Representatives Kathy Hochul, NY-26, and Louise Slaughter, NY-28, have announced that the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies, has been awarded more than $1.5 million in funding through the Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge, a multi-agency competition to support the development of high-growth industry clusters across America’s regions. The award will go towards RIT’s Finger Lakes Food Processing Cluster Initiative.
The funding will go toward equipping the Finger Lakes Food Processing Cluster Initiative to provide the structure and resources needed to support a successful, sustainable, robust food processing cluster in the nine-county Finger Lakes region of New York.
RIT will facilitate cluster unification and planning and will provide economic and environmental information, technical and business assistance to existing and developing companies, and training for the local labor force to fill the gap between current workforce skills and industry needs.
The grant came through three sources: the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration, the Department of Labor’s Employment & Training Administration and the Small Business Administration.
“This program is a great example of how regional organizations can partner by leveraging their knowledge and expertise to help industry in our community,” said Nabil Nasr, assistant provost and director of the Golisano Institute for Sustainability at RIT. “This program will bring significant leverage and present good opportunities for our region to expand these kinds of activities with excellent potential to contribute to our regional economic development goals.”
