Cornell chemistry and chemical biology researchers have found a new and potentially more accurate way to see what proteins are doing inside living cells — using the cells’ own components as built-in sensors.
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.
Overconfidence is a hallmark trait of people who believe in conspiracies, and they also significantly overestimate how much others agree with them, Cornell psychology researchers have found.
From designing a reversible male contraceptive to detecting life on distant ocean worlds, the latest Cornell Engineering SPROUT Awards are cultivating breakthroughs across medicine, space exploration, robotics and environmental sensing.
Study participants who watched scenes from popular movies showed emotion plays a larger role than previously understood in establishing event boundaries that help structure attention and memory.
Devin Flores/Cornell University
Enslavers posted as many as a quarter-million newspaper ads and flyers before 1865 to locate runaway slaves. Ed Baptist is leading the public crowdsourcing project, Freedom on the Move, that has digitized tens of thousands of these advertisements in an open-source site accessible to the public.
A research project collecting records of freedom-seeking enslaved people in the pre-Civil War U.S. came to a halt when researchers received a stop-work order from the National Endowment for the Humanities in early May.
A Cornell research team has employed a variation of a theory first used to predict the collective actions of electrons in quantum mechanical systems to a much taller, human system – the National Basketball Association.
Credit: Sheryl Sinkow/Provided
Left to right: Charles Walcott PhD ’59; Holger Klinck, the John W. Fitzpatrick Director of the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics; and K. Lisa Yang ’74 at the center’s advisory council meeting, where Yang honored Walcott with the establishment of the Charles Walcott Graduate Research Fellowship in Conservation Bioacoustics. Photo by Sheryl Sinkow.
A new $1.5 million gift from philanthropist K. Lisa Yang ’74 has established the Charles Walcott Graduate Research Fellowship in Conservation Bioacoustics to fund graduate research at the Lab of Ornithology.
Sreang Hok/Cornell University
Jamila Walida Simon, MA ’10, standing, just completed her doctorate in global development.
More than two dozen staff members who earned degrees at Cornell or other institutions this year while also working at the university were celebrated in a ceremony June 10.
In the 2025 Summer Events Series, A&S Dean Peter John Loewen will give a lecture on AI; and beloved alumna author Diane Ackerman, M.F.A. ’73, M.A. ’77, Ph.D. ’79, will talk about her research trips.
A professor of religious studies at Brown, Lewis will also hold a faculty appointment as a professor of religious studies and German studies in the College of Arts and Sciences.
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.
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.
A mainstay of the Department of Russian Literature from 1977 until his retirement after the department closed in 2010, Senderovich oversaw the establishment of a comprehensive graduate program in Russian literature, expanding Cornell’s graduate offerings in the field.
The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings bring together Nobel Prize recipients and approx. 600 exceptional young scientists from around the world for a week of “interdisciplinary exchange” aimed at fostering scientific collaboration across generations and national boundaries.
Alexandra Bayer/Cornell University
President Michael I. Kotlikoff congratulates a doctoral candidate at the 2025 Ph.D. Recognition Ceremony on May 23 at Barton Hall.
Cornell’s newest Ph.D.s found success even through the unexpected events of the last few years, President Michael I. Kotlikoff reminded nearly 400 doctoral graduates at the 2025 Ph.D. Recognition Ceremony on May 23 at Barton Hall.
Devin Flores/Cornell University
Marine 2nd Lt. Connor Eaton is pinned at the Cornell University ROTC Tri-Service Commissioning Ceremony, held May 23 in Statler Auditorium.
During a May 23 ceremony in Statler Auditorium, more than 25 members of Cornell’s Reserve Officers' Training Corps Tri-Service Brigade were commissioned as second lieutenants or ensigns in the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and Space Force.
Provided
The Cornell men’s lacrosse team celebrates after defeating Maryland in the NCAA Championship Game May 26 in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
The technique enables them to watch chemistry in action and collect real-time movies showing what happens to energy materials during temperature changes.
“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."
This year’s cohort includes the W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow and three Kohut Fellows. These emerging scholars will advance data-driven research by contributing original scholarly work that uses Roper iPoll’s extensive survey archive.
“This grant will allow us to pursue some high-risk, novel ideas for how to measure material properties like elasticity and high-frequency conductivity that have previously been inaccessible in 2D materials.”
Ryan Young/Cornell University
Campus Community Leadership Award winner Netra Shetty ’25 (center-left) poses with (from left) Marla Love, the Robert W. and Elizabeth C. Staley Dean of Students; Alec Brown, program manager of the Hunter R. Rawlings III Cornell Presidential Research Scholars Program; Monica Yant Kinney, interim vice president for university relations; Sarah Bartlett, volunteer and outreach manager at the Ithaca Free Clinic; and Taili Mugambee, lead program coordinator of Ultimate Reentry Opportunity, outside of Day Hall
For her work supporting the Ithaca community and people struggling with incarceration and drug addiction across New York, Netra Shetty ’25 earned the 2025 University Relations Campus Community Leadership Award.
Jason Koski/Cornell University
Héctor Abruña, the Émile M. Chamot Professor in the Department of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences.
The biennial prize, announced May 15, “recognizes an individual for exceptional and original research in a selected area of chemistry that has advanced the field in a major way.”
Inspired by the mechanisms plants use to store carbon, researchers found that sunlight can power the capture and release of carbon dioxide, which could vastly lower costs and net emissions.
A new computational method developed by researchers at Cornell sheds light on how going dormant – sometimes for multiple generations – has affected the evolution of the tuberculosis bacterium and other organisms that can temporarily drop out of the gene pool.
Ryan Young/Cornell University
Semiconductors are at the core of the economy and national security. Their importance makes them a target. Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute in the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, discusses how Cornell is helping to keep the semiconductor supply chain safe.
A Cornell-led assessment of vulnerabilities in the semiconductor supply chain and how to mitigate them is on hold after receiving a stop-work order.
Dan Rosenberg/Provided
From left, MFA students Gerardo Iglesias, Sarah Iqbal and Aishvarya Arora listen to observations by two young poets at the Ithaca Children’s Garden.
A crew of Cornell creative writers lent their time and experience to guide young poets during Nature Poetry in the Garden, an event held May 3 at the Ithaca Children’s Garden.
The Cornell Center for Social Sciences has awarded spring Seed Grants and the inaugural Grant Preparation Funds to support impactful social science research. Faculty can now apply for up to $115,000 in funding, with the next deadline approaching on June 1.
Through intensive breeding, humans have pushed breeds such as pug dogs and Persian cats to evolve with very similar skulls and “smushed” faces, so they’re more similar to each other than they are to most other dogs or cats.
Cornell researchers found that by prioritizing the perspectives of white Americans instead of those from underrepresented groups, studies of pandemic disparities likely missed important insights from those most affected by COVID-19.
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.
Jason Koski/Cornell University
Ishion Hutchinson, the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor in the Humanities, is making his prose debut this month with his first essay collection, “Fugitive Tilts,” published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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.
Specialized MRI scans revealed dramatic changes over the human lifespan in the locus coeruleus, a finding that helps characterize healthy aging patterns.
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.
Princeton history professor Michael Gordin will give the inaugural lecture celebrating the life and work of Henry Guerlac ’32, M.S. ’33, an influential historian of science and Cornell faculty member for three decades.
Simon Wheeler for Cornell University
Anne Thompson of NBC News, Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund, and David Lodge, the Francis J. DiSalvo Director of the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability (left to right) discuss the value of visionary partnerships between Cornell Atkinson and organizations such as EDF on April 10 during Cornell Atkinson’s 15th anniversary celebration.
The Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability’s 15th-anniversary conference addressed past successes and future efforts to support climate and sustainability.
Sreang Hok/Cornell University
Graduate students chat at Cornell's Big Red Barn
Two women meeting for the first time can judge within minutes whether they have potential to be friends – guided as much by smell as any other sense, according to new Cornell psychology research.
Cornell-led research finds that large numbers of Americans are leaving organized religion – not in favor of secular rationality, but to pursue spirituality in ways that better align with their individual values.
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.
Cornell researchers are helping upgrade the CMS detector at CERN, as LHC collaborations win the 2024 Breakthrough Prize for fundamental physics discoveries.
José Beduya/Provided
Irina Troconis, assistant professor of Latin American studies, pores over a selection of handwritten Venezuelan migrant testimonies, part of the TodoSomos archive, in the Reading Room of Cornell University Library’s Rare and Manuscript Collections.
Three Cornell undergraduates, including A&S student Michelle Tcherevatenko ’25, are being recognized for their dedication to tackling social challenges through innovative, community-engaged learning projects.
Prof. Carmichael identifies how parables unique to Luke were composed as a response to, and reframing of, problems attributed to the earliest of biblical times.
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.”
Provided
The shutter component of the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope being placed at the summit of Cerro Chajnantor.
The first major component of the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST) has arrived at its final home: the Cerro Chajnantor mountaintop, more than 18,000 feet above sea level.
Through volunteer work, research and advocacy, the 5,824 students admitted to the Class of 2029 reflect Cornell’s commitment to changing lives through public engagement.
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Spirochetes are long, slender, spiral-shaped invasive bacteria, associated with Lyme disease and syphilis.
Researchers have identified a new way to fight infections like Lyme disease and syphilis by disrupting the bacteria’s ‘motor,’ preventing it from spreading through the body.
The evening panel will be moderated by Anne Thompson, NBC News’ chief environmental affairs correspondent and the spring 2025 Zubrow Distinguished Visiting Journalist.
Researchers studying novel traits in organisms and the fundamental understanding of extreme weather are among the five Cornell assistant professors who've received National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Awards.
Cornell University file photo
Robert Wilson, right, with a model of the Robert Wilson Laboratory, built in 1968 on the Cornell campus.
The works ponders how “ghosts” can help a state secure its survival and ground its authority in moments of crisis, such as the one Venezuela is experiencing now.
Sreang Hok/Cornell University
Four of Twin Court’s bandmates (from left) Mandy Gurung, Caleb Levitt ’24, Wyatt Westerkamp ’22 and Gracekelly Fulton ’25 rehearse in the Gamelan room in Lincoln Hall.
The Cornell Gamelan Ensemble and a collection of antique instruments sparked the formation of Twin Court – a band that melds rock and traditional Indonesian music.
The newest episode of Startup Cornell, a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, features Cornell senior Micere Mugweru ’25, the founder of Mizoma Africa.
New Cornell research focuses on two types of uncertainty that play important roles in the cyber threat security industry – coordinative uncertainty and adversarial uncertainty – and analyzes the relationship between them.
Don’t expect a broader backlash against President Donald Trump's flurry of executive orders simply because they may rest on shaky legal ground, new Cornell research suggests.
An FDA-approved drug used in humans has been found to inhibit the growth of oral squamous cell carcinomas in dogs - with one dog’s tumor nearly disappearing in a matter of weeks.
A Cornell-led research team has developed an artificial intelligence-powered ring equipped with micro-sonar technology that can continuously and in real time track fingerspelling in American Sign Language.
Nareeta Martin/Unsplash
Plastics bound for recycling
Chemistry researchers have found ways to reduce the environmental impact of high-density polyethylene by developing a model that enables manufacturers to customize and improve those materials.
The Brooks School Center on Global Democracy hosted “Democratic Mobilizing: Comparative Responses to Backsliding Threats,” a hybrid event that attracted 120 participants and was streamed live from Goldwin Smith Hall on Cornell’s Ithaca campus.
Provided
Officially launching the Abruña Energy Initiative Level 3 electric vehicle fast-charging station: Interim President Michael Kotlikoff (left) and Héctor D. Abruña, the Émile M. Chamot Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology.
The station will serve as part of a real-world “living laboratory” for existing and emerging electric-vehicle technologies developed at Cornell and elsewhere.
Katharine Downey/Cornell University
Damon Hollenbeck '25 pitches his business CRIT to a crowd at the 2024 Cornell Entrepreneurship Showcase: Student Pitches and Venture Panel.
Robert C. Fay, emeritus professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, died Feb. 6 in Fairfax, Virginia. He was 88.
Jason Koski/Cornell University
In Goldwin Smith Hall on Feb. 28, Peter Loewen, the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of government, spoke during the “Science Under Siege?” faculty panel discussion hosted by the Department of Science and Technology Studies.
Even when women receive similar amounts of recognition from peers as men for excelling in physics classes, they perceive significantly less peer recognition, new research has found.
Cornell University file photo
Joseph A. Burns, Ph.D. ’66, emeritus professor of engineering and astronomy, and a former vice provost and dean of the Cornell faculty, speaks at Charter Day Weekend in 2015.
Joseph A. Burns, Ph.D. ’66, emeritus professor of engineering and astronomy, and a former vice provost and dean of the Cornell faculty, died Feb. 26 in Ithaca.
Cornell Atkinson is supporting 36 graduate students – including some in A&S – whose work protects biodiversity, improves health, reduces climate risk and more.
12 faculty members from seven colleges have been named 2025-26 Faculty Fellows with the Cornell Center for Social Sciences.
Provided
Max Bohun ’25 pitches AI teaching assistant GradeWiz, a startup he co-founded with Aman Garg ’25, last March at the 2024 eLab Student Startup Showcase at San Francisco’s Autodesk Gallery
GradeWiz, an artificial-intelligence teaching assistant founded by Cornell undergraduates Max Bohun ’25 and Aman Garg ’25, has been accepted into startup accelerator Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 Batch.
Our minds and the ways we tell stories are closely attuned, research shows, and scholar Fritz Breithaupt will explore how that connection works during a March visit as University Lecturer.
Sreang Hok/Cornell University
2024 George Peter Award winner Sarah Albrecht, administrative manager of the Science and Technology Studies Department in the College of Arts and Sciences, embraces Suman Seth, the Marie Underhill Noll Professor of The History of Science and chair of the department, at the Feb. 24 award ceremony.
For her skilled management and healthy sense of humor, Sarah Albrecht, administrative manager of the Science and Technology Studies Department in the College of Arts and Sciences, received the Employee Assembly’s 2024 George Peter Award for Dedicated Service.
The Feb. 28 event will provide a forum for scientists, social scientists and humanities scholars to discuss challenges to research support in response to recent major changes to federal funding.
Ryan Young/Cornell University
HelioSkin is a lightweight, stretchable architectural fabric that is aesthetically attractive and can wrap around complex shapes.
What if photovoltaic panels were a hinged, lightweight fabric that was aesthetically attractive and could wrap around complex shapes to better absorb sunlight?
Through a series of facilitated faculty conversations, the series aims to shine a spotlight on unique aspects of a variety of teaching formats, from the discussion to the studio, from the field site to the lab to the seminar.
Brian Crane began as Director of the Weill Center for Cell and Molecular Biology on January 1, 2025. He is only the second Director in the History of the Weill Institute since its founding by inaugural Director Scott Emr in 2008.
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.
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.
Cornell researchers have captured an unprecedented, real-time view of how a promising catalyst material transforms during operation, providing new insights that could lead to replacement of expensive precious metals in clean-energy technologies.
Across languages and cultures, parents simplify their speech in response to babies’ babbling and early speech, supporting language development, new Cornell research finds.
A scholar of Greek and Roman epic and drama and the intellectual history of Greece and Rome, Ahl was a member of the Cornell faculty for more than 52 years.
Benjamin Widom, Ph.D. ’53, Goldwin Smith Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, died Jan. 23 in Ithaca. He was 97.
A Cornell chemist has created an alternative to the unrecyclable, plastic-based material used for durable items such as car tires, replacement hip joints and bowling balls.
A doctoral student in the field of information science developed an interactive map that has become an online hub for thousands of people in the greater Los Angeles area who need provisions, are looking to donate supplies or want to get involved.
Chayene Rafaela/Unsplash
The Child Tax Credit expansion reduced the number of children living below the poverty line by more than a third.
Expansion of the Child Tax Credit gives researchers a unique example of a universally praised social good that disproportionately benefited some populations.
Jana Bauch / University of Cologne
The Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope’s largest parts being loaded onto the Helena Adriaan, a Dutch-flagged Rhine barge that sailed Jan. 17 for Antwerp, where they will be transferred to a transatlantic ship.
”This is a huge milestone for the project and we wish FYST bon voyage,” said Gordon Stacey, the project’s director and the David C. Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences.
Provided
Cornell's Combined Heat and Power Plant will provide researchers access to real-world flue gas emissions as home to the CAPTURE-Lab, an experimental facility that will explore carbon capture and industrial decarbonization.
Cornell researchers Greeshma Gadikota, Phil Milner and Tobias Hanrath discuss their carbon capture research, including a new experimental CAPTURE-Lab at Cornell’s Combined Heat and Power Plant.
Cornell researchers have discovered a way for ammonia oxidizing archaea, one of the most abundant types of microorganisms on Earth, to produce nitrous oxide, a potent and long-lasting greenhouse gas.
Voters care if they’re better off than before the last election — but also about incumbent politicians’ intentions, Cornell research finds.
Weill Cornell Medicine
Lipid accumulation in a murine model of fatty liver disease, visualized by color-enhanced lipid droplets (pink) in liver tissue (green). Superimposed chemical structure of a newly discovered bile acid conjugate.
Beneficial gut microbes and the body work together to fine-tune fat metabolism and cholesterol levels, according to a new preclinical study by investigators from Weill Cornell Medicine and the Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell’s Ithaca campus.
Cornell chemists and nanofabrication experts have joined forces to create a 2 millimeter-wide, wireless, light-activated device to simplify electrochemistry for broad use.
Barry Banfield Adams, professor of literatures of English emeritus in the College of Arts and Sciences, died Dec. 31 at home in Brooktondale, New York. He was 89.
