The Faculty PiTech fellowship, selected annually and with terms ranging from six to twelve months, provides a platform for established faculty to explore public interest technology ventures or initiatives in their teaching and research. In the four months since the start of her fellowship, Linardi has supported Cornell Tech by helping connect the academic research of the campus with the needs of the communities it serves.

Introduced in 2021 and central to Cornell Tech’s mission of incorporating social considerations into all aspects of their research, Cornell Tech’s PiTech initiative is at the forefront of a movement to build a commitment to responsible tech and public interest technology. The program, funded by David Siegel and brought to fruition by Associate Dean and Robert V. Tishman ’37 Professor Deborah Estrin, was established in recognition of the need to imbue a public interest orientation in students that they can carry into their professional lives as they pursue careers in tech.

“There are so many conversations currently about creating smart cities and utilizing tech for social good, but because so much of the focus is on academic innovation, it can be difficult for those conversations to translate to community needs,” said Linardi. “We’re attempting to answer the question of what it means to use tech for good and social justice in a university setting, connecting tech research with communities in a way that creates a practical impact.”

Linardi’s journey that led her to delve into the intersection of research and community began after she received her PhD in social science from CalTech and became a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. As a researcher in social science, she worked with nonprofit organizations like School on Wheels that didn’t have the funding to conduct statistical analytical research experiments, and she also conducted direct outreach to communities to how academia could best meet their needs.

In her position as associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh, she founded the Center for Analytical Approaches to Social Innovation (CAASI), which, amidst the devastation of George Floyd’s murder in 2020 and following social reckoning, offered a community for healing. CAASI began expanding rapidly, beginning as a place for meditative reflection and gradually becoming an incubator for creating practical web and data projects driven by students and created in collaboration with communities.

Linardi’s extensive work growing and developing CAASI for five years made her well-equipped to take on the role of Executive Director of Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization (EEAMO). A network of diverse researchers with various orientations to the intersection of academia and equity, EEAMO serves as a nonprofit organization focused on using interdisciplinary research to improve equity and access to opportunity in historically under-served communities. As Executive Director, Linardi took her work scaffolding the divide between student learning and community and translated it to connecting academic researchers and community.

“We take people who are already in the research network and help them build, understand, and integrate the perspectives of historically underserved populations,” Linardi explained. “Reaching out to people who are academically invested in their respective fields and exposing them to what communities actually need helps to create greater equity for historically underserved communities.”

Linardi’s tireless efforts in her role as Founding Director of EAAMO are helping to ensure that math, computing, and technology research are supporting the efforts of underserved communities and increasing overall equity. Cornell Tech’s PiTech fellowship has allowed her to expand her crucial work, making it more accessible to additional universities and communities. Linardi will be working within the Cornell Tech community through December 2024.

The post Siegel PiTech Faculty Impact Fellow Explores Using Tech for Good in Academic Setting appeared first on Cornell Tech.

The below Q&A was originally published by the Siegel Family Endowment on its website in the “From Our Grantees” section under “Insights” and has been republished here with permission.

The Public Interest Technology (PiTech) Initiative at Cornell Tech is at the forefront of a movement to offer applied technical learning experiences rooted in the public interest to emerging technologists, faculty, researchers, and practitioners. The PiTech Impact Studio and the Siegel PiTech PhD Impact Fellowship are signature programs that typify PiTech’s approach of building a commitment to responsible tech and public interest technology among students, regardless of whether they enter careers in the public, civil society, or private sectors.

We sat down with renowned computer scientist and leader of PiTech at Cornell Tech, Deborah Estrin, to discuss PiTech’s practicum approach; why Cornell Tech was the perfect place to realize her vision for public interest tech learning; how she first encountered the concept of public interest tech (hint: it involves us!); and Estrin’s vision for how public interest tech approaches can be incorporated into a variety of settings.

You worked in public interest tech long before anyone called it public interest tech. What drew you to this field?

I’ve always had a bent towards social opportunities and impact challenges related to technology. Even as an electrical engineering and computer science undergrad, I had a tendency to be distracted by what was going on outside of tech. For almost my entire career, I’ve been doing technology for something, whether in environmental monitoring or health technology. I’ve always had a bit of that activist in me.

How common was that approach when you first started your career? Have you seen a change in how what we now call “public interest technology” is valued in the field?

When I started, a focus on social implications wasn’t typical. In fact, for many years, I sometimes felt as though my interest in the social realm was seen as detracting from my credibility as a technologist. Early on, I didn’t even list my master’s in technology policy on my bio! But in the last ten years it’s become a thing. More young faculty and students—and the larger world—are saying that this is important. My once unusual interest is now mainstream in academic circles, at least.

When did you first encounter a public interest tech framing for the work that you were doing? How did that lead you to create PiTech?

Actually, the first time I heard the term “public interest tech” was from David Siegel! I think it was around 2018, and David was chatting with me and some others at a Cornell Tech Council meeting. He referred to his conversations with Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation and used that phrase. I didn’t act on it immediately, but it stuck with me.

Over the next year, I was planning for my sabbatical and also thinking about a larger project I could tackle that would rise to the occasion of receiving a MacArthur grant. At the same time, across the CS community, more students were increasingly seeking out ways to engage with responsible tech and public interest tech. It was no longer considered an unusual thing. So I started thinking about how to bring public interest tech to Cornell Tech as a platform for exploring and elevating these ideas.

I spent a fair amount of time looking at other programs to build on, rather than starting from scratch. For example, I had an intern who did some background work on public interest law to see what we could take from that model. For me, it was all about making the model work practically. I didn’t just want to study what could constitute public interest tech; I wanted to build infrastructure that would help emerging tech practitioners and researchers gain hands-on experience doing public interest tech.

Why was Cornell Tech the right place to develop PiTech?

I had prior experience establishing a standalone nonprofit venture/startup so knew firsthand that startups aren’t necessarily the most frugal or sustainable answer to unaddressed social needs. A new business can be a pretty expensive way to address a problem. In this case, I thought that it made much more sense to build PiTech on top of an existing venture that had the infrastructure to address the need.

Cornell Tech was that existing venture, that existing infrastructure. We have master’s students, PhD students, postdocs, and faculty and a unique studio model that prioritizes hands-on, real-world learning and partnerships. Plus, we can tap into subject matter expertise, which is not always present in purely technological initiatives. As an example, I worked on digital health projects for 15 years, and I always wanted a doctor “in the room.” It’s important to have the people and organizations out there who know the complexities of the problems you’re trying to address.

Cornell Tech’s faculty and partners allow for that. Even faculty who do what I think of as “tech for tech” have external engagement with companies and policymakers. In fact, we added external engagement to the hiring, tenure, and promotion process. It’s a concept that is foundational for Cornell Tech. I saw an opportunity to draw on that external engagement emphasis within the faculty and the commitment that Cornell Tech has to Studio as I laid out a plan for PiTech.

Tell us more about how PiTech engages with Cornell Tech’s Studio model. How did your approach evolve over time?

Since 2013, not a single master’s student across our academic programs has left Cornell Tech without some level of practical and entrepreneurial culture exposure, thanks to Studio. And since the introduction of PiTech in 2021, we have integrated responsible tech and public interest tech content into that core Studio experience. That means that even students who are working on monetization-focused products and startups do a multi-stakeholder-based ethical risk assessment or some sort of responsible tech exercise. It’s core to our curriculum.

The PiTech Studio has also evolved over time. In the early days, it was focused on social venture startups. And there were some successes there. For example, the first winner of the Siegel Family Endowment PiTech Startup Award spun off as a successful startup addressing equity issues in maternal health. But we realized that we have too many public interest needs and significant student interest to address them only when a unicorn emerges.

So we have switched to a service learning practicum format which can be applied more widely and across different contexts. Not coincidentally, that is closer to the field’s origin story of Public Interest Law clinics. Under PiTech Impact Studio’s practicum format, students will participate in applied learning opportunities, alongside more formal coursework. We have an amazing instructor: Matthew Klein, Robin Hood’s Chief Program and Impact Officer. I’m very excited about that.

The wonderful thing about having flexible philanthropic funding for this work is that it gives us the ability to experiment and try one format or another to see what makes the most sense. You can’t just reason this through first-principles. You have to meet students’ interests, which change from year-to-year. And above all, you have to meet the public interest needs in a way that’s both generative for the field and teachable to students.

How is PiTech’s approach different from other public interest tech programs in higher ed?

We are quite different from the many public interest tech programs that were created to serve undergraduate and non-engineering majors.

Most master’s students come to Cornell Tech to deepen their technical skills and entrepreneurial exposure and pursue jobs in industry. So It just doesn’t make sense to try to focus our programs on preparing students to work full-time in the public or nonprofit sectors.

Instead, our goal is to imbue in all of our students a public interest orientation that they can carry through into their professional lives. Maybe they will contribute to an open source project with organizations like BetaNYC or volunteer with organizations like US Digital Response. Maybe they’ll incorporate social impact into the mission of a new company they found. Maybe they’ll ask critical ethical questions that change the trajectories of existing companies. There are lots of settings where they could be applying these ideas and skills.

How does that philosophy infuse your work with PhD students through the Siegel PiTech PhD Impact Fellowship?

Like our master’s students, PhD students are typically not pursuing careers in civil society organizations. Some of them end up in academia. Some of them end up in commercial research organizations. Some of them end up in product-focused startups or larger tech companies. Very few of them enter the public interest or public sectors as their primary gigs. We therefore focus on providing hands-on impact experiences to these students so that they can apply public interest and responsible tech approaches in whatever career they pursue.

What does the PhD Impact Fellowship involve? Why did you decide to establish the fellowship?

For context, most technical PhD students spend a number of their summers during their PhD going out and working for companies on internships. I thought, “What if we created opportunities for students to do internships with public interest or public sector organizations, not only with commercial enterprises?”

We heard from students we interviewed that they most wanted help curating specific projects and managing the relationships with external organizations. That way we’re not simply going to organizations and saying, “Here’s a technical student…good luck putting them to work.” Instead, we engage in conversations with the organizations early-on to understand their context and provide guidance and feedback on project scoping. We have become increasingly discerning about which projects are a good fit for students to consider. Students apply for a particular project and we work to make high-quality matches.

For pragmatic reasons, we decided to limit the program to Cornell University Tech students from both of our campuses and to partner with local organizations. We invested in developing relationships with a mix of potential host organizations in the nonprofit and public sectors and we seek a balance across different subject matter areas that are of interest to students. And unlike industry internships, we pay the students to avoid the cost burden on these organizations. This is where much of our philanthropy funding is deployed.

We started with five applicants the first year, and this year we had over 50 applicants for our 10 impact fellow positions. We apply a lot of care and attention curating meaningful projects and to matching students based on skills and interests.

What do you hope that students get out of the PhD Impact Fellowship?

I hope that every research technologist that we birth into the world has the opportunity to help address messy, difficult social needs, particularly those that do not have a monetizable solution. We want them to carry that forward.

They might be working on products that are multi-stakeholder and have impact in a community context. They might be working on a side project. All the tech companies have research arms which many PhD students go and work for, and have opportunities to spend some of their time working on social, public-facing problems.

Wherever it is that they are working, they are important citizens of the world because they have tech expertise and they influence what happens in STEM and other things. I hope that they go and approach those problems with subject matter experts from those communities and contexts, and not just use potential social good as window dressing. This is already a part of many technologists’ lives. We hope to help them pursue it in a richer, more meaningful way.

For many of today’s academic jobs, applicants are asked to describe social impact aspirations alongside research and teaching statements. The PiTech PhD Impact Fellowship experience gives them insight into how they can be impactful technologists as well as researchers and teachers.

Public interest and social impact should be a part of technologists’ lives whether they’re in academia or work for traditional companies or institutions. It shouldn’t just be a part of the lives of people working in the nonprofit and public sectors. Technologists should have a background in actually doing that work, rather than just learning the theory. That’s what we’re trying to do through both the Siegel PiTech PhD Impact Fellowship and the PiTech Impact Studio.

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Siegel Family Endowment supports organizations working at the intersections of learning, workforce, and infrastructure. Learn more about the organization here.

The post Deborah Estrin: Building Public Interest Technologists For All Sectors appeared first on Cornell Tech.

The fellowship term is 12 weeks between June and August. Impact Fellows work 20 hours per week, to leave enough space in their schedules for independent thesis research.

We accept applications through 5 PM EST on February 5th, 2024. We select between 8-12 Impact Fellows per cohort.

APPLY now

The post Apply for Siegel PiTech PhD Impact Fellowship by Feb. 4 appeared first on Cornell Tech.

ViPs engage with Cornell Tech students and other community members in multiple ways throughout the semester, such as giving talks, offering office hours, providing feedback on product and business ideas, and informing the direction of PiTech at Cornell Tech.

“We’re excited to welcome our next cohort. Through conversations and interactions with these thought leaders, students can learn about how technology can be effectively applied to serve the public interest,” said PiTech Initiative Director, Małgorzata Rejniak.

The second cohort of ViPs for the fall 2022 semester includes: Afua Bruce, Public Interest Technologist and Author, Stephen Nicoleau FullCycle Partner, Jennifer Park, Executive Director of the Opportunity Accelerator at Results for America, and Jorge Fontanez, CEO of B Lab U.S. & Canada.

Learn more about the 2022-23 ViPs here.

PiTech and the ViP Program are supported by generous investment from the Siegel Family Endowment.

The post Cornell Tech’s Public Interest Tech Initiative Welcomes its Second Cohort of Visiting Practitioners appeared first on Cornell Tech.

“The purpose of the PiTech initiative is to bring together world-class engineering talent, a focus on entrepreneurial innovation, and a commitment to social progress,” says Professor Deborah Estrin, Associate Dean for Impact. “We are delighted to have Anjana return to Cornell to help foster an environment for creative and impactful solutions.”

Before joing the PiTech Initiative, Anjana was the Chief Technology Officer of Polaris, one of the largest anti-human trafficking NGOs in the United States. She served on the organization’s executive team and led Polaris’s engineering, security, and technology departments. In this role, Anjana architected Polaris’s web3 and human rights vision, built a robust strategy to defend the organization against disinformation threats caused by violent extremist groups, and created “Mission Engineering,” a leadership framework that inspires technologists to build solutions for complex and dangerous problems.

Prior to working at Polaris, Anjana was the Chief Technology Officer of Callisto, a Y Combinator-backed social enterprise that builds advanced cryptographic technology to combat sexual assault. Anjana was a Tech Policy Fellow at the Aspen Institute, where she studied the intersection between mass shootings, domestic violence, and white supremacy extremism. She also served as an independent consultant for the Homeland Security Advisory Council and has testified before Congress as an expert witness on ways technology can protect victims and survivors of human trafficking.

Previously, Anjana lived in London and worked at Palantir, where she served as a Commanding Officer for a deployment in the Middle East and worked across commercial and international government projects. Prior to joining Palantir, Anjana worked as a technologist at Johnson & Johnson focusing on building new software products across global healthcare markets.

Anjana returns to Cornell Tech after serving as an inaugural Visiting Practitioner last year and herself studying at Cornell. She was a Knight Scholar at Cornell’s Engineering School and received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Operations Research and Information Engineering.

“I am deeply impressed by Cornell Tech’s PiTech initiative and the way they are shaping the future generation of engineering talent”, says Rajan. “I am excited to return to my alma mater as an Entrepreneur in Residence to incubate new ideas.”

This story originally appeared on the PiTech @ Cornell Tech website.

The post Anjana Rajan, Human Rights Technologist and Creator of “Mission Engineering,” Joins Cornell Tech as Entrepreneur in Residence appeared first on Cornell Tech.

In this sense, technology is having its own sort of Frankenstein moment. Companies and the talent within them are creating new products and features each day, and often with little regard for their impact at large.

More and more we are seeing that technology can have unforeseen consequences past its intended purpose, with effects spreading from our wellbeing to our democracy and even our freedom.

Lyel Resner, head of PiTech Studio, explained how — outside of the moral responsibility — creating responsible technology is actually beneficial for business.

Attract and Retain Diverse Talent

More and more, employees care about the positive and negative impact of their place of work. There have been unprecedented numbers of worker walkouts for bad company behavior in recent years — such as the 2019 Global Climate Strike’s Silicon Valley walkouts, the 10,000+ employee signatures on the Open Letter on Climate Action at Google, and the 2020 Facebook employee virtual walkout over disinformation shared through posts — with the amount of protests, leaks, think pieces, and exposés about poor business practices rising as well.

People are less likely to apply for and stay at companies that don’t live up to their expectations, especially when it comes to the impact their products and services have on society at large.

A 2019 Doteveryone report on the attitudes of the designers and builders of digital technologies found that 28 percent have seen decisions that they felt could have negative consequences for people or society, with nearly one in five (18 percent) of those leaving their companies as a result. Sixty-three percent of workers want more time and resources to think about the impacts of products they create, and 78 percent would like practical resources to help them recognize the impact of their work.

Building technology to make a positive impact leads to improved employee satisfaction, productivity, and retention — as seen in a 2015 Project ROI report that showed an increase in productivity by up to 13 percent and a decrease in turnover by up to 50 percent when corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices were adopted in business  — and may also help companies attract new workers. 

Growing Public Scrutiny

As technology intersects with our daily lives at an increasing rate, techno-skepticism — or the apprehension toward the benefits of modern technology — has been growing among the general public. More and more scrutiny has been raised toward tech companies and whether their services are truly beneficial.

In a 2018 Doteveryone report on how the public thinks and feels about the internet technologies that shape our world, 64 percent of people said that they don’t think the internet has had a very positive impact on society, with 20 percent of that group believing it has had an outright negative impact.

Thinking about the potential negative effects of your business, how they ripple outward, and addressing them preemptively is one way to help combat a poor reputation. Getting issues right the first time around helps to generate consumer loyalty.

Growing Regulatory Scrutiny

Similarly, regulators are also paying more attention to tech.

There has been a bigger push from the public for regulators to monitor Big Tech, with companies ranging from social media titans like Facebook and Twitter to service apps such as Airbnb and Uber — not to mention the notorious facial recognition company Clearview AI — taking the spotlight.

Every day, lawmakers and other government regulators work to hold companies like these accountable. Getting ahead of the issues they pose is a business imperative, and a strong way to build social capital is to follow the laws and guidelines these regulators set in place.

Prevent Disasters That Cost Time, Money, and Reputation

Overall, responsible tech functions as a sort of insurance transaction: the business pays a small premium (such as money, time, or personal reflection) to have protection from regulators, consumers, and unforeseen consequences.

These deposits yield and compound over time, leading to non-linear effects and benefits. As you perform more responsibly, more good people are attracted into your company’s orbit and help you to further improve and avoid problems moving forward. More people notice, come in, and the cycle of benefits continues.

“Have a genuinely positive impact,” said Resner. “Build something you’re proud of.”

The hard work and long hours in the beginning are what will help your business maintain a good image, sustain itself over time, and grow in the future.

Resner cites much of this work as being co-written with colleague Michelle Shevin, Senior Program Manager with the Technology and Society team at the Ford Foundation.

The post Why Responsible Tech in Business is an Imperative appeared first on Cornell Tech.

Cornell Tech’s Public Interest Tech initiative (PiTech) just launched a new Visiting Practitioners program (ViP), in which Cornell Tech students and faculty will glean insights and build relationships with tech leaders from a range of impact-oriented organizations.

ViPs will engage with community members in multiple ways throughout the semester, giving talks, offering office hours, and providing feedback on product and business ideas.

“We’re excited to launch this new program, which will help our growing PiTech community to learn from experienced practitioners in the field,” says professor Deborah Estrin.

Lyel Resner, Head of PiTech Studio, says the initiative’s goal is to foster a new generation of innovators, leaders, and thinkers focused on guiding technology toward positive societal outcomes.

The inaugural cohort of ViPs for the fall 2021 semester include:

• Rhonda Allen, CEO, dev/color
• Anjana Rajan, CTO, Polaris
• Oscar Romero, Program Director, NYC’s Mayor’s Office of the CTO
• Roxann Stafford, Managing Director, Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund

PiTech is supported by a seed investment from The Atlantic Philanthropies.

The post Cornell Tech Launches Visiting Practitioners Program for Public Interest Tech appeared first on Cornell Tech.

Cornell Tech has announced a $1 million grant from The Atlantic Philanthropies to jumpstart its Public Interest Tech (PiTech) initiative. PiTech will be geared toward developing the tools, systems, data sets, research, and education needed to address significant public sector concerns.

The gift will help Cornell Tech create the foundational infrastructure for the PiTech initiative, which bridges the gap between the public and private sectors in much the same way public interest law does. The goal is to build a community of researchers and practitioners dedicated to addressing societal challenges that might otherwise “fall between the cracks” of federal research funding, commercial investment, and foundation support.

The Atlantic Philanthropies’ new grant to launch the Public Interest Tech initiative is the foundation’s very last to Cornell University—a capstone to an extraordinary legacy of support from Chuck Feeney for his alma mater.”

—Fred Van Sickle, vice president for Alumni Affairs and Development, Cornell University

 

A full circle of giving to Cornell

The Atlantic Philanthropies, founded by Charles F. Feeney ’56, has a long history of giving to Cornell University. In 2011, Atlantic made its largest ever commitment, $350 million, to support the establishment of Cornell Tech at a critical moment in Cornell’s winning bid to build an applied sciences and technology campus in New York City.

The establishment of Cornell Tech is one of the great success stories of U.S. higher education, thanks in large part to the generosity, vision, and support of The Atlantic Philanthropies.”

—Greg Morrisett, Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and vice provost, Cornell Tech

“The Atlantic Philanthropies’ new grant to launch the Public Interest Tech initiative is the foundation’s very last to Cornell University—a capstone to an extraordinary legacy of support from Chuck Feeney for his alma mater,” said Fred Van Sickle, vice president for Alumni Affairs and Development at Cornell. “Atlantic will complete its grant-making and close its doors this year, achieving Chuck’s goal of giving away his entire fortune in his lifetime. Cornell and Cornell Tech are proud to have played such an important role in Chuck’s mission of ‘giving while living,’ which has resulted in more than $8 billion in philanthropy around the world and nearly $1 billion to our university.”

“We are honored that one of our final gifts will support the Cornell Tech campus once more,” said Christopher Oechsli, president and CEO of The Atlantic Philanthropies, “and can think of no better use than Public Interest Tech—advancing technology as a means to a better quality of life for communities in New York City, across the nation, and around the world.”

 

A great differentiator for Cornell Tech

Upon joining Cornell Tech in summer 2019, Greg Morrisett, Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and vice provost of Cornell Tech, elevated PiTech as a priority for campus.

“Our commitment to initiatives like Public Interest Tech will be what sets Cornell Tech apart from other institutions,” said Morrisett. “We are distinguished by a drive not simply to advance tech for tech’s sake, but to build a better world. I am enormously grateful for The Atlantic Philanthropies’ support of this vision.”

Associate dean for impact and Robert V. Tishman ’37 Professor Deborah Estrin was also instrumental in coordinating the Atlantic gift. She works to strengthen Cornell Tech’s external relationships with public, private, and non-profit organizations—in service of campus-wide initiatives.

“This generous seed gift from The Atlantic Philanthropies will enable early concept testing as a foundation for our large-scale launch,” said Estrin, “creating a platform for shaping new technologies to meet unmet public interest needs.”

 

A model for collaboration in the public interest

In the near term, the Atlantic gift will help Cornell Tech seed the infrastructure necessary to catalyze collaboration among technical, policy, and community experts and develop technologies in the public interest. The initiative will span both Cornell Tech and Ithaca campuses, uniting public interest tech activity university-wide.

One of the driving inspirations for PiTech was the tech clinic, a form of public interest tech which emerged organically at Cornell Tech. The first tech clinic launched in fall 2019, in partnership with the Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence. The Clinic to End Tech Abuse (CETA) supports survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV). By pairing Cornell Tech’s expertise in human-computer interaction and security with engagement by IPV victims and policymakers, Professors Nicki Dell and Tom Ristenpart developed a computer security clinic that helps IPV survivors navigate technology abuse. They are now scaling the clinic to serve the larger New York City metropolitan region and helping to create a model that is replicable across the country.

The Atlantic gift will help support the establishment of two additional tech clinics over the next two years. These clinics will focus the expertise of Cornell Tech faculty on public interest research. “For example, the current COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the need for sociotechnical solutions around disease surveillance and home-based medical care,” explained Estrin.

 

A strategy for the post-COVID-19 world

As New York City and communities around the world look to rebound in the post-COVID-19 era, there is widespread consensus that recovery should be driven by sound data. Shalini Mimani, associate vice president for Alumni Affairs and Development at Cornell Tech, believes that Cornell Tech and its researchers are well positioned to fill the need for data-science based decision making and technology-enabled interventions that will be critical to drive the recovery effort in New York City, New York state, and beyond.

“Cornell Tech researchers and students are poised to work across technology, policy, and industry networks to assess and develop approaches that can support communities affected by these challenges. PiTech will be particularly relevant as New York City and the world at large struggle to recover from the social and economic impact of the pandemic.” Mimani said.

We are distinguished by a drive not simply to advance tech for tech’s sake, but to build a better world.”

—Greg Morrisett, Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and vice provost of Cornell Tech

The gift will support the launch of a Public Interest Tech Studio, which will provide master’s students with product development and entrepreneurial experience addressing real-world public interest challenges with non-profits and other socially-minded organizations. In Studio, a core part of the Cornell Tech curriculum, students work in interdisciplinary teams to develop tech solutions for startups, companies, and organizations in New York City.

Examples of the kinds of issues PiTech could help address include:

• How might we rapidly build tools for monitoring and managing a public health crisis?
• How might we support public school systems in assessing the fairness and privacy features of the software platforms they increasingly depend upon?
• How might we bring the ease and enjoyment of consumer technologies to the elderly, or others with impaired sight, hearing, or mobility?
• How might we leverage community participation in data-driven decision making to help cities address the challenges of climate change?

 

A grand vision fueled by an in-house engine

The long-term goal is to create an Institute for Public Interest Technology at Cornell Tech, which would incubate and launch tech clinics and support related research, education, and policy making in the public interest.

“Cornell Tech attracts faculty and students who are compelled by the unique social impact mission of the campus and its unparalleled offering of world-class technical depth in the heart of NYC,” said Estrin. “This gift will give us the resources to further expand this social impact work.”

Since its founding, Cornell Tech has graduated 800 students, recruited 27 faculty, and established eight technical and industry-focused master’s degree programs. There are currently about 440 master’s and PhD students enrolled.

Cornell Tech is slated to enroll 1800 students and employ 250 faculty by 2043, as part of its commitment to the city. The campus plans to double the size of its faculty and student body over the next five years.

“The establishment of Cornell Tech is one of the great success stories of U.S. higher education, thanks in large part to the generosity, vision, and support of The Atlantic Philanthropies,” said Morrisett.

This story originally appeared on the Cornell alumni website.

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