NEW YORK (TIP): : New York University will invest $1 billion over 20 years to improve the ranking of its Tandon School of Engineering, named after Indian American philanthropists Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon.
The investment, announced by NYU President Andrew Hamilton, is also aimed at raising the profile of New York City as a technology hub.
A news release issued by the university said it has already acquired a 350,000 square foot building adjacent to Tandon School. “The purchase of the new facility will help support an ongoing $1 billion investment in Tandon to significantly advance engineering at NYU by recruiting 40 new full-time tenure track faculty, fueling groundbreaking research, and growing and modernizing its Downtown Brooklyn campus,” the release said. “The funding will fuel basic and applied research in key interdisciplinary areas of global import—secure wireless ecosystems and supply chains, health engineering, sustainable engineering, and data science to improve the human condition.”
“Continuing the stunning upward trajectory! So, thrilling!” Chandrika Tandon, who, along with her husband, Ranjan, donated $100 million to the school in 2015, tweeted Wednesday. The philanthropist was present at an event where the announcement was made.
“Problems don’t require an engineering solution, they require a multidisciplinary solution,” she was quoted as saying by the official Twitter handle of NYU Tandon.
The media reported that the “investment includes $600 million that was already slated” for the school and “an additional $400 million in new funds.”
The paper wrote that the 10-story 3 MetroTech Center building was purchased in September.
The $100 million donated by the Tandons was used to improve lab and recruit academics specialized in the areas of robotics, health and data science.
“We feel privileged to be able to participate in the transformation that is happening at NYU and at the School of Engineering,” Chandrika Tandon said while announcing the gift in 2015. “As a trustee of NYU, I have had a front row seat to the energy and excitement of the Global Network University and the scale of possibility it presents.”
It was reported that the investment improved the position of Tandon School in the U.S. News and World Report ranking from 82 in 2006 to 33 this year. Tandon, a Grammy-nominated artist, is a big proponent of technology. “Sitting with the with some of the greatest minds in in the engineering school, the potential of what is happening in technology, whether it’s in the space of wearables, whether it’s in the space of what is going to happen in in the fields of health, and the field of … urban informatics, what’s going to happen is mind-boggling,” she said in an interview streamed last year on DesiMax. “So, technology is not something that is just sort of on the sidelines that one can sort of look at and say, ”Oh, you know I’m an artist.” The field of the arts has transformed, the field of health is transformed, and we ain’t seen nothing yet. You know it’s just beginning.”