117th NY Hardware Meetup x Pre-NYC Design Week @ Cornell Tech - Assistive Tech

The Hardware Meetup community is excited to announce the 117th NY Hardware Meetup at Cornell Tech, exploring the theme: Assistive Tech. Speakers coming soon!
Hardware Meetups happen across 30+ cities around the world, bringing together hardware professionals to network and learn from each other. You might not realize it, but NYC is a hotbed for this kind of innovation and tonight you'll meet two companies working at the cutting edge of this technology.
This May we'll be at Cornell Tech. ALL ATTENDEES MUST BRING A PHOTO ID to get admittance. Cornell Tech is Cornell University’s state-of-the-art campus in New York City that develops leaders and technologies for the AI era through foundational and applied research, graduate education, and new ventures. Located on Roosevelt Island, the growing campus was founded in partnership with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and in close collaboration with the NYC Economic Development Corporation after Cornell won a worldwide competition initiated by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration to create an applied sciences campus in New York City. More than 1,000 Cornell students are now educated annually on the campus, including 700 in Cornell Tech programs. Since opening in 2012, nearly 120 new companies have spun out from startup programs at Cornell Tech, and 95 percent of them are based in New York City. Cornell Tech continues to have a transformative economic impact on the region’s tech sector.
For information on how to get to the event: https://tech.cornell.edu/visit-us/
THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSOR
This event is graciously sponsored by Autodesk! Autodesk is a global leader in design and engineering software, empowering innovators to bring ideas to life—from concept through production. Their tools are used across industries including product design, manufacturing, architecture, and media, helping teams build better, faster, and more efficiently.

AGENDA
6:30 - Arrival, presentation of student demos
7:00 - Welcome and introductionNiti Parikh, Director of Learning Spaces and MakerLABs @ Cornell Tech intro
Thijs Roumen, assistant professor of information science & director of the Matter of Tech lab @ Cornell Tech intro
7:15 - Guest speakers with audience Q+A
8:20 - Community open micAnyone will have the chance or talk about what they are working on
8:30 - Student demos, makerlab tours, mix and mingle
WELCOME REMARKS
Niti Parikh is the founding director of Cornell Tech’s academic MakerLAB. A designer and maker with over 15 years of experience in interior architecture and sustainable manufacturing, she leads community engaged initiatives such as Craft at Large and Make Health. Her work focuses on creating learning environments where people of all ages and abilities can bring ideas to life through digital modeling and fabrication.
Thijs Roumen is an assistant professor of information science at Cornell Tech and the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. He also directs the Matter of Tech lab at Cornell Tech. His lab focuses on digital fabrication, a subfield of technical human-computer interaction (HCI). The lab’s goal is to enable personal fabrication, e.g., making digital fabrication relevant to everyone, as opposed to industrialists and hobbyists currently using fabrication machines. Besides fabrication, the lab is interested in accessibility, primarily focusing on speech accessibility.
SPEAKERS
Yunting Yan is a Robotics Ph.D. student at Cornell University, advised by Prof. Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee in the EmPRISE Lab. His research centers on Human-Robot Joint Caregiving, focusing on the development of adaptive robotic systems that navigate the complex physical and social dynamics of care environments. Yunting earned his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University in 2025 under the guidance of Prof. Guy Hoffman, and holds a B.S. in Physics from Boston University (2023).
WANT TO GET INVOLVED?
Sponsorship: We offer exclusive access to our 10,000+ member community through sponsorships.
Host an event at your space: We are always looking for host sponsors to provide access to unique spaces from cool hardware companies building interesting things. Want to open up your office?
Speaker: Do you have something interesting to share with our community? We're on the lookout for fresh faces to talk about their journey and experiences.
If you want to get involved, head here: https://linktr.ee/nyhardware