New York University has launched a new lab to support entrepreneurial United States military veterans and their startup ventures, the school announced this week.
Called the Veterans Future Lab, the technology hub will be located in Industry City, along the waterfront in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The initiative is part of NYU Tandon School of Engineering and supported by Barclays and the Empire State Development Corporation.
“Historically, veterans have shown an immense entrepreneurial spirit, founding a wide range of successful startups,” said Katepalli R. Sreenivasan, dean of Tandon, in a statement.
“The Veterans Future Lab was conceived as a way to foster that spirit and encourage veterans to combine technology with skills learned while serving in the military,” he continued. “I look forward to seeing what these exceptional men and women will create.”
The lab will provide mentorship opportunities, support for startup ventures and will feature a prototyping space open to all in the Sunset Park community.
Vets can also receive full scholarships to the engineering school if they enroll in “A Bridge to Tandon.” That program helps prepare people without engineering degrees to qualify for graduate-level studies at the engineering school.
Those scholarships are in addition, the university says, to perks for veterans like access to the NYU Tandon faculty, industry leaders, community events, subsidized office space, and entrepreneurship-specific services such as legal, marketing, and design.
These opportunities will open doors to veterans when they come back home, officials said.
“It’s our responsibility to ensure that the brave men and women who put their lives on the line to protect our freedom receive the support they need to be successful when they return from the front lines,” said Lieutenant Gov. Kathy Hochul in a statement. “By providing our military veterans with a startup hub that provides mentorship and support in the early stages of their businesses, we are setting them up with the tools they need to launch and grow into our next entrepreneurial success stories.”
The Veterans Future Lab is part of the engineering school’s larger entrepreneurial efforts launched in 2009, called the NYY Tandon Future Labs. Those labs are a public-private partnership with the city that has helped companies create more than 1,500 jobs, according to the school, and achieved an estimated local economic impact of $550 million.
