NEW YORK -- With the tech ecosystem set to explode thanks to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plans for an applied sciences campus in New York City, Cornell is joining Manhattan-based tech star Next Jump as its exclusive academic partner to help launch a one-of-a-kind recruiting event designed to lure the East Coast's top minds and leading companies to the Big Apple.

The "Silicon Alley 500" event, will take place on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange Saturday, Oct. 15. It will draw a select group of 500 engineers and engineering students -- including several busloads arriving from Cornell's Ithaca campus -- to meet with the leaders of 50 of the region's hottest tech companies for a meet-and-greet that could help redefine New York's economic future.

"Fueling the growth of New York City's tech sector is all about building on the city's unique energy and genius, using technology to transform commerce and urban life," said Dan Huttenlocher, Cornell's dean of Computing and Information Science. "We're excited to join Next Jump and the other sponsors in launching SA500 to showcase many of the hottest young tech companies and best technical talent in New York and in the world."

The event differs from other tech recruitment sessions not just for its connections to New York's rising tech sector, but in the nature of its participants. In addition to a collection of select engineering professionals and students, SA500 requires tech companies to send their founders, CEO or chiefs of engineering to the session.

"There are great tech opportunities on the East Coast, but the infrastructure for bringing tomorrow's talents together with today's entrepreneurs needs strengthening," said Next Jump CEO and founder Charlie Kim. "By taking it to the next level with events like SA500, we are bolstering the engineering community as a whole."

In addition to Next Jump, the next generation web-based shopping platform, and Cornell, the SA500 event is being sponsored by global financial markets leader NYSE Euronext.

"This is a terrific opportunity for NYSE Euronext to showcase the current drivers of the thriving East Coast tech sector and to introduce them to future innovators," said Scott R. Cutler, executive vice president and co-head of U.S. Listings and Cash Equities, NYSE Euronext. SA500 is an extension of a pilot event Next Jump and the New York Economic Development Corp. held in Boston earlier this year. That event attracted 18 tech firms and nearly 200 students. Applications from students, engineers and tech companies to attend the much larger New York City event later this month are still being accepted at http://www.nextjump.com/sa500.

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Companies and leaders among the 50 set to attend SA500 include:

10gen | MongoDB - Eliot Horowitz, CTO and co-founder

Boxee - Idan Cohen, co-founder, head of product

CrowdTwist - Irving Fain, CEO, Josh Bowen '98, COO, and Mike Montero, CTO

Etsy - Chad Dickerson, CEO

Harvest -- founders Danny Wen '00 and Shawn Liu '00

Hashable - Mike Yavo, founder and CEO, and Todd Coleman, director of engineering

Hunch - Tom Pinckney, co-founder and VP of engineering

Kayak - Paul English, CTO and co-founder

LivingSocial - Chad Fowler, VP of engineering

Meetup - Gary Burns, VP of engineering

Red Rover - Dan Storms '02, head of engineering

SecondMarket - Dominic Preuss, chief product officer

SinglePlatform - Wiley Cerill, founder and CEO, and Pete Chen, COO

SquareSpace - John Colton, head of engineering, and Jesse Hertzberg, SVP

Stack Exchange - Michael Pryor, co-founder

Tumblr - Fredrik Nylander, head of operations