News

Hundreds of white corner-shaped particles on a black background

Physics

Self-assembling magnetic microparticles mimic biological error correction

9/2/2025 Cornell Chronicle

A Cornell-led collaboration developed microscale magnetic particles that can mimic the ability of biomolecules to self-assemble into complex structures, while also reducing the parasitic waste that would otherwise clog up production.

purple spheres representing bacteria — CDC/Unsplash

Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Bioengineered bacteria could lead to therapeutic antibody drugs

8/26/2025 Cornell Chronicle

A Cornell-led collaboration devised a potentially low-cost method for producing antibodies for therapeutic treatments: bioengineered bacteria with an overlooked enzyme that can help monoclonal antibodies boost their immune defenses.

Person sitting casually back to back with a statue of a seated human figure carved from black stone — Jason Koski/Cornell University Michael Fontaine, professor of classics in the College of Arts and Sciences, edited and translated “How to Have Willpower: An Ancient Guide to Not Giving In.”

Classics

Listen to the ancients: Don’t cave to peer pressure, improper requests

8/12/2025 Cornell Chronicle

“How to Have Willpower: An Ancient Guide to Not Giving In,” edited and translated by professor Michael Fontaine, brings together a pair of works by Plutarch and Prudentius that show how people can overcome pressures that encourage them to act against their own best interests.

Mathematics

For microbes in harsh environments, it’s survival of the meekest

7/14/2025 Cornell Chronicle

Cornell researchers have found that peaceful microbes are more likely to thrive, and their more aggressive peers perish, if their environment is harsh or experiences violent disruptions.

Book cover: The Greater Second World War

History

Global perspectives reframe timeline and scope of WWII

6/25/2025 Cornell Chronicle

This summer marks the 80th anniversary of the “official” end of World War II, but a new book co-edited by Ruth Lawlor, assistant professor of history, extends the war’s timeline back to 1931 and into the mid-1950s.

A huge ring with electronic wiring going into the center, along with a ladder-like stairs. — Provided The muon g-2 ring sits in its detector hall amidst electronics racks, the muon beamline and other equipment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Physics

One tiny particle could complicate predictions of physics theorists

6/3/2025 Cornell Chronicle

The international, interdisciplinary team measured the magnetic anomaly of the muon – a tiny, elusive particle that could have very big implications for understanding the subatomic world.

Chemistry & Chemical Biology

Happy together: Peroxide binds incompatible polymers for recycling

5/23/2025 Cornell Chronicle

“The dream is, if you can make a really rigid polymer that’s also really tough, then you can make packaging that uses less material, yet has the same sort of properties."

Literatures in English

Poet Ishion Hutchinson tilts into expansive essay writing

4/30/2025 Cornell Chronicle

Award-winning poet Ishion Hutchinson is making his prose debut with his first essay collection, which brings together two decades’ worth of probing reflections on his childhood in Jamaica, the country’s cultural and colonial history and his maturation as a writer.

Book cover: I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer

History

Love and the Athenian Mercury: 1600s advice column still resonates

4/23/2025 Cornell Chronicle

Historian Mary Beth Norton found the perfect confluence of interests in a London periodical published from 1691-97 that answered readers’ questions about love and marriage.

Provided Book cover: Humanities in the Time of AI

Humanities and technology

Book plumbs AI’s potential to reinvigorate the humanities

4/1/2025 Cornell Chronicle

In his new book, “Humanities in the Time of AI,” professor Laurent Dubreuil argues that the arrival of AI may present an opportunity to “re-create scholarship.”

a piece of fabric with a design on it — Ryan Young/Cornell University HelioSkin is a lightweight, stretchable architectural fabric that is aesthetically attractive and can wrap around complex shapes.

Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Solar solutions: Bio-inspired approach creates bespoke photovoltaics

2/21/2025 Cornell Chronicle

What if photovoltaic panels were a hinged, lightweight fabric that was aesthetically attractive and could wrap around complex shapes to better absorb sunlight?

Three people wearing lab safety glasses look at a small scientific device — Ryan Young/Cornell University Postdoctoral researcher Christopher Petroff (center), doctoral candidate Virginia McGhee (left), doctoral student Azriel Finsterer (right) and Lara Estroff, the Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Industrial Chemistry in Cornell Engineering (background), work on perovskites – a class of compound minerals that over the last decade have become the most exciting alternative to silicon.

The 2030 Project: A Cornell Climate Initiative

Solar solutions: ‘Crazy’ perovskite offers sustainable alternative to silicon

2/12/2025 Cornell Chronicle

Cornell researchers are studying how the material can be recycled and grown to be more durable.

Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Protein shuttling mechanism helps bacteria pump out antibiotics

2/12/2025 Cornell Chronicle

A Cornell-led collaboration uncovered the equipment that enables bacteria to survive exposure to antibiotics: a shuttling mechanism that helps a complex of proteins pump out a wide spectrum of antibiotics from the cell.

person sleeping — Alexander Grey/Unsplash

Neurobiology and Behavior

Pupil size in sleep reveals how memories are sorted and preserved

1/2/2025 Cornell Chronicle

The eyes may be the window to the soul, but the pupil is key to understanding how, and when, the brain forms strong, long-lasting memories, Cornell researchers have found.

Provided Book cover: Short Film Screen Writing

Performing and Media Arts

Short film screenwriting: a high-wire act of abbreviation

10/29/2024 Cornell Chronicle

In his new book, filmmaker Austin Bunn delves into the mechanics of the short form by reprinting notable scripts and interviewing the films’ creators, as well as providing insights and advice based on his own screenwriting career.

Media Studies

Firesign Theatre made lowbrow, high-concept media critique

10/8/2024 Cornell Chronicle

In his new book, Prof. Jeremy Braddock explores the history of the Firesign Theatre, which used multitrack audio and avant-garde collage to put a countercultural spin on the comedy album in the 1960s and ’70s.

Music

‘Mr. Mozart’ finishes comprehensive catalog of maestro’s work

9/16/2024 Cornell Chronicle

The three-decade project is a fitting capstone to the 85-year-old Neal Zaslaw’s career as one of the world’s leading Mozart authorities, one who was once dubbed “Mr. Mozart” by the New York Times.

yello triangles with holes punched in them, all conntected, on a blue background — Provided The kirigami robot is a hexagonal tiling composed of approximately 100 silicon dioxide panels that are connected through more than 200 actuating hinges.

Physics

Microscale kirigami robot folds into 3D shapes and crawls

9/11/2024 Cornell Chronicle

Researchers created a robot less than 1 millimeter in size that is printed as a 2D hexagonal “metasheet” but, with a jolt of electricity, morphs into preprogrammed 3D shapes and crawls.

Four people cluster around a painting, laid out on a table — Noël Heaney/Cornell University Ananda Cohen-Aponte, associate professor of history of art and visual studies (center left), discusses a painting with Miguel Barrera ’24 (left), Osiel Aldaba ’26 and Emily Hernandez ’25.

Latin American art

Exhibition highlights once-overlooked colonial Latin American art

7/19/2024 Cornell Chronicle

The exhibit brings a nuanced view to a complicated period in Latin American art, and it is doing so with the help of student curators.

Blue background with a line of gold bubbles 3/4 of the way up

Chemistry and Chemical Biology

A touch of gold has extra reach in degrading micropollutants

7/19/2024 Cornell Chronicle

A Cornell team used a new form of high-resolution optical imaging to better understand how adsorption – the clinging of molecules to surfaces – works on the semiconductor titanium dioxide with a gold particle added as a co-catalyst.

Ancient ship underbody, just a skeleton of wood — Kyrenia Ship Excavations/Provided The Kyrenia was the first major Greek Hellenistic-period ship to be found with a largely intact hull. It was excavated and reassembled for scientific study.

Archaeology

Almonds, pottery and wood help date famed Kyrenia shipwreck

6/26/2024 Cornell Chronicle

The Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory identified the likeliest timeline of the Hellenistic-era ship's sinking as between 296-271 BCE, with a strong probability it occurred between 286-272 BCE.

Dark background with a pattern of white dots in diagonal lines — Provided An electron microscopy image from David Muller, the Samuel B. Eckert Professor of Engineering, confirmed that researchers had created a high-entropy multi-metal with cations mixed together in the same lattice, without any elements separating out.

Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Backdoor method creates high-entropy material at lower temps

6/20/2024 Cornell Chronicle

An interdisciplinary team developed a backchannel method that uses solubility, not entropy, to overcome thermodynamic constraints and synthesize high-entropy oxide nanocrystals at lower temperatures.

solar panels under a sun rise — Nuno Marques/Unsplash

Chemistry and Chemical Biology

‘Two-for-one’ fission aims to improve solar cell efficiency

6/20/2024 Cornell Chronicle

A Cornell-led team used ultrafast laser spectroscopy to scrutinize a key intermediate state during singlet fission and found that in certain molecules the intermediate can be directly generated with a strikingly simple technique.

Philosophy

Philosopher mines the ethical line in caustic wisecracking

5/28/2024 Cornell Chronicle

In his new book, David Shoemaker, professor of philosophy, explores the need for spirited, sometimes prickly humor and the ethics that distinguish an innocent gibe from an offensive insult.

Economics

Nicholas Kiefer, economist and ‘towering intellect,’ dies at 73

3/21/2024 Cornell Chronicle

Nicholas Kiefer, an economist whose deep curiosity and sharp insights into statistics and economic theory enabled him to parse a range of financial and banking systems, died March 12.

Graph showing a curve sprinkled with rainbow dots — This data visualization shows the geodesic training trajectory of different deep neural networks as they advance from total ignorance to full certainty

Physics

Replica theory shows deep neural networks think alike

3/13/2024 Cornell Chronicle

A collaboration between researchers from Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania found that most successful deep neural networks follow a similar trajectory in the same “low-dimensional” space.

Lindsay France/Cornell University Writer J. Robert Lennon, the Ann S. Bowers Professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences, has previously played around with genre elements – from mazy, existential mysteries to dystopian satire – but his new novel, “Hard Girls,” is his first straight-up thriller.

Literatures in English

Lennon chases down literary thrills in new series

2/20/2024 Cornell Chronicle

J. Robert Lennon’s “weird hike through the wilderness” of publishing has led him to a new and unexpected place: writing his first thriller, “Hard Girls,” published Feb. 20 by Mulholland Books.

metal puck levitates above a slightly pitted white surface

Physics

'Flawed' material resolves superconductor conundrum

2/2/2024 Cornell Chronicle

Researchers developed a more controlled way of making nickelates, a material that could potentially help pinpoint the key qualities that enable high-temperature superconductivity.

Creative Writing Program

From pages to pixels: Writers offer literary take on video games

11/17/2023 Cornell Chronicle

In “Critical Hits,” a new essay anthology co-edited by J. Robert Lennon, writers explore their own experiences with video games, and how those simulated worlds connect to real life.

Pattern in green, blue and yellow — Provided A confocal microscopy image shows a bicontinuous microstructure with well-defined spacing.

Creating New Materials

Quantum materials behave in strange ways, unlike normal matter. Harnessing their unique behavior will enable advances in a wide variety of applications, including making sustainable pigments, energy storage and filtration. A&S researchers are creating novel nanostructures that reveal the possibilities in the quantum realm for matter.

Tiny networks intertwine to mimic design of bird colors

Literatures in English

Humanists have the power and the tools to fight climate change

10/27/2023 Cornell Chronicle

Humanities scholars have an important role to play in the current political struggle to stave off environmental collapse, Caroline Levine argues in her new book.

Multi-colored terrain on Mars, seen from above

Astronomy

Decadal survey sets agenda for biological, physical sciences in space

9/15/2023 Cornell Chronicle

A&S Astronomy and Cornell Center for Astrophysical and Planetary Science (C-CAPS) faculty are key to “Thriving in Space,” released Sept. 12.

Looking down into a large scientific facility dominated by a blue ring the size of an auditorium — The muon g-2 ring sits in its detector hall amidst electronics racks, the muon beamline and other equipment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. This experiment studies the precession (or wobble) of muons as they travel through the magnetic field.

Physics

Latest muon measurement doubles precision

8/21/2023 Cornell Chronicle

A Cornell team is designing some of the technology that captures the muon data.

Yellow metal array of almost-triangles on a blue-green background — Provided This metamaterial robot, which can morph into different shapes, is the type of machine Cornell researchers hope to build at the microscale using a new design paradigm inspired by the operation of proteins and hummingbird beaks.

Physics

Hummingbird beak points the way to future micro machine design

8/18/2023 Cornell Chronicle

Building smaller and smaller machines is not simply a matter of shrinking the components.

long plank with smaller arms coming off it and a long rod of metal with a loop at the end suspended over it — Matt Ferguson Schematic of a SQUID pickup loop imaging stray magnetic fields above a Hall bar sample of dimensions 200 × 75 μm2.

Physics

Current takes a surprising path in quantum material

8/3/2023 Cornell Chronicle

The findings will help settle a decades-long debate and offers insights that will inform the development of topological materials for next-generation quantum devices.

purple dots in a grid against a turquoise background

Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Imaging shows microbes turning CO2 into bioplastic

7/27/2023 Cornell Chronicle

"We provide quantitative assessments of protein behaviors and also a mechanistic understanding of how the electron transport occurs from the semiconductor to the bacteria cell.”

Illustration of a molecule featuring spheres attached by black rods — Provided Cornell researchers bulked up highly reactive radical molecules by attaching groups of carbon and hydrogen atoms to their surface, effectively giving each molecule a set of antlers that allowed them to preserve their native reactivity while keeping their partner at a safe distance.

Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Bulky size frustrates radical molecules to boost chemical reactions

7/17/2023 Cornell Chronicle

The technique, the approach of a new Cornell-led collaboration, could prove to be a boon for creating new and improved derivatives of pharmaceutical compounds.

Philosophy

Political philosopher Richard Miller dies at 77

6/16/2023 Cornell Chronicle

Remembered as "a remarkable scholar and teacher, a true polymath," Miller was heralded for extending traditional boundaries of philosophy to incorporate the social sciences.

Campus buildings seen from above, under a partly cloudy sky

Student achievement

Cornellians named Schwarzman, Goldwater and Udall scholars

5/8/2023 Cornell Chronicle

Three students and a recent graduate have won national scholarships that will prepare them for future global leadership and careers in STEM and public service.

Yellow paper with six sides and six holes on each side folded together into a shape — Provided. An SEM image shows an origami tetrahedra microstructure that self-folded after it was exposed to hydrogen.

Physics

Self-folding origami machines powered by chemical reaction

5/2/2023 Cornell Chronicle

The approach could one day lead to the creation of a new fleet of tiny autonomous devices that can rapidly respond to their chemical environment.

a drawing showing a round disk of gray with a green arrow encircling it hovering above a purple disk with a red arrow going in the other direction. Gold colored thick lines run from the bottom disk. — Provided. This image schematically shows the measurement principle. A flake of an atomically thin superconductor (shown in purple) on a substrate is patterned into a disk and covered by a spin-coated ionic gel. The pickup loop of the magnetic probe (shown in silver), with a concentric field coil (shown in dark gray) is approached to the sample. A current in the field coil produces a magnetic field, which results in an opposing screening current in the superconducting sample. The strength of the screening current is

Physics

Magnetic imaging unlocks crucial property of 2D superconductor

5/1/2023 Cornell Chronicle

“I’m excited that we can use this tool now and apply it to this large class of really fascinating superconductors, which are a rich playground in condensed matter physics for realizing extraordinary superconducting phenomena.”

History

Historian explores limits of justice for enslaved women in Virginia

4/28/2023 Cornell Chronicle

The creation of slave laws throughout the antebellum South can be traced back to the legal system in Virginia.

Literature and climate change

Book goes underground to find how climate change shapes stories

4/21/2023 Cornell Chronicle

Prof. Karen Pinkus confronts the global threat of climate change by using select literary works from the 19th century.

three people use a wheeled machine on a grassy plot of land — Anahma Shannon of Kawerak, Inc./Provided Thomas Urban, research scientist in the College of Arts and Sciences, uses ground-penetrating radar to search for communal graves at Pilgrim Hot Springs in Alaska, in collaboration with employees of the National Park Service and Kawerak, Inc.

Archaeology

Radar, AI identify Alaska Native Spanish flu victims burial site

3/29/2023 Cornell Chronicle

The finding helps clarify the historical record for the Indigenous communities devastated by the 1918-19 pandemic.

Purple field showing a lattice pattern and orange and yellow highlights — Yu-Tsun Shao and David Muller/Provided A transmission electron microscope image shows the moiré lattice of molybdenum ditelluride and tungsten diselenide.

Physics

Semiconductor lattice marries electrons and magnetic moments

3/21/2023 Cornell Chronicle

A model system created by stacking a pair of monolayer semiconductors is giving physicists a simpler way to study confounding quantum behavior.

Dark blue background with two orange mice (a thermal image) — Thermal image recording of mice

Neurobiology and Behavior

Imaging captures social dynamics of 'pee-shy' mice

3/21/2023 Cornell Chronicle

Cornell research is shining a new light – via thermal imaging of mice – on how urine scent mark behavior changes depending on shifting social conditions.

White flag showing a red, white and blue skull graphic in front of a campus clock tower — Cornell University file photo Cornellians gathered to listen to the Cornell Chimes play Grateful Dead songs on 2017 Grateful Dead Day, the 40th Anniversary of the famous 1977 Grateful Dead concert at Barton Hall.

Music

Dead & Co. to play benefit at Barton Hall, honoring legendary ’77 show

3/8/2023 Cornell Chronicle

Remaining members of the Grateful Dead will return to play a benefit concert in Barton Hall on May 8 as part of the band’s final tour.

Hand holding a colorful rectangle — Provided A new museum exhibit showcases the Alpha CubeSat project, in which a small, low-cost satellite and light sail will be adorned with holographic art as a means of interstellar communication.

Astronomy

Postcards from Earth: Hologram project showcased at Intrepid

2/28/2023 Cornell Chronicle

A yearslong effort to launch Cornell-made satellite technology into a neighboring solar system is making a terrestrial stop at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City.

Dry landscape featuring a hill and partly cloudy sky — John Marston The researchers scrutinized tree ring samples recovered from the Midas Mound Tumulus at Gordion, a human-made 53-meter-tall structure located west of Ankara, Turkey.

Archaeology

Rare drought coincided with Hittite Empire collapse

2/8/2023 Cornell Chronicle

An interdisciplinary collaboration used tree ring and isotope records to pinpoint a likely culprit: three straight years of severe drought in an already dry period.

Physics

Tweezers untangle chemotherapeutic’s impact on DNA

1/30/2023 Cornell Chronicle

New research into a common chemotherapy agent is advancing the study of cancer inhibitors.

Physics

Cornell to lead new semiconductor research center

1/5/2023 Cornell Chronicle

Dan Ralph, Ph.D. ’93, the F.R. Newman Professor of Physics, is among the center’s 25 principal investigators.

golden spheres connected by dark lines — Alex Shuper/Unsplash

Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Electrochemistry converts carbon to useful molecules

1/5/2023 Cornell Chronicle

Cornell chemists discovered they could produce two products used in medicinal chemistry by changing the electrochemical reactor.

Cover of Science Advances showing fruit fly

Interdisciplinary research

Fruit flies use two muscles to control pitch for stable flight

12/14/2022 Cornell Chronicle

The finding provides evidence for an organizational principle in which each muscle has a specific function in flight control.

Composit image of a man wearing glasses, a purple moon, a mountain, and a metal monument

Uniquely Cornell

Fictional civilization leaves behind lasting legacy

12/7/2022 Cornell Chronicle

Llhuros – its relics, rituals, poetry, and music – as well as the academic commentary it inspired, "documents just one tiny little sliver of Cornell’s history. But it’s a fascinating one.”

Magnified image shows an arrow-shaped embryo, glowing red, yellow and purple at the edges, appearing to give off red smoke — Provided This image, featured in a 2008 paper in Science that was co-authored by Jeremy M. Baskin, associate professor of chemistry and chemical biology, shows a developing zebrafish larva in which the sugars on the surface of individual cells are fluorescently tagged with copper-free click chemistry.

Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Cornell chemists contributed to Nobel Prize-winning work

10/6/2022 Cornell Chronicle

Jeremy M. Baskin and Pamela Chang were doctoral students in Carolyn Bertozzi’s lab at the University of California, Berkley, in the mid-2000s.

Two people wearing gloves work with football-sized museum object — Ryan Young/Cornell University Creating a 3D model of a mummified bird from Cornell’s Anthropology Collections.

Anthropology collections

Mummified bird gets second life in multisensory exhibition

10/5/2022 Cornell Chronicle

“A Tale of Two Mummies: Multisensory Experience” runs Oct. 7-9, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., in Upson Hall’s Lounge 116.

Migration

Book: Policymakers are failing ‘climate refugees’

9/27/2022 Cornell Chronicle

The United States must transform its outdated migration policies to address the human devastation that is left in the wake of climate change and environmental catastrophe, Maria Cristina Garcia argues.

Illustration of a blocky silver robot — Noël Heaney/Cornell University Cornell researchers installed electronic “brains” on solar-powered robots that are 100 to 250 micrometers in size, so the tiny bots can walk autonomously without being externally controlled.

Physics

Brains on board: Smart microrobots walk autonomously

9/21/2022 Cornell Chronicle

Electronic “brains” on solar-powered robots that are smaller than an ant’s head allow them to walk by themselves.

Red cliffs reaching down to blue ocean; a city of white buildings appears small — Provided The Greek island of Santorini, traditionally known as Thera, experienced one of the largest volcanic eruptions in the Holocene epoch, most likely between 1609 and 1560 BCE, according to a new analysis

Statistical analysis aims to solve Greek volcano mystery

9/20/2022 Cornell Chronicle

Sturt Manning has zeroed in on a much narrower range of dates, approximately 1609–1560 BCE, for the eruption on Santorini, a pivotal event in the prehistory of the region.

Ancient stone building with a spire and foliage growing on the roof — Provided St. Hovhannes Church of Chahuk (built in the 12th or 13th century and renovated in the 17th and 19th centuries) was destroyed between 1997 and 2009, as documented in a new report from Caucasus Heritage Watch.

Cultural heritage

Report shows near-total erasure of Armenian heritage sites

9/12/2022 Cornell Chronicle

The study compiled decades of high-resolution satellite imagery from the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan.

Cornell University Cornell University James Turner, the founding director of Cornell’s Africana Studies and Research Center and a a professor emeritus of African and African American Politics and Social Policy in the College of Arts and Sciences, died Aug. 6 in Ithaca.

In memoriam

James Turner, a ‘giant’ of Africana studies, dies at 82

8/12/2022 Cornell Chronicle

James Turner, the founding director of Cornell’s Africana Studies and Research Center and a pioneer of the multidisciplinary approach to exploring the African diaspora, died Aug. 6 in Ithaca.

Religion

Desert sounds offer lessons in solitude and community

7/12/2022 Cornell Chronicle

In a new book, Kim Haines-Eitzen explores the rich range of desert sounds and what they can teach us about place, the past, solitude and community.

History

Think twice before founding that free-market utopia

6/22/2022 Cornell Chronicle

In a new book, Raymond Craib writes that libertarian attempts to escape regulation and build communities structured entirely through market transactions often have calamitous consequences for local populations.

Wei Wang, in a blue shirt and black plastic-framed glasses, sits in a lab looking at an instrument while he adjusts another instrument with his right hand. — Noël Heaney/Cornell University Doctoral student Wei Wang of the Itai Cohen Group helped design an artificial cilial system using platinum-based components that can control the movement of fluids at the microscale.

Physics

Artificial cilia could someday power diagnostic devices

5/25/2022 Cornell Chronicle

The technology could enable low-cost, portable diagnostic devices for testing blood samples, manipulating cells or assisting in microfabrication processes.

The sun shining over a field next to a powerplant spewing huge clouds into the air. — Image by catazul from Pixabay Coal-fired power station Neurath in Grevenbroich, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Sustainability

Spongy material captures carbon dioxide in cavities

5/23/2022 Cornell Chronicle

The materials are made from sugar and low-cost alkali metal salts, so they would be inexpensive enough for large-scale deployment.

Stop motion images of a dragonfly turning over in flight — Provided This series of images, captured by three high-speed video cameras filming at 4,000 frames per second, track a dragonfly as it was released upside-down from a magnetic tether and rolled 180 degrees to reorient itself.

Physics

Dragonflies use vision, subtle wing control to straighten up and fly right

5/13/2022 Cornell Chronicle

As one of the oldest insect species on the planet, dragonflies are an early innovator of aerial flight.

Shiny spikes organized into a sphere — Etienne Desclides/ Unsplash Ferrofluids were invented in 1963 by NASA to create liquid rocket fuel that could be drawn toward a fuel pump in a weightless environment by applying a magnetic field.

Physics

Mechanism ‘splits’ electron spins in magnetic material

5/5/2022 Cornell Chronicle

Cornell researchers have discovered a technique that could eventually lead to the development of more energy-efficient magnetic memory devices.

Spots of orange light against a dark background

Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Light-infused particles go the distance in organic semiconductors

4/29/2022 Cornell Chronicle

Prof. Andrew Musser and his team have found a way to tune the speed of polaritons' energy flow, using an approach that could eventually lead to more efficient solar cells, sensors and LEDs.

Cornell University file photo A.R. Ammons

Poetry

‘Ammons & the Falls’ highlights poet’s ties to Ithaca landscape

4/21/2022 Cornell Chronicle

The April 26 celebration will include the unveiling of a new display of Ammons’ poem “Triphammer Bridge," a screening of an episode of “Poetry in America," and more.

Faculty Honors

Musicologist and poet awarded Guggenheim fellowships

4/12/2022 Cornell Chronicle

Alejandro L. Madrid, professor and chair of music, and Valzhyna Mort, associate professor of literatures in English, were honored as fellows.

Three people look at an artifact on a lab table — Carol Jennings/College of Veterinary Medicine Carol Anne Barsody, left, imaging specialist Michael Haner and Frederic Gleach ready the mummy bird for radiographs and a CT scan at the Cornell University Hospital for Animals.

Anthropology collections

Cross-college researchers unravel mummy bird mystery

4/6/2022 Cornell Chronicle

What began as a passion project for a master’s student in archaeology, has become a cross-campus fascination that encompasses everything from ancient burial rituals to the lost history of donated artifacts, the totemic power of animals, and even Egyptian beer.

Book cover: The War that Made the Roman Empire

Roman history

Historian delves into the battle that shaped the Roman Empire

3/16/2022 Cornell Chronicle

In his new book, “The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium,” historian Barry Strauss offers a more accurate, nuanced narrative of the conflict and the fascinating personalities at its core.

Orange pill bottle, spilling green pills

Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Electrosynthesis energizes sustainable drug development

2/21/2022 Cornell Chronicle

A Cornell-led collaboration used electrochemistry to stitch together simple carbon molecules and form complex compounds, eliminating the need for precious metals or other catalysts to promote the chemical reaction.

Physics

Gender bias in lab groups not rooted in personal preference

1/20/2022 Cornell Chronicle

The finding shows there is potential for instructional interventions that could correct the gender inequity in physics labs.

History

Historian delves into LGBTQ life and the American home

1/19/2022 Cornell Chronicle

The intimacy of domestic space was a crucial aspect of LGBTQ life in the postwar era, according to historian Stephen Vider, who explores that history in his new book.

Physics

Semiconductor demonstrates elusive quantum physics model

1/11/2022 Cornell Chronicle

With a little twist and the turn of a voltage knob, Cornell researchers have shown that a single material system can toggle between two of the wildest states in condensed matter physics.

History

Economic sanctions evolved into tool of modern war

1/11/2022 Cornell Chronicle

Economic sanctions have long been considered a nonviolent deterrent, but ironically they have become a tool of modern warfare, according to a new book by Nicholas Mulder, assistant professor of history.

Two squares: one green and pink graph, the other rainbow — Provided A high-resolution map of a photocatalyst particle shows the transition zones of reactivity and the corresponding spatial variation of photoelectrochemical performance across the inter-facet edge.

Chemistry and Chemical Biology

3D semiconductor particles offer 2D properties

1/3/2022 Cornell Chronicle

Cornell researchers have found that 3D semiconductor particles have 2D properties, which can be leveraged for photoelectrochemical processes that boost solar energy conversion technologies.

Government

Three Cornellians named Schwarzman Scholars

12/9/2021 Cornell Chronicle

Shaheer (Shawn) Haq ‘21, Daniel James II ’22 and Xiaochen (Brian) Ren ‘22 were elected to join the seventh cohort of Schwarzman Scholars, a program that nurtures a network of future global leaders.

Voting sticker help up by a smiling person

Mathematics

Modeling suggests friendships may lead to lopsided elections

11/29/2021 Cornell Chronicle

Have you ever thought about not voting because your candidate’s victory seems assured? Think again.

Music

Sierra wins Latin Grammy for guitar sonata

11/19/2021 Cornell Chronicle

Composer Roberto Sierra won for “Music from Cuba and Spain, Sierra: Sonata para Guitarra.”

Physics

Weak coupling shows flaw in strange metal model

11/8/2021 Cornell Chronicle

Planckian metals have the potential to power high-temperature superconductors, quantum computers and a host of other next-generation technologies.

man looking at a piece of charcoal — Provided Sturt Manning, director of the Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory, examines a charcoal sample at the New York State Museum in Albany.

Classics & Archaeology

New timeline clarifies Indigenous history in Mohawk Valley

10/15/2021 Cornell Chronicle

A collaboration between the Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory and the New York State Museum in Albany has established a more precise timeline for some of the most iconic archeological sites in the Mohawk Valley.

History

Book explores Nigerian women’s political activism

10/13/2021 Cornell Chronicle

"The Great Upheaval: Women and Nation in Postwar Nigeria,” explores the years immediately following World War II, which were pivotal for women in Nigeria.

Music

Concerto highlights individual voice and the sound of community

10/8/2021 Cornell Chronicle

“The Oberlin Concertos,” released Sept. 17, features a composition by Elizabeth Ogonek, which combines voice, piano and percussion.

Lab beakers, one partly filled with liquid — Photo by Hans Reniers on Unsplash

Chemistry & Chemical Biology

Chemistry professor helped catalyze Nobel-winning breakthrough

10/7/2021 Cornell Chronicle

A small contribution from chemistry Professor Tristan Lambert when he was a doctoral student helped catalyze the breakthrough in catalysis that led to the 2021 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

Literatures in English

Book explores connections of Alaska’s Native and Asian peoples

9/21/2021 Cornell Chronicle

Juliana Hu Pegues often heard stories of Asian immigrants as she was growing up, but they never made it into the history books.

whale coming out of water — Provided Cornell will host “The Whale Listening Project,” Sept. 23-26, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the best-selling 1970 album, “Songs of the Humpback Whale,” co-produced by pioneering bioacoustics researchers Roger Payne, Ph.D. ’61, and Katy Payne ’59.

Music

Project celebrates the beauty of humpback whale songs

9/20/2021 Cornell Chronicle

“The Whale Listening Project,” which runs Sept. 23-26, is a four-day immersion in the beauty of whale song and a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the best-selling 1970 album, “Songs of the Humpback Whale,” co-produced by pioneering bioacoustics researchers Roger Payne, Ph.D. ’61, and Katy Payne ’59, a retired research associate with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Bioacoustics Research Program.

Colored three-dimensional scan of the hands and footprints — Researchers discovered what is possibly the world's oldest artwork, rendered here in a three-dimensional scan, on a rocky promontory at Quesang on the Tibetan Plateau in 2018.

Archaeology

Hand and footprint art dates to mid-Ice Age

9/14/2021 Cornell Chronicle

To answer whether this could be the oldest art ever found, the team turned to A&S research scientist Thomas Urban.

Chemistry & Chemical Biology

Scientists harness machine learning to lower solar energy cost

9/1/2021 Cornell Chronicle

A Cornell-led collaboration received a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to use machine learning to accelerate the creation of low-cost materials for solar energy.

Chemistry & Chemical Biology

Polymer enables tougher recyclable thermoplastics

8/13/2021 Cornell Chronicle

The resulting thermoplastic is strong and flexible enough to be used for large-scale applications such as packaging products.

In memoriam

Mathematician James H. Bramble dies at 90

8/12/2021 Cornell Chronicle

James H. Bramble, professor emeritus of mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences, died July 20 at his home in Austin, Texas. He was 90.

Music

Sierra symphony highlights Caribbean culture

8/4/2021 Cornell Chronicle

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra will launch its 2021-22 season on Oct. 14 with the world premiere of “Symphony No. 6,” composed by Roberto Sierra, the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Physics

Chaotic electrons heed ‘limit’ in strange metals

7/29/2021 Cornell Chronicle

"We are finally unlocking the enigma behind the intense motions of electrons in strange metals.”

Performing & Media Arts

Book explores historical queerness of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe

7/29/2021 Cornell Chronicle

“What’s really interesting about the space and these artists is that there is a queerness that has always been at the cafe, but that has never been used to frame the space.”

Literatures in English

From Kenya to Cornell, writer Mukoma ranges across genres

7/23/2021 Cornell Chronicle

Mukoma Wa Ngugi channeled his fascination with Ethiopian "Tizita" songs into his fourth novel, “Unbury Our Dead With Song,” which will be published Sept. 21.

Graphic featuring yellow, red and blue balls — Provided Ligands can attract and help each other adsorb at some surface sites, but can often impair each other’s efforts as well.

Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Small molecule plays outsize role in controlling nanoparticle

7/13/2021 Cornell Chronicle

A breakthrough imaging technique enabled Cornell researchers to gain new insights into how tiny ligands adsorb on the surface of nanoparticles and how they can tune a particle’s shape.

Physics

Machine learning tool sorts the nuances of quantum data

7/6/2021 Cornell Chronicle

An interdisciplinary team of Cornell and Harvard University researchers developed a machine learning tool to parse quantum matter and make crucial distinctions in the data, an approach that will help scientists unravel the most confounding phenomena in the subatomic realm.

Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Magnetic tweezers reveal polymers’ hidden properties

6/16/2021 Cornell Chronicle

Cornell researchers were able to stretch and twist individual molecules of a conjugated polymer and measure its mechanical and kinetic properties, gaining insights that could eventually lead to more flexible and robust soft electronic materials.

Physics

Monolayer superconductor exhibits unusual behavior

6/10/2021 Cornell Chronicle

Cornell researchers have discovered a rare “pseudogap” phenomenon that helps explain how the superconducting transition temperature can be greatly boosted in a single monolayer of iron selenide, and how it might be applied to other superconducting materials.