Fuel cells could someday power numerous devices – automobiles and mass transit systems, buildings, and virtually any type of portable electronic device.
Unlike batteries, which eventually run out of power (and thus need to be recharged), a fuel cell will continue to generate electrical energy as long as it has a fuel – usually hydrogen – and oxygen or some other oxidant necessary for the complete electrochemical reaction.
Jerrold Meinwald, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Chemistry Emeritus and a 2014 winner of the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest honor for achievement in science and engineering, died April 23 in Ithaca. He was 91.
Enzymes are nature’s best nanoscale catalysts, and often show what’s known as catalytic allostery – that is, reactions at one site affecting reactions at another site, typically a few nanometers away, without direct interaction between the reactants.
Assistant professors Brett Fors, Karthik Sridharan and Jin Suntivich have been named recipients of Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellowships. These awards support early-career faculty members’ original research and broad-based education related to science, technology and economic performance.
Say you’re the coach of a basketball team that’s trailing by two points in the dying seconds of a game. Your team has the ball and you call a timeout to set up a play.
Or imagine your football team has just scored a touchdown with three seconds to play to pull to within one point. Instead of immediately sending out the placekicker for the point-after, you call your final timeout to discuss your next move.
Two new studies led by Hening Lin, professor of chemistry and chemical biology, offer new insights into oncogene RAS, the most frequently mutated gene of its type in human cancer.
In 2016, Yimon Aye, Howard Milstein Faculty Fellow and assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, introduced the world to “T-REX” – a chemical method for targeting and modulating single proteins to analyze and screen for specific oxidation-reduction (redox) events, which are vital to many basic functions of life.
An unfortunate church dinner more than 100 years ago did more than just spread typhoid fever to scores of Californians. It led theorists on a quest to understand why many diseases – including typhoid, measles, polio, malaria, even cancer – take so much longer to develop in some affected people than in others.
Fundamental processes that occur along strands of DNA, including RNA transcription and DNA replication, commonly encounter obstacles – or “roadblocks” – that can impede progress and ultimately result in mutations and/or DNA damage.
The Keck Foundation announced in early July that it had awarded $1 million to a Cornell cross-campus collaboration of professors in engineering and physics aimed at turning theory into reality – namely, creating a specific topological superconducting material that could help pave the way to quantum computing.
Imagine walking through the Northwest wilderness, camera phone at the ready, hoping to catch at least a faint glimpse of Bigfoot, and instead returning home with an Ansel Adams-quality picture of the mythical beast as he lumbers past you.
That’s kind of what a team led by physics professor Paul McEuen has done in research into the optical properties of single-atom-thick layers of graphene.
Until last week, if students in Itai Cohen’s research group wanted to perform advanced measurements on a fluid – such as applying both rotation and sinusoidal oscillations to gauge whether the flow disruption was hydrodynamically or contact-mediated – they’d have to drive 330 miles east.
Radiation therapy has been proven effective for the treatment of cancer, but its side effects can be severe depending on the patient and the location of the tumor.
The concept of “valence” – the ability of a particular atom to combine with other atoms by exchanging electrons – is one of the cornerstones of modern chemistry and solid-state physics.
“Think differently” – it’s been a central theme at Cornell for more than 150 years and a driving force behind numerous educational initiatives including the new Cornell Tech campus, which opened this fall on Roosevelt Island in the heart of New Yor
Conventional wisdom has said that when molecules known as monomers band together to create a polymer chain, that creation takes place steadily as the chain forms, like spaghetti out of a pasta maker. But a Cornell research collaboration shows that’s just not the case.
A cellular biology “mystery” is closer to being solved, thanks to sleuthing in the lab of Jeremy Baskin, assistant professor and Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology.
A group led by Rob Shepherd, assistant professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is using the cephalopod as inspiration for a method to morph flat surfaces into three-dimensional ones on demand.
The Cornell Center for Materials Research – which through research and education is enhancing national capabilities in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and materials research at all levels – has been has been granted $23.2 million for the next six years from the National Science Foundation.
One of the goals of personalized medicine is to be able to determine which treatment would work best by sequencing a patient’s genome. New research from the lab of Yimon Aye, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology, could help make that approach a reality.
Solitary waves – known as solitons – appear in many forms. Perhaps the most recognizable is the tsunami, which forms following a disruption on the ocean floor and can travel, unabated, at high speeds for hundreds of miles.
Clifford J. Earle, professor emeritus of mathematics, whose nearly 40-year tenure at Cornell included three years as chair of the math department, died June 12 at Hospicare in Ithaca. He was 81.
Born Nov. 3, 1935, in Racine, Wisconsin, Earle earned his bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College in 1957, and his master’s (1958) and doctorate (1962) from Harvard University.
Assistant professors Jeremy Baskin, from the College of Arts and Sciences, and Pamela Chang, from the College of Veterinary Medicine, are among eight assistant professors across the nation to be named a Beckman Young Investigator, a prize is given to promising young faculty members in the early stages of their academic careers in the chemical and life sciences.
Mathematicians often struggle with the idea of communication – to the rest of the world, and even with each other – but a recently secured grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) will help math “evangelist” Steven Strogatz and his colleagues tackle that problem.
Next-generation solar cells made from organic compounds hold great promise in meeting future energy needs, but researchers are still striving to gain a deep understanding of the materials involved – including the efficiency with which they convert light into mobile charge, known as photocapacitance.
Water is the Earth’s most abundant natural resource, but it’s also something of a mystery due to its unique solvation characteristics – that is, how things dissolve in it.
Yimon Aye, a Howard Milstein faculty fellow and assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the College of Arts and Sciences with a secondary appointment at Weill Cornell Medicine, is one of six winners of this year’s Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators in Cancer Research, which supports New York-based scientists exploring innovative avenues in the fight against cancer.
Geoffrey W. Coates, the Tisch University Professor in the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, is one of 84 new members elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the academy announced May 2.
Robert E. Hughes, Ph.D. ’52, who taught chemistry at Cornell for 16 years and was co-founder of the University of Pennsylvania’s Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM), died at his home in Round Hill, Virginia, April 2.
The experimental realization of ultrathin graphene – which earned two scientists from the University of Manchester, U.K., the Nobel Prize in physics in 2010 – has ushered in a new age in materials research.
Cornell assistant professors Yimon Aye and Robert Shepherd are among 33 scientists selected from among 360 applicants to receive Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program (YIP) awards, which support early-career academic scientists and engineers.
Assistant professors Ilana Brito, Guillaume Lambert, Kyle Lancaster and Nilay Yapici have been named recipients of Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellowships that support early career faculty members’ original research and broad-based education related to science, technology and economic performance.
Kurt Gottfried, emeritus professor of physics and a recognized expert on nuclear arms control, has been awarded the 2016 Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Using a novel chemical procedure developed in her lab, Yimon Aye and her group are helping to blaze a trail in the emerging field of precision medicine by targeting and modulating single proteins to achieve desired responses.
