The state is awarding RIT nearly a million dollars to establish a New York State Center for Advance Technology in Additive Manufacturing and Functional Printing.
Additive manufacturing refers to printing or adding one layer of material on top of another, commonly referred to as 3D printing.
It'll be called the AMPrint Center for Advanced Technology, and it's director, Denis Cormier, says there's enormous potential.
He says the Finger Lakes region is the ideal location to host the center because of the traditional expertise in document and image printing in the region.
"There's a very strong technological connection between traditional printing and 3D printing, and that's why we have such tremendous potential in this area."
It's expected 3D printing will be a $20-billion dollar industry by 2020.
Cormier says additive manufacturing can be as big as photonics, and he feels there is a lot a synergy between the two.