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Comment by robg | Hacker News Reader

Not sure if the venue, but why is UPitt left out here? CMU is great, but Pitt is also a world class research institution and with a first rate medical school and insurer already investing deeply in startups.

http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/10/mental-health-startup-lante...

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It's not a bad school by any stretch, but it's not on the same level. Looking at federal grant money (e.g. NSF, reasonable metric for research), U Pitt is at 26 million to CMU's 70 million. Penn is a much closer match at 48 million. Berkeley and Stanford are at 112 and 78 million, for comparison.

You can make 'world class' mean whatever you'd like, but I think most would consider Pitt a solid state-level school, whereas CMU is more competitive nationally.

http://dellweb.bfa.nsf.gov/awdlst2/default.asp

I'm definitely not saying it doesn't matter, but it's not as significant as CMU, and PG's argument seems to be that you benefit from having a really apex research institution for making a startup scene.

You are correct that CMU and Pitt are not on the same level, but you have your dirctionality flip. Pitt is in top 10 in research expenditures nationally[1], I don't think CMU is even in the top 50. Don't ignore the significance of a medical school. NSF has a 7 billion dollar budget, but NIH is 30 billion. Don't even get me started on endowments.

Pitt+CMU == complementary research institutions that have had a long tradition of collaborating (for example the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center) and BOTH provide strong intellectual anchors for the city. BOTH are significant.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Pittsburgh#Res...

NSF funding isn't really a fair comparison, because Pitt is most well known for its excellent medical research. $4.5 million in NIH funding at CMU vs $79.9 million at Pitt in FY2016...

Plus CMU and Pitt collaborate quite a lot, especially in biomedical research.

[0]: https://report.nih.gov/award/index.cfm

Funny, I just got recruiter spam promoting Lantern today, and the email mentioned the investment from UPMC (that’d be University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the med school & healthcare conglomerate, for those unfamiliar with the 412)

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