Someday! (Photo: CornellNYC Tech)

Cornell Tech's coffers are a little fatter this morning. Yesterday, Qualcomm cofounder Irwin Mark Jacobs and his wife Joan announced they're donating $133 million to the project. And so the joint program designed by Cornell and the Technion (a project within the Roosevelt Island campus, it'll allow students to earn dual masters degrees) will now be known as the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute.

That's a useful data point if you're trying to get your name on a major NYC landmark.

According to the announcement, "The funds will help support curriculum initiatives, faculty and graduate students, and industry interactions in a two-year graduate program." 

“We are delighted to partner with Cornell and the Technion on this unique educational initiative,” the couple said in a statement. “We believe strongly in the mission of this international collaboration to drive innovation and to foster economic development.

This isn't the couple's first higher-ed donation, either. Both Cornell alums, they've established a scholarship program and an endowed professorship at their alma mater, and their names are slapped on both a Graduate School and a "Center for Communications and Information Technologies" at the Technion. Dr. Jacobs has also already been involved with Cornell Tech, as an advisor.

Wonder how much the Jacobs spent on their wedding.

Someday! (Photo: Cornell Tech)

Earlier this week, classes commenced for the inaugural batch of Cornell Tech masters students, of which there are eight. To get a sense of how the first week is going, we checked in late yesterday afternoon with vice president Cathy Dove, who sounded like a satisfied high school principal ready to prop her pumps on her desk: "I have to say, by far, this is the most rewarding and exciting milestone that we've hit," she said.

For now, the school is operating out of the Google-owned building at 111 Eighth Avenue. However, this "beta class" of masters students isn't exactly mingling freely with the upperclassmen in the Google cafeteria, contrary to our fondest Freaks and Geeks-inspired hopes. "For Google people to come to our space and for us to go to Google, we invite each other," Ms. Dove clarified. "These truly are different offices."

There will likely be no grand partnerships (romantic or business) born from serendipitous meetings in the library, in other words.

But the temporary home Cornell Tech has created for itself does probably have more in common with a startup than the average university English department. "Right now all of us sit in a very open floor plan," Ms. Dove said, though there are private rooms for meetings and phone calls (can't have those loud talkers driving everyone barmy). "It truly has an impact, this kind of layout, on collaboration," she added.

"It is, I agree with you, different from many traditional academic buildings that you would see on our main campus and on other campuses," Ms. Dove said. But hey, isn't abandoning Victorian design detritus the beauty of building a campus from scratch? And the plan is to replicate this sort of setup on Roosevelt Island as much as possible.

But the learning itself isn't too radically different from a traditional grad school. Monday through Thursday, students will attend classes, three of them technical and one taught by business school faculty. On Fridays they switch over to a practicum dubbed "entrepreneurial life," with visits from industry folk. This first semester, they'll also be assigned to projects dreamed up by groups like Artsy, Google and the Robin Hood Foundation.

"When you're used to working at an institution that's been around 150 years, sometimes things just happen and nobody really thinks about the fact that there's somebody somewhere thinking about making sure that this particular procedure is working well," she said.

"I'm sure we'll find some of those, but so far so good."

Snazzy! (Photo: Cornell Tech)

Classes start in January, but unless Cornell Tech wants to live in Google's spare bedroom forever it's got to get cracking on that splashy Roosevelt Island campus. Last night, the campus plan got the official a-okay from Manhattan Community Board 8, clearing its first hurdle.

A press release that went out this morning trumpets "community support" and frames the approval as the cherry on top of a productive year. Cornell Tech VP Cathy Dove said in the announcement, “Roosevelt Island has a fantastic history of innovation and civic participation, and we were still gratified by the interest and support of so many Islanders from day 1," adding,

“We are appreciative for the support of our new neighbors and assure them that the construction and operation of the campus will be handled in a way that protects, respects and welcomes the rest of the Island."

This is just one stage in the long gauntlet that is the city's public land use review process, which started back in October and typically takes around seven months. Next up, the plan has to clear Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer's office, then the City Planning Commission and then the City Council. Rome wasn't built in etc.

However, while most islanders seem pleased with the notion of a prestigious school sitting in their front yard, even the most well thought-out construction plan is likely to create a massive traffic nightmare for the tiny island community. Roosevelt Islander reports that at a recent meeting of the Roosevelt Island Operating Committee, transportation manager Cy Opperman spoke about the island's burgeoning traffic problem, the possibility of adding a bus lane and the havoc a years-long construction project is likely to wreak.

Not much room to maneuver. (Photo: flickr.com/paytonc)

"Traffic is absolutely getting worse, worse and worse," Mr. Opperman said, adding that "We have some future problems coming up, one of which is Cornell." The project will mean dealing with something like 900 construction workers on top of existing problems. Main Street is already crowded in the mornings, he said; adding just another 50 cars is going to bring traffic to a standstill. Then the bus gets stuck.

There's also the fact that, as the New York Times has pointed out, construction managers are planning to bring construction materials in by road, rather than via water. Nothing like a dump truck to liven up the gridlock!

UPDATED: A spokesperson points out that Cornell Tech is considering options for barging construction materials that'll reduce truck trips, and they presented a number of options at last night's a previous meeting. Somebody want to invent them a teleporter right quick?

Maybe the thought of a two-decade traffic jam is what's getting this irate gal's goat, over in the comments on Roosevelt Islander:

There is no more " what the population wants" here anymore. Never really was that way, so what the Hell! Let Pollara come in and take over, build a huge fence to cut out the pie she wants, let Cornell come in and think we all are asleep here and just give them the whole island!

Tell us how you really feel.

But it's worth remembering what Eric Schmidt told the Observer a couple of months ago, when we bumped into him at the opening of the island's FDR memorial: “It’ll be more gentrified, it will be more upscale” as the results of all the changes underway.

What's a little traffic as a trade-off for moving on up?

Professor Estrin.

The Entrepreneurial Egghead

Of all Mike Bloomberg’s many initiatives to turn New York into the Silicon Valley of the 21st century, one stands out as the centerpiece of his master plan: the applied sciences campus. After a battle royale with other schools including Stanford, Cornell emerged the winner with its proposal to build a Roosevelt Island satellite. Now, with classes scheduled to start in January, the city’s techies are left watching and waiting for graduates to fill all their open jobs.

Cornell insists its campus is designed to boost New York’s tech sector, and the school’s choice of open-source advocate Deborah Estrin as its first academic faculty member shows that’s more than mere talk.

The professor was poached from UCLA, where her work on embedded sensing networks landed her on lists like Wired’s “50 People Who Will Change the World” and CNN’s “10 Most Powerful Women in Tech.”

But more important than her research is the tone she’s already setting as a founding faculty member. Her commitment to open source—the principle that the fruits of technological research ought to be shared freely—should pique the interest of even the most reticent founders. “Open source is a shared good from which everyone benefits and on which tremendously successful commercial and social ventures are built,” she told The Observer. It also means even the city’s scrappiest startups might have a chance to build on breakthroughs that emerge from the school’s state-of-the-art labs, without ponying up for pricey licensing fees.

What drew her to the school, she said, was the promise of  “innovation that crosses all sorts of boundaries: the boundaries between academia and industry, theory and application, teaching and research, commercial and social good.” In fact, her current focus—personalized, mobile healthcare—could have implications for that lagging biotech sector city officials are so desperately trying to build.

Next: Ryder Ripps, Jonathan Vingiano and Jules LaPlace, OKFocus: The Merry Pranksters

Back to the beginning.