LONG BEFORE celebrities named their kids after a certain is incredibly difficult.” Polytechnic was an obvious choice, but New York City borough and Girls and Broad City set their action there were several years of stop-and-start talks before the two there, NYU’s then financially strapped Bronx–based campus, institutions agreed to affiliate in 2008. (The formal legal merger University Heights, was sold and the College of Engineering took place in 2014.) and Science was merged into the Polytechnic Institute of Meanwhile, says Brown, Brooklyn had rapidly morphed into Brooklyn. The year was 1973, and the resulting school became “this quite exciting hub of cool, creative people.” NYU’s the Polytechnic Institute of New York, and engineering suddenly footprint now extends to Brooklyn Heights, the Brooklyn Navy disappeared from NYU’s portfolio. There were many reasons— Yard, Downtown, DUMBO, and Sunset Park. crime, isolation—why parts of New York City (Brooklyn among With the Tandon School of Engineering serving as the them) weren’t hot property. That reality was the believable plot technological hub of the downtown campus, it was particularly driver in Saturday Night Fever, as John Travolta’s character, serendipitous when, in 2011, New York City decided to turn Tony Manero, sought to escape his bridge-and-tunnel life. over underused city properties to institutions that promised to That was then. One reacquisition of the merged institute, invest in the applied sciences. NYU bid on and, in 2012, won several name changes, and many groundbreakings later, NYU’s the former MTA headquarters at 370 Jay Street—abandoned for downtown Brooklyn campus is at the heart of what has more than a decade—and began the planning to turn 500,000 become the East Coast’s version of Silicon Valley (though unlike square feet into a new academic hub for the university. the original, it’s also the hipster epicenter of the universe). Thus began the cross-pollination that has made the campus “NYU has had this uncanny ability throughout its history a place where engineering intersects with urban science, to be in the right place at the right time,” says Lynne Brown, data analytics, gaming, cybersecurity, wireless technology, senior vice president for university relations and public affairs. entrepreneurship, media arts, and recorded music. “It’s like a She chalks up NYU’s presence in Brooklyn to “either strategic petri dish, this swirl of talent,” says Brown. “We now have this serendipity or serendipitous strategy.” amazing cluster…. [The Tandon folks] realize that engineering The Great East River Crossing began about a dozen years more and more calls on artistic and creative expression, and the ago, when the university, long since back on its financial feet, artists and creative people realize more and more that what they began to regret not having an engineering school. That was want to do has a technological basis.” the strategic aspect. “Without an engineering base, some of the As with all great endeavors, NYU’s presence is kinetic and largest pots of research money were inaccessible to us,” says always evolving. Come explore all the points of NYU’s place in Brown. “But creating an engineering school from whole cloth the Brooklyn universe. NYU.EDU/ALUMNI.MAGAZINE 19 HOME TO: NYU IT AS WELL AS . THE TANDON DEAN JELENA KOVAČEVIĆ previously headed up the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University. We asked Kovacevic,ˇ ´ the new dean as of mid-August, about her vision for the Tandon School of Engineering. Q: What do you want to do at Tandon? A: I want Tandon to keep on its momentous rise. It’s gone through some amazing transformations. Research expenditures have doubled over the past five years, to $48 million. It has risen through the US News & World Report rankings from 80 to 41. The class that entered in 2017 was 20 percent minorities and more than 40 percent first generation to attend college. And the current incoming class is 43 percent women. It takes huge financial aid to be able to support such diversity. I would like for this gritty, scrappy, Brooklyn-based school to become the top research institution that gives back. Q: You’re the first female dean since the engineering school was founded in 1854, and that’s kind of a big deal. A: When I was growing up in Yugoslavia, that was not the case— it just was not that unusual to see women leaders. I want little HOME TO: girls, but also little boys and kids of all races, to look at me and FINANCIAL AID OFFICE say they can grow up to be the dean, or anything they dream of. AS WELL AS . Q: Were you always a math nerd? A: Yes! I’ve been a math nerd for as long as I can remember, and I’m proud of it. But I liked a bunch of other things like languages and history. I went to a music school in parallel to my regular school. In fact, I believe that math and music (and arts) REGISTRAR are intimately connected. Mathematicians talk about “beautiful In June, with just two exceptions—the School of Medicine and proofs” and “beautiful equations” and think visually. I think the College of Dentistry—all of the back-end operations for today is a great time to connect, because technology can be used NYU registration moved from Manhattan to this new base in to impact almost any area. A great example is 370 Jay Street [see Brooklyn. Face-to-face assistance is available around the corner at page 37], which is going to house programs from Tandon as well 5 MetroTech Center or at 383 Lafayette Street in Manhattan. as Steinhardt and Tisch. 22 FALL/WINTER 2018 NYU.EDU/ALUMNI.MAGAZINE 23 HOME TO: CENTER FOR ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY AND MAGNET TELECOMMUNICATIONS MOSES CENTER FOR STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES CENTER FOR CYBERSECURITY TANDON CARD CENTER COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT VISUALIZATION AND DATA ANALYTICS LAB ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT AS WELL AS . NYU WIRELESS / CIMS, MED, TANDON In the not-too-distant future, you will have a superspeedy 5G (radiology). NYU has teamed up with Columbia and Rutgers phone—and much of the technology was born here. “NYU under the aegis of the National Science Foundation’s Platforms Wireless has become synonymous with 5G,” says Sundeep for Advanced Wireless Research “to build one of the first 5G Rangan, associate professor of electrical and computer test beds over about 20 city blocks near the Columbia campus,” engineering at Tandon. This preeminence began five years ago Rangan says. Another big project for the National Institute with the research of the program’s founder, Theodore Rapport, for Standards and Technology is the study of millimeter wave a professor at three schools: Tandon (electrical engineering), communications technology and how it can help first responders Courant (computer science), and the School of Medicine transmit information to one another in remote areas. 24 FALL/WINTER 2018 ABILITY PROJECT / STEINHARDT, TANDON, TSOA EDTECH ACCELERATOR / STEINHARDT This lab brings together adult wheelchair users, hearing-impaired Three years ago when this endeavor started, New York City children, autistic teenagers, and others with students who are had about 800 educational technology companies and the learning how to become designers, engineers, or occupational Bay Area had 1,000. Now, according to Dominic Brewer, therapists for disabled people. Most recently, students worked Steinhardt’s dean, the figures are reversed thanks in part to with children from Brooklyn’s Midwood neighborhood who this initiative, which is helping to create a thriving community were adjusting to cochlear implants and having difficulty with of entrepreneurs. Among the many start-ups that have been balance. “They designed an adjustable balance board that wasn’t incubated or accelerated through the project’s conferences, as steep as a conventional one, with tilt stops to further limit festivals, boot camps, classes, and mentorship programs is one movement,” says codirector Anita Perr. They also constructed a that teaches history courses through virtual reality and another game that taught new hearers how to determine which direction that uses an app to help millennials just out of school learn how a sound was coming from by following a light. to handle their finances. PHOTO: SHELLY CHEN AND KEVIN ZENG SHELLY PHOTO: GAME CENTER / TSOA Five years ago the center was “squatting at 721 Broadway,” then it moved to 2 MetroTech, which was “great,” says the center’s director, Frank Lantz. Owing to expansion, the center—which teaches game design as a major or minor—is moving again, this time around the corner to 370 Jay Street, and Lantz is psyched: “We’re calling it MTA: Media, Technology, and the Arts. That building and the Brooklyn campus are the cutting edge of the intersection of design and technology—two worlds that in many universities are kept apart.” A Memoir Blue (pictured) is a single-player magical realism game created by Shelley Blue (TSOA ’18) and Kevin Zeng (TSOA ’17). BROOKLYN STORY: THE TEDDY BEAR The creation of this childhood staple was sparked by, of all things, a shooting expedition. When Bed-Stuy store owner Morris Michtom saw a Washington Post cartoon of Theodore Roosevelt refusing to kill a black bear that had been captured for him during a 1902 hunting trip, his wife, Rose, sewed a plush velvet version of the animal. They put it in their shop window with the label “Teddy’s Bear.” It was a hit, so the Michtoms sent it to the president with a request for permission to make more with his name. The Ideal Novelty and Toy Company was born, and Roosevelt adopted the bear as the Republican Party symbol in the 1904 election.