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. Read More
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. Read More
The patent wars rage on in the tech world, but today a couple of big names extended olive branches in hopes of brokering a peace–or at least one between the industry and the notion of patents. This morning, leaders from the Commerce Department and Cornell University announced that there’ll be a U.S. Patent Office staffer permanently planted right on campus.
That individual will serve as a kind of liaison between the worlds of tech and intellectual property, working to connect university students and affiliates to whatever resources the Commerce Department has to offer. (Before you private sector devotees scoff, that ranges from IP strategizing to government grants.) It’s all in the service of speeding innovations from academic notion to marketable product.
This is the first time the bureau has ever devoted such attention to a particular university campus. How you like dem apples, Stanford? Read More
The starchitect-designed Roosevelt Island campus won’t be ready ’til sometime in 2017, but that doesn’t mean the embryonic staff of Cornell NYC Tech plans to sit around for the next half decade, twiddling their thumbs. A rolling stone gathers no moss! Time and tide wait for no man! Haven’t you heard there’s a tech talent crisis on?
Today Cornell University (with Mayor Bloomberg, naturally) announced that applications are now being accepted for the “beta class” of the school’s one-year Master of Engineering in computer science program. Classes commence in January 2013, in space borrowed from Google. So if you’ve been kicking the tires on a graduate degree, today could very well be your moment of glory. Read More
The latest challenge for the city’s grand applied-sciences plans: Some ticked-off East Harlemites, says the Daily News.
As we’ve mentioned before, building that snazzy billion-dollar campus on Roosevelt Island requires demolishing the antiquated old Coler-Goldwater long-term care hospital. Hundreds of patients–many of them with complex needs and financial situations–have to be relocated before October 2013.
The good news is the city has a plan: The Daily News reports that, in order to squeak in under the deadline, “city officials are racing to erect several facilities in East Harlem that will house as many as 700 Coler-Goldwater patients.” But that’s going to cost some $300 million and the locals are, frankly, peeved. Read More
Mayor Bloomberg announced today at Google’s New York headquarters in Chelsea that the company has agreed to provide CornellNYC Tech with 22,000 square feet of free office space while the Roosevelt Island campus is built. The mayor joined Google CEO Larry Page, Cornell President David Skorton and Technion’s director Craig Gotsman at a press conference this morning to make the announcement. The value of the space is over $10 million, said Mr. Page. Read More
It’s easy to get the impression that literally everyone in New York City is thrilled by the prospect of the Roosevelt Island tech campus. But one population is less than thrilled, and for good reason. That’s the long-term residents of Goldwater Hospital, which is due for demolition to make way for construction. DNAInfo spoke to several and found them less than reassured about their futures. Read More
In this week’s issue of The New Yorker, the illustrious Ken Auletta, who recently profiled Sheryl Sandberg’s attempts to “upend Silicon Valley’s male-dominated culture,” looks at the Bay Area from a different perspective. This time, he analyzes how Stanford became “the farm system for Silicon Valley,” and whether the “gold-rush mentality” among both Stanford’s students and faculty is good for the university.
Tucked inside the story are also a number of details about why Stanford, which was widely considered a frontrunner to open a its first-ever second campus on Roosevelt Island, abruptly dropped its bid at the last minute. Read More
Cornell is revolutionizing education in more ways than one at the new Roosevelt Island tech campus. Grad students will pioneer a new method of “learning by doing” as they’re paired with what Cornell is calling “industry mentors.”
In an effort to make the transition from classroom to workforce as seamless as possible, Cornell’s yet-to-be-built NYCTech will match graduate students with Silicon Alley entrepreneurs. While no formal curriculum has been created, the mentor program is designed to help students integrate into the tech and business communities and build relationships before graduation.
Prof. Lance Collins, dean of Cornell’s College of Engineering told The Cornell Daily Sun how vital experience outside of the classroom is. “We feel that connectivity to the business community is really an important part of this whole commercialization focus in New York City. There’s a certain ‘learning by doing’ aspect to commercialization,” he said. “It plugs people into others who are really knowledgeable about how to succeed as an entrepreneur.” Read More
In an interview with the Cornell Daily Sun, Provost Ken Fuchs revealed plans to make the tech campus on Roosevelt Island, a 50-50 partnership between Cornell University and Israel’s Technion, even more of a “global institute.”
Over the next six months, he said, Cornell plans to start a search to find “at least one university from Europe and as many as two from Asia” to boost the applied sciences program’s prestige abroad. Read More
