PiTech Runway Startup Postdoc

Want to harness your PhD expertise to start a company that addresses the public interest?

Every year, Cornell Tech's PiTech initiative seeks a Runway Startup Postdoc who will put social impact at the forefront of their venture’s mission. A PiTech startup is audacious about finding solutions to the world’s most pressing problems, has a mission of addressing public needs or systemic injustices, and may not lend itself to a traditional, commercial business model. This is a paid opportunity for PhDs from anywhere in the world in any field.

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From PhD to Entrepreneur

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Program Details

The Runway Startup Postdoc Program is part business school, part research institution, and part startup incubator. Based at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, Runway ushers recent PhDs in digital technology fields through a paradigm shift — from an academic mindset to an entrepreneurial outlook.

Startup Postdocs arrive with ideas for unproven products and markets that require time and specialized guidance to develop. These startups demand more than a few months to launch – they need a bit of a “runway.” Cornell Tech provides a package valued at $175,000 in year one and $102,000 in year two, which includes a salary, research budget, housing allowance, office space, and academic and business mentorship. Details about the Runway program can be found here.

Application

Please reach out to
pitech-info@tech.cornell.edu
with a short paragraph expressing your interest and share your CV.

There is no application fee required since this is a postdoctoral appointment at Cornell University.

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Runway Postdoc Reports

News

PIT Cases - Accelerate responsible climate action through the use of artificial intelligence (AI)

Climate Change AI - CCAI is now scaling its impact thanks to support from the Jacobs Institute through the Public Interest Technology (PiTech) Initiative and the Runway Startup Postdoc at Cornell Tech, a PIT-UN study case.

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Maria João Sousa joins the PiTech Startup Postdoc Runway Program as Executive Director of Climate Change AI

Maria João Sousa, joins Cornell Tech’s Public Interest Technology Initiative (PiTech) as PiTech Startup Postdoc in the Runway Program. In this new role, Maria will work as Incoming Executive Director at Climate Change AI (CCAI), a global non-profit that catalyzes impactful work at the intersection of climate change and machine learning. Before joining the PiTech Initiative, Maria pursued her PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, in Lisbon (Portugal), which she is set to defend in 2023. Her doctoral thesis focused on cooperative aerial robotics and artificial intelligence for wildfire detection and monitoring systems and was developed as a research fellow at both IDMEC in the Center of Intelligent Systems and at ADAI in the Forest Fire Research Center.