Friday, June 29, 2012

Cornell HIres First Professor For Roosevelt Island NYC Tech Campus - She Did Not Think About Living On Roosevelt Island Due To All The Upcoming Construction - BBC Visits Roosevelt island For Cornell Report Too



Mashable reports:
CornellNYC Tech, the high-tech campus opening in New York City this fall, has announced its first academic hire: Dr. Deborah Estrin, a renowned professor of computer science whose speciality is networked sensing, which uses mobile phones and wireless Internet to collect and examine data from users’ surroundings.

Estrin, who previously taught at University of California, Los Angeles and has been called one of the “10 Most Powerful Women in Tech,” told Mashable she was drawn to the soon-to-be-open campus because of the “incredible opportunity to work in such a vibrant context.”

“I don’t know of any other place that’s done or is trying to do what CornellNYC Tech is trying to do. It’s very much up my alley, that’s what’s bringing me to New York.”
and:
... While working and teaching at CornellNYC Tech, Estrin will continue to pursue her mission of finding ways to use mobile phones to help people improve their health.

“People walk around with instruments in their pockets they’re attached to,” said Estrin, referring to their mobile phones. “We’ve got the ability to use those to help people self-monitor their health and bring high-resolution data to clinical care. From wellness to prevention to managing medication, that’s what mobile health is about. And that always comes down to co-innovation between people on the health side and technologists....
Click here for the entire Mashable article.

WNYC Blog asks Dr. Estrin where she is going to live. :
... Do you know where you’re going to be living in New York?

Not yet. If anyone has a good sublet to offer in the East Village please let me know.

How about Roosevelt Island?

…I hadn’t thought about that. I figured there was going to be a lot of construction going on there.
The BBC has an interesting article and video on the new Roosevelt Island Cornell project including interview with our own  Roosevelt Island Residents Association (RIRA) President Matt Katz. According to the BBC:
Roosevelt Island is a long narrow strip of land beside Manhattan in New York, shaped like a fountain pen that someone dropped in the East River.

It has been used for a prison - with inmates including the jazz singer Billie Holiday in the 1920s. It has been a mental asylum and an isolation hospital.

If a Scooby Doo villain was looking for a place to put a ghost mystery fairground, it might end up there.

But this two-mile stretch is soon to become a $2bn hi-tech cradle of creativity, a "Silicon Island" launchpad for the industries of the digital age.

This is going to be the site of New York's technology campus - a hugely ambitious project to create a research hub from scratch.

And it is an experiment being watched as a blueprint for other countries trying to find a way to kick-start such hi-tech innovation....
Click here for the entire BBC article and video.

3 comments :

Dottie Jeffries said...

One would think that Cornell news department would have prepared Dr. Estrin for questions about where she might live. And it sounds like she has yet to visit the island. 

Anonymous said...

We do Not Need cornell Here. We need a golf couse.THE hipsters on The Island LOVE to play golf.bankers and wall Street People all Play golf

Katie Cunningham said...

This is indicative of the the direction RI is going, campus/transient-ville. These people don't care about RI, they are focused on Cornell. RI will continue down the road of becoming a campus, moving farther away from being a NYC community.