THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK CORPORATION

Their core work

CUNY is the largest urban public university system in the United States, serving as a transatlantic host institution for European researchers through Marie Skłodowska-Curie mobility programmes. Across all 13 H2020 participations, CUNY acts exclusively as a third-party host — receiving visiting fellows and seconded researchers from European consortia in disciplines ranging from physics and biochemistry to cultural heritage and social sciences. Their role is to provide US-based research environments, lab access, and cross-cultural academic exchange rather than to drive EU project design or coordination.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In the early period (2016–2018), CUNY's hosted projects leaned toward hard sciences — spin-wave computing, scanning probe microscopy, wave propagation, and sensor technologies. From 2019 onward, the balance shifted markedly toward social sciences, humanities, and life sciences: cross-cultural theatre, black maternal health, citizenship studies, medieval heritage, and membrane protein research. This broadening suggests CUNY's European appeal evolved from its physics labs to its unique position as a socially diverse US urban university with strong humanities and public health programmes.

CUNY is increasingly attractive to European researchers studying migration, race, identity, and cultural exchange — topics where New York City itself is a living laboratory.

How they like to work

CUNY participates exclusively as a third-party entity — it never coordinates and never serves as a formal consortium partner. This means European consortia write CUNY into their proposals as a secondment or fellowship host, not as a project co-designer. With 99 unique consortium partners across 25 countries, CUNY functions as a high-connectivity node that many different European groups independently choose to work with, rather than maintaining deep ties with a few repeat collaborators.

CUNY has been linked to 99 unique partners across 25 countries through its third-party hosting role, giving it one of the broadest indirect networks among US-based H2020 participants. The geographic spread is pan-European with no single dominant country cluster.

What sets them apart

CUNY's value lies in being a major US-based urban university that European consortia repeatedly choose for researcher secondments across vastly different disciplines. Unlike most H2020 third parties that contribute narrow technical expertise, CUNY offers access to New York's research ecosystem, diverse communities, and cultural infrastructure — making it equally relevant for a physicist studying photonic insulators and a social scientist studying migrant maternal health. For consortium builders, CUNY provides a credible and well-connected US partner that strengthens MSCA proposals with genuine transatlantic mobility.

Highlights from their portfolio

• NOCTURNO
  A large MSCA-RISE network (2018–2023) on non-conventional wave propagation for sensing and actuating technologies, spanning the full duration of CUNY's most active period.
• RiR
  Addresses black maternal health disparities in both Europe and the US — a socially urgent topic that directly uses New York City's demographic diversity as a research asset.
• CONQUES
  A rare fusion of medieval art, archaeometry, and digital heritage in the context of Global Middle Ages — one of CUNY's most recent projects (2021–2024), signaling continued humanities engagement.