During my US trip, in late April 2017 I had the chance to visit Stevens Institute of Technology, in New York. My pleasure was double: both because I could deliver a lecture on Entrepreneurship at the Software Engineering class of a leading technical university, and because I was invited by an alumni of University of the Aegean, Dimitris Damopoulos - now Assistant Professor at Stevens.
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| With Dimitris at the (tight) Stevens entrance |
Stevens Institute of Technology is a private university situated in Hoboken, New Jersey, overlooking the Manhattan skyline. Founded in 1870 by Stevens family (America's First Family of Inventors, who patented steam ferries and railroad track), the university has put technological innovation as the hallmark of its education and research programs ever since. Today, within the university’s three schools and one college, 6,600 undergraduate and graduate students collaborate with faculty members in an interdisciplinary, student-centric, entrepreneurial environment. Among others in its alumni we also find Henry Gantt, the creator of the Gantt Chart, used as a project management tool for giga-projects like the Hoover Dam.
My presentation at the Software Engineering class touched upon issues like supply-chain-driven technology entrepreneurship, open-data based application development and of course the Aegean Startups programme, and seemed to be greatly enjoyed by the multinational audience. Something the amazed me from my audience was that almost 40% of them seemed to have read "Goedel - Escher - Bach", a book by D. Hofstadter on creativity patterns and more. The fastest even got University of the Aegean t-shirts as a small reward. I hope we will setup more collaborative lessons and projects between Aegean and Stevens at the coming months.
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| With a happy class, after the lecture at Stevens |
Hoboken is just 20 minutes by bus or ferry from Manhattan, but looks like another world. Going back to NY centre, leaving the peaceful parks and piers overlooking the opposite coast of Manhattan for Times Square was like going from a village to a space station. Still, one can go back ...
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| Hoboken style of life |
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| Manhattan style of life |
