Cornell University and the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology will establish a graduate school for applied sciences and engineering on Roosevelt Island, a sliver of land in New York City’s East River between Manhattan and Queens. On 19 December, in announcing the winners of a city-sponsored competition for the project, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the campus will “educate tomorrow’s entrepreneurs and create the jobs of the future.” The city hopes CornellNYC Tech will become the heart of a broader set of initiatives to diversify the city’s economy and transform the city “into the world capital of innovation for the 21st century,” says Seth Pinsky, president of the nonprofit New York City Economic Development Corp.
“There is still a huge gap between the time scales of universities—decades and centuries—and the time-scale needs of the commercial sector,” says Dan Huttenlocher, Cornell’s dean of computing and information sciences and dean of the new campus....
