European nanotech group to pair with Osceola tech site
Osceola County will contribute $15 million during the next five years to programming and research development at hightech Florida Advanced Manufacturing Research Center, currently under construction near Kissimmee.
The Board of County Commissioners approved the additional funding Monday afternoon, which will help start a Design Center at FAMRC that will design high-tech electronics and sensors. County manager Don Fisher said the county expects the money to be paid back over five years.
The board also authorized an agreement to approve a partnership with a European organization, as yet unnamed in public documents, referred to only under a code name “NANO,” with 2,200 employees.
The NANO organization is expected to build and office in Osceola County in the near future.
Although county officials would not confirm who NANO is, UCF officials previously told the Sentinel that they were talking to Belgium-based IMEC, Inter-University MicroElectronics Center, one of Europe’s leading nanotechnology research groups — which also has 2,200 employees.
The agreement requires that Osceola County pay $3 million per year during the next five years to the International Consortium of Advanced Manufacturing Research, which is the group that oversees FAMRC.
ICAMR is a cooperation between UCF, Osceola County, the High Tech Corridor and other universities. The design center will serve as a location for researchers to design next-generation sensors, with approval of an oversight board.
Officials say the partnership will boost research opportunities for the $95 million research facility just outside of Kissimmee.
The commission also approved an agreement that allows Photon-X, a photonics company that moved to Florida from Alabama in 2013, to defer payment of $2 million in membership dues to ICAMR for five years.
The membership allows the company to reap the benefits of research conducted at FAMRC.
FAMRC is being pushed as a way to build Central Florida into a global leader in research related to high-tech sensors.
The board also OK’d a memo of understanding to establish an informal partnership between research communities in Central Florida and a Netherlands organization called PhotonDelta, which Osceola believes will accelerate the rate at which the new, local research facility develops.
The memo states that the partnership will make “both regions of the world stronger, safer and more economically stable in the years to come.”
“It’s truly exciting, not just for Osceola County but for Central Florida and Florida, in general,” said Cheryl Grieb, District 4 representative. “It will change the economic makeup of Central Florida.”
Officials have said that the design center, a semiconductor foundry and lab facilities, should be up and running early next year.