The Spitzer Space Telescope – with its Cornell-developed infrared spectrograph instrument – has been peering through murky cosmic dust to study the distant heavens for 16 years. Originally scheduled to last 2.5 years, the mission officially will end Jan. 30.Spitzer was the final mission of NASA’s Great Observatories program. The infrared spectrograph portion of the mission ended in 2010.
Maria Cristina Garcia, the Howard A. Newman Professor of American Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Anthony Burrow, associate professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology, have won the inaugural Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, Teaching and Service Through Diversity.
Six of the world’s most promising early-career scholars will pursue leading-edge research projects across the sciences, social sciences and humanities during three-year terms.
In research, documents and artifacts must be discoverable online to have the broadest impact. Continuing to recognize this need, the Grants Program for Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences is now in its 11th year of funding projects to create digital collections that are accessible to all researchers.
Elizabeth H. Kellogg, assistant professor of molecular biology and genetics in the College of Arts and Sciences, considers herself an explorer. She devises and refines techniques for looking at the unmapped terrain within cells so she can discover molecular structures so small they are challenging to detect – yet essential to understanding cell function.
Kate Manne, associate professor of philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences, has won the 2019 American Philosophical Association’s Book Prize for her first book, “Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny.”The biennial prize is awarded in odd years for the best published book written by a younger philosophy scholar.
Soraya Nadia McDonald, cultural critic for The Undefeated, a website that explores the intersection of race, sports and culture, has been named winner of the 2019-20 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism.
Isaac Kramnick, the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government Emeritus, a renowned scholar of English and American political thought and history, and a longtime champion of undergraduate education, died Dec. 21 in New York City. Kramnick was 81.Cornell President Martha E. Pollack said Kramnick was “a beloved Cornellian; a teacher and leader who, in his time at Cornell, touched the lives of generations of students, faculty and staff.”
Five Cornell faculty members have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society.
“Action to alleviate the impact of warming oceans is a priority, but understanding the role of pollutants in coral disease and mortality gives us more options for solutions.”
“Workplace Rankings,” a new episode of the “What Makes Us Human?” podcast series, explores power and status in the workplace. The podcast’s fifth season – “What Do We Know about Inequality?” – showcases the newest thinking across academic disciplines about inequality.
… Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) fellowships from the U.S. Department of Education.The prestigious fellowships, managed at Cornell by the Mario Einaudi Center … Baik to China. … Two doctoral students win Fulbright-Hays fellowships …
Acclaimed writer James McConkey, the Goldwin Smith Professor of English Literature Emeritus and mentor to young writers at Cornell for nearly four decades, died Oct. 24, 2019 at his home in Enfield. He was 98.
The Cornell Center for Advanced Computing (CAC) is among 10 collaborators awarded a $2.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop the concept for a Scalable Cyberinfrastructure Institute for Multi-Messenger Astrophysics.Adam Brazier, a computational scientist with CAC, is the technical lead on the project, which is being led by the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
Cornell professor Benjamin Piekut’s latest book is an exhaustive study of an experimental British group that blurred the lines between genres as it created captivating music.
There’s a structural avalanche waiting inside that box of Rice Krispies on the supermarket shelf. Cornell researchers are now closer to understanding how those structures behave – and in some cases, behave unusually.
New cellular and molecular processes underlying communication between gut microbes and brain cells have been described for the first time by scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell’s Ithaca campus.
Lehmann and Klinck sounded out two other Cornell scientists – associate professor of entomology Kyle Wickings and assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering Greg McLaskey – to join in a project to listen to the Earth. Wickings is the principal investigator on “Sounds of Soil,” a project to develop inexpensive acoustic sensors to detect, monitor and study populations of soil-dwelling organisms – in particular, disruptive insects that feed on roots, affecting both plant and soil health. The project received a Venture Fund grant from the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability in June 2018.
Cornell researchers have put a new spin on measuring and controlling spins in nickel oxide, with an eye toward improving electronic devices’ speed and memory capacity.
Cornell has recognized eight members of the faculty for excellence in teaching undergraduate students and contributions to undergraduate education at the university.The Stephen H. Weiss Awards were announced Oct. 18 by President Martha E. Pollack in a report to the Cornell University Board of Trustees. The eight awardees were unanimously recommended by a selection committee composed of six faculty members and two students, who considered 37 distinguished nominees in all.
CIVIC (Critical Inquiry into Values, Imagination and Culture), the provost’s Radical Collaboration initiative focused on the humanities and the arts, is halfway toward its goal of 10 new faculty.
Cornell University Library’s Grants Program for Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences transforms fragile artifacts into lasting online collections for teaching and research. This year, the program has awarded funding to five projects representing a range of study, from unearthing a vanished hamlet in Enfield Falls, New York, to examining modern art in Indonesia.
Harold Bloom ’51, a bestselling literary critic and a friend to many of Cornell’s English faculty over the years, died Oct. 14 in New Haven, Connecticut. A longtime professor of English at Yale University, Bloom was 89.
With students and faculty representing 116 countries on a campus in Ithaca, New York – a sanctuary city since 2017 – Cornell is a crossroads for global mobility. This year’s Lund Critical Debate explores another contact zone for migration and exchange: the U.S.-Mexico border.
