Will the Next Facebook, Google and Apple Be Incubated On Roosevelt Island? Stanford University Submits Proposal To Establish New York City Innovation Hub With New Engineering School At Coler Goldwater Campus

 Image From Carve Your Destiny

A post from last month speculated, dreamed and almost drooled over the possibility of Roosevelt Island's Coler Goldwater Hospital campus, adjacent to the Tram, being selected as the new home for a high-tech, state of the art applied science and engineering University that Mayor Bloomberg is seeking to attract for New York City.

Will Roosevelt Island follow in the footsteps of San Francisco's Bay area Silicon Valley to become New York City's Silicon Island? How about the next Sergey Brin and Larry Page starting the new Google from right here on Roosevelt Island? Is that possible? Well, hold on to your hats because it may very well happen sometime in the not too distant future.

As reported in earlier post, the Roosevelt Island Coler Goldwater Hospital site is being considered as one of the 4 possible sites for a world class applied sciences academic research facility to be located in New York City according to a plan put forth by Mayor Bloomberg....

That possibility took one step closer to reality yesterday when 27 universities from all over the world submitted proposals to be considered by NYC as the home for such a research center including Stanford University whose proposal specifies Roosevelt Island as the site for their campus. WOW WOW WOW!!!!!

This Stanford University press release has more details:

Stanford University this week formally submitted a tentative proposal to the city of New York to build a campus for applied science research and graduate education on Roosevelt Island, with the intent that the campus would serve as a hub for innovation and economic growth.

The Stanford proposal, submitted in response to a New York City request for expressions of interest, outlines a high-technology campus that could be constructed in phases over 25 years to provide graduate degree-granting programs for students in engineering, computer science and business.

"Whether there will be another hub of innovation in the world is not in doubt. The only question is where it will evolve," the Stanford document states. "Silicon Valley is unique, and replicating its success will be a challenge. But we believe it can be done. Stanford University has the expertise and the track record, and New York City is the place to apply them."

Under an aggressive timeline, the university proposes starting construction on the first phase in 2013 and enrolling 440 master's and PhD students by the fall of 2015. Over time, Stanford envisions the possibility of as many 2,200 graduate students and 100 faculty members at a New York City location.

"Stanford seeks to leverage its entrepreneurial culture, its experience in attracting great minds and its partnerships with industry to build an applied research and high technology center in New York City – a city whose ambitions for the future are aligned with those of the university," the proposal states. "Stanford envisions a strategic partnership that will blend the strengths of a great research university with those of a great center of commerce and creativity – and generate significant and sustainable economic development."

Stanford was joined by 26 other institutions in submitting expressions of interest Wednesday to the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Others who submitted proposals include Cornell, Columbia, Purdue and the University of Chicago. The city is expected to issue a formal request for proposals by this summer.

Stanford President John Hennessy will discuss Stanford's proposal at his annual address to the Academic Council on April 14. He will be joined in conversation by Jim Plummer, dean of the School of Engineering; Jennifer Widom, chair of the Department of Computer Science; and Robert Reidy, vice president for land, buildings and real estate. The address will begin at 3:30 p.m. in the NVIDIA Auditorium of the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center.

The proposed Stanford New York campus would draw from various schools, centers and programs, including the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. The proposal also relies upon very close integration with the California campus, and the use of distance education and telepresence systems to connect students, faculty and researchers at the two locations.

Of four possible locations put forth by the city of New York, Stanford has used the Roosevelt Island site as a model for its proposal. The land is located in the middle of the East River between Manhattan and Queens. Facilities to be constructed on the site would include academic and research space, as well as housing for students and faculty members. Funds for capital costs would be expected to come from a combination of philanthropy, New York City and Stanford University.

More from earlier posts, the SF Gate and  NY Times.

UPDATE 12 PM - According to Mayor Bloomberg's Press Release:

... The institutions that submitted responses are:

• Åbo Akadmi University, Finland
• Amity University, India
• Carnegie Mellon University with Steiner Studios
• Cornell University
• Columbia University and the City University of New York
• The Cooper Union
• École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
• Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India
• Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Korea
• New York University, Carnegie Mellon, the City University of New York, the University of Toronto, and IBM
• The New York Genome Center, with Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York University, Rockefeller University, and the Jackson Laboratory
• Purdue University
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• Stanford University
• The Stevens Institute of Technology
• Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
• The University of Chicago
• The University of Warwick, United Kingdom

“We want New York City to grow as the 21st Century capital of innovation, and helping develop a new or expanded applied sciences and engineering school may be one of the most impactful things we can do to ensure that happens,” said Deputy Mayor Steel. “Many of the world’s leading tech companies grew out of top applied science programs, and we want the next generation of companies and jobs to start up here in New York. We recognize it’s an enormous undertaking and we have a lot of work ahead of us. But the commitment of support from many of New York City’s philanthropic, civic, political and business leaders, combined with this unmistakable response from the academic community, further solidify our confidence in the venture.”

“We believe science and technology to be critical to the future of the global economy. The universities that responded, including our local institutions, are among the world leaders in these fields, having done ground-breaking research, spun off pioneering companies and created hundreds of thousands of jobs, not just for high-tech engineers but for all skill and income levels,” said New York City Economic Development Corporation President Seth W. Pinsky. “The number and quality of these responses constitute an enormous vote of confidence in this important initiative and represent the first page of what we believe will ultimately become a new chapter in our City's economy.”

The responses contained proposals for hundreds of millions of dollars in private investment and significant increases to the number of applied sciences and engineering graduate students to be based in New York City. They included a variety of ideas about what types of science might be studied at the new campus, ranging from environmental sciences to neuroengineering. Many of the proposals included wet or dry labs as well as space for teaching, housing, and recreation....

UPDATE 1:45 - An illustration of the proposed final phase of the campus on Roosevelt Island.

 Image From Stanford University News

UPDATE 3:30 PM - More here.