My first few weeks at Cornell Tech
Welcome to my blog. I’m Ryan, and I hope to share my experience at Cornell Tech in NYC over the next year. Prior to Cornell Tech, I was an undergrad in CS at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.
Cornell Tech was started as a joint venture between Cornell University and the Technion in Israel in response to an international competition posed by Mayor Bloomberg to create a new applied sciences campus in NYC. Cornell Tech won the competition and was awarded the land on Roosevelt Island along with $100 Million to start building. The new campus opened two years ago in 2017 with 3 buildings. The Bloomberg Center is the main academic building where I have many of my classes. It closely resembles the Gates Hall at Cornell in Ithaca. The Tata Innovation Center is the second building home to some classrooms, labs, open work spaces, amazing views, and real companies have offices on the upper floors. The third building is called The House at Cornell Tech and houses master’s students, PhD students, and faculty. This is where I live and still cannot believe it. I live in a 2 bedroom apartment with my roommate Ben who is always cooking or baking something tasty. Every day when I get back from class I take a few minutes to marvel at the view from my apartment.


One of the main reasons I decided to come to Cornell Tech is the Studio Curriculum. In addition to technical classes and electives, all students partake in Product Studio in the fall and then either Startup Studio or BigCo (Big Company) Studio in the spring. While undergrad was very theoretical and rigorous, Cornell Tech is very focused on practical applications to build impactful products with cutting edge technology. For Product Studio I got matched with an interdisciplinary team of engineers, designers, and business students along with a Company Advisor and a “How Might We” challenge. My team got matched with the CTO of Priceline.com and posed the following challenge to us:
How might we personalize the travel experience to enable the consumer to select the right flight, hotel, rental car, and activity products for wherever they want to travel in the world?
The connections and opportunities Cornell Tech has opened up to us constantly remind me that this campus is already having serious impact and is already something bigger than I had ever expected. It truly is something revolutionary, and I cannot wait to see what the year ahead holds for me!
Stay tuned for more posts about Studio Projects, Adventures in NYC, and more…
