“We are intensely interdisciplinary”: CUSP Director Steve Koonin

NYU’s Center for Urban Science Progress [CUSP] will have a big announcement in the coming weeks on instrumentation, according to its director, Steven E. Koonin, speaking at the Transatlantic Science Forum last week, in the CUSP offices in Downtown Brooklyn.

“CUSP is a mission driven research and educational partnership,” he told the gathered academics from both sides of the Atlantic, as he explained the new program’s vision going forward.

The new announcement may or may not pertain to the idea of the “urban observatory” that Koonin described at the event. He said that CUSP scientists see a lot of possibilities in putting instruments at the top of tall buildings, which enable them to observe the behavior of a great many people at once.

Some other insights that Koonin provided on the program he helped found:

• Modeling the city will be a key initiative going forward. Scientists will begin by modeling transportation, but move on to adding other variables to their models, such as economics and health.
• Citizen science: CUSP will be looking for ways to engage the public not just as consumers of their research, but also to engage in it with them.
• “We are intensely interdisciplinary,” Koonin said, “We go from sensors to sociologists.” In fact, he went on to speak in some detail about the role of social science, “The most interesting and problematic aspect of cities are the people,” Koonin said. Adding that CUSP researchers believed they would be able to revolutionize the social sciences.