Knowing what to study and having the necessary skills to succeed are students’ main course-related concerns early in introductory STEM classes, according to a new study co-led by Cornell researchers – findings that Cornell faculty are now working to address.
Nearly 4,000 miles separate Cornell’s campus in Ithaca, New York, from Petange, Luxembourg, yet they are linked through the achievements and wartime exploits of a World War II soldier, 2nd Lt. Hyman Josefson ’29, J.D. ’31. Once the “unknown soldier,” Josefson is venerated in Petange as a symbol of the heroism and sacrifice of all American soldiers, and recognized as the first U.S. soldier to die for the liberation of Luxembourg.
As a first-generation college student whose family – refugees from Indonesia – arrived in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, when he was only a year old, Malikul Muhamad ’20 credits his teachers and professors with helping him chart a successful course through uncertainty and new experiences.
Making art addresses “the emotions of the times,” said Helena Maria Viramontes, director of the Creative Writing Program. “We should ‘speak, so that we can heal.’”
Aparajita Majumdar, Ph.D. candidate in the field of history, spent six hours last summer hiking through the Khasi hills of eastern India to find one of the region’s famed living root bridges. Ana Ozaki, Ph.D. candidate in the field of history of architecture and urban development, befriended her cab driver in Maputo, Mozambique, while investigating how race and climate meet in that country’s architecture.
So-called “white lies” – telling a spouse you like their sub-par cooking, or praising a friend’s unflattering haircut – serve a purpose. But they can cause problems in the workplace, where honest feedback, even when it’s negative, is important.
After examining a dozen types of suns and a roster of planet surfaces, Cornell astronomers have developed a practical model – an environmental color “decoder” – to tease out climate clues for potentially habitable exoplanets in galaxies far away.
The COVID-19 pandemic is keeping people apart, but Cornell students showed that despite physical distancing they can still make meaningful local, regional and global connections.
The Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) will partially restart operations in June to conduct research related to treatment of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
Spring 2020 was a semester like no other. Over the course of a few weeks, thousands of classes – lectures and seminars, laboratory and performance courses, capstone projects and veterinary clinics – transitioned entirely online. Instructors navigated technical and logistical difficulties, as well as the shifting realities of a global pandemic. But amid the challenges, students and faculty found opportunities for innovation, connection and intellectual growth.
Historian Barry Strauss, who specializes in ancient and military history, notes that plagues and epidemics have often been linked to wars. The current pandemic will accelerate the use of computer models and big data in the field of history; however, he says, COVID-19 has taught us that models are only as good as the assumptions on which they’re based.
This summer, the Cornell in Washington program is offering undergraduates a chance to study COVID-19’s effects on the economy, politics and social policy through the eyes of politicians and policymakers working directly on the crisis response.
The proliferation of medical misinformation on social media and the human experience of social distancing are among the pandemic-related topics to be studied with Rapid Response Fund grants from the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.
Witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust and other acts of genocide are dwindling in numbers, but their faces and voices will live on through Cornell University Library’s recently acquired permanent access to USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive (VHA).
Cornell thought leaders discussed the balance between public health and economic health, and the role government plays in finding a path forward during this worldwide crisis.
Beloved emeritus professor and scholar David Bathrick, who taught theater arts, German studies and Jewish studies at Cornell for 20 years, died April 30 at his home in Bremen, Germany. He was 84. Bathrick taught and inspired countless students and colleagues over a colorful and successful career in his chosen fields.
Raven Schwam-Curtis ’20 had seen the coronavirus coming: She visited China and South Korea on a research trip over winter break, when the first cases were being reported there. But she was still confronted with financial and emotional disruption when the pandemic forced Cornell to abruptly suspend classes in mid-March and switch to remote learning April 6, following spring break.
Before the Ithaca campus closed in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, members of Cornell’s Asian American community enjoyed strong connections to each other.
In February, Longsha Liu ’21 was well aware that COVID-19 was coursing through China and around the world. His mother had been giving him regular updates about the virus’s spread in China, where most of his immediate family live – including his 77-year old grandmother, who continued to practice as a physician.
Doctoral students Sri Lakshmi Sravani Devarakonda and Cheyenne Peltier have been named winners of the 2019-20 Cornelia Ye Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award.
The monumental scroll stretches nearly 60 yards around the Bartels Gallery in the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art – an immersive calligraphy experience by Tong Yang-Tze, one of Taiwan’s foremost calligraphers working today. The scroll’s subject – and title – is “Immortal at the River,” referencing a poem by 16th century Chinese poet Yang Shen.
The next generation of powerful Earth- and space-based telescopes will be able to hunt distant solar systems for evidence of life on Earth-like exoplanets – particularly those that chaperone burned-out stars known as white dwarfs. The chemical properties of those far-off worlds could indicate that life exists there. To help future scientists make sense of what their telescopes are showing them, Cornell astronomers have developed a spectral field guide for these rocky worlds.
Rachel Beatty Riedl, an expert in international studies, says Africa is the first place to look for an effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic, given Africa’s success in dealing with the Ebola virus.
Historian Lawrence Glickman says the simultaneous public health disaster and economic meltdown may lead us to rethink the country’s values. However, “given … how rare it is for fundamental transformations to happen, my money would be on this pandemic not fundamentally altering our basic structures of society,” he says.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers hopes to shape Congress’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic and encourage a less divisive – and more productive – climate in Washington, a pair of members said during a Cornell forum April 23.
Two 21st-century works for recorder and orchestra by Cornell faculty composers are included in a recent feature by New York City classical radio station WQXR.
Cancer cells not only ravage the body – they also compete with each other.Cornell mathematicians are using game theory to model how this competition could be leveraged, so cancer treatment – which also takes a toll on the patient’s body – might be administered more sparingly, with maximized effect.
After spotting a curious pattern in scientific papers – they described exoplanets as being cooler than expected – Cornell astronomers have improved a mathematical model to accurately gauge the temperatures of planets from solar systems hundreds of light-years away.
Political scientist Gustavo A. Flores-Macías compares the economic consequences of COVID-19 to the 2008-09 recession. The pandemic, he says, will result in a poorer and more unequal U.S. society, and it highlights the importance of solutions that require collaboration across borders.
Interdisciplinary scholar Noliwe Rooks discusses how people curate their home spaces, now that much of work and school is conducted from home via video conferencing. The pandemic has also underlined our need for human contact, she says. Rooks is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Literature in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Aaron Sachs, professor of history in the College of Arts and Sciences, nearly dropped out of graduate school because he found the assigned reading lifeless.
Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences and director of the Carl Sagan Institute, will give the Fred Kavli Plenary Lecture on June 1 at the American Astronomical Society virtual meeting.
Jamila Michener, assistant professor of government in the College of Arts and Sciences, discusses COVID-19 and potential changes in the role of the federal government. The pandemic may prompt people to re-examine investments in institutions, such as the public health system, on which we now rely, she says. Disinvestments in these institutions include the steady closure of rural hospitals for the past five years, she says.
Theologians once pondered how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Not to be outdone, Cornell researchers who build nanoscale electronics have developed microsensors so tiny, they can fit 30,000 on one side of a penny.
Social distancing measures to stop the spread of COVID-19 canceled the last two shows of the spring 2020 Cornell Concert Series, challenging organizers to connect performers with fans in new ways.
How long will it take to develop a vaccine for COVID-19? And how quickly can it be scaled up to inoculate everyone?With lives and livelihoods on pause, Cornell’s Institute of Politics and Global Affairs hosted a TeleTown Hall April 8 to explore these questions.
Most experts agree that state-sponsored hackers in Russia are trying to use the internet to infiltrate the U.S. electrical grid and sabotage elections.And yet internet security teams in the U.S. and Europe actively seek to cooperate with their Russian counterparts, setting aside some of their differences and focusing on the issues where they can establish mutual trust.
Eric Rebillard, the Avalon Foundation Professor of the Humanities in the Department of Classics, in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a 2020 fellow by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.A historian of early Christianity and late antiquity, Rebillard is one of 175 writers, artists, scholars and scientists awarded the Guggenheim fellowship this year, selected from nearly 3,000 applicants.
