Research, Engineering & Other High-Tech

Polk County – Where Change is Inevitable, Even Enviable

• The University of South Florida Polytechnic is building a new campus at the intersection of Interstate 4 and the Polk County Parkway in Lakeland, at the heart of Florida’s High Tech Corridor, midway between Tampa and Orlando. The state’s only polytechnic university features a distinctive combination of science, engineering and technology programs, offering undergraduate and graduate degrees with an emphasis of applied learning and research.
• The USF Polytechnic, in association the Central Florida Development Council, has established two Blue Sky Incubators. The Blue Sky West Incubator serves as a location for business start-ups, while Blue Sky East serves as a business accelerator.
•  Polk State College has received a $12 million donation and 20 acres of land from Clear Springs Land Corporation in Bartow to develop its Advanced Technology Center. The Center will be designed to encompass ongoing successful training institutes at PSC, including Supply Chain Management, the Institute for Advanced Manufacturing/Automation and Robotics, the Information Technology Institute, The Safety and Homeland Security Institute and partnerships with local, state, national and international higher education institutions.
• The Six/Ten Corporation has developed an Inland Fiber & Data Technology Park in downtown Winter Haven. The technology park offers a protected inland location, carrier grade facilities, hardened facilities, high security, multiple fiber providers on campus, a highly redundant infrastructure and a hospital grid.
• Using tactics recommended by SRI International, the Central Florida Development Council is concentrating on developing its existing base of technology companies and recruiting new high tech firms as a catalyst for the region’s economic renaissance: A source for exceptional talent and R&D activity as well as a magnet for technological innovation.