Contributing article by Justin Call, CEO of Modovolo

Commercial UAV News published an article from contributing author Justin Call, CEO of Modovolo, on how Upstate New York rose to prominence as the “Center of the Drone Universe.”

The center of the drone universe is in what at first glance appears to be the most unlikely of locations: among the bucolic farmlands and woodlands of Upstate NY – and especially Syracuse, NY. But this region has all the building blocks for leading the country in drone technologies.

“We did not stumble into UAS,” explains Rob Simpson. “It was very intentional. We knew we had amazing capabilities in our area: manufacturing, IOT, micro-electronics capabilities – to name just a few. But these capabilities were being deployed in multiple verticals like medical, aerospace, radar systems and many others. We asked the question: how could we map these capabilities to a global market need? That’s where UAS and UTM came in. We decided to make a big bet on those.”

It was a big bet that paid off. The region won $500 million from the URI and a significant portion of this money would then go to fund a litany of projects aimed at making the region the center of the drone universe and one of them was a new business plan competition.

“We had been running a business plan competition with private funds for almost a decade,” continues Rob Simpson. “The biggest challenge of the region is that we weren’t starting companies fast enough to cover the businesses we were losing.”

“The existing business plan competition was $200k per year and we had success in building a pipeline of start-ups,” explains Kara Jones, Director of GENIUS NY. “But it was very general. There wasn’t an industry focus.”

The result was GENIUS NY, a business competition focused exclusively on UAS technologies. That in and of itself was revolutionary but the next step was even better. The grand prize is $1 million investment and that got a lot of people’s attention.

“From nearly the start we had companies apply and join from all over the world,” continues Kara.

This is a well-worn pun but: there is a lot of genius behind the GENIUS NY program that goes far beyond the $1 million prize money. Sure, it was a great idea to have such a large prize because it gets a lot of attention but that’s not what makes GENIUS NY special. What is special is the ecosystem that’s been created – and that’s growing.

Read more about the region’s history, assets, industry expertise and capabilities that have contributed to its success in the unmanned system industry.