Re: NYC vision points: Cornell SCU, Cornell Tech, and Tri-I CBM Date: April 5, 2018 To: [email protected] Dear NYC Visioning Committee in Ithaca, As Tri-Institutional Computational Biology and Medicine [CBM] PhD students at SKI/WCM, we would like to share the following points of discussion as you engage the community with your vision. 1. Computational biology is a rapidly expanding interdisciplinary field, and we hope the Cornell University Graduate School will support a computational biology PhD program through its existing Tri-I CBM collaboration. Please regard our Tri-Institutional program as an avenue to improve and stimulate connectedness between Cornell campuses. Highlighting room to grow, we report a statistically significant negative correlation in the number of students making a thesis lab at Cornell Ithaca versus Sloan-Kettering [SKI], and significantly fewer students making a thesis lab at Cornell Ithaca than SKI and WCM (Fig 1). Prof. Jason Mezey knows the CBM program well and has affiliations with both Ithaca and NYC campuses. Please closely consider his advice on using our program to the greatest inter-disciplinary and inter-campus benefit. For additional context, current CBM students hold one NSERC, one NSF, and two NIH F31 grants. 2. Cornell Tech should be easily accessible to WCM/Cornell students. Foremost, while already a strong point, the academic relationship between Cornell Ithaca, Cornell Tech, and WCM needs to be strengthened even further. Registration for a course hosted at any Cornell campus should be easy and accessible for all students regardless of their home campus. All WCM/Cornell students should have access to the Cornell Tech campus without security issues or additional guest procedures. Access to academic buildings will ensure students are able to meet for class projects, meet with professors, visit meetings, and otherwise easily nurture collaboration, especially considering the close proximity between WCM and Tech. 3. Short-term housing, for a few days to a month, should be available to NYC students coming to Ithaca, and for Ithaca students coming to NYC. As cross-campus collaborative efforts grow, there is a greater need for short term accommodations for students. Motivating example: A non-CBM Ithaca student in one of the pilot inter-campus labs had to use AirBnB to find an NYC apartment for three weeks, for a cross-campus collaboration grant. 4. The Cornell Statistical Consulting Unit [and other resources] in Ithaca should be easily accessible to students regardless of campus. Many possible options may be helpful: visits, teleconferencing, or a unified Statistical Consulting Unit [SCU] with bases in both NYC and Ithaca. Motivating example: Without the Cornell SCU in NYC, students may instead decide to collaborate with statistical consultants at Columbia. 5. An inter-campus data science community retreat would stimulate collaboration among campuses, students, clubs, industry, and investors. Such a retreat would bring together students and faculty from Cornell SCU and Cornell Data Science Club [DSC], CBM, Cornell Ithaca CB, WCM, Cornell Tech, and others. Cornell Tech and DSC have extensive faculty and industry connections. Industry participation at a data science retreat may defray retreat costs and provide additional career options. Some companies, e.g. Nvidia, have student scholarships, education packs for teaching, and a GPU Grant program for labs. NYC angels will be impressed by teams of Ithaca eLab and WCM E-lab students. Companies and faculty will be keen to meet all Cornell students, regardless of home campus, inspiring cross-campus collaborations. Thank you for your time and consideration, Andrew Schaumberg [email protected] Nathaniel Omans [email protected] Yubin Xie [email protected] Hilary Monaco [email protected]

2004 2008 2012 2016 Year Student Joined CBM Program

2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 Year Student Joined CBM Program

CBM Student Thesis Lab Anticorrelation, Years 2008−2016

CBM Students with SKI Lab, for Same Year 0 1 2 3 4

1.0 Student Fraction 0.4 0.6 0.8 0.2

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Students Total Students Cornell Ithaca Students Rockefeller Students Sloan−Kettering Students Weill Cornell

CBM Student Fraction, by Thesis Lab Institution

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CBM Student Thesis Lab Institution, by Year

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0 1 2 3 4 CBM Students with Cornell Ithaca Lab

Figure 1: For years 2008 to 2016 inclusive, the count of students making their thesis lab in Cornell Ithaca [CU-I] was fewer than that in Weill Cornell [WCM] (Mann-Whitney U one-tailed p = 0.001977) and in Sloan-Kettering Institute [SKI] (p = 0.02002). More students choose WCM than SKI (p = 0.04966). Additionally for 2008-2016, there is a negative correlation between the count of students making their thesis lab at CU-I versus SKI (Pearson ρ = −0.73 and two-tailed p = 0.02603), so CU-I may lose students to SKI. There is no correlation for CU-I versus WCM (ρ = −0.33, p = 0.3868), and none for WCM versus SKI (ρ = 0.28, p = 0.466), so for example, WCM and SKI do not lose students to each other. A CBM student first chose a CU-I lab in 2008. In ˜2012, CU-I stopped CBM support. Year 2017 students have not declared a thesis lab. Data from http://compbio.triiprograms.org/students-alumni/students-directory/ and http://compbio.triiprograms.org/students-alumni/alumni-directory/.