Aaron Gokaslan, a prominent researcher and PhD student from Cornell Tech, has received the PyTorch Award for 2023. PyTorch’s codebase is a popular deep-learning framework, and the PyTorch Award for Excellence in Code Review is a recognition of Gokaslan’s dedication to maintaining the highest standards in AI technology.

“I am deeply honored to contribute to the PyTorch community and receive the PyTorch Award for Excellence in Code Review. Code review is a vital part of maintaining the quality and reliability of open-source software,” says Gokaslan. “This award reflects the collective efforts of the entire PyTorch community, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to work with such dedicated and talented individuals. I look forward to continuing to ensure that PyTorch remains a trusted and robust platform for AI research and development.”

Gokaslan currently works with Volodymyr Kuleshov, Assistant Professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and in the Computer Science Department at Cornell University, and is presently researching open and efficient generative models, specifically looking at how to bring the cost down of training and deploying. He also continues to work on using large language models on DNA sequences and biological data for science, drug discovery, and gene editing.

“The award presented by the PyTorch Foundation is a testament to Aaron’s contributions to the world of machine learning,” says Kuleshov. “Aaron has a significant impact on the PyTorch community, particularly in code review, which plays a critical role in advancing the field of artificial intelligence. His work and research are vital to the growth and strengthening of A.I. infrastructure.”

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Artificial intelligence-powered writing assistants that autocomplete sentences or offer “smart replies” not only put words into people’s mouths, they also put ideas into their heads, according to new research.

Maurice Jakesch, a doctoral student in the field of information science asked more than 1,500 participants to write a paragraph answering the question, “Is social media good for society?” People who used an AI writing assistant that was biased for or against social media were twice as likely to write a paragraph agreeing with the assistant, and significantly more likely to say they held the same opinion, compared with people who wrote without AI’s help.

The study suggests that the biases baked into AI writing tools – whether intentional or unintentional – could have concerning repercussions for culture and politics, researchers said.

“We’re rushing to implement these AI models in all walks of life, but we need to better understand the implications,” said co-author Mor Naaman, professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and of information science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. “Apart from increasing efficiency and creativity, there could be other consequences for individuals and also for our society – shifts in language and opinions.”

While others have looked at how large language models such as ChatGPT can create persuasive ads and political messages, this is the first study to show that the process of writing with an AI-powered tool can sway a person’s opinions. Jakesch presented the study, “Co-Writing with Opinionated Language Models Affects Users’ Views,” at the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in April, where the paper received an honorable mention.

To understand how people interact with AI writing assistants, Jakesch steered a large language model to have either positive or negative opinions of social media. Participants wrote their paragraphs – either alone or with one of the opinionated assistants – on a platform he built that mimics a social media website. The platform collects data from participants as they type, such as which of the AI suggestions they accept and how long they take to compose the paragraph.

People who co-wrote with the pro-social media AI assistant composed more sentences arguing that social media is good, and vice versa, compared to participants without a writing assistant, as determined by independent judges. These participants also were more likely to profess their assistant’s opinion in a follow-up survey.

The researchers explored the possibility that people were simply accepting the AI suggestions to complete the task quicker. But even participants who took several minutes to compose their paragraphs came up with heavily influenced statements. The survey revealed that a majority of the participants did not even notice the AI was biased and didn’t realize they were being influenced.

“The process of co-writing doesn’t really feel like I’m being persuaded,” said Naaman. “It feels like I’m doing something very natural and organic – I’m expressing my own thoughts with some aid.”

When repeating the experiment with a different topic, the research team again saw that participants were swayed by the assistants. Now, the team is looking into how this experience creates the shift, and how long the effects last.

Just as social media has changed the political landscape by facilitating the spread of misinformation and the formation of echo chambers, biased AI writing tools could produce similar shifts in opinion, depending on which tools users choose. For example, some organizations have announced they plan to develop an alternative to ChatGPT, designed to express more conservative viewpoints.

These technologies deserve more public discussion regarding how they could be misused and how they should be monitored and regulated, the researchers said.

“The more powerful these technologies become and the more deeply we embed them in the social fabric of our societies,” Jakesch said, “the more careful we might want to be about how we’re governing the values, priorities and opinions built into them.”

Advait Bhat from Microsoft Research, Daniel Buschek of the University of Bayreuth and Lior Zalmanson of Tel Aviv University contributed to the paper.

Support for the work came from the National Science Foundation, the German National Academic Foundation and the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts.

Patricia Waldron is a writer for the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.

This story originally appeared in the Cornell Chronicle.

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Asthma is personal for Tyler Bershad.

“Like 26 million Americans, I have asthma,” said Bershad, Johnson Cornell Tech MBA candidate, during the 2023 Health Hackathon in February. “Asthma is the most prevalent chronic respiratory disease in humans and, unfortunately, those who are most vulnerable are children.”

Bershad knows first-hand the reality that many pediatric asthma patients don’t always know how to communicate their symptoms to their parents or providers. This problem led him and his Hackathon team — named “Mixed Bag” — to create an innovative solution in the form of AiroCare, a smart monitoring device for asthmatic symptoms. It attaches directly to a nebulizer, collecting data on lung performance in real-time before sending it to an app that a physician can easily access. Mixed Bag presented AiroCare to a panel of judges during the Hackathon, winning the $2,000 grand prize.

The annual Health Hackathon, held in person Feb. 17-19 and organized by Weill Cornell Medicine’s Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC), brought together 136 student participants and 37 mentors from the Cornell ecosystem — including Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell Tech, and the Ithaca campus — as well as the wider New York metropolitan area, such as Hospital for Special Surgery, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and others. Mentors from Johnson & Johnson and biotechnology companies were available to coach the teams throughout the weekend. Even local high school student innovators participated.

“The Clinical and Translational Science Center has been involved in these activities for years with Cornell’s Ithaca campus,” said Dr. Julianne Imperato-McGinley, the CTSC’s Founding Director. “This multidisciplinary team activity is unique in that it sparks creativity,  innovation, and disruption. We want participants to collaborate and to think outside the box.”

Over the course of three days, medical, business, engineering, and design students convened in spaces spread throughout two floors of NextJump’s interdisciplinary workspace in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood to create solutions to some of today’s most pressing needs in human health and wellness.

On Feb. 17, they formed teams and hashed out ideas, then met with mentors the following day, receiving intensive feedback and guidance.

By Feb. 19, the event culminated in a day-long project showcase to an audience of peers, mentors, and sponsors. As the participants hurtled through the fast-paced, whirlwind of a weekend, there was time to connect with and learn from people whose points of view might not be like their own. There were times set aside for restorative yoga, fitness, and making new friends.

To hone the technical skills that would be needed for many of the projects, the participants learned rapid ideation, prototyping, and 3D printing by way of a pop-up MakerSpace.

Event coordinator My Linh H. Nguyen-Novotny, Assistant Director of Programmatic Development at the CTSC, said the event is unlike any other.

“At Friday evening’s kick-off, my advice to the participants was to meet someone new,” she said. “What’s special about the Hackathons are the people. Without the people, this is just a room with four walls. Later on, many of the participants confided how much they appreciated that the Health Hackathon is the rare opportunity where individuals from across Cornell’s campuses, who have diverse backgrounds, have to interact in an intentional and engaging way.”

Nguyen-Novotny added that the event was particularly meaningful given that it was the first Health Hackathon post-pandemic that the CTSC has been part of since February 2020.

“It demonstrates remarkable entrepreneurial drive; the creativity of our community coming together to find innovative, cross-disciplinary, inclusive solutions to improve the health outcomes for vulnerable populations,” she added.

The teams presented projects that included helping asthmatic children, devising solutions for teenagers with vaping addiction, seniors who feel isolated, women post-mastectomy, and uninsured individuals. Each project addressed what are some of the most enduring health challenges in society that have often been under-addressed.

Nguyen-Novotny said the participants revealed the great potential of “emerging technologies” — think machine learning, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, miRNA, 3D printing, and on-demand digital fabrication — to solve these problems.

Beyond Mixed Bag, the winning teams were:

• 1st Place for Evidence-Based Solution ($1,500): S-cubed
• Most Inclusive Solution ($1,000): AuthenZ
• Best Research-Backed Impact ($500): Big Red Cures
• Honorable Mention for Addressing a Public Health Need: Connected Dot
• Honorable Mention for Tackling Youth Epidemic: Lagged
• Honorable Mention for Best Pivots: Yes, And

The big challenge for all of these teams was to distill their solutions to very complex problems in just four minutes. That’s how long they had to pitch their projects, followed by a four-minute Q&A session from the judges’ panel. On the final day of the competition, all teams presented during a morning session, before the finalists who received the judges’ highest scores presented their work for the final demonstrations.

Ami Stuart, Tech Events Manager at Entrepreneurship at Cornell who organizes hackathons across Cornell, said it really spoke to the “caliber and reputation” of the event that students from not just Columbia, Parsons, and NYU participated, but those from as far as Philadelphia, Boston, and Hartford traveled to New York City to be a part of the weekend.

When reflecting on the hackathon, Mariia Dobko, one of the members of Mixed Bag and a Jacobs Technion-Cornell Dual MS Degree — Health Tech Concentration student, said that winning the grand prize “was a truly unforgettable experience.” She said the sleepless hours of hard work and dedication were successful due to the fact their team came from such “different backgrounds and diverse skills.”

“Although I have participated in hackathons before, I have never tried to combine so many different parts,” she said. “It was amazing to see how it came together at the end.”

The post Student Teams Tackle Pressing Health Concerns During Health Hackathon appeared first on Cornell Tech.

Associate Dean for Impact Deborah Estrin encouraged Michael Byrne to use his dance research to showcase the affordances of the Cornell Tech campus, prompting Byrne to brainstorm with PhD student Fanjun Bu, newly graduated Nialah Wilson-Small, and the Production Glue crew about the ways in which robotics, drones, virtual reality, and choreography could intersect creatively.

The result was Innovación Monumental – a film collaboration with one of New York’s most inventive dance organizations, Ballet Hispánico – in which Artistic Director and CEO Eduardo Vilaro choreographed several vignettes with company members Dandara Veiga and Mariano Zamora, as well as the aforementioned technologies.

“It is a professional thrill to work within a cross-disciplinary institution like Cornell Tech where there is an open invitation to create,” said Michael Byrne, DLI Research Associate and newly appointed Creative Lead for Tech, Arts, and Culture. “This special partnership with Ballet Hispánico allowed us to examine the playful interchange between technology and choreography, revealing a shared institutional passion for innovation – both digital and embodied. The expansive interiors of our campus, as well as the breathtaking surrounds of the nearby memorial, provided Ballet Hispánico’s Eduardo Vilaro with a stage to explore multimodal forms of movement.”

The sublime dancers (and their technological counterparts) can be seen performing Vilaro’s compelling choreography inside Cornell Tech’s Tata Innovation Center and within Four Freedoms Park, both co-located on Roosevelt Island. Projects and partnerships like this highlight Cornell Tech’s ongoing mission to ensure its groundbreaking research and technologies can impact communities and creative industries beyond the campus labs.

“Monumental Innovación also marks the beginning of a longer-term initiative between Cornell Tech, Ballet Hispánico, and other collaborators around history, dance, and digital interventions in civic spaces,” Byrne added excitedly.

Project Credits

Choreography: Eduardo Vilaro, Ballet Hispánico
Dancers: Dandara Veiga and Mariano Zamora, Ballet Hispánico
Creative Direction: Michael Byrne, Cornell Tech
Film Direction: Dom McGee, Production Glue
Producers: Production Glue and Bloomberg Philanthropies

Featured Technologies: Cornell Tech
Drones: Nialah Wilson-Small, Shiri Azenkot, and Kristin H. Petersen
Robotics: Fanjun Bu and Wendy Ju
Mixed Reality: Michael Byrne

Four Freedoms Park Conservancy: Howard Axel and Angela Stangenberg

Music: Santa Maria (Pepe Braddock Mix), La Revancha del Tango (Bonus Track Version), © Gotan Project, 2001 XL Recordings Ltd

A Sample of Behind the Scenes Visuals (10 x photos)

The post Cornell Tech, Ballet Hispánico, and the Four Freedoms Park Conservancy Collaborate to Highlight the Generative Collisions of Dance and Emerging Technology appeared first on Cornell Tech.

A Cornell-led collaboration used machine learning to pinpoint the most accurate means, and timelines, for anticipating the advancement of Alzheimer’s disease in people who are either cognitively normal or experiencing mild cognitive impairment.

The modeling showed that predicting the future decline into dementia for individuals with mild cognitive impairment is easier and more accurate than it is for cognitively normal, or asymptomatic, individuals. At the same time, the researchers found that the predictions for cognitively normal subjects is less accurate for longer time horizons, but for individuals with mild cognitive impairment, the opposite is true.

The modeling also demonstrated that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a useful prognostic tool for people in both stages, whereas tools that track molecular biomarkers, such as positron emission tomography (PET) scans, are more useful for people experiencing mild cognitive impairment.

The team’s paper, “Machine Learning Based Multi-Modal Prediction of Future Decline Toward Alzheimer’s Disease: An Empirical Study,” published Nov. 16 in PLOS ONE. The lead author is Batuhan Karaman, a doctoral student in the field of electrical and computer engineering.

Alzheimer’s disease can take years, sometimes decades, to progress before a person exhibits symptoms. Once diagnosed, some individuals decline rapidly but others can live with mild symptoms for years, which makes forecasting the rate of the disease’s advancement a challenge.

“When we can confidently say someone has dementia, it is too late. A lot of damage has already happened to the brain, and it’s irreversible damage,” said senior author Mert Sabuncu, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering and Cornell Tech, and of electrical engineering in radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine.

“We really need to be able to catch Alzheimer’s disease early on,” Sabuncu said, “and be able to tell who’s going to progress fast and who’s going to progress slower, so that we can stratify the different risk groups and be able to deploy whatever treatment options we have.”

Clinicians often focus on a single “time horizon” – usually three or five years – to predict Alzheimer’s progression in a patient. The timeframe can seem arbitrary, according to Sabuncu, whose lab specializes in analysis of biomedical data – particularly imaging data, with an emphasis on neuroscience and neurology.

Sabuncu and Karaman partnered with longtime collaborator and co-author Elizabeth Mormino of Stanford University to use neural-network machine learning that could analyze five years’ worth of data about individuals who were either cognitively normal or had mild cognitive impairment. The data, captured in a study by the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, encompassed everything from an individual’s genetic history to PET and MRI scans.

“What we were really interested in is, can we look at these data and tell whether a person will progress in upcoming years ?” Sabuncu said. “And importantly, can we do a better job in forecasting when we combine all the follow-up datapoints we have on individual subjects?”

The researchers discovered several notable patterns. For example, predicting a person will move from being asymptomatic to exhibiting mild symptoms is much easier for a time horizon of one year, compared to five years. However, predicting if someone will decline from mild cognitive impairment into Alzheimer’s dementia is most accurate on a longer timeline, with the “sweet spot” being about four years.

“This could tell us something about the underlying disease mechanism, and how temporally it is evolving, but that’s something we haven’t probed yet,” Sabuncu said.

Regarding the effectiveness of different types of data, the modeling showed that MRI scans are most informative for asymptomatic cases and are particularly helpful for predicting if someone’s going to develop symptoms over the next three years, but less helpful for forecasting for people with mild cognitive impairment. Once a patient has developed mild cognitive impairment, PET scans, which measure certain molecular markers such as the proteins amyloid and tau, appear to be more effective.

One advantage of the machine learning approach is that neural networks are flexible enough that they can function despite missing data, such as patients who may have skipped an MRI or PET scan.

In future work, Sabuncu plans to modify the modeling further so that it can process complete imaging or genomic data, rather than just summary measurements, to harvest more information that will boost predictive accuracy.

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicine and National Institute on Aging, and the National Science Foundation.

Many Weill Cornell Medicine physicians and scientists maintain relationships and collaborate with external organizations to foster scientific innovation and provide expert guidance. The institution makes these disclosures public to ensure transparency. For this information, see profile for Dr. Sabuncu.

This story originally appeared in the Cornell Chronicle.

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Personal sensing data could help monitor and alleviate stress among resident physicians, although privacy concerns over who sees the information and for what purposes must be addressed, according to collaborative research from Cornell Tech.

Burnout in all types of workplaces is on the rise in the U.S., where the “Great Resignation” and “silent quitting” have entered the lexicon in recent years. This is especially true in the health care industry, which has been strained beyond measure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stress is physical as well as mental, and evidence of stress can be measured through the use of smartphones, wearables and personal computers. But data collection and analysis – and the larger questions of who should have access to that information, and for what purpose – raise myriad sociotechnical questions.

“We’ve looked at whether we can measure stress in workplaces using these types of devices, but do these individuals actually want this kind of system? That was the motivation for us to talk to those actual workers,” said Daniel Adler, co-lead author with fellow doctoral student Emily Tseng of “Burnout and the Quantified Workplace: Tensions Around Personal Sensing Interventions for Stress in Resident Physicians,” published Nov. 11 Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction.

The paper is being presented at the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Social Computing, taking place virtually Nov. 8-22.

Adler and Tseng worked with senior author Tanzeem Choudhury, the Roger and Joelle Burnell Professor in Integrated Health and Technology at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech. Contributors came from Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell Health and Zucker Hillside Hospital.

The resident physician’s work environment is a bit different from the traditional apprenticeship situation in that their supervisor, the attending physician, is also their mentor. That can blur the lines between the two.

“That’s a new context,” Tseng said. “We don’t really know what the actual boundaries are there, or what it looks like when you introduce these new technologies, either. So you need to try and decide what those norms might be to determine whether this information flow is appropriate in the first place.”

Choudhury and her group addressed these issues through a study involving resident physicians at an urban hospital in New York City. After hourlong interviews with residents on Zoom, the residents and their attendings were given mockups of a Resident Wellbeing Tracker, a dashboard with behavioral data on residents’ sleep, activity and time working; self-reported data on residents’ levels of burnout; and a text box where residents could characterize their well-being.

Tseng said the residents were open to the idea of using technology to enhance well-being. “They were also very interested in the privacy question,” she said, “and how we could use technologies like this to achieve those positive ends while still balancing privacy concerns.”

The study featured two intersecting use cases: self-reflection, in which the residents view their behavioral data, and data sharing, in which the same information is shared with their attendings and program directors for purposes of intervention.

Among the key findings: Residents were hesitant to share their data without the assurance that supervisors would use it to enhance their well-being. There is also a question of anonymity, which was more likely with more participation. But greater participation would hurt the potential usefulness of the program, since supervisors would not be able to identify which residents were struggling.

“This process of sharing personal data is somewhat complicated,” Adler said. “There is a lot of interesting continuing work that we’re involved in that looks at this question of privacy, and how you present yourself through your data in more-traditional mental health care settings. It’s not as simple as, ‘They’re my doctor, therefore I’m comfortable sharing this data.’”

The authors conclude by referring to the “urgent need for further work establishing new norms around data-driven workplace well-being management solutions that better center workers’ needs, and provide protections for the workers they intend to support.”

Other contributors included Emanuel Moss, a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell Tech; David Mohr, a professor in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University; as well as Dr. John Kane, Dr. John Young and Dr. Khatiya Moon from Zucker Hillside Hospital.

The research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation and the Digital Life Initiative at Cornell Tech.

This story originally appeared in the Cornell Chronicle.

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In a new paper, a team from Cornell Tech in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) recommends that, if YouTube wants to truly impact these creators, they develop a shared database of demonetized users in conjunction with Patreon, Twitch, and other alternative monetization sites, to prevent them from using each other’s platforms.

The Cornell Tech team reviewed 71 million videos on YouTube that were published by more than 136,000 popular content creators with more than 10,000 subscribers to understand how creators, including channels that distribute problematic content, employ alternative monetization strategies that could allow them to circumvent the effects of any “demonetization” by YouTube.

In their new paper the researchers found that, when compared to random channels of similar activity, popularity, age, and with similar content fringe content creators are:

• more likely to adopt alternative monetization
• use alternative monetization methods more frequently
• more likely to diversify their alternative monetization efforts

“We found that channels that establish alternative monetization strategies actually become more productive on the platform,” said Cornell Tech doctoral researcher Yiqing Hua, co-lead author on the new paper alongside Cornell Tech professors Thomas Ristenpart and Mor Naaman. A collaboration with Manoel Horta Ribeiro and Robert West of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, the paper will be presented this November at the annual ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing.

The researchers learned that creators who produce problematic content thrive from the attention they get from their supporters through alternative monetization. Looking at even just a small sliver of the overall YouTube analytics, Hua found that at least a dozen fringe channels have made more than $100,000 on Patreon alone.

While the problem is not limited to YouTube and Patreon, the two platforms have an outsized influence in this space. The new paper shows that 61 percent of fringe channels use an alternative monetization strategy, compared with 18 percent of channels overall.

The team generally found that the practice of demonetization on YouTube is less effective because of the opportunities to employ alternative monetization strategies, citing Alex Jones’ InfoWars YouTube channel as a high-profile example. Before the channel’s ban in late 2018, the channel featured over 30,000 videos and gathered more than two million subscribers. Despite being demonetized during this period, Jones still managed to amass millions of dollars each year through affiliate links and alternative monetization strategies. This paper shows that many fringe content creators benefit from alternative monetization and are able to maintain an income while producing content.

“We were surprised to discover how much money these creators are making from alternative monetization platforms,” Hua said. “Creators make money on YouTube through engagement, including number of views and minutes watched, but fringe creators that are demonetized focus on ensuring their fans and followers want to support and pay for their work.”

However, the researchers suggested that alternative monetization should not be banned from the platform, as these strategies also empower creators who are often in a vulnerable position when YouTube policies become ambiguous. Alternative monetization also allows for different incentives that may encourage higher-quality content compared to the ad-revenue model.

This research was funded in part by the Siegel Family Endowment and by the National Science Foundation.

The post How YouTube’s Demonetization Strategy Fails — and What They Can Do About It appeared first on Cornell Tech.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul described her plans for rebuilding the state’s infrastructure and praised Cornell students for their involvement in current issues during “Rebuilding New York,” a public conversation on Feb. 10 in New York City sponsored by the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy’s Institute of Politics and Global Affairs (IOPGA).

“I believe in Cornell, and I want to thank Cornell and all of its leaders for being part of our whole economy and driving a lot of important ideas that we have embraced,” Hochul said.

She was questioned by students including sophomore Claire Tempelman ’24, a policy analysis and management major in the Cornell Brooks School. Tempelman asked how Hochul would incorporate a concern for the environment in efforts to rebuild infrastructure including repairs and new construction of highways, bridges and transit lines.

Hochul said projects would incorporate plans for climate change resilience as well as environmentally sound construction. “We need your voices, because you’re the ones we’re going to be trusting with the future when we’re finished,” Hochul said. “This is a perfect time to be imagining your future here in the state of New York. We have unprecedented opportunities to have the resources to do what has been neglected for too long.”

The governor said quickly improving commutes for workers is especially critical. “When they’re making that decision – ‘Am I going to stay bunkered down and work remotely or am I going to come back to the city where I once worked?’ – it’s going to come down to whether they feel comfortable with reliable service that makes them feel good.”

After the event, Tempelman said she had discussed New York state’s climate policy in her classes on policy and oceanography at Cornell. “I loved being able to see what I learned in class in practice and to be able to discuss it with the governor of New York,” she said.

“Speaking with Governor Hochul about the impact young people can and will have in rebuilding New York was an amazing honor,” added Patrick Mehler ’23, an ILR School junior and a member of the Ithaca Common Council. “I am looking forward to the next generation of New Yorkers working with the governor to strengthen our great state.”

The event was moderated by former Congressman Steve Israel, director of IOPGA. The ILR School, host of the event at its New York City offices, and the Regional Plan Association co-sponsored the discussion.

Joining Israel and students in questioning Hochul were panelists Howard Milstein ’73, a member of the Cornell University Board of Trustees and an expert in the development and financing of large infrastructure projects, and Janette Sadik-Khan, chair of the National Association of City Transportation Officials and a member of the Regional Plan Association’s board of directors. Greg Morrisett, the Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and Vice Provost of Cornell Tech, introduced the governor.

Jim Hanchett is assistant dean of communications for the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy.

This story originally appeared in the Cornell Chronicle.

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What is your favorite class this semester?

My favorite class is probably Startup Studio since it’s most reflective of the product management career I’m pursuing. It provides the unique opportunity to combine theory with practice. So, I’m gaining experience building products in an incubator-like environment while reinforcing that experience by also building skills through academic instruction. 

What excites you most about your program?

I love that I can take tried and tested business courses, like Financial Statement Analysis and Management Presentations; as well as leading-edge tech courses, like Startup Studio, Introduction to Blockchains, Cryptocurrencies, and Smart Contracts, and Fundamentals of Modern Software within the same degree. For me, the ability to integrate these academic worlds is the beauty of the Cornell Tech MBA. It’s also extremely beneficial to be surrounded by peers (engineers, designers, other MBAs) who are focused on technology. A lot of synergies and latent learning occur in this environment where everyone brings a tech-oriented background and career path.

Why did you choose Cornell Tech?

The uniqueness of the curriculum, culture, and community. I explored other graduate business programs, many of which seemed to offer great opportunities in Tech, but none were as explicitly focused on tech as Cornell Tech. Ultimately, this program stood out to me as the most efficient way to accelerate my trajectory in the industry.

What has surprised you most about Cornell Tech?

The amount of work! While I fully expected an institution of Cornell’s standing to demand a lot (I wouldn’t have it any other way) the experience has been, in some respects, an exercise in prioritization. To be successful, I’ve had to thoughtfully consider exactly what I’m here to learn. In one year, there simply isn’t enough time to do it all (even if you find almost everything intellectually appealing).

What’s the most interesting use of technology you’ve seen lately?

The rapid development and deployment of big data tools to track COVID-19 have been pretty cool to see and use. The scale at which it’s taking place, and the collaboration that it requires across governments, academia, the open source community, and private businesses is remarkable. Many times in the past, tech has excelled at uniting these forces to make progress — it’s great to see a more recent example of that collaborative effort. The New York Times’ Covid tracking project is a great example. There are so many disparate contributors to that effort, and it’s obviously delivering a very important service. 

What is one of your favorite things to do on the weekend in NYC?

Leave the apartment, get on the subway with no real agenda, and see where the day takes me. Maybe I’ll call friends to meet up along the way and we end up in a park with street food. Maybe I run into someone unexpected and we grab a drink. Also, I love walking and listening to music. Before the pandemic, I saw a lot of live music on weekends — but with good headphones, a walk, and a musical itch to scratch I’m pretty happy. For a quick break, I really enjoy going for runs around Roosevelt Island with classmates.

In what way do you hope your work might affect others and society at large? 

Regardless of where a tech company lies on the spectrum between pure commercial entity and social enterprise, I think by building things that solve problems, and not believing “the status quo is fine with me,” tech companies inherently contribute to progress. I acknowledge that society’s relationship with technology must be continuously redefined, as we often can’t foresee the societal impacts that innovation brings. But by and large, I believe technology solves problems. As long as I’m making an earnest contribution to that effort, I’ll be happy knowing I’m moving the world forward.

The post Master’s Q&A: Scott Hillman, MBA ’21 appeared first on Cornell Tech.

What is your favorite class this semester?

It is hard to say! I am in my last semester at Cornell Tech and there are still too many courses I would like to explore. However, Technology, Media, and Democracy is exceptionally good. The course is a collaboration between NYU, Columbia, CUNY, The New School, and Cornell Tech to examine the socio-technical aspects of our information ecosystem and its challenges in monitoring media platforms, providing high-quality and trustworthy information, and enabling a healthy public sphere. So far, we have had amazing speaker guests like Roger McNamee (Mark Zuckerberg’s mentor and an early investor on Facebook), Julia Angwin (Editor-in-Chief of The Markup and former ProPublica journalist), and Katherine Maher (the CEO of Wikimedia Foundation).

Another class I am thrilled about is Core Leadership Skills for a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) World taught by General George Casey, the 36th Chief of Staff of the United States Army, now retired. Listening to his career journey while extracting life-long leadership skills is priceless. 

What excites you most about your program?

My peers coming from all around the world! Norway, South Africa, Mexico, China, Japan, The Netherlands, Colombia, and more. Think about a room with people from a hundred different educational, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds discussing how to solve the most pressing issues technology is challenging humanity with. Collaboration in a highly diverse environment is probably the most critical skill to learn in today’s world.

Why did you choose Cornell Tech?

Cornell Tech is home to multidisciplinary people and this is precisely why I feel I belong. I think my career path has been everything except linear, and I believe this is the result of a decision-making process motivated by deep curiosities and inner motivations. Non-linear career paths, as well as non-linear algorithms, are more complex and uncertain but they can also have a much bigger expressive power.

What has surprised you most about Cornell Tech?

Its startup ecosystem. Cornell Tech is not only home to numerous successful tech startups (and growing!), but the campus feels like a startup itself. Although Cornell Tech is part of an Ivy League school, the Tech campus is still in its early stages and it is great to be able to shape what I believe will be the best startup hub in NYC!

What’s the most interesting use of technology you’ve seen lately?

I recently saw a very interesting computer vision application to help people with visual impairments to follow sports — in this case, tennis — in real-time using auditory clues (3D sound design). Check it out!

What is one of your favorite things to do on the weekend in NYC?

Take the Tramway from Roosevelt Island to Manhattan, walk to 5th Avenue and 59th Street and run Central Park up until the Reservoir. Then, on the way back home, pick up a Magnolia Bakery banana pudding or some chocolate chip walnut cookies from Levain Bakery. And I can not forget to mention the famous fried Oreos from Ray’s Candy Store.

In what way do you hope your work might affect others and society at large?

I hope my work helps to identify and address real human needs and uphold human values to design for augmentation, not automation. I believe we have entered into the age of automation extremely confident and hopeful yet naively underprepared. If we fail to design ethical and inclusive AI, we risk losing the gains made in civil rights and gender and racial equity. 

How do you describe your program to your friends and family?

I like to say it is a two-year program in which we take as many computer science courses as the students under the one-year CS program, plus other courses that focus on the psychological and sociological aspects of technology.

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