Florida Semiconductor Institute could land in Jacksonville

Jacksonville is the front-runner to become the future home of the University of Florida's Florida Semiconductor Institute that Gov. Ron DeSantis calls the next step in building the state's growing semiconductor industry.

UF has not yet made a site selection but at a board of trustees meeting this month, board Chairman Mori Hosseini said putting the Florida Semiconductor Institute in Jacksonville would be in addition to the ongoing work toward building a UF graduate campus in the downtown area.

He said the the UF grad campus, which would apply advances in artificial intelligence across a variety of courses and research, still needs another $50 million to reach the $300 million mark to move forward with construction. Over the past year, the prospect of a UF campus in Jacksonville has locked up $250 million in funding — $150 million from the state, $50 million from the city of Jacksonville and $50 million from private donors.

Hosseini said UF will go back to the city and private donors for the final $50 million installment.

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"So far, it has been tremendous response from both the city and the community," Hosseini told fellow board members. "They came to the table."

He said community backing also will be a key factor in where UF decides to put the Florida Semiconductor Institute. At DeSantis's request, the Legislature agreed to put $45 million for the facility and $35 million for operations of it in next year's budget. UF will decide where to build the institute.

City spokesman Phillip Perry said Mayor Donna Deegan wants the graduate campus and the semiconductor institute to happen in Jacksonville.

"We’re honored UF has chosen Jacksonville for graduate program expansion," Perry said Tuesday. "Mayor Deegan believes they are a fantastic partner and that the city and private sector should do everything in our power and means to close this deal."

He said Deegan and Hosseini have had "extensive conversations" about the Florida Semiconductor Institute.

"It’s our understanding that the site selection will be a competitive process," Perry said. "We will bring forward our city’s strengths to compete for this facility."

Florida ranks fifth nationally in semiconductor workforce

Hosseini said he and UF President Ben Sasse favor putting the institute in Jacksonville. He said other communities in Florida have made their own pitches for the institute so UF needs to know it has Jacksonville's support.

"If not, our semiconductor business may go somewhere else," he told board when it met over two days on March 7-8. "We don't know that yet. We're looking at it, but both the president and myself, we think Jacksonville is the right place for the community and for our state and for the university."

The plan for the Florida Semiconductor Institute emerged in January when DeSantis said he was asking the Legislature to put $80 million for it in the 2024-25 budget.

Nearly half of semiconductor manufacturing employment nationally is in California, Texas, Oregon, and Arizona, according to an S&P Global report. DeSantis said Florida has the fifth-largest workforce in the United States for semiconductors, the components widely used in everyday items such as appliances, smart phones, digital cameras, air conditioners and LED bulbs.

In addition to consumer electronics, the next generation of the chips are being applied to space and defense technology, according to UF.

DeSantis said in January the Florida Semiconductor Institute would help the state build the workforce needed for the expansion of semiconductor manufacturing. "That'll not only be good for students," he said. "You're going to end up seeing businesses want to come and locate alongside that."

He said that institute wouldn't necessarily be built at UF's main campus in Gainesville. "They may choose to locate it somewhere else in the state under the UF banner — maybe someplace where there would be more businesses likely to start and expand, and that's fine," DeSantis said.

Hosseini did not say during the March board meeting whether UF is eyeing a specific site in Jacksonville.

While that selection remains to be made by the UF board for Jacksonville or elsewhere, the UF graduate center has been in the works since February 2023 when school officials joined then-mayor Lenny Curry at City Hall to announce they were exploring the idea.

Hosseini compared it to how Arizona State University's creation of a Phoenix campus helped energize its downtown, and the University of South Florida enhanced downtown Tampa with the USF Health campus. He said in both those cases, city leaders approached the universities and worked in partnership with them and that's what's happened in Jacksonville.

"We extended our hand as a partner and and we are absolutely looking to do a partnership anywhere we go," Hosseini said at the board meeting. "And so hopefully they'll also stand by their promise to see UF as something that absolutely will change the face of downtown Jacksonville."

Sasse: Gainesville is "mother ship" but Jacksonville extends UF impact

UF is targeting its search for a UF grad campus site to the downtown area and has considered three locations: the Prime Osborn Convention Center area, the area of Florida State College Jacksonville's downtown campus and Laura Street, and the current fairgrounds site in the sports complex.

Jaguars owner Shad Khan has a contract to buy the fairgounds site when the Greater Jacksonville Fair Association moves to a new location on the Westside. Khan has said he would donate the land for UF campus and he agreed to donate $5 million for the private-fundraising drive.

Until UF has built a campus, it will use space on the fifth floor of the JEA headquarters in downtown. The JEA building also will be where UF offers the first graduate-level classes starting in fall 2025.

Sasse, who was on his second day on the job as UF president when he joined Hosseini at Jacksonville City Hall for a February 7, 2023 announcement about the potential Jacksonville graduate center, told the UF board the Gainesville campus remains the "mother ship" for the UF system but Jacksonville presents an opportunity to engage students across the span of their careers.

"Jacksonville is important in its own right, but it's also very important as a doodle pad for lot of the broader experiments and reform that are needed in higher education in general and that the University of Florida is obviously a leader on," Sasse told the board.

He said the plan for Jacksonville has gotten "bigger and bolder" with expectations of more than 1,500 students at the campus by the fifth year. He said that pace of growth "is something that rarely happens in higher education."

"When we talk about what it means to be elite and practical, to be nimble and future focused, to expand research and improve student experiences, Jacksonville is a huge part of how we will write the future," Sasse said.

Hosseini said the selection of a site will be based on having enough acreage for even more future expansion.

"We're making this decision for the next 50 to 100 years," he said. "I expect in 20 years, we'll have 10,000 students because this is not pie in the sky."

AI would be big part of Jacksonville campus degree offerings

In Jacksonville, UF will start by offering 10 graduate degrees at the Jacksonville center the university's colleges of business, engineering, law, health sciences and design, construction and planning.

The overarching themes for the degrees will be artificial intelligence and machine learning, precision machine and smart manufacturing, data analytics and security, and the "application/translation of emerging innovations across fields," according to the presentation to the board.

Sasse said preparing students for the "AI revolution" is an important part of the university's mission at Gainesville and would be the same at Jacksonville.

"We're on the verge of a lot of things being made new and the disruption over time will be equal to and beyond the disruptions of the industrial revolution, which obviously remade higher education," Sasse said.

He said a master's degree in in using AI for biomedical and health sciences would be among the first of its kind in Florida and in the nation. He said students will help develop AI technology in the lab and then put it in place in clinical settings.

"If something works well in a clinical setting, great, let's expand it, let's scale it," he said. "And if it doesn't work, let's learn from it, redevelop it and go back into the lab and bring it back into a clinical environment on a tight time cycle."

Sasse also highlighted the physician assistant program UF wants to offer in Jacksonville. He said the Gainesville campus gets about 1,400 applications for 60 slots for physician assistant courses. He said Jacksonville would offer an opportunity to "open the spigot quite a bit beyond the 60 students we currently take."

He said the Jacksonville campus also will help UF take advantage of HiPerGator AI, a supercomputer on the Gainesville campus that is one of the most powerful in the world.

The presentation to the UF board showed graduate degrees in business for a professional MBA with artificial intelligence "analytics concentration" and a master of science in management with an AI concentration for deploying that technology in business processes.

Another degree would be a masters in architecture using an existing UF program in downtown Jacksonville

Two degrees would be in the field engineering: a masters in engineering management and data analytics and a masters in computer science.

The center would have a masters in study of law for non-lawyers who are "engaged in financial and tax compliance." UF plans to add more concentrations for that degree.

In the area of health sciences, there would be a masters in health administration for executives and a genetic counseling training program in addition to the physician assistant program and the masters in AI biomedical and health sciences.

The UF grad campus in Jacksonville will be tailored to working professionals but farther down the road, the permanent campus would have student housing. That would allow rotational programs where students take courses in both Gainesville and Jacksonville. Sasse said one possibility would be for engineering students to take fourth-year classes in Jacksonville while gaining experience at engineering firms.

UF will seek approval next week from the Florida Board of Governors for adding Jacksonville as a campus in the state university of system.

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This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: University of Florida eyes Jacksonville for semiconductor institute