Technion, Cornell chosen to launch NYC grad school

Bloomberg: Thanks to them, city’s goal of becoming the global leader in technological innovation is now within sight.

By JORDANA HORN, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT
New York mayor Michael Bloomberg R 311 (photo credit: REUTERS/Andrew Burton)
New York mayor Michael Bloomberg R 311
(photo credit: REUTERS/Andrew Burton)
NEW YORK – A partnership between Cornell University and the Technion won a first-time competition to launch an applied sciences graduate school on Roosevelt Island off Manhattan, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Monday.
Bloomberg joined Cornell President David Skorton and Technion President Peretz Lavie at Cornell’s Weill Cornell Medical College Monday to announce the new applied sciences campus, to be called the NYCTech Campus.
“Thanks to this outstanding partnership and groundbreaking proposal from Cornell and the Technion, New York City’s goal of becoming the global leader in technological innovation is now within sight,” said Bloomberg. “By adding a new state-of-the-art institution to our landscape, we will educate tomorrow’s entrepreneurs and create the jobs of the future. This partnership has so much promise because we share the same goal: to make New York City home to the world’s most talented workforce.”
Flanked by American, Israeli and New York State flags, officials announced that the temporary off-site campus will open next year, and that the first phase of the permanent campus on Roosevelt Island will be completed no later than 2017.
The Cornell Technion consortium was selected, officials said, due to a variety of factors, including the track records of the respective institutions and the largescale vision of their proposal.
“Cornell University and our extraordinary partner, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, are deeply gratified to have the opportunity to realize Mayor Bloomberg’s vision for New York City: to prepare tomorrow’s expanding talent pool of tech leaders and entrepreneurs to work with the city’s key industries in growing tomorrow’s innovation ecosystem,” Skorton said. “Starting today, we are going to put our plan to work, tapping into our extensive connections throughout the city and build a truly 21st Century campus to fuel the creation of new businesses and new industries throughout the city for decades to come.”
“Our pride and our hopes for the future are shared by the whole Technion community of students, faculty, friends and supporters, including the very successful American Technion Society,” Lavie said.“Together, we have the means, ingenuity and will-power to make our world a better place by joining with Cornell University and the great people of New York City for this innovative new center of learning and enterprise.”
After receiving its accreditation, the campus will offer innovative Technion-Cornell dual Master of Applied Sciences degrees, among other graduate degrees.
The NYCTech Campus, it was announced, will also serve as a veritable hub for technology-related business opportunities in New York, by hosting entrepreneurs-in-residence, organizing business competitions, providing legal support for startups and forming research partnerships.
The NYCTech Campus will also create a $150 million revolving financing fund devoted exclusively to startup businesses.
The Cornell-Technion proposal beat out other university teams including Stanford, NYU, Columbia and Carnegie Mellon to win the right to free land and $100m. of city subsidies for infrastructure improvements.
In July, Bloomberg invited proposals for a world-class campus for engineering and applied sciences which would create new companies and bring new jobs to the area.
The presence of such a campus, Bloomberg said at the time, would help to diversify New York’s Wall Street-based economy. Bloomberg predicted such a campus would generate up to $6 billion in economic activity by creating up to 400 new companies and thousands of permanent jobs in its first 30 years of existence.
Projections are now for it to spur on 600 new companies.
Stanford, another front-runner, dropped out of the competition without explanation on Friday, as it became known that Cornell had received an anonymous $350m. donation to back its bid for the campus.
The $350m. gift is among the largest individual gifts to American higher education.
“We are grateful for the opportunity to introduce Israel’s creative spirit to New York City’s new technological center through this unique Technion-Cornell partnership.
This is more than a just a collaboration between organizations; but rather an alliance of leading young minds and we will do our best to turn this endeavor into a major success,” Israeli Consul General Ido Aharoni said.
“I am looking forward to the innovations that this dynamic partnership will create,” he added.


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