Robert Geer, has a big job ahead of him.

Appointed Tuesday as acting president of SUNYIT, Geer will step into the job just as the college’s massive $125 million Computer Chip Commercialization Center project ramps up.

It’s one of the biggest state-funded projects the region has ever seen, and is expected to bring in more than 1,000 jobs when complete.

Construction is set to begin within a few weeks, and Geer will take his post August 1.

“It’s a very exciting opportunity,” Geer said Tuesday, just a few hours after his appointment became official. “There is a tremendous amount of potential there.”

Geer, 49, is now vice president for academic affairs and chief academic officer at the Albany College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.

The College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering is partnering with SUNYIT on its nanotechnology initiative and has already helped foster a growing private tech sector in Albany.

Geer, who has a Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Physics from the University of Minnesota, has been at the Albany college since 1996. He has worked closely with Alain Kaloyeros, the Sr. Vice President and CEO of the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, as it has grown.

Kaloyeros praised Geer’s abilities and said his background would “further build the SUNYIT-CNSE partnership” and help the school “enable 21st-Century education, high tech-job creation and new economic growth throughout the Utica-Rome area.”

In his current job, Geer has already been working with SUNYIT staff on the Computer Chip Commercialization Center project, which is known as the Quad-C.

“This is a very critical time,” he said. “SUNYIT is going through a transition from a college that has been serving in engineering technology, nursing and other disciplines, to one that stants to have a much more dramatic impact on the region.”

In his years at CNSE, Geer worked with Kaloyeros to create a symbiotic relationship between the school and technology companies.

“We were researchers who worked with private companies and private-sector partnerships,” he said. “We started a graduate program to provide the workforce that could drive those companies. Then we built undergraduate degrees and became a resource to bring students from community colleges here to provide more of that workforce.”

Now, he said, he wants to do the same thing here, and Albany’s success makes SUNYIT all the more appealing for companies.

“People have seen the model work and they are much more ambitious and engaged because they have seen the results just 90 miles away,” he said.

Geer said he wants to build programs that prepare students for other parts of the Mohawk Valley workforce as well. Geer said he wants to make sure SUNYIT staff continues talking to businesses in the community about ways to work together.

“When you do that, people see the mutual opportunities there,” he said.

SUNYIT College Council President Don Hanson praised Geer’s strong record and said he hopes Geer will help boost enrollment numbers and work to bring the college’s strategic plan, which seeks to expand the number of majors offered, to fruition.

“There are many things I think are going to be on his plate,” Hanson said, referring to the strategic plan. “There are lots of good things in there and I hope he acts on them.”

Departing SUNYIT President Bjong Wolf Yeigh announced in late May that he is taking the job of chancellor of the University of Washington Bothell this summer. He had been a key player in the state’s push to make SUNYIT a center for nanotechnology research and development.

 Geer’s salary would be $220,000 for the job that would begin on or about Aug. 1, and it would continue until a permanent successor for Yeigh is appointed, the resolution said. That could take as long as a year, officials have said. Yeigh’s total compensation in 2012 was $257,000, according to records available on See Through NY government watchdog website.