The debate about the location of the next technology hotspot has recently been focused on New York City, sometimes referred to as "Silicon Alley," as a would-be challenger to Silicon Valley. Now a new move by Microsoft and a group of former Yahoo researchers indicates that the Big Apple may indeed be primed to become a new hub of technology innovation.
Microsoft will open its newest research lab in Manhattan, led by Jennifer Chayes, the managing director of Microsoft Research New England. The new lab will be tasked with investigating and building upon the areas of computational and experimental social science, algorithmic economics, machine learning, and information retrieval.
Notable additions to the 15-member team include former Yahoo researchers David Pennock (computer science and economics), Duncan Watts (computational and experimental social science) and John Langford (interactive machine learning).
"In addition to growing our already strong ties to the academic research community, we'd like to play our part in the New York City tech scene, including the startup, venture-capitalist, and hack/make communities, plus the new Cornell-Technion campus, contributing what we can to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's vision of New York City as a tech hub," said Pennock, who will serve as the lab's assistant managing director overseeing the day-to-day operations.
Other members of the team include Sharad Goel and Jake Hofman, focused on computational social science, David Rothschild, whose concentration is in the area economics and prediction markets, and Dan Goldstein and Siddharth Suri, who devote most of their research efforts to the areas experimental and behavioral social science.
Microsoft's focus on the New York City area as a new technology mecca isn't incidental. In fact, the location appears to be one of the driving inspirations behind the new lab. Emphasizing the importance of the new locale, Chayes said, "[Microsoft Research New York City] has started to reach out to prestigious research universities in the area, including Columbia, NYU, the new Cornell-Technion NYC campus, Princeton, and Rutgers, to discuss ways to collaborate more closely and to support each other… New York City recently has dedicated itself to becoming a leader in technological innovation and entrepreneurship… We are excited about our opportunity to contribute to this initiative by helping to create new disciplines at the intersection of computer science and the social sciences."
Last year Bloomberg announced the Applied Sciences NYC initiative, an effort to build a 2 million-square-foot applied science and engineering campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City. Working in concert with Cornell University and the Israeli Technion Institute, the city will provide $100 million in capital to assist with site's infrastructure and construction. Although not directly affiliated with the Applied Sciences initiative, the addition of the Microsoft Research lab to the city's overall technology picture could help to kick start interest from engineers, designers, and technology start-ups looking distinguish their efforts by relocating outside of Silicon Valley's already saturated competitive space.
