An award of more than $900,000 will help a Syracuse University program continue economic development efforts in New York state.

The Center for Advanced Systems and Engineering (CASE) at SU received a $921,000 award to assist with economic development across the state last week. The award re-designated CASE as a Center for Advanced Technology (CAT) for the next 10 years.

Empire State Development (ESD), New York state’s chief economic development agency, provides funding for CATs to improve New York state’s economy through job creation.

This year, CASE’s grant proposal was among the best in a competitive field of applicants, said Howard Zemsky, president and CEO of ESD, in an SU News release. The director of CASE, Pramod Varshney, agreed that the process was very competitive this time.

“There were many universities that wanted to try to get new CAT centers and that meant some older centers would not have been re-designated,” Varshney said. “This time around, we had very stiff competition and we are very fortunate to have it re-designated.”

CASE is an applied research center that works with complex information-intensive systems. Varshney said this area of expertise covers things like big data revolution, cybersecurity and data mining. Ultimately, the center uses sciences and technology to promote economic development and to create jobs across New York state.

Varshney added that they have had this funding from ESD for the past 31 years, so the center will try to maintain the support they have provided to their partners.

CASE plans to use part of the money to support the center’s collaborative projects between university faculty and local companies. Based on the potential of economic impact, CASE will provide resources and funds so additional graduate students can work on the projects without costs to the company or the faculty member.

“Our goal is to keep adding new companies, news projects, and expand our collaborative partners,” Varshney said.

Since 1998, the center’s total economic impact was $208.8 million, breaking down to 20 percent state, 40 percent corporate and 40 percent federal, according to the CASE website. CASE’s impact has grown significantly every year, as the last fiscal year generated more than $60 million in economic impact.

CASE provides both long-term and short-term support to its partner companies. The long-term projects are collaborative research projects with a faculty member that typically last between one and three years. The center is able to place a much larger number of students on the short-term projects because the long-term projects require contracts or grants from the Office of Sponsored Programs, Varshney said.

The center usually takes 12 graduate students each year to work on the collaborative research project. Jim Fawcett, a faculty adviser for these projects, said the projects tend to be quite varied, but they do a lot of website design with their partner companies.

“It depends on what the company needs, but most recently we’ve modernized desktop apps that small companies have been using for years,” Fawcett said.

Moreover, CASE will often provide seed money to small businesses to help them determine if their proposed project will really make an economic difference for them. The projects’ total cost depends on the job — Fawcett said small projects require about $600 whereas most projects are $2,000 to $3,000. Fawcett said the funding from ESD is vital for the center to continue its economic efforts.

“I think CASE really is doing a significant service for the local businesses,” Fawcett said. “We do a lot of jobs for mom-and-pop businesses that just couldn’t afford to have the work done any other way.”

Published on October 4, 2015 at 9:49 pm

Contact Alexi: ajmccamm@syr.edu