Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Elder of ZiyonFrom PC Magazine:
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today that Cornell University, in partnership with the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, has been selected to build a new graduate engineering school on an 11-acre site at Roosevelt Island. Bloomberg aims to make New York City "the world's leading city in technological innovation."
Bloomberg said the two schools were picked out of seven applications from consortiums of multiple schools as part of the city's applied sciences initiative. They were selected based on their plans for the site, economic impact, and speed of development. The new campus, which will be run as a joint venture by the two universities, is expected to eventually host 2,000 graduate students and 300 faculty members. (The selection of the Cornell-Technion group wasn't a surprise, as Stanford University dropped out of the running on Friday, meanwhile Cornell announced it had received a $350 million donation to help build the new campus.)
The new school plans to start operation off-site next year. The first phase of the development will be completed in 2017, with 300 students and 70 faculty members on the campus in 2018. Bloomberg said the project will create up to 20,000 construction jobs and up to 8,000 permanent jobs. He expects that over the next three decades, it will spawn 600 new companies, which will result in 30,000 new jobs.
Technion President Peretz Lavie said the new facility, known as the NYC Tech Campus, is "not an extension of the Technion or Cornell, but something new." It will be built around the concept of applied sciences and based on various hubs including Connecting Media, Healthier Life, and Built Environment—all of which are in turn based on computer science, electrical engineering, information sciences, economics, and business.
Bloomberg called the plan a "game-changer," and said the push for more applied sciences in the city would "prime the economic pump for generations to come." A university has the power to be "a magnet for economic innovation and growth," Bloomberg said, citing the influence of land-grant colleges such as Cornell in the 19th century.
(h/t Aviv)
