Roundtables
Our year-long series of online roundtables sets a proactive path for effective, ethical urban tech. Each roundtable takes on a grand challenge facing cities and explores opportunities offered by emerging trends in urban technologies.
What We Do
Jacobs Institute Urban Tech Hub
Mission
The Urban Tech Hub of the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech applies digital technology to improve people’s lives in cities. We identify challenges and opportunities, train the next generation of tech leaders, and advance research and urban tech engineering solutions in real-time. We work with a wide range of partners, from established industries and urban tech startups to communities and municipal governments. We bring together thought leaders and engage communities to further the positive impact of urban technologies.
Initiatives
Research
Sponsored research and seed funding leverage the resources of Cornell University to address the challenges of cities — without the limitations that commercial enterprises and governments face. Our areas of expertise span computer science, business management, entrepreneurial studies, civil and electrical engineering, urban tech engineering, systems design, data analysis, urban planning, urban policy, behavioral economics, social theory, and more.
Graduate Education
We offer the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Dual Master of Science Degrees with a Concentration in Urban Tech, as well as support for doctoral students interested in augmenting their PhD studies with urban tech research.
Technology Development
Global entrepreneurship is part of our DNA. We co-create with industry partners and user communities constantly, giving rise to meaningful technologies that are fine-tuned for direct impact. Aside from our award-winning faculty’s research, all Cornell Tech master’s students respond to challenges issued by real companies and organizations, as part of our required Studio curriculum.
Runway Startup Postdoc Program
The Runway Startup Postdoc Program is part business school, part research institution, part startup incubator. Postdocs come to the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute with ideas for unproven products and markets and receive a generous package, valued at $175,000 in the first year and $102,000 in the second year, which includes a salary, research budget, housing allowance, space and more.
Partnerships
The Urban Tech Hub partners with public sector, corporate, and academic organizations in a wide range of activities. From conferences and seminars to classroom product challenges to talent pipeline development, we offer many ways to get involved. Recent partners include the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) , the New York State Office of the Governor, Sidewalk Labs, and the NYC Economic Development Corporation.
What We Believe
- Put People First
- Bridge Cities and Industry
- Build from the Bottom Up and the Top Down
- Engage a Range of Stakeholders
- Cultivate an Urban Tech Ecosystem
Cities are rebooting.
We all expected that reopening cities would be harder than shutting them down. But few appreciated just how challenging it would be. In New York City, transit, housing, schools, retail, tourism, and office life are all still severely disrupted.
But even if, and when, day-to-day activities return to their pre-pandemic routine, the virus has permanently reshaped our urban future. It exposed striking inequalities in large cities—migrants, racial and ethnic minorities, the poor, women and the elderly were all hit hard. A full recovery means systematically dismantling the biases and blockages that created so much isolation and vulnerability. City governments, many believe, need a full reboot, running a new batch of code.
Urban Tech is Rebooting Too.
Digital technology has rapidly transformed how we live, work, and play in cities. With software in our pockets syncing everything from taxis to takeout and tango lessons, we’ve squeezed more desks, beds, and restaurant seats into the same old street grids than ever before. And created astonishing dynamism and untold wealth in the process.
Now, many of these dreams are on hold. Technology is being used mostly to flee cities rather than flock to them. And the toxic fallout of the “surveillance capitalism” gold rush is still being calculated. Even so, technology will certainly play a role in building better cities for the future. New data is needed to choreograph the post-pandemic urban ballet. But the next generation of urban tech must be built on a solid ethical foundation, so it doesn’t create new problems or exacerbate the ones it is trying to solve.