If you happen to watch Nicolas Cage's new movie "The Runner" and stay for the credits, you'll see the name Andrea Fiorentini '16.Working on the film's postproduction has been just one of the benefits of Fiorentini's internship the past two summers through the alumni-run Cornell in Hollywood program, which helps Cornell students learn about careers in the entertainment industry, find internships…
For some people, mention a physicist, and they conjure up images of Einstein or Newton – scientists who discover the math of the physical world, theorize the seemingly unexplainable. They watched atoms split and electrons collide. They might even associate the term with the closely cropped NASA engineers cheering from Houston as they achieve what people once believed impossible.Well, Joseph…
Google “Ivy league admissions” and up will pop thousands of sites that list the GPA requirements, SAT scores and stellar list of activities a high school student needs to make their application stand out to admissions counselors. As admissions deadlines loom, these sites are getting more traffic than ever.The typical text goes like this: “A winning Ivy League application needs to present a strong…
Among them was Naomi Gendler, a senior at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. In a few minutes, Gendler summarized her project, “Analysis of Methods to Excite Head-Tail Motion of Bunches within the Cornell Electron Storage Ring.” Her research could help improve the stability of electron beams in particle accelerators.Gendler and the 16 other student presenters came from far and wide, including some…
While most Cornell students headed home for the summer – off to internships, work or play – a group of entrepreneurial undergrads and graduate students are staying in Ithaca for intensive business development as part of the new Life Changing Labs (LCL) summer incubator.Six student teams are working on their businesses in apartments and offices, meeting together at least three times a week in the…
For many teenagers, math is just a necessary component of earning a high school diploma. For others, though, math is a passion, a destination in itself.Recognizing this, professors in the Department of Mathematics in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences have created the Senior Seminar, a course for Ithaca High School (IHS) students who have completed most or all IHS math classes. The seminar…
Lori Khatchadourian teaches the Exploring Archaeology mini-course at the Elizabeth Anne Clune Montessori School of Ithaca.The week of June 15-19, professors Adam T. Smith, anthropology, and Lori Khatchadourian, Near Eastern studies, led a mini-course on archaeology at the Elizabeth Anne Clune Montessori School of Ithaca. Nine children ages 5-8 spent five mornings exploring aspects of…
Chinelo Onyilofor ’15 has found that her studies in chemistry and art history have taught her the art of looking for small details, whether she’s finding the hidden meaning in a painting or an answer to solve a chemical synthesis.After she graduates this weekend, Onyilofor, a double major in the College of Arts and Sciences from Annapolis, Maryland, plans to travel for a year before going to…
When Irene Li ’15 isn’t hunkered down surveying the latest research on the local food movement and social change, she’s in a Boston kitchen, meeting growers or dreaming up new items for her food truck and restaurant.Li, one of three sibling owners of Mei Mei Kitchen in Boston, is a College Scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences, who will return to her family business after graduating.This…
The course of Carol Rattray's '78 career has veered from finance to philanthropy to entrepreneurship, so she's a popular person when she volunteers her time for the Arts and Sciences Career Services office."I kind of want to be her," says Roslyn Jin '15, a student who signed up for a March career services "office hours" event with Rattray. "I will be starting a job in finance this summer, but I…
“We’re down one Democrat. It’s going to be a slaughter,” someone called out.The students in Suzanne Mettler’s Introduction to American Government and Politics class huddled in small groups in eight different classrooms, bargaining, brokering deals and negotiating, trying to overcome gridlock and partisan loyalties to pass a budget.The engaged learning exercise simulates the real U.S. Senate…
If you hear Tim Novikoff, Ph.D. '13, speak and you're of a certain age, you might recognize him as the voice of Jeffy from MTV's "Daria" animated series from the mid-1990s.But if you look at his LinkedIn profile, you'll see that his career has followed a path that marries his love of the technical world with the joy he finds in being creative.Today, Novikoff is the founder and CEO of Fly Labs,…
Hundreds of students have just completed new courses in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Active Learning Initiative (ALI), part of a strategic effort by the college to embrace engaged learning models and emerging technologies. The ALI five-year pilot project is funded by Alex and Laura Hanson, both Class of 1987.ALI uses a “flipped classroom” approach: Knowledge transfer happens before class,…
Among the billions and billions of stars in the sky, where should astronomers look for infant Earths where life might develop? New research from Cornell University’s Institute for Pale Blue Dots shows where – and when – infant Earths are most likely to be found. The paper by Blue Dots research associate Ramses M. Ramirez and director Lisa Kaltenegger, “The Habitable Zones of Pre-Main Sequence…
For the 15 students in a new interdisciplinary class this semester, the murals common throughout East Harlem have deeper meanings than passersby might realize.The students, taught by assistant professors Ananda Cohen Suarez, history of art, and Ella Maria Diaz, English and Latino studies, studied the murals all semester and presented their research at a Dec. 4 event unveiling their exhibition, …
Math, to a mathematician, is an aesthetic, creative endeavor. But for too many high school students, math has become a reviled, boring subject.It doesn’t have to be that way, as Steven Strogatz aims to show the students in his new College of Arts and Sciences course, Mathematical Explorations. The course fulfills the math distribution requirement and has attracted seniors who put off taking a…
Although Katrine Bosley '90 doesn't get a lot of time to talk to patients as CEO of Editas Medicine, she relishes the opportunity."You only have to talk to one patient with one disease that you're working on to know why you go to work every day," says Bosley, whose company is working to translate genome editing technology into new drugs and treatments for poorly treated diseases and patients…
Brian Lukoff '04 loves math.This is not true for many Americans (30 percent according to a recent survey), who say they're just "not good at math."Lukoff thinks there's a way to change that statistic, believing that part of the problem is the way students are learning in math and other disciplines as well. He has developed a tool that helps teachers and professors gauge what their students know…
The fearless honey badger steals lions' prey and gobbles cobras for dinner. Tenacious and determined, it devours honeycombs despite countless bee stings. This is the totem animal of Sally Wen Mao, MFA '13, and an inspiration for her first book of poems, "Mad Honey Symposium," published in May by Alice James Books.The title refers to honey made from rhododendron flowers, which are poisonous; the…
“Welcome to Cornell Ruins National Park,” Adam T. Smith tells his students. “We’re lucky today. We have a cache of objects to examine discovered in the ruins of McGraw Hall.”This “Rise and Fall of ‘Civilization’” class examines traditional archaeological topics, like kingship and the origins of cities, partly by looking at our current civilization through the lens of a single site – the Cornell…
The scene is straight out of a disaster movie: melting glaciers wreaking havoc on the ecosystem, and a tundra-like wasteland where once forest reigned. Thirteen thousand years ago or so the spruces, firs and birches of central New York state vanished; dendrochronology researcher Carol Griggs '77, Ph.D. '06, is using ancient wood to figure out what happened when they finally reappeared.Griggs has…
A poor childhood in Guyana spent watching his mother get pushed around gave Frank Douglas, Ph.D. '73, M.D. '77, an early awareness of injustice. At age 12 he was challenging his school principal on fairness, despite the risk to his academic future.Fortunately that principal eventually gave him a wonderful letter of recommendation. And many years later, when Douglas worked for a pharmaceutical…
*/Kids like John Ball -- an eighth-grader at a public charter school in Blytheville, Arkansas -- help Maisie Wright '06 know she has the right job.*/"I remember sitting on the couch with John and his mom, telling them that John should go to college, that he was focused and a hard worker," says Wright, who helped found the school. "John told me that no one had ever said that to him before, that no…
Captain Lauren Morgens '02 stands on the quarterdeck surveying her ship, red sash around her waist and a tall feather in her pirate hat. It is a cloudy August afternoon in Lewes, Del.; her crew has finished scrubbing the Kalmar Nyckel's deck, and the last sailor has come off the rigging. Once the tall ship clears the shallows, Morgens' command to "set the mizzen" rings across the ship in a sing…
*/Had it not been for the beauty of Cornell and a memorable weekend back in 1980, this story about Kathy Savitt '85, chief marketing officer for Yahoo, might very well be appearing in a publication for Harvard alumni.As a high school senior who was all set to apply to Harvard early action -- a choice applauded by her parents (her dad is a Harvard graduate) -- Savitt accompanied a friend on a…
A U.S. delegation arrived in Taiwan to show support for the nation as leaders are expected to meet with President Tsai Ing-wen this week. Concerns about the island have escalated since Russian President Vladimir Putin began his assault on Ukraine.
Allen Carlson, associate professor of government and an expert on China, says Taiwan was on edge even before the invasion: “Over the last several…
Despite pandemic challenges, the College of Arts & Sciences expanded its faculty with 17 new hires this year, bringing exciting new ideas into wide-ranging fields, including moral psychology, Indigenous studies, cosmology, genetics and African American literature.
Read about new faculty for 2021-22
On Thursday, the Biden administration announced economic sanctions on Russia in retaliation for alleged election interference and cyberattacks.
Nicholas Mulder, assistant professor of history at Cornell University, studies the origin and effects of economic sanctions. His first book “The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War” is forthcoming with Yale…
The advent of queer theory “caused a shock wave which has affected all intellectual disciplines,” as Didier Eribon, a leading French intellectual, once said. A look back at the undergraduate years of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, ‘71, a founder of queer theory, reveals a unique glimpse of where that shock wave first began.When Sedgwick arrived at Cornell in 1967, she had yet to make her mark on the…
Gustavo Flores-Macias, professor of government, has studied the Colombian security tax, a levy on the economically elite that finances public safety.Growing up in Latin America at a time of drastic economic reforms wasn’t easy, says Gustavo Flores-Macías.Those reforms included privatization, trade and financial liberalization, and the elimination or reduction of government subsidies, all of which…
