Serge Petchenyi/Cornell University
Students in Rhonda Gilmore's studio course present their plans of a redesigned Cornell classroom. Gilmore will present this project as an example of engaged learning at "What Works" on Oct. 1.
The Center for Teaching Innovation will host “What Works,” on Oct. 1, featuring presentations, the Canvas Course Spotlight awardees, and a poster showcase that will demonstrate engaged learning approaches from Cornell faculty teaching in a diverse range of courses and fields.
Journalist and biographer Sam Tanenhaus will share his writing expertise with the Cornell community in a master class, “Op-Eds and Narrative Storytelling, on Oct. 8 in Lewis Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall.
Ryan Young/Cornell University
Nobel-winning economist Claudia Goldin '67 delivered the 2025 George Staller Lecture to a packed audience in Rockefeller Hall’s Schwartz Auditorium on Sept. 25.
Claudia Goldin '67 used data to paint a picture of the "tremendous" progress of the U.S. women’s movement, as well as the forces that have prevented women from reaping the benefits of their rights.
Levan Ramishvili/Public Domain
William F. Buckley (right) with then-President Richard Nixon at the White House in 1969.
Journalist Sam Tanenhaus will share insights gained from 20 years of investigation in “The Man Who Built a Movement: How William F. Buckley Invented Modern Conservatism,” a conversation with A&S Dean Peter John Loewen, on Oct. 9.
Jason Koski/Cornell University
Monti Wilkins, left, director of Morrison Hall, and Jesse Wright, an artist and Ithaca High School teacher, talk after a section of tableaux dedicated to Toni Morrison was installed in Morrison Hall. Hanging near an image of Morrison, this painting on wood panels features Ithaca High senior London Smith, whose blue sunglasses reference Morrison’s novel, “The Bluest Eye.”
High schoolers from Ithaca and Brooklyn produced the artworks depicting Morrison and a local student, a collaboration that promises to introduce Morrison's work to new generations of New Yorkers.
Physics professor Natasha Holmes is sharing what she's learned about best practices in physics labs with physics faculty and instructors nationwide through The Introductory Physics Lab Institute.
In a threatening situation, the world looks more dangerous when caring for an infant, finds new research that used a virtual baby to explore parenting dynamics.
Historian Peidong Sun began her new book “Unfiltered Regard for China: French Perspectives from Mao to Xi” amid profound personal upheaval: An exit ban from China and a move to France.
Emr and collaborator Wesley Sundquist are recognized for their breakthrough discoveries in the cellular mechanisms of receptor membrane protein transport and degradation.
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As part of her Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, Phoebe Dailey Wagner, M.P.S. ’24, visited Niraj Bahugunaji, whose family has lived in their home near the temple grounds of Lakha Mandal in India for more than 300 years.
Nozomi Ando, professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a Schmidt Polymath, part of a global cohort of eight scientists and engineers who will each receive up to $2.5 million over five years.
A new study provides an example of asymmetry, a pattern found throughout biology where a pair of organs or appendages that mirror each other have different proportions and may have different functions.
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With support from Cornell Atkinson, students conducted fieldwork at an experimental cattle ranch in Florida, studying how plant structures influence methane transport and how deep soil layers affect methane production.
With support from Cornell Atkinson, graduate students mentored undergraduates to conduct summer research on methane mitigation, food security and climate forecasting.
Eelco Böhtlingk/Unsplash
Memorial at Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, Israel. December 2018
There’s no place like home — and even when state-by-state income tax disparities make it profitable to move, high-wage earners seem to agree, according to new Cornell-led research.
Cornell's 2025–26 Fulbrighters, including several A&S alumni and students, will conduct research, study and teach English in Canada, France, Honduras, India, Jamaica, the Netherlands, Norway and Taiwan. Most will be on site by October.
In “Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide that Threatens Democracy,” Cornell government scholars Suzanne Mettler and Trevor Brown share findings from their study of data spanning five decades and all 3,143 U.S. counties plus interviews with people in several states.
Cornell researchers have uncovered the "three-tailed" fat molecule's surprising role in cellular survival: protecting against damage when oxygen runs out.
Robert Barker/Cornell University file photo
Martin Hatch in 2015
Martin F. Hatch Jr., Ph.D. ’80, professor of music emeritus in the College of Arts and Sciences, died Aug. 23 in Ithaca, New York. He was 83.
NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI)
Provided The Earth-size exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 e, depicted at the lower right, is silhouetted as it passes in front of its flaring host star in this artist’s concept of the TRAPPIST-1 system.
TRAPPIST-1 e may have an atmosphere that could support having liquid water on the planet’s surface in the form of a global ocean or icy surface, according to new research.
Cornell Athletics
Ken Dryden ’69 was one of the greatest goalies in NHL history.
Ken Dryden ’69, the legendary Cornell men’s hockey goaltender who still holds the program record for career wins (76) and backstopped the Big Red to its first national championship in 1967, died of cancer Sept. 5.
Amanda Hatcher
A crowd of students listens to alum Dan Cane '98 talk about the companies he's founded during an entrepreneurship kickoff event Sept. 4.
Niko Tsavekou ’27, an economics major in the College of Arts & Sciences, won the pitch contest for Katha, a creatine-enhanced coconut water recovery drink he created with two friends.
Naia Andrade/Provided
Ethan Duvall, an inaugural Semlitz Family Sustainability Fellow, co-founded a nonprofit in the Ecuadorian Amazon to strengthen green economic opportunities.
Ethan Duvall, an inaugural Semlitz Family Sustainability Fellow, has launched a nonprofit aimed at protecting biodiversity and culture in the Amazon Rainforest.
Jean Frantz Blackall, a Cornell faculty member from 1958-94 who in 1971 became the first woman to receive tenure in what was then the Department of English, in the College of Arts and Sciences, died July 15 in Williamsburg, Virginia. She was 97.
A four-day event featuring films, panels, workshops, the unveiling of a mural and other activities will celebrate the 70th anniversary of her degree, life and work. “Toni Morrison: Literature and Public Life” will take place Sept. 18-21.
Best-selling writer and technology blogger Cory Doctorow will make the A.D. White Professor-at-Large program’s second dual-campus visit, ending his week at Cornell Tech in New York City. Four other professors will visit Cornell this fall.
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.
Maimonides, one of the most significant intellectual figures of the medieval period,worked as a physician, thought like a scientist, and served as a leader of the Jewish community in Cairo.
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.
Wiesner Group/Provided
A copolymer-inorganic nanoparticle ink is deposited during the 3D printing process, where it self-assembles before being heat-treated into a crystalline superconductor.
Nearly a decade after they first demonstrated that soft materials could guide the formation of superconductors, Cornell researchers have achieved a one-step, 3D printing method that produces superconductors with record properties.
Proactive outreach and Cornell’s tradition of supporting military service have helped grow the number of cadets and midshipmen joining the Tri-Service Brigade this year.
Rachel Foster/Provided
Allison Rittershaus at the Anthropology Collaboratory in the basement of Olin Library
The celebration also features a welcome speech at 12:15 p.m. by Elaine L. Westbrooks, Carl A. Kroch University Librarian, and open houses for the new Anthropology Collaboratory and Library Map Collection.
Grant Farred, a professor in the Africana Studies and Research Center, chronicles his love for both a distant and a local sports team in “A Sports Odyssey: My Ithaca Journal,” published July 25 by Temple University Press.
Ryan Young/Cornell University
Lisa Kaltenegger, director of the Carl Sagan Institute, in the Space Sciences Building.
Matthew Velasco argues that the reduction of head shape to a marker of ethnic identity has been a colonial invention.
Jason Koski/Cornell University
Margaret Rossiter, the Marie Underhill Noll Emerita Professor of the History of Science in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Margaret Rossiter, the Marie Underhill Noll Emerita Professor of the History of Science in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and known worldwide for her studies of the history of women in science, died Aug. 3. She was 81.
Cornell chemistry researchers have designed a light-powered, reusable catalyst that’s pre-charged by electricity and capable of driving challenging reactions, with applications including drug development and environmental clean-up.
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.”
“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.
Antonio Fernandez-Ruiz, assistant professor and Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded a biomedical sciences grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.
The David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement awarded nine grants to a diverse array of projects that connect classroom learning with hands-on collaboration.
Tenbergen/Creative Commons license 4.0
A sun dog and 22 degree halo appearing over Winnipeg, Canada. Sun dogs and other visual effects occur when icy crystals in Earth’s atmosphere align in certain ways; Cornell astronomers predict that similar effects can appear when starlight interacts with quartz crystals in exoplanet atmospheres.
The newest episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features Meredith Oppenheim ‘95, founder of Vitality Society and now a strategic advisor in the senior housing space.
Cornell government scholars have been tracking democracy's erosion in various regions – including the United States.
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Gina Fu ’28, a statistics and economics major in the College of Arts and Sciences and vice president of the Cornell Table Tennis Club, competes at the College Table Tennis National Championships in April.
A grant from the Ono Pharma Breakthrough Science Initiative, which supports bold new ideas in science, will help Cornell researchers study how chemical modifications to proteins play a powerful role in cell survival.
Cornell’s Student Machine Shop at the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics (LASSP), students have access to industry-standard equipment and expert guidance: “We have users from physics, chemistry, architecture, engineering, physical education — you name it.”
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.
Orion Smedley
Lead author Thow Min Jerald Cham, M.S. ’21, Ph.D. ’24 at work in the laboratory.
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.
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.
Cornell researchers are applying a theory about the movement of electrons 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.