Featured by New York Business Journal. 

Forget the ivory tower. Some new college programs launching in New York are tied into improving city life and boosting the economy. For example, Steven Koonin, director of  Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), located in MetroTech in Brooklyn, is on the cutting edge of using big data to create jobs in New York in the private sector and government.

Launched in April 2012, CUSP currently is on target to graduate 24 master’s-degree students next year. But in the next decade, the program is primed to grow and graduate 500 master’s and doctoral students.

Koonin, a native New Yorker, has strong credentials. He served as under secretary at the Department of Energy from 2009 through 2001. He’s also been associated with the Institute for Defense Analyses and has a bachelor of science from Caltech and a doctorate from .

In this question-and-answer session, Koonin discusses how CUSP works with government, what skills its graduates possess and how it’s on the cutting edge.