While a lease between the two officially began Nov. 1, NeoCity welcomed the Florida Semiconductor Institute to town Tuesday, with a meet-and-greet with its director and a ribbon cutting for its Kissimmee facility.
FSI, started in Gainesville at the University of Florida, is a statewide hub for research, development, innovation, and workforce initiatives focused on semiconductor technology.
It’s director, Dr. David Arnold, said Tuesday the institute, an industry leader in emerging materials, chip design, microsystems, advanced packaging, and cybersecurity, is following the federal vision of the CHIPS Act, the catalyst for previous federal National Science Foundation grants.
Jay Galbraith heads up BRIDG, the partnership working to create a semiconductor advanced packaging and workforce hub at NeoCity. He said FSI’s arrival marks the next step in NeoCity becoming a nucleus for advanced packaging of semiconductors.
For Arnold, it’s a homecoming of sorts. He was born at what’s now AdventHealth Kissimmee Hospital, and his family lived in St. Cloud before moving to Merritt Island—where he spent his school years watching rocket launches from up close on the Space Coast.
He said FSI’s focus is to work with NeoCity and the county to create that advanced packaging nucleus—taking what was an Osceola County farm and going “from cow chips to microchips.”
“The crown jewel of that vision is this site. It’s been a ‘Build it and they will come,’ vision … it’s just been a decade too early,” he said. “But that time is now. This place is prime. We’re already seeing federal and state investments in the location.
“NeoCity is where the action is going to be. We want to be here to support the consortium of folks coming to make that happen.
“We are far ahead here, frankly, as a pad-ready site to stand up technology and semiconductor manufacturing.
What NeoCity means to FSI, Arnold said, is the creation of a stepping stone from University of Florida lab to commercial-scale manufacturing.
“The adoption time from when something is invented to when it’s actually in your hands—in your car, or phone or pacemaker—that time period has gotten so short,” he said. “With that exponential increase as a backdrop, the University of Florida is trying to understand its role in the state and national economy as an economic engine, not just a producer of degrees, and not an ivory tower.”
