On 23 April 2012, New York's Mayor Michael R Bloomberg announced a historic agreement between New York City, New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and a consortium of world-class academic institutions and private technology companies, which will lead to the creation in New York of a new Center for Urban Science and Progress - CUSP.

The New York Center for Urban Science and Progress has been formed by a consortium of world-class institutions from acround the globe, led by NYU and NYU-Poly and including the University of Warwick, Carnegie Mellon University, the City University of New York, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and University of Toronto. Industry partners include IBM, Cisco, Siements, Con Edison, National Grid, Xerox, Arup, IDEO and AECOM.

CUSP is an appliced science research institute dedicated to researching and creating new solutions for the pressing and complex challenges confronting the world's growing cities. Under the Directorship of Steve Koonin, former US Undersecretary of Energy for Science, Chief Scientist of BP and Provost of the California Institute of Technology, CUSP will eventually play host to 50 principal scientists (30 from the academic partners and 20 research staff from the industrial partners), over 400 Masters students, 100 PhD students and 30 post-docs.

CUSP is a significant component of New York's Applied Sciences NYC Initiative. This research institute will spark new technologies, discoveries and innovations, will create new businesses and jobs and will educate the workforce for the high-tech urban science sector. New research and technologies developed at CUSP are expected to generate $5.5 billion in economic activity and create a total of 7,700 jobs over the next 30 years.

CUSP's 460,000 square foot New York campus is nearly complete. It is based at 370 Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn, a vibrant, creative and entrepreneurial neighbourhood.