HAMMOND — Indiana is angling for a share of federal money meant to establish regional innovation and technology hubs around the nation, and the Region potentially could benefit.
U.S. Sen. Todd Young touted the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act he co-sponsored last year to help bring semiconductor production back to the United States during a visit Tuesday to the Digital Crossroad Data Center at the former State Line Generating Plant site on the Hammond lakefront. The legislation also would help fund quantum computing, biotechnology, artificial intelligence and other technological advances.
"We have maybe a once-in-a-generation opportunity to harness those assets both human and hard in order to become more prosperous and position this Region for the future," he said, "to grow economically, to attract more talent, retain more talent and be the sort of place that retrospectively will be incredibly proud to leave as a legacy to our kids and grandkids."
Young addressed a crowd at the data center that included many tech industry representatives, Gary Mayor Jerome Prince, Lake County Commissioner Michael Repay and other dignitaries. He said his top priority was making sure the legislation is implemented in an effective way.
"Now that the legislation is law, I want to make sure Indiana maximally benefits from it," he said.
The legislation aims to fix the chips shortages that bedeviled automakers and other sectors during the coronavirus pandemic; its manufacturing had long ago been outsourced abroad.
"The computer chips you're reading about and hearing about on television are the brains of the modern economy," Young said. "Everything that has an on-off switch these days relies on these chips. Increasingly, as we get better and better at making these intricate chips, they allow us to process more data more quickly and do all sorts of exciting things, from hypersonics, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, autonomous systems and synthetic biology.
"These are the economic sectors of the future that we hope and we believe the next generation and beyond will have high-value and highly compensated jobs in."
All of those sectors have implications for fighting and preventing wars, he said.
"If we can develop these things at home, we will be prepared for the defense of our values. A byproduct of that is, if we play our hand well, Indiana will play an important role in defending our values."
The CHIPS and Science Act also will fund scientific research and employee training at community colleges, as well as tech hubs across the country. It may end up providing substantial funding to a half-dozen to 20 such hubs around the country, potentially including one in Indiana.
"We have a lot of core competencies. We're a farming state. We're a life sciences state," he said. "We're an advanced manufacturing state. We're the most manufacturing-intensive state in the country and on and on and on. I can personally conceive of a lot of areas where we have competencies and are just looking for investments in our people and in our places to take it to the next level."
The federal government would provide initial seed capital but not long-term subsidies, Young said.
"The tech hub model is the Silicon Valley model. Government funds it as a customer or investor in the early years, but then the private sector takes over. In a particular area, some sort of advanced manufacturing designation is a signal to the market and venture capitalists and others of means that we want to make the intellectual property and research investments.
"We want to recruit workers and we want to make this home for our small businesses that will become the large businesses of tomorrow."
Young said semiconductor investments typically took place near major research universities, such as Purdue or Notre Dame. Local leaders will formulate proposals that could land congressional funding even if they are not initially chosen as one of five or six regional tech hubs around the country.
Indiana, for instance, has the potential for collaboration between its pharmaceutical and agricultural sciences sectors to create a hub for synthetic biology that would study how to grow things like materials, pharmaceuticals and strains that could grow more effectively in unusual conditions.
"If we could become the destination area for that field, that could become very exciting," he said. "That's one concept I've heard a fair amount of chatter about."
The Northwest Indiana Forum, Digital Crossroads and other local stakeholders plan to make a regional hub push for Northwest Indiana, possibly in collaboration with partners in other states or in Chicago, Digital Crossroads principal Tom Dakich said.
"State lines don't matter," he said. "We've talked about resources in Chicago. They're developing the South Side of Chicago, the Bronzeville area. Maybe it goes all the way up to Wisconsin and over to South Bend."
A core geographic hub could be served by spokes, Young said.
"Be creative," he said. "Seize on existing assets. You don't want something that's already a magnet for private capital, that's already a hub. It's not just a designation. There are research dollars and tech maturation dollars to help small businesses get over that valley of death. We want to make that valley shallower."
Northwest Indiana could be part of a broader regional tech hub, Northwest Indiana Forum President/CEO Heather Ennis said.
"There's an opportunity for Northwest Indiana," she said. "We're just down the toll road from the hypersonics at Notre Dame and just down I-65 from the hypersonics program at Purdue. We envision ourselves as in the middle of a research triangle between Chicago, Indy and West Lafayette, that little pyramid."
Article Source:
- The Times of Northwest Indiana I "Senator Says Potential Tech Investments Present 'Once-in-a-Generation' Opportunity" I April 4, 2023 Updated October 23, 2023
