A New York City island will host a high-tech science college run by Cornell University, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced on Monday after choosing the winning bid.
The science and research facility to be built on little-used property on Roosevelt Island is hoped to become a leading incubator for high-tech research and innovation.
Bloomberg said the winning bid by Cornell and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology “marks a major milestone in the city’s Applied Sciences NYC initiative, which seeks to increase New York’s capacity for applied sciences and dramatically transform the city’s economy.”
The consortium beat bids by Stanford University, Columbia University and New York University.
Plans are for classes to start next year, although the campus, boasting advanced environmentally friendly designs, will take years to be completed.
New York City is contributing US$100 million for construction costs and the site itself, sitting at one end of the long, narrow island in the East River, a short distance across the water from the skyscrapers of Manhattan.
Cornell/Technion’s plan is for 186,000m2 in housing for 2,500 students and 280 faculty members by 2043. Initially, classes will be held at a temporary location, with the first phase of the Roosevelt Island campus opening by 2017.
The campus is designed to imitate the success that Stanford and MIT have had with prestigious and highly lucrative science facilities.
Cornell University president David Skorton said he wanted 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.”
“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,” he said in a statement.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last