The New York Times: Where Halls of Ivy Meet Silicon Dreams, A New City Rises

Cornell University’s Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island is one of three higher education development projects that will transform New York City, the New York Times reports.

Opening this summer is Cornell’s 12-acre, $2 billion technology campus on Roosevelt Island, established in a partnership with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

Cornell won Mr. Bloomberg’s initial Applied Sciences NYC competition, in which the city offered $100 million in funds and the Roosevelt Island acreage. Soon, a four-story academic building will open, powered by its own rooftop photovoltaic installations and equipped with geothermal heating and cooling. Next door, companies and start-ups will work alongside Cornell researchers, who are now temporarily working out of the Google building, in Chelsea. Flanking these facilities will be a 26-story residence for Cornell personnel.

The campus has attracted university officials and international visitors, who want to see how academics can work alongside start-ups and established companies. Universities want to “push the envelope to have that unique advantage,” said Diana Allegretti, assistant director for design and construction, who previously had worked on both the N.Y.U. and Columbia projects.

Cornell’s incoming president, Martha E. Pollack, the provost at the University of Michigan, joined the campus project’s steering committee in 2014. So “she will be uniquely qualified to oversee the opening of the Roosevelt Island campus and to capitalize on the opportunity to make Cornell Tech a major new player in the life of New York City,” Hunter R. Rawlings III, the interim president, recently said.

Read the full article on The New York Times.