The showing Florida made in that contest, however, helped establish its credibility to win a bigger prize, Riordan said.
"I'd rather have the magnetic lab," he said. "First of all, the magnetic business is bigger than semiconductors."
Florida officials think the emphasis they put on medical applications helped them win the lab. Research with high-power magnetic fields can improve magnetic resonance imagery, which means physicians will be able to make more accurate diagnoses with less-invasive examinations.
Another possible outcome of magnetic research could be improving the transmission of energy by finding materials that conduct power more efficiently. For instance, one big power plant in the middle of a desert might serve 25 states if there was no loss of power along the lines, Riordan said.
"There's large industrial applications," Riordan said, ranging from moving railroad boxcars around more easily to exploiting the power of electromagnetism inside an atom.
Tallahassee will join a select group of cities in the world with magnetic laboratories, according to Jack Crow, director of the Florida consortium. Others include Moscow; Amsterdam; Grenoble, France, and cities in Poland and Japan.
"This puts us on the map," Reed said.
The chancellor's office is already getting calls from researchers and companies all over the country, from Boston to Silicon Valley in California, who are interested in using or being near the lab, Riordan said.
Some 400 scientific teams from all over the world will visit the lab each year. The schools have also promised to offer rotating yearlong positions to 20 foreign scientists. The state, which has committed about $58 million over the next five years, will have 34 full-time faculty.
The growth impact on Tallahassee won't be dramatic in terms of numbers, Riordan predicted. But the people who do move to Florida's capital will be professionals who bring with them increased spending power.
Reed said he isn't worried that the National Science Foundation will reverse itself.
"I think the problem is not that Florida won or was awarded the national lab," the chancellor said Saturday. "It's being viewed by MIT and the administration as we took it away. I guess that has never happened to MIT before. What they're going to have to learn is other university systems can do good science."
Regardless of what MIT does, Reed said Florida will move ahead on a with its plans to build or renovate a laboratory, hire scientists and confer with researchers who will be using the facility.