Columbia University to Add New Tech Campus

What do the world’s top economic catalysts such as Apple, Canon, and Disney need the most? Engineers.

The campus of Columbia University with the Butler Library in the foreground in Manhattan on June 21. On Monday, July 30, Mayor Bloomberg announced an agreement to create a new institute for data sciences and engineering at the college. Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times

NEW YORK—What do the world’s top economic catalysts such as Apple, Canon, and Disney need the most? Engineers.

To help push New York City forward as a high-tech leader, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger revealed plans to double both Columbia’s current science engineering staff, and graduate students, at a press conference at the university Monday.

Columbia will open a new Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering. “This is the most ambitious economic plan the city has had in decades,” Bloomberg said.

The plan will create 44,000 square feet of new applied science and engineering space on Columbia’s Morningside Heights and Washington Heights campuses by 2016, hiring 75 new faculty staff over the next decade and a half.

Although Columbia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science ranks 17th for computer science schools in the world, and 10th in the United States, the percentage of Columbia’s engineering professors elected to the national Academies of Engineering and Sciences ranks Columbia in the nation’s top five engineering schools.