[8] The school's main campus is in Brooklyn's MetroTech Center, an urban academic-industrial research park.

It is one of several engineering schools that were founded based on a European polytechnic university model in the 1800s, in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States.

[12] The new campus gave the university space to build larger science laboratories that could not be constructed at its Washington Square site.

However, by the early 1970s this growth ceased due to rising crime and financial troubles in New York City.

Also during that period from 1969 to 1975, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn was forced to rely on subsidies provided by New York state to keep the school afloat.

[15] The schools officially merged in 2014 when the New York State Regents approved the change of charter making NYU the sole member of Polytechnic University.

[21] In 2022, NYU announced it will invest $1 billion in the school to hire 40 tenure-track faculty members, improve lab and student spaces, and bolster the cybersecurity and artificial intelligence programs.

It is located in the Brooklyn Tech Triangle and about a 20-minute subway ride from NYU's main campus in Lower Manhattan.

In addition to its main address at MetroTech Center in Downtown Brooklyn, the school offers programs in Manhattan.

Today, the 16-acre, $1 billion complex in Brooklyn includes the school's main campus, along with several technology-dependent companies such as Securities Industry Automation Corporation (SIAC), as well as New York City Police Department's 9-1-1 Center, New York City Fire Department Headquarters and the U.S. technology and operations functions of JPMorgan Chase.

The seven buildings are as follows: An eighth 460,000-square-foot space at 370 Jay St, adjacent to Rogers Hall, which houses the Center for Urban Science and Progress and other academic units within NYU, opened in Fall 2017.

Undergraduate chemistry students have the option to pursue a degree approved by the American Chemical Society (ACS).

[45][46][47] Over the years the school has been a key center of research in the development of microwave physics, radar, polymers and the space program.

[9] During World War II the school's Microwave Research Institute worked on problems whose solution led to the development of radar, and later broke ground in electromagnetic theory and electronics in general.

[9] The school has been affiliated with some major inventions and innovations including: the Panama Canal locks; lockmaking;[48] the Brooklyn Bridge cables; cable-lift elevators;[49] cordless phones; ATMs; bar codes; laser; radar; penicillin; polymers; elevator brakes; lightweight, ultra durable automotive brake rotor;[50][51] light beer; cardiac defibrillator; artificial cardiac pacemaker; RFID; contact lenses; zoom lens; first telephone handset; commercial television;[52] non-stick coating as an application of Teflon; suspension system for the largest radio telescope; microwave technology; Apollo Lunar Module, the first, and to date only, crewed spacecraft to operate exclusively in the airless vacuum of space; X-ray crystallography;[9] structure of the DNA molecule; submarine; modern refrigerator; A/C generator; electric motors; transformer;[48] submarine communications facilities;[53][54] development of the artificial sweetener aspartame; development of nontoxic processes to create food colorings and remove caffeine from coffee; the quasi-complementary (transistor) amplifier circuit; lateral transistor; the wireless microphone; as well as Eugene Kleiner's first semiconductor (and much of the Silicon Valley), and Spencer Trask's investing and supporting of Thomas Edison's invention of the electric light bulb.

[75] The school's alumni include inventors, scientists, entrepreneurs, politicians, country presidents, university presidents, academic leaders (including NYU Stern's founder Charles Waldo Haskins) and more than 2,000 CEOs and leaders at large corporations.

[77][78] Alumni leaders at large companies include: Partial list of inventors affiliated with the school: