Tia Lessin ’89 began working on her movie about a team of clandestine 1960s-70s abortion providers long before this summer’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe vs. Wade. So, the release of “The Janes” on HBO Max this summer only weeks before the decision wasn’t planned. But, its release seems eerily prescient.
Lessin, who co-directed the film with Emma Pildes, will be on campus Oct. 13…
Ryan Young/Cornell University
Ann Simmons, the Wall Street Journal’s Moscow Bureau Chief and the fall 2022 Zubrow Distinguished Visiting Journalist Fellow, speaks as part of a panel Sept. 22 in the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts.
Energy rationing in Europe. Shifting global alliances. The end of the free world.
Those dire consequences and others were raised by a panel of faculty and journalist experts during a Sept. 22 panel discussion about the ongoing conflict that began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The event, “Aftershocks: Geopolitics Since the Ukraine invasion,” was part of the College of Arts and Sciences’…
This fall, Professor Linda Nicholson took on the position of faculty director of the Office of Undergraduate Biology (OUB) and she has lots of plans for innovative ways to support students in the major.
Nicholson takes over from Professor Cole Gilbert, who served as the Hays and James M. Clark Director of Undergraduate Biology for seven years.
“We’re working to shift the culture within…
Cornell will host an archaeology conference in October focusing on ethics and social justice in the archaeological sciences – the areas of archaeology that utilize techniques and approaches from STEM.
“Frontiers in Archaeological Sciences 3: Rethinking the Paradigm” will take place Oct. 7-9 and feature a keynote address by Dr. Kisha Supernant, director of the Institute of Prairie and…
As Cornell’s Jewish Studies Program celebrates its 50th year, it’s also celebrating the news that a new Jewish studies major has been approved by the state and the Cornell Board of Trustees.
Plans for the major received strong support from students, faculty and alumni, said Deborah Starr, professor of modern Arabic and Hebrew literature and film in the Department of Near Eastern Studies and a…
Physicist Kurt Gottfried, Cornell professor emeritus, author of a classic text on quantum mechanics and co-founder of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), died Aug. 25 at the age of 93.
“Professor Kurt Gottfried was a great physicist and a wonderful human being,” said Tung-Mow Yan, Cornell professor emeritus in physics, who co-authored a second edition of the textbook with Gottfried. “He…
Professor Héctor D. Abruña, the E. M. Chamot Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded $8.3 million to further his group’s research related to fuel cells and advanced battery technologies.
“Prof. Abruña’s work is at the forefront of research into energy conversion and storage, underscoring the leadership of the College…
Prominent journalists with expertise in Europe and Russia will join Cornell professors to discuss the global implications of the war in Ukraine during an upcoming event hosted by the College of Arts and Sciences.
“Aftershocks: Geopolitics since the Ukraine invasion,” will take place Sept. 22 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Kiplinger Theatre of the Schwartz Center, 430 College Ave. The event is free…
Provided
Milo Vella spent time at the Big Pine Paiute Tribal Environmental Department and the Indian Water Commission in Owens Valley, Calif.
Like many students who had an amazing summer, Milo Vella ’23 is starting the semester thinking about how he will incorporate that experience into his senior thesis.
Vella, a Robert S. Harrison College Scholar in the College of Arts & Sciences, spent his summer gardening for the Big Pine Paiute Tribal Environmental Department and the Indian Water Commission in Owens Valley, Calif. His…
Nanci McCraine
Great Gully Falls in Union Springs is an important spot in Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫɁ history.
Cornell’s Society for the Humanities will kick off its 2022-23 theme of “Repair” with a community read of “The Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫɁ People in the Cayuga Lake Region. A Brief History” by Kurt Jordan, associate professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences.
The Sept. 23 event will take place from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in the Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall, and will be…
Provided
From left to right: Chunyi Hu, Gabriel Schuler and Ailong Ke.
New research from Cornell offers insights into a line of CRISPR systems, which could lead to promising antiviral and tissue engineering tools in animal and plants.
The research by Ailong Ke, the Robert J. Appel Professor of molecular biology and genetics in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Stan J.J. Brouns at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, focuses on a newly…
Cornell’s Center for Alkaline-Based Energy Solutions (CABES) has received renewal funding of $12.6 million for a four-year period to continue its work developing advanced fuel cell technologies in alkaline media.
The center, part of the Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) program supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, was created in 2018 with an initial $10.75…
Jesse Winter
Elida Met-Hoxha, left, and Zayana Khan, became friends this summer during their time at Cornell Tech.
We spent some time talking in depth with four of the 29 students in the Milstein Program in Technology & Humanity during their eight-week immersion at Cornell Tech in New York City this summer. Here are some of the thoughts from:
Carlton Cassedy ’24, computer science
Zayana Khan ’25, computer science major
James Koga ’25, computer science and science and technology studies major
…
Jesse Winter
Milstein students explored the city on various outings.
At the end-of-summer showcase for students in the Milstein Program in Technology & Humanity, James Koga ’25 had a host of things on display: an interactive glove he developed and coded that allows people to create music or poetry by tapping their fingers; a 3D digital museum that he and other students built for artworks created by patients and residents of Coler Hospital on…
Jesse Winter
Iván Andrade on the Weill Cornell Medical Center campus in New York City.
This summer, when Iván Andrade ‘23 wasn’t interviewing patients in the emergency room at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, he was spending his time interpreting for Spanish-speaking patients at the Einstein Community Health Outreach Free Clinic, or perhaps studying for the MCATs, the Medical College Admissions Test.
Andrade’s summer experience helped him realize that he’s…
Jesse Winter
Louise Wang outside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, where she worked this summer, in New York City.
Prameela Kottapalli ’23 and Louise Wang ’23 spent the summer in New York City courtrooms and legal offices, reviewing evidence, reading cases and learning about the complex processes of the legal system, thanks in part to grants from the Humanities Scholars Program (HSP) in the College of Arts & Sciences.
Wang interned with the New York County District Attorney’s office while Kottapalli…
Provided
Abigail Kraus husks a coconut during her summer experience in Hawai'i.
From Ithaca to Hawaii to Ecuador, students in the Robert S. Harrison College Scholars Program in the College of Arts & Sciences took advantage of the summer as a time to explore their research interests.
The students — who create their own interdisciplinary course of study around a question or issue of interest — can receive summer funding from the program to pursue their research. Some of…
Austin Bunn, associate professor of performing and media arts in the College of Arts & Sciences, has been awarded a New York State Council for the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in screenwriting. The fellowship includes a $7,000 prize meant to “fund an artist’s vision or voice, at all levels of their artistic development.”
Bunn is a Koenig Jacobson Sesquicentennial Fellow…
Jesse Winter
Stephanie Naing in front of Trinity School in New York City, where she is teaching this summer.
In a New York City classroom this summer, Stephanie Naing ’23 decided against giving her sixth-grade students another formula to memorize: Area = base x height.
Instead, she drew a parallelogram for them, shaded in the triangle at one end and showed how it fits perfectly into the triangle at the other end.
“The students were shocked and amazed that it made so much sense,” Naing said. …
Patrick Shanahan
Eden Kebede '25 collects a soil sample in a forest outside Ithaca.
“Tuck your pants into your socks – the ticks can be really bad out here,” graduate student Dave Frey tells the group of four students as they embark from their cars.
That’s one of the directions the students are used to hearing this summer as they head into the forests surrounding Ithaca to collect soil samples that will be used in research assessing soil carbon storage and loss. They also are…
Eros Georgiou ’25 is the kind of student every career counselor dreams of. As he started his freshman year, he wasn’t willing to accept the fact that internships are hard to come by for first-year students. So, during his winter break, he spent hours networking and reaching out to alumni at various finance and investment firms, eventually landing an interview and lining up a job at investment…
As part of Ryan Pinard ’25’s summer research project, he’s hoping to create a chemical sample that’s never existed before —with a cavity that could hold liquid between two reflective surfaces. The sample could make it possible to use various organic materials to shape the future of solar or change the way chemical reactions are performed.
He’s one of seven undergraduate researchers on campus…
Chris Kitchen
Juno Salazar Parreñas, left, and Mari Kramer
As the COVID pandemic has so starkly taught us, human health is intricately connected to the health of animals, plants and the environment.
These connections and related impacts have been studied for decades, but are now receiving urgent attention under an approach called One Health. The transdisciplinary initiative, endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control, works at local, regional,…
Provided
Molly Ryan will be the new director of Cornell Cinema
A new director, Molly Ryan, will take the helm of Cornell Cinema this fall, succeeding Mary Fessenden, who has led the organization for 35 years, eight years as manager and 27 as director.
Ryan is finishing up a master’s degree in film studies from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and has experience with museums and festivals.
“I’m excited to find new ways to embed the art of film…
Chris Kitchen
Smith feeds the chickens at Fallen Tree.
Nexus Scholars study connections between wellness & environment
This summer, Audrey Lockett ’24 is learning about the importance of respecting all sorts of labor – from academic research and reading to physical tasks such as turning weedy beds into productive gardens or cleaning toilets. As a human biology health and society major, she’s also learning how connecting to the environment and…
Faculty from the College of Arts & Sciences will be leading many courses on campus, as well as teaching during educational vacations far from campus as part of Cornell Adult University this summer and fall. Alumni can also take part in special trips curated especially for them through Cornell Alumni Travel.
From cruising the Nile to discovering the universe, faculty in the College will be…
Wanda Field
Artwork from Christel Robinson and Wanda Field appears throughout the book.
A performing and media arts class composed of Cornell students and formerly incarcerated people has produced a book of their writings, exploring their own stories and their discoveries about each other.
“Moments Before the Silence” contains poems, artwork, devised theater pieces and essays from the class, Performing RE-Entry, which met in the fall semester, with students and Professor Bruce…
An album featuring the work of Daniel Gaibel, former information technology manager for the Language Resource Center (LRC), will debut this weekend at the Ithaca Festival. The album project, a posthumous tribute to Gaibel, was co-led by Sam Lupowitz, media manager at the LRC, who plays keyboards on the record with Gaibel’s band Spacetrain.
“I’m feeling a lot of joy that this music will be…
Noël Heaney/Cornell University
Student documentarians Milan Taylor, Adele Williams and Justice Hoff at Loving House.
From exploring Ithaca’s drag history to researching AIDS activism on campus to offering a tour and history of Cornell’s Loving House, students in an Introduction to LGBTQ Studies class this semester brought key events in Cornell’s history to light through short documentaries.
The films created by the class, which draws students from all of Cornell’s schools and colleges, are appropriate as…
Simon Wheeler
Milstein seniors gathered for a reception and dinner with faculty, staff and other mentors on May 4.
Four years after entering Cornell as the first students in the new Milstein Program in Technology & Humanity, 20 seniors will graduate this year with degrees in everything from biology to linguistics to computer science to physics.
Many of them look back on some of the interesting speakers they were able to meet, the camaraderie they formed with each other and the community projects they…
As alumni gather on campus June 10-12 for the first in-person reunion in two years, there’s lots to celebrate and a wide array of Arts & Sciences events to attend. Whether you’re interested in faculty research, student experiences, music, space, math or food, there are a host of options. Here are some of the highlights:
Friday, June 10
2-3 p.m.: “Lessons from the Underground Railroad:…
Students in a new moral psychology class spent the semester working with local non-profit organizations to tackle issues from migrant family justice to food insecurity to sustainable agriculture.
The 10 students in Moral Psychology in Action began the semester studying various aspects of community-engaged work and the necessity of developing partnerships to tackle the most challenging issues…
Dave Burbank
Angel Nugroho ’22, an information science and archaeology major, studied the increase in pseudo archaeological posts on social media platforms.
From philosophy to music to archaeology to Africana studies, seniors involved in the Humanities Scholars Program (HSP) and honors students across the College of Arts & Sciences shared their projects with an audience of faculty, students and staff May 6 at the A.D. White House.
Twenty of the 36 students who presented are part of HSP, launched in 2020 in the College of Arts & Sciences…
Chris Kitchen
Anna Hu '22 presents her research project.
Does activism around one local environmental issue cause people to become more active around climate issues in general? Is there discrimination at work in the verification process of some social media platforms? Do Asian Americans and African Americans have more empathy toward each other because they’ve both experienced unfair treatment?
These are some of the questions this year’s graduating…
Students in the Class of 2022 in the College of Arts & Sciences have had transformational experiences during their time at Cornell.
They are curious, independent and diverse thinkers. They've made it through the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, continuing to conduct research, expand their intellectual pursuits and create deep friendships and memories.
Explore the…
Dave Burbank/Cornell University
From left, Ray Jayawardhana, the Harold Tanner Dean of Arts and Sciences; Robert S. Harrison ’76, chair of the Cornell Board of Trustees; and Provost Michael Kotlikoff at Spring 2022 Advisory Council Dinner.
A $10 million gift from Robert S. Harrison ’76 will enhance the College Scholar Program in the College of Arts and Sciences and support undergraduate scholarships.
Harrison, chair of the Cornell Board of Trustees and former CEO of the Clinton Global Initiative, was a College Scholar during his time at Cornell, where he pursued an interdisciplinary program of study centered on government and…
Sarah Gates ‘25 will help build instruments to study the early universe while Alexis Terracciano ’24 will delve into molecular genetic techniques during their first research experiences this summer. Joaquin Smith ’24 will study the relationship between faith communities and environmental movements, then teach community members a host of sustainable practices. Richard Amaro ’24 will work with…
A host of people working on an Underground Railroad archaeological dig at St. James A.M.E. Zion Church in Ithaca celebrated the release of a 3-D video model of the church and its history in the Underground Railroad movement on March 25.
The model, created by CyArk, an Oakland, Calif.-based, non-profit organization that specializes in the digital preservation of historic sites, offers a 3-D…
Four doctoral students studying fields in the College of Arts & Sciences are the inaugural recipients of the Zhu Family Graduate Fellowships in the Humanities.
Alexia Alkadi-Barbaro in government, Dusti Bridges in anthropology, Du Fei in history and Jason Ludwig in science and technology studies will be able to use the funds to focus on their research and complete their dissertations.
…
An Arts & Sciences sophomore is one of 13 students selected for the Institute for Responsible Citizenship Washington Program.
Mar’Quon Frederick, a government major with minors in Inequality Studies and Crime, Prisons, Education, and Justice, will spend the summers of 2022 and 2023 in Washington, D.C., participating in internships, seminars on government and economics and…
Ten faculty members in the College of Arts & Sciences were approved in the last several months as endowed professors by the Cornell Board of Trustees, continuing the college’s priority to recognize faculty excellence and accomplishments.
With these 10, the number of A&S faculty appointed to endowed professorships since fall 2018 has reached 44.
“Faculty members are the heart of…
A book by Liliana Colanzi has won the Ribera del Duero prize, honoring the best short stories in Latin America and Spain, for her book “Ustedes brillan en lo oscuro” (“You glow in the dark”). The prize comes with an award of 25,000 euros.
Colanzi, assistant professor of Romance studies in the College of Arts & Sciences, is the author of two previous short story collections —“Vacaciones…
Artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on international politics is the topic of a recently-released Oxford Handbook chapter written by a Cornell doctoral student and government professor.
The chapter, "AI and International Politics," is a broad look at the opportunities and risks that the proliferation of AI technology holds for international politics, said Amelia C. Arsenault, graduate…
Sreang Hok/Cornell University
Michael Reynolds, M.S. ’17, Ph.D. ’21, postdoctoral associate in the Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the College of Engineering, demonstrated an origami model of a nanobot.
From a nanoscale “brobot” flexing its muscles to a discussion of the artistry of scientific images, participants at a March 9 event got an up-close look at how quantum science and nanotechnology are shaping our lives.
“Arts Unplugged: Science of the Very, Very Small” included both online and in-person activities, centered around 11 TED-style talks given by faculty members in the College…
Provided
Ian Ghasemian ’23 spent the summer doing research at the University of Virginia.
Thanks to generous alumni gifts, students in the College of Arts & Sciences can apply for funding to help them take on unpaid or minimally-paid summer positions.
This year, more than $500,000 will be available to students through Summer Experience Grants, which can help to pay for housing, food, travel costs and other expenses students might incur during an internship or career opportunity…
Liz Schneider-Cohen
New York Baroque Dance Company dancers Julia Bengtsson and Matt Ting performing in Opera Lafayette’s production of Venus and Adonis.
An upcoming performance of 18th century opera will showcase the talents of dancers, musicians and artists from New York City, Cornell and across the state, as well as mark the retirement of Rebecca Harris-Warrick of the music department.
“The Pleasures of the Quarrel: Three Parisian Operatic Hits from the Contested Season of 1753” is scheduled for 3 p.m. March 27 in Bailey Hall and a…
Noël Heaney/Cornell University
Karl Termini works with glass heated to 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, depending on the type of glass.
Karl Termini’s worktable holds pieces of glass, metal and rubber, from glass tubes and pipettes to flasks, funnels and columns. Some are intricately crafted together in systems that are headed to research spaces in Baker Lab. Others are works in progress.
Next to it all is a stack of research papers. And somewhere in the office is his advanced organic chemistry textbook; he’s studying…
A letter signed by 163 Nobel Prize laureates, and drafted by Cornell Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann, was released March 1, condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine and expressing support for the Ukrainian people and the country.
“In a move that recalls the infamous attack of Nazi Germany on Poland in 1939 and on the Soviet Union in 1941, the government of the Russian…
The College of Arts & Sciences is preparing for this year’s Giving Day, Wednesday, March 16 — a day to show your support for our faculty and students. We hope you’ll join in the fun!
Last year 1,642 donors joined together to raise more than $1.25 million for the College on Giving Day. This year, we have a goal of raising $1.3 million from 1,750 donors.
Your gift allows the College to…
A new scholarship for first-generation undergraduate students has been established in the name of beloved government professor Isaac Kramnick. With contributions from his family, former students and colleagues, the endowment will support students beginning this fall.
Kramnick, who came to Cornell in 1972, died in December 2019. He was associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from…
