About the time that the Bay County Economic Development Alliance, working with The St. Joe Company, succeeded in bringing GKN Aerospace to Panama City Beach, Dr. John Holdnak, then president of Gulf Coast State College and Glen McDonald, its current president, floated an idea.
Holdnak and McDonald believed that an advanced manufacturing research and development center might serve as a complement to businesses like GKN. In addition, they believed it could be a difference-making jobs generator and a meaningful factor in the region’s economic development and, thus, a strong candidate for a grant from Triumph Gulf Coast. They viewed Florida State University, given its status as a Tier 1 research university, as the ideal candidate to apply for such funding.
Back then in 2017, the timing wasn’t right for FSU, recalled Bay County EDA president Becca Hardin. But circumstances would change, and Dr. Richard McCullough — a chemist, entrepreneur and a man with a passion for R&D — would succeed John Thrasher as FSU’s president.
Six years later, the Bay County EDA was working to win over electric air taxi manufacturer Joby Aviation, which was seeking a site for a 2,000-job plant, when the Holdnak/McDonald idea resurfaced. This time, it gained traction, Hardin said, and resources for preparing a funding proposal were dedicated to it.
McCullough was among 15 representatives of FSU who traveled from Tallahassee to DeFuniak Springs last November for a meeting of the Triumph Gulf Coast board. Agenda items included an application from FSU for $100 million for a “collaborative center for manufacturing and aerospace technology.” The project has come to be known as InSPIRE, the Institute for Strategic Partnerships, Innovation, Research and Education.
Hardin has worked with Triumph and its board chair David Bear on varied proposals but told him regarding InSPIRE, “You’ve seen some impressive projects but nothing like this. This one is truly transformational.”
The board responded by voting to support InSPIRE’s pre-application with $98.4 million in funding, the largest award in its 10-year history. FSU has pledged $65 million to the initiative, whose total cost is estimated at $300 million. FSU’s proposal listed state, federal and private contracts and grants; state and federal budget allocations; private donations; and student tuition and fees as additional anticipated funding sources.
On Feb. 5, the Triumph board met at FSU Panama City (FSU PC) and unanimously approved the term sheet, sometimes referred to as clawback criteria, for InSPIRE. At this writing, a location for the project has not been finalized, but sites at the Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport are the leading possibilities, Hardin said.
As a Triumph board member, Leslie Weiss, a civil engineer who heads up a firm located in Crawfordville, assessed FSU’s application based on factors including its forecast economic impact.
“For every Triumph dollar spent, we expect to get $10 back out of it, which is a great amount,” said Weiss, who is a member of the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering Advisory Board.
Dr. Farrukh Alvi, the associate provost for innovation, research and entrepreneurship in STEM at FSU, was the team lead in developing the proposal. Dr. Stacey Patterson, FSU’s vice president for research, was the principal investigator. Their work involved ensuring that a long list of collaborators and partners were informed and on board.
“This is a community initiative,” Alvi said. “FSU led but not FSU only.”
Projected partners include FSU colleges and research centers; K-12 public school districts; state colleges and technical colleges; military bases; businesses ranging from Danfoss Turbocor to Space X; and economic development agencies.
Patterson said InSPIRE will employ a pull strategy, seeking to attract partners for whom the institute’s unified, multi-disciplinary team of experts can solve problems. Barriers that may separate engineering and physics departments, for example, in academic environments will not exist here.
“The work carried out at InSPIRE will change as industry needs evolve,” Patterson said. “We are going to have to be nimble. We’re going to have to act like a business.”
In conversation, Alvi tries to avoid the word ecosystem, finding that it is overworked, but he occasionally relents.
“Exactly what we are trying to build is an ecosystem and a culture, so that it becomes second nature for people to associate the area with not just beaches but also applied R&D,” Alvi said.
He sees parallels between Huntsville, Alabama, when its evolution toward becoming “Rocket City” was young, and what will be the early stages of InSPIRE.
“We are confident that the investment made by FSU and Triumph and other funding entities in InSPIRE will be dwarfed by the investment in the region that it will attract,” Alvi said.
As they undertook the proposal-writing process, Alvi, Patterson and others had the “luxury and challenge” of starting with a clean sheet of paper.
“We began by thinking about the needs of the region,” Alvi said. “We recognized that it is too reliant on tourism. We looked at businesses that are already present in the region and assets including military bases.
“At FSU, we’ve been working closely with Eglin Air Force Base for more than a decade,” Alvi said. “We do research for them and provide training. We’ve done programs at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Bay County. We spoke with military bases as we refined our proposal and obtained letters of support from them. Those conversations informed our plan and our decisions about what areas to emphasize first.”
Alvi, who has been with FSU and the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering for a combined 30 years, recalls when FSU PC, in 2009, was recommended for closure by an FSU budget crisis committee. The campus survived, in part, by agreeing to enrollment growth requirements.
In addition, FSU PC worked to become more relevant by strengthening ties with area employers. At the time, Alvi was an associate dean at the College of Engineering in charge of graduate programs there. He was instrumental in bringing about a master’s program in systems engineering at FSU PC, a development that helped meet needs at the Naval Surface Warfare Center.
“We took available expertise and bridged gaps,” Alvi said. “That’s what we want to do with InSPIRE — fill in missing pieces by building on a foundation.”
Alvi stressed that, appropriately, InSPIRE will be additive, not duplicative and will allow FSU to play to its strengths.
“We’re building upon things that we have done and do well,” he said. “FSU is in a grant position to execute project aims because of its expertise in education in STEM fields. Nationally, we are well known in aerospace additive manufacturing for energy and national defense applications. This is going to be the initial thrust, but we hope down the road that there will be other areas that will come in.”
Alvi mentioned health care as one possibility, noting that additive manufacturing will play a big role in the production of wearable, health-monitoring devices.
He anticipates that InSPIRE will attract companies that will have employment opportunities for military personnel who are transitioning out of active duty; people with four-year degrees and associate degrees; and graduates of certificate programs.
“We want to build a talent pipeline from an early age,” Alvi said. “We want students in middle and high school to start envisioning the kinds of careers they can have. Workforce development is integral to our proposal — talent nurturing and retention.”
“InSPIRE is a game-changing project for the entire Northwest Florida region,” Hardin said. “It is going to put our area on the international map like never before. It is focused a lot in the aviation sector, but its additive manufacturing component has application to the automation of manufacturing in all sectors.”
Meanwhile, FSU is not prepared to rest solely on its Triumph triumph. With other schools, it is writing a National Science Foundation funding proposal called NSF Engines.
“We are talking about economic engines,” Alvi said. “The focus is on additive manufacturing for defense and energy. There is tremendous synergy between InSPIRE and the NSF proposal. It’s not a given that it will succeed, but if it does, it is possible to receive up to $160 million over the life of the project.
“That’s an example of the kind of thing that InSPIRE will allow us to leverage. We’ll be able to think bigger and be competitive because funders and industry will see that we are seriously invested already.”
Patterson is excited about what can be InSPIRE’s regional impacts.
“The opportunity for us to recruit industry partners will provide new opportunities for students to not only go to school in North Florida, but to stay in North Florida and build their families. When regions can do that, it raises the bar for everyone and everything improves.”
The first phase of the hospital can accommodate up to 180 beds and will offer a broad range of health care services, including emergency medicine, general surgery, and diagnostic imaging. In addition, the agreement outlines the development of specialized service lines such as cardiac care, neurology, and orthopedics.
