Applied Sciences NYC competition 2011
Applied Sciences NYC was a 2011 worldwide competition sponsored by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) which sought to make New York City a growing player in the tech industry by sponsoring the growth of an applied sciences campus in the city. The initiative would have one official winner, but multiple additional institutions could receive funding and/or city-owned land to build a new campus under the plan. Columbia submitted a proposal which included the creation of an Institute for Data Sciences that would operate alongside SEAS on the new Manhattanville campus. Cornell, NYU, Stanford, and other schools also submitted plans. In all, 17 institutions were involved in the competition, and seven campus proposals were floated.[1]
Contestants
- Amity University proposed a campus on Governor's Island
- Carnegie Mellon and Steiner Studios submitted a proposal for the Brooklyn Navy Yard
- Columbia submitted a plan that would see an Institute for Data Sciences partnering with SEAS to open a three-building center on the new Manhattanville campus;
- Cornell proposed a partnership with Israel's Technion (that country's MIT), to build a tech campus on Roosevelt Island;
- The New York Genome Center, Mt. Sinai Medical School, Rockefeller University and SUNY Stony Brook submitted a plan for Midtown;
- NYU proposed a Center for Urban Science and Progress in Downtown Brooklyn, partnering with Carnegie Mellon University, CUNY, the Indian Institutes of Technology, the University of Toronto, and the University of Warwick;
- Stanford, in partnership with CCNY, also proposed a Roosevelt Island campus
Result
Stanford was widely seen as the favorite in the competition and it was believed that Mayor Bloomberg sorely wanted the school to open a campus in the city to repeat what it had achieved in Silicon Valley, spinning off tech startups that had transformed the region's economy. But Stanford pulled out of the competition before a winner was announced. Accounts differ as to why; some say it was because Stanford could not tolerate arcane and unclear city rules, which NYC-based schools were used to, others say it was to avoid the embarrassment of being passed over in favor of other institutions.
Cornell and Technion's proposal emerged as the official winner of the competition and was given the coveted Roosevelt Island plot on which to build its new campus. Cornell has already set up its new institution, Cornell NYC Tech, in space provided by Google in Chelsea, while its campus is being built. However, other schools did not emerge as total losers in the competition. In 2012, the city agreed to provide funding for the proposals by Columbia and by the NYU-led consortium.
