Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces $300 Million Investment in SUNY at Stony Brook’s Quantum Research and Innovation Hub

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced $300 million to establish the Quantum Research and Innovation Hub at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, further catapulting New York’s national leadership in groundbreaking research that saves lives, grows the economy and improves national security.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Great to be back at the State University of New York at Stony Brook University. Incredibly, proud of this institution and all those who lead it. And I want to thank also — start with our leaders in the legislature, our senators who've been acknowledged, our assemblymember, but they've been my great partners, and I want to thank them for their support.

Also I come out of county government and I always have a great deal of respect for the challenges faced by our county officials, starting with our county executive, a great friend, Ed Romaine, thank you for all you do. And Steve Englebright, our county legislator.

We have our friends in labor here as well. Let's give them a round of applause – Matty and Ryan. Members of my administration and someone I'm enormously proud of, that we were able to recruit him to assume the role as Chancellor of this great organization, this entity known as State University of New York. And I want to thank Chancellor John King for saying yes a number of years ago and truly leaving a legacy that people around the country and in the world are looking at one they want to emulate and model. So thank you for all you do for us, John King,

And you need to have a powerful chair of the board of trustees, and that is Meryl Tisch, who's come here. And I thank her for what she has done, her vision and her passion for SUNY is extraordinary and the effort that she puts behind helping identify the key leadership that are the drivers of change. I want to make sure that we all give her a special round applause as well. Meryl Tisch.

Cary Staller, our trustee. Cary, who you will be hearing from him momentarily. Thank you for what you do as one of the trustees. We have our student here, Luca Rallis, President of Student Government. I said, “I used to be in student government,” so you never know where it's going to lead you. I was a little bit of a rabble-rouser back then, but don't give your administration too hard of a time.

But also delighted to see the work done by people like Kevin Law and as a chair of the committee to identify the next leader. And it's a heavy lift to keep raising the bar because we have had extraordinary leaders come through here. I've been Lieutenant Governor since 2015, and I've seen many people come through this organization and I'll tell you, they always have great careers that lie ahead of them, but we like to keep people here a little longer though.

And so we're planning on making sure that our new president, Andrea Goldsmith – we are so grateful for your energy and your enthusiasm that you do. We talked about your background in California and how you didn't use these words, but we want to make sure that they eat our lunch when it comes to higher education and innovation, it would be that incubator for innovation. So, truly a lot of great people here.

A lot of smart people in this room, a lot of smart people. So I have a question for you. What would Albert Einstein call spooky action at a distance? You don't know? It’s called quantum entanglement. Take that home. Tell your kids, tell your family that you learned something cool.

It's one of the strangest and most fascinating topics in modern science and the physics of it are really hard to grasp — certainly for lay people like myself. But the idea is simple, that entangled particles can share information simultaneously, instantly, across great distances. And that is truly the objective of what we're talking about here today. And that simply describes what'll be the future of computing.

So, as President Goldsmith described, trying to draw an analogy between how significant this moment is compared to another significant moment when no one saw the full potential. That's what we're talking about. People will come back and look at this time — as a time when state government partnered with their academic institutions and none greater than the Stony Brook University, but also private sector organizations to unleash this next era of computing and it's all being developed here.

I don't know how you don't believe in the power of SUNY, we've seen that, but also how SUNY is embracing the power of quantum computing. I mean, this is something I don't think a few years ago people would've envisioned. I mean, that's something the private sector does — we're going to teach the basics here. There are leaders who've come before who've left their mark here. And I always want to mention James and Marilyn Simons on this organization, on this institution, and their belief and their ideas that maybe seem so wild and farfetched at the time, but really create an opportunity for them to be successful, but also to return to this great place and make massive, major investments.

I know because we started a program a few years ago where the state would match contributions to endowments to our public institutions. I didn't know that the Simons would break the bank on the first day. It was a lot of money. But it all came here. So I was like, okay, I have to go back to my Budget Director. And I thought it was a little here, there a little there. It's all gone.

But I was there at those great announcements. But this institution has been the beneficiary of a lot of people who believe in what you do is the point. As I do and I look at your new leadership and the support of the trustees and everyone else who's part of this — we're creating an institute of advanced computational sciences and moving us in from the theoretical to the practical, which I probably won’t even understand when it becomes the practical.

But people who need to know will know, and that's why to make further investments and to sort of catalyze our belief in the future of State University of New York at Stony Brook University. We're investing big time today, big time. How does $300 million sound to you?

It'll establish the new Quantum Research and Innovation Hub right here. You heard it here first, it'll cement SUNY's role as a global powerhouse. We don't just want to be the best in the nation. That's shooting too low. Our moonshot is to be the one recognized globally as the place where the smartest people want to be, and the smartest students want to be educated. And the ideas that are incubated here are commercialized, and we create more jobs here on Long Island in New York State. That's my vision of how these investments will ultimately benefit all the people of our great state.

So that's what we're going to do. We're going to strengthen our leadership in the industries of tomorrow. And as you mentioned, I designated the Stony Brook University as a flagship because people say, “Well, how come some of these other states — you think about Michigan and California, other places in Texas — like they have a flagship. Well, why don't we?” Well, if we don't have one, I'm going to have one. I mean, I want to have my flagship.

So we had this kind of ambition in mind. With that designation, but also I knew that designation would help lift up the prestige of Stony Brook University and let's look at some of the results. Freshman applications are up 65 percent. PhD applications are up 45 percent. This is the smartest in the nation and abroad, they want to be here — 45 percent increase, and faculty applications, because everybody wants to be part of the action, are up 100 percent. That's what a designation and the leadership and the cultivation of this innovation hub, this whole concept of a place where the smartest people gather. The momentum that we're experiencing here is nothing short of extraordinary, beyond my expectations. And that's why I'm so excited but we're not done. No matter what the topic is, I say we are not resting on our laurels. We're never saying mission accomplished for anything, because I want to make sure that we establish New York's brand as the place for the smartest minds gathered, but also there's opportunities for everyone.

Whether it's what we're doing with free community college now – which is often a pipeline. President, you said that you started in community college yourself. And to realize that there's a lot of adults, not everybody knows their future when they're 18 years old and they take a pass on even applying to colleges.

But to say in our budget, again I thank our Senators and our Assemblymember for their support. We offer in the State of New York, for the first time ever, free adult learning free community college for anyone over the age of 25 to be able to go back and get a degree or an enhanced or get more credentials — and to really embrace these new opportunities and technologies and curriculum that weren't there before.

So I want people to have a reset in life sometimes and just another chance to lift their credentials. And I'm going to call on the Chancellor, and maybe he knows this number. A few weeks ago I asked and said, “how many more students have applied to college at SUNY community colleges this year than last.” I think it was 16,000 — over 16,000 people. We just enacted this a few months ago.

So that shows the demand, and we're focusing people on the jobs we know that there's openings. Whether it's health care or education, but also specific industry, advanced manufacturing in particular. But also the trades, I want more people to learning skills and so that's what I get most excited about.

I want every single student to have the same shot at the American Dream that lifted my family out of its circumstances. My parents lived in a trailer park and my dad worked at the steel plant — it was tough, dirty work. His father worked there, his brothers were, this was the American dream for poor Irish immigrants, that was to be able to work at a steel plant and have a union card.

But my dad had an even bigger dream and he worked all day and had a little baby, my brother, lived in the trailer park. I came along a year later. We're Irish, like I said, a year later and there's more and more, there's more lots of little kids. But he went on and pursued a college degree at night and when he got that credential, he's able to move up out of the hard work in the factory and move into a different position there and ultimately took a risk — and I'd say this because I think I have the same risk-taking gene or else I wouldn't be here. But my dad, when he was 30 and had five of his six kids, already had a secure job at Bethlem Steel. He had met a couple of guys who had just been involved in something crazy called computers, and my dad left his job. People thought he was crazy. And took a chance to join a couple of other guys who started before.

Four people started a company that worked in technology and solutions and went into companies and sold business, and I went on business calls with my dad and they almost went under so many times — we struggled and struggled. But eventually, they made it and grew to 3,000 employees in my hometown and took the company, not national, but global — my dad became the CEO.

I take all that success back to a decision he made to get a college degree. And whether you want to go into the trades out of high school, we have great programs and BOCES and others you can go on that path. And I meet so many people in that space as well. But for those who want to embrace these new opportunities of the future, they're being developed and unfolded as we speak before our very eyes today.

Giving people that chance to get that degree without worrying about the cost. It is something I feel is a gift to the people of this State, and I'm so proud about that initiative and I know that there are going to be other lives that are transformed just as my family was because of that access to education.

So we're going to have a brand new quantum hub here. It will be anchored by other institutions. It’ll be a data center, a network control room, an institute — all sorts of big, fancy names and people are going to make this happen. I'm going to come back and say, “That's very cool, I don't really quite understand it, but that's all right. As long as you do, I don't need to.”

But I'll close with this. It just means an investment like this solidifies our position — as an incubator of ideas and possibilities and ultimately an educational system that'll lead to more businesses being created and supported by the graduates of institutions like this.

This is the whole ecosystem because I want Long Island to thrive and prosper, and this is the linchpin — this is our key to unlock that even more. It's a wonderful place to live, raise families. I know that our educational institutions K through 12 are outstanding, especially since the kids are finally off the cell phones.

I said our kids will be a lot smarter than the other states’ kids, I'm telling you I'm putting my money on them, but this is what it's all about. It’s about opportunity, and I want to thank everyone involved in this because for me, this is a good day. And I can look out at a room full of true believers. People know that we just haven't quite unleashed our full potential. And we're going to seize it like this.

Thank you very much everyone.