Two Days of Innovation: New York State Innovation Summit Returns to Rochester

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — For the first time since 2019, the New York State Innovation Summit returned to Rochester this week, bringing together more than 550 of the state’s brightest minds in technology, manufacturing, and research for two days of conversation, collaboration, and commercialization.

Presented by FuzeHub in partnership with Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology & Innovation (NYSTAR), the sixth annual summit reaffirmed New York’s role as a national leader in technology-driven economic growth. The event showcased the state’s expanding innovation ecosystem from university labs and startup accelerators to established manufacturers and industry leaders all working to shape the future of American innovation.

Throughout the summit, discussions focused on themes central to New York’s innovation economy: advanced manufacturing, life sciences, artificial intelligence, semi-conductors and quantum technology. Panels and workshops offered practical resources for entrepreneurs and early-stage founders, emphasizing pathways from research to real-world commercialization.

A highlight of the summit was the Commercialization Competition, a pitch event spotlighting emerging startups from across the state. This year’s winner, REEgen of Binghamton, is a women-led company spun out of Cornell University that’s reimagining how the world sources rare earth elements (REEs) critical materials for clean energy systems, electric vehicles, and advanced electronics.

REEgen uses a clean, biological process to recover and purify rare earth elements from industrial waste, replacing environmentally harmful chemical and mining methods with genetically optimized bacteria that extract and separate these essential metals. By transforming how REEs are produced, the company aims to secure a sustainable, domestic supply chain for the renewable energy economy and reduce the global environmental toll of rare earth production.

Since its inception, the New York State Innovation Summit has become a cornerstone for the state’s innovation infrastructure. Born from NYSTAR’s long tradition of convening research centers, manufacturing extension partnerships, and industry innovators under one roof. This year’s return to Rochester underscored the city’s growing role in the state’s tech landscape and its legacy of invention and industry.

Next year’s summit will move west to Buffalo, where it will be held October 27–28, 2026, continuing the momentum and expanding opportunities for collaboration across the Empire State’s innovation network.