Who Is Steven Koonin, The New Director Of CUSP?

April 24th, 2012 by Melissa Cronin

Mayor Bloomberg announced yesterday that NYU’s proposal for its Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) has been named a recipient of some city funding, and will open for classes next year. The center for research and graduate study right next to NYU-Poly in Downtown Brooklyn will focus on technology to “address the challenges of an increasingly urbanized planet.” Read all about it here.

Bloomberg also announced the director of CUSP—a theoretical physicist named Steven Koonin with a prestigious background as the Undersecretary for Science in the U.S. Department of Energy and the Chief Scientist at BP.

Koonin, a prominent figure in the science world and a winner of both the Humboldt Senior U.S. Scientist Award and the E. O. Lawrence Award, has an impressive list of interests, including nuclear astrophysics; theoretical nuclear, computational, and many-body physics; and global environmental science. A Brooklyn native, Koonin received a physics degree from Caltech—where he was a professor for nearly thirty years and served as Provost until 2004—and his Ph.D in theoretical physics from MIT.  Read more…


Bloomberg, Quinn And Sexton Announce NYU’s Urban Science Campus Is A Go

April 24th, 2012 by Zoë Schlanger and Julia Berke

After Cornell won the city’s competition last year with its bid to build an enormous applied science campus on Roosevelt Island, we’d been waiting to hear what would come of NYU’s own elaborate plan submission for an urban planning school in Downtown Brooklyn. Yesterday morning, with John Sexton at his side, Mayor Bloomberg announced that “there can be more than one winner and loser,” and NYU’s Center for Urban Science & Progress, or CUSP, is a go.

“You can always tell whether something is important by how many people want to participate in the announcement,” Bloomberg chuckled in the atrium of NYU-Poly, where Speaker (and potential next mayor) Christine Quinn, Borough President Marty Markowitz, and an assortment of other officials, CEOs and NYU trustees gathered for the announcement. Read more…


Brooklyn Business Groups Put Out Pro-NYU Ad For Urban Planning Campus

February 3rd, 2012 by Zoë Schlanger

Today, two Downtown Brooklyn business groups put out this 90-second video advocating for NYU’s plan to put a Center for Urban Science & Progress campus in the old, dilapidated MTA building at 370 Jay Street. The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and the DUMBO Business Improvement District have both been vocal about their desire to see CUSP be developed, and this video is the latest in a string of publicity they have given the project. It is yet to be seen if NYU will win funding from Bloomberg to go ahead with the project, but we have a hunch that as long as the MTA and the university can strike some kind of deal about the purchase price of the building, this will probably end up happening.


Cornell Wins Science Campus Bid, But NYU’s Downtown Brooklyn Plans Are Still On The Table

December 19th, 2011 by Zoë Schlanger

Cornell University has won the city’s competition with its bid to build an enormous science and engineering graduate campus on Roosevelt Island, but NYU is not out of the game. At a press conference Monday, Mayor Bloomberg announced that Cornell would not be the only recipient of funding for an applied science campus.

“The competition is not over,” Bloomberg said. “We remain in active discussions with three other universities: NYU, Columbia, and Carnegie Mellon.”

With broad community support, plans to revamp a dilapidated MTA building, and a budget a fraction of the cost of Cornell’s, NYU’s proposal for the Center for Urban Science & Progress (CUSP) graduate campus in Downtown Brooklyn still has a formidable a shot.   Read more…