News

Physics

Don Hartill, longtime physics professor, Lansing mayor, dies at 86

4/30/2025 Cornell Chronicle

Donald Hartill, a professor of physics emeritus in the College of Arts and Sciences and a driving force behind decades of experimental research in particle physics, died on April 16. He was 86.

Provided Jennet Dickinson, assistant professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences and researcher at CLASSE, works on a silicon module for the upgrade of the CMS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Cornell is assembling a detector using over 2,000 of these modules.

Physics

Cornell Celebrates Breakthrough Prize for LHC Collaborations

4/14/2025 Cornell Chronicle

Cornell researchers are helping upgrade the CMS detector at CERN, as LHC collaborations win the 2024 Breakthrough Prize for fundamental physics discoveries.

Piece of scientific equipment the size of a room, shaped in a circle — Provided The Compact Muon Solenoid detector in Switzerland.

Physics

Cornell takes role in advancing software at CERN

1/25/2024 Cornell Chronicle

Cornell and other U.S. universities have been awarded $25 million from the National Science Foundation for research at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland.

Two people stand with crossed arms in front of a large, complicated machine — Savan DeSouza/Provided Graduate student Sam Levenson, left, and CLASSE Research Associate Matt Andorf show off the HERACLES beamline in Newman Lab.

Physics

HERACLES beamline to accelerate cathode research

5/24/2023 Cornell Chronicle

Cornell is breaking new ground in electron beam research with the HERACLES beamline, a state-of-the-art electron gun that mimics the harsh environments of the world’s largest particle colliders.

star-like crystals on a green background — Orinoco14/Creative Commons license 2.0 Protein crystals

Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Picking up good vibrations – of proteins – at CHESS

5/15/2023 Cornell Chronicle

A new method for analyzing protein crystals – developed by Cornell researchers and given a funky two-part name – could open up applications for new drug discovery and other areas of biotechnology and biochemistry.

Graphic with hundreds of yellow dots — Christopher Parzyck/Provided An artist’s conception of the single-crystal alkali antimonides photocathode, which is 10 times more efficient than existing photocathodes.

Center for Bright Beams

Cornell team develops more efficient photocathode

3/31/2022 Cornell Chronicle

Researchers at Cornell’s Center for Bright Beams, have developed a technique to create a photocathode – a material vital to the performance of some of the world’s most powerful particle accelerators – from a single-crystal alkali antimonides.

person in lab — Provided Cornell doctoral student Ryan Porter prepares an superconducting radio-frequency cavity made from the element Nb3Sn in the clean room of Newman Lab.

Center for Bright Beams

Center for Bright Beams awarded $22M in grant renewal

9/20/2021 Cornell Chronicle

A collaboration of researchers led by Cornell has been awarded $22.5 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue gaining the fundamental understanding needed to transform the brightness of electron beams available to science, medicine and industry.

Physics

Cheaper, greener particle accelerators will speed innovation

3/15/2021 Cornell Chronicle

A team of scientists at the Center for Bright Beams – a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center led by Cornell – are working on the next generation of superconducting materials that will greatly reduce the costs associated with operating large particle accelerators and lessen their environmental impact. The research could also make it easier for smaller institutions and industry to use these critical tools.

Chemistry & chemical biology

NIH awards $17.4 million to Cornell for CHESS subfacility

8/15/2019 Cornell Chronicle

A single human cell contains thousands of proteins that perform a vast array of functions, from fighting off viruses to transcribing DNA. By understanding the structure of these proteins, researchers can interpret their functions and develop methods for turning them on and off.

Physics

Cornell announces $54M from NSF for new CHESS subfacility

7/22/2019 Cornell Chronicle

The Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source, more commonly known as CHESS, entered a new era April 1.

Physics

New accelerator sails through key test – recovering energy

7/17/2019 Cornell Chronicle

A half-century after the idea of energy-recovering accelerators was proposed at Cornell, the university is showing that high-energy physics can also be renewable-energy physics.

Physics

Lecturer to examine the point of basic research

4/18/2019 Cornell Chronicle

Why should resources – financial or intellectual – be dedicated to the pursuit of theoretical knowledge when the world has so many pressing problems? On April 24 particle physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed will examine the significance of performing basic research in his latest public talk as an A.D. White Professor-at-Large. The talk will be held at 7:30 p.m. in Rockefeller Hall’s Schwartz Auditorium and is free and open to the public. A reception will follow at 9 p.m. at the West Pavilion of Clark Hall.

Physics

Next-gen particle accelerator is aim of Bright Beams work

1/10/2019 Cornell Chronicle

New research at Cornell is helping address current challenges and develop more efficient accelerators.

Astronomy & Physics

Cornell researchers build telescopes to measure universe’s earliest light

3/28/2018 Cornell Chronicle

Teams of scientists, including researchers from the Cornell physics and astronomy departments, are collaborating on two of the largest telescopes ever built to take readings on the universe’s oldest light measurable, known as the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB.These telescopes will be placed in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile and will give scientists new tools to record the earliest signals from the universe.