First-of-their-kind observations beneath the floating shelf of a vulnerable Antarctic glacier reveal widespread cracks and crevasses where melting occurs more rapidly, contributing to the Florida-sized glacier’s retreat and potentially to sea-level rise, according to a Cornell research team and international collaborators.
Deploying the remotely operated Icefin underwater robot through a…
Assistant professors Eshan Chattopadhyay, Debanjan Chowdhury, Andrew Musser, Angeline Pendergrass and Andrej Singer have won 2023 Sloan Research Fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
The fellowships, established in 1955, support early-career faculty members’ original research and education related to science, technology, mathematics and economics.
Chowdhury is in the Department…
Collab Media/Unsplash
Milner's project aims to use renewable electricity to achieve low-cost capture of methane from various streams, including landfills.
Phillip Milner, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, is on a project team that won a grant for their research related to methane capture.
Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA), the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and ClimateWorks Foundation made awards to seven cross-disciplinary teams of early career scientists in the third year…
Most of us like to think there are hard and fast rules about morality. Certain actions are obviously wrong, we argue. But consider the following scenario: A criminal holds a gun to a man’s head and says that the man must kill his neighbor or be killed himself. Under threat, the man goes ahead and kills his neighbor. Should he be held responsible for what he did, considering that he had no choice?…
NASA/Dartmouth/Alexa Halford/Creative Commons license 2.0
A high altitude research balloon, launching in 2015
Several unidentified flying objects were shot down over the U.S. and Canada over the weekend. Countries have long used balloons to extend intelligence collection though more sophisticated technologies have replaced them in recent years.
Paul Lushenko is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and senior policy fellow at Cornell University’s Tech Policy Lab. He discusses several potential…
Kim Montpelier ‘24, Austin Manning ‘24 and Shanzai Ikhlas ‘24 have been selected for 2023 Harry Caplan Travel Fellowships through the classics department in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Montpelier, a classics and philosophy major, will participate in an immersive German program at the Goethe-Institut in Berlin. Her research focuses on the influence of Stoicism on the 17th century…
Provided
Poem from an 1827 edition of Freedom's Journal
The Cornell Department of Music in the College of Arts and Sciences and A.D. White Professors-at-Large program welcome internationally acclaimed and five-time GRAMMY Award-winning soprano Dawn Upshaw when she performs Maria Schneiders’ “Winter Morning Walks” on Friday, Feb. 24, at 7 p.m. in Barnes Hall.
Guest artist Scott Robinson (saxophonist-clarinetist)…
In December 2021, President Biden warned President Vladimir Putin of Russia that any incursion into Ukrainian territory would entail “economic consequences like none he has ever seen,” wrote Nicholas Mulder, assistant professor of history and Milstein Faculty Fellow, in a New York Times guest essay.
“America and its European allies followed through on this threat with the largest scale…
Sunghoon Kim
As the experimentalists changed the electric field, it is likely that different parts of the material underwent the metal-to-insulator transition at different values of the electric field because of a small number of inherent imperfections. Consequently, the flowing electrons must find a path through these “islands” of insulating regions, embedded in a “sea” of metal.
There are stark differences between metals, through which electrons flow freely, and electrical insulators, in which electrons are essentially immobile. And despite the obvious difficulties in finding a way to switch back and forth from a metal to an insulator within one material, physicists are trying to figure out how.
“Say you want to put billions of circuit elements on a tiny chip and…
During his State of the Union address, President Joe Biden called for a focus on police reform as seven additional Memphis police employees fall under investigation for the death of Tyre Nichols.
Joseph Margulies, attorney and professor of government at Cornell University, says that while President Biden was right to call for police accountability, we all share responsibility for the police…
Nuria Rodríguez/Provided
Fieldwork and sampling in Tirez lagoon, central Spain, when the lagoon was still active (left) and after drought and desiccation, with only salt crusts remaining (right).
The ongoing search for signs of life on Mars relies in part on terrestrial analogs – places on Earth closely resembling the past or current geology and climate of the red planet that can be readily explored.
A new study proposes to focus on another method: “time-resolved analogs,” which are dynamic analogous Earth environments where changes can be analyzed over many years. Alberto G…
White guests favor Airbnb properties with white hosts, but are more inclined to rent from Black or Asian hosts if they see featured reviews from previous white guests, new research co-authored by Cornell scholars finds.
The research suggests that sharing-economy platforms may be able to algorithmically harness racial bias in responses to recommendations to reduce racial inequality in…
John Marston
The researchers scrutinized tree ring samples recovered from the Midas Mound Tumulus at Gordion, a human-made 53-meter-tall structure located west of Ankara, Turkey.
The collapse of the Hittite Empire in the Late Bronze Age has been blamed on various factors, from war with other territories to internal strife. Now, an interdisciplinary collaboration used tree ring and isotope records to pinpoint a more likely – and prescient – culprit: three straight years of severe drought in an already dry period.
The group’s paper, “Severe Multi-Year Drought Coincident…
Provided
Isaac Kramnick at a sanatorium where he was treated for rheumatic fever.
"I never felt burdened by the hell that was my early life, or if I did, I repressed it,” Isaac Kramnick writes in his memoir. “Repression and denial, when they work, can be effective coping mechanisms, the backbone of resiliency.”
A renowned scholar of political thought and history, Kramnick, who passed away in December 2019, served on the Cornell faculty for more than 45 years.
At the…
Jason Koski/Cornell University
Coronavirus testing site at Fischell Band Center in 2020
“The next pandemic could be just around the corner,” says the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and the world is “dangerously unprepared.” On Feb. 20, David Shmoys of Cornell and Jay Bhattacharyas of Stanford will discuss what we’ve learned, and can apply, about the successes and failures of the policy responses to Covid‑19 in “The pandemic: What we got right,…
Vinson Cunningham, a theatre critic at The New Yorker magazine, has been named winner of the 2021-22 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism.
The award committee praised Cunningham for his “lucid, lyrical, and evocative prose, through which he draws his readers into the performance moments he chronicles.” The committee said it was equally struck by his cogent remarks on art, politics,…
Akimasa Ihara ’23 is one of 100 students from four countries chosen for a new fellowship that will provide $50,000 toward his graduate school education.
Ihara, a physics major, has focused his research on experimental quantum computing, a technology he says has the potential to solve some of the world’s biggest problems, from climate change to disease.
“We don’t know the applications of…
Two Arts & Sciences alumni — Kamillah Knight ’13, MPA ’15, MBA ’22 and Julia Buffington ’14 —are among the winners of the inaugural Robert S. Harrison ’76 Recent Alumni Volunteer Awards.
The awards celebrate the service of a new generation of alumni volunteers and honor Harrison’s long-standing commitment to Cornell. Harrison served as a student trustee from 1975 to 1976, launching what…
From antiquity through about 20 years ago, historians were invisible in their writing. Thucydides, for example, did not give his own testimony when writing about the Peloponnesian Wars in the fifth century, B.C., despite having participated as an Athenian general.
“He wanted to write as a historian and reconstruct the conflict through objective description of the facts, an approach that…
LCPL Matthew J. Anderson/USAF
US Marine Corps personnel on the Philippine Marine Corps Base
The United States is expanding its presence in Southeast Asia with an agreement to establish four bases in the Philippines, as part of an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). The move is widely viewed as a means to deter China’s influence in the region.
Tom Pepinsky is a professor of government and director of the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University. Pepinsky says the…
New York Representative George Santos has told GOP colleagues that he is temporarily stepping back from his congressional committee assignments as he faces multiple investigations.
Steve Israel, professor of government and policy at Cornell University and a former congressman, can speak to the ramifications for Santos’ constituents. He says most of the hard work is done in committees.
…
Looking beyond the sculptures, pottery, and architectural ruins of the Graeco-Roman era in this year’s annual Society for the Humanities Invitational Lecture, art historian Verity Platt will present her research on a valuable but unexpected object of ancient natural history: the humble sea sponge.
Platt, professor of classics and the history of art and visual studies in the College of Arts and…
Provided
Ingabire visited the Opera Garnier in Paris.
Students throughout the university are flocking back to international travel opportunities now that COVID restrictions are easing a bit around the world. Those interested in studying abroad next fall or for the 2023-2024 academic year are prepping applications for a March 1 deadline, while deadlines are fast approaching for summer study abroad and other travel programs.
“We are thrilled…
Jason Koski/Cornell University
Cornell's Arts Quad
Ten exceptional early-career scholars will join the College of Arts and Sciences this year as recipients of Klarman Postdoctoral Fellowships, enabling them to pursue leading-edge research in the sciences, social sciences and humanities.
The fourth cohort of Klarman Fellows is the largest since the program’s launch in 2019, thanks to significant additional support from Seth Klarman ’79 and Beth…
Alex Nik Pasqualini, a Ph.D student in the music department in the College of Arts and Sciences, will give a talk as part of the Soup & Hope series on Feb. 23 at noon in Sage Chapel. Their talk will be about how they turned toward learning and education in some of life's most challenging moments.
Pasqualini’s research is focused on the intersections of popular music, activism and queer…
Provided
Richard Gottfried '68 speaking on the Assembly floor
When Richard Gottfried ’68 first joined the New York State Assembly, another Richard—Nixon—was in the White House. He’d go on to hold his seat continuously for 52 years, serving under nine governors. Retired in December 2022, Gottfried now boasts the all-time record for New York State legislative service—and is one of the longest-sitting politicians in U.S. history.
A progressive Democrat who…
New York Times best-selling author Ross Gay will kickstart the Spring 2023 Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series on Thurs., Feb. 9 at 5 p.m. in the Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, G70 Klarman Hall. A poet and essayist, Gay will read from his most recent collection of essays, “Inciting Joy” and other works. The Reading Series is sponsored by the Creative Writing Program in the Department of…
The construction of the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST, pronounced “feast”) being developed by CCAT Observatory Inc. , an international consortium of universities led by Cornell, is drawing closer to an end.
Work is poised to begin on a defining feature of the telescope, the “elevation” part that supports the upper structure and will contain the telescope’s mirrors. Unlike almost any…
In response to a spate of recent layoffs in the tech industry, Arts & Sciences Career Development is offering a free online session Thursday for students interested in finding internships and jobs in the tech sector.
“Finding a CS Internship Beyond Big Tech” is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Feb. 2. Students can sign up for the virtual event on Cornell’s Handshake platform.
“Students are…
Cornell University photo
A 2005 photo shows McGraw Hall and the Arts Quad from the air.
The College of Arts and Sciences has embarked upon a $110 million transformation of McGraw Hall, with several Cornell families pledging more than $40 million in foundational gifts to enable the comprehensive renovation.
“McGraw Hall is a treasured icon at the heart of Cornell’s campus and a centerpiece of Cornell’s history,” said Ray Jayawardhana, the Harold Tanner Dean of Arts and…
A seminal fluid protein transferred from male to female fruit flies during mating changes the expression of genes related to the fly’s circadian clock, Cornell research has found.
A seminal fluid protein transferred from male to female fruit flies during mating changes the expression of genes related to the fly’s circadian clock, an innovative technique has revealed.
The finding, published Jan. 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could help explain how this protein, called sex peptide, alters the female’s behavior.
Post-mating, sex peptide…
Project Kei/Creative Commons license 4.0
A quadcopter drone
Iranian officials claim Israel was behind a weekend drone strike on a defense factory. The attack comes as tensions between Iran and the West are growing over Tehran’s advancing nuclear program, ongoing crackdown on peaceful anti-government protests, and the supply of arms for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Paul Lushenko is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, senior policy fellow at Cornell…
Ross Brann, the Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Judeo-Islamic Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, has been elected a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in recognition of his distinguished scholarly contributions to medieval studies.
Brann will be inducted during the academy’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 25.
The Medieval…
New Cornell research is providing a fresh view into the ways a common chemotherapy agent, etoposide, stalls and poisons the essential enzymes that allow cancer cells to flourish.
The findings, from the lab of Michelle Wang, the James Gilbert White Distinguished Professor of the Physical Sciences and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in the College of Arts and Sciences, will…
In radio broadcasts and in leaflets dropped from warplanes during World War II, U.S. and British air forces announced their status as liberators to “amici italiani” – Italian friends – on the ground.
“We do not want to bomb you, we are not fighting with you, we only want peace,” one leaflet read.
And yet, two-thirds of the 60,000 Italian civilian victims of Allied bombing were killed after…
Cornell University file photo
Famed Cornell astronomer Peter Gierasch, seen here in 1979, died Jan. 20 in Ithaca. He was 82.
Peter Gierasch, a Cornell astronomer whose mathematical models unveiled the turbulent vortices, tempestuous eddies and atmospheric tumult arising on other worlds – long before spacecraft could consistently prove it with images – died Jan. 20 in Ithaca. He was 82.
Gierasch, a professor emeritus of astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences, contributed to a wealth of knowledge on the…
Meta will be reinstating former president Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks with what the company calls “new guardrails” to deter repeat offenses. The following Cornell University experts are available to discuss the news.
Alexandra Cirone, assistant professor of government and expert on the spread of disinformation online, says Facebook is still struggling to…
George Baird/Creative Commons license 3.0
Michelle Yeoh at the Cannes Festival in 2017
On Tuesday, as the Academy released its picks for Oscars contenders, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” clearly lead the pack with 11 awards nominations.
Kristen Warner, associate professor of performing and media arts at Cornell University, studies racial representation and employment in the creative media industries. She warns while it may seem like diversity has arrived in Hollywood, that…
Torbjørn Kjosvold for the Norwegian Military Media Archive/Forsvarets Mediearkiv
A Leopard 2 A4 NO tank from Telemark Battalion Tank Squadron 1 in a training area outside Camp Rena.
Ukraine has asked Germany to send Leopard 2 tanks to help it break through Russian lines and recapture territory. The Leopard 2 offers significant advantages over the older, Soviet-era tanks currently in service with both the Russian and Ukrainian armies.
David Silbey, associate professor of history at Cornell University and director of teaching and learning at Cornell in Washington,…
Ryan Young/Cornell University
Doctoral student Shikhar Prakash, right, and Madhur Srivastava, assistant research professor in chemistry and chemical biology, work at a white board in the Physical Sciences Building.
Extreme weather and changing patterns of electricity use have led to blackouts and unpredictable utility bills across the nation.
To address that unpredictability, Cornell researchers are piloting a new payment plan and an app that would provide consumers with more information about their energy use and incentives to reduce use, while also allowing utility companies to respond more nimbly in…
Prominent new media executive and veteran journalist Andrew Morse ’96 has been named the Zubrow Distinguished Visiting Journalist (DVJ) Fellow in the College of Arts and Sciences for spring 2023.
A former senior leader at CNN, Bloomberg and ABC News, Morse was recently appointed president and publisher of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, to lead the digital transformation of the…
Historian Robert Travers has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant to work on his newest book, a deeper look at the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings from 1787-1795.
Travers, professor of history in the College of Arts and Sciences, has long been curious about the British empire in India. Hastings, who rose through the ranks of the East India Company and served as the…
irina island images
Peter Enns, professor of government and public policy in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, speaks to a Cornell Tech audience about the Collaborative Midterm Survey.
An innovative Cornell-led survey paints a comprehensive picture of what Americans were thinking on Election Day in 2022 – and advances the science of surveys.
Key findings include that nearly half of white Americans recognize that the deck remains stacked against Black Americans. One out of four Americans think parents should decide whether their kids buckle up. And a majority of Americans…
Patrick Shanahan
As a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in chemistry and chemical biology, Richard Kong develops catalysts to guide chemical reactions toward desired outcomes, including some that could have a positive effect on the environment.
The Klarman Postdoctoral Fellowship program in the College of Arts and Sciences has been expanded to 10 fellows per cohort, effective immediately, and extended by five years, thanks to additional significant support from Seth Klarman ’79 and Beth Schultz Klarman.
“The Klarman Fellowships have surpassed our highest expectations, and I am most grateful to Seth and Beth for their visionary and…
Ever since John DeWitt Warner 1872 headed to Washington, D.C., in 1891 to serve as a representative from NYC, dozens of Cornellians have held seats in Congress, including five in the Senate and more than 50 in the House.
There are seven alumni in the 118th Congress. It is a modern Big Red high eclipsed only by the 112th Congress (2011–13), which included not only seven alums in the House, but…
The research of Geoffry Coates (center) is recognized to be at the forefront of innovation in the development high-performance sustainable materials.
Chemist Geoffrey W. Coates will receive the 2023 National Academy of Sciences Award for the Industrial Application of Science. The award, which includes a $25,000 prize, will be presented during the NAS 160th Annual Meeting on April 30.
“Coates’ research is recognized globally to be at the forefront of innovation in the development high-performance sustainable materials. It embodies how…
Noël Heaney/Cornell University
Dombrowski displays one of his hundreds of TikToks.
"What’s This Shark?!” “The Largest Amphibians!” “My Favorite Chemical Exfoliant for Sensitive Skin.” “This Spider Is Crazy!” What do these videos have in common? They’re all TikToks by J.C. Dombrowski ’23, a leading social media personality with a global reach, boasting nearly 3 million followers on the platform.
With more than a quarter of a billion likes on TikTok, Dombrowski occupies an…
Answers by more than 19,000 Americans to a wide-ranging survey about political views will be revealed Friday, Jan. 20 at an online and in-person event on the Cornell Tech campus in New York City.
The NSF-funded project is hosting a hackathon featuring experts from industry, academia, and media as they offer their perspectives on the innovations, methods, and data from the 2022…
Lindsay France/Cornell University
Composer Roberto Sierra, at home
Composer Roberto Sierra’s new work, “Cuatro Piezas para cello y piano,” will be featured at a concert in Barnes Hall on Sunday, Jan. 29 at 3 p.m., performed by the Sierra Duo – John Haines-Eitzen, cello, and Matthew Bengtson, piano. They will also perform George Walker’s “Sonata for Cello and Piano” and Beethoven’s “Sonata in A Major, Op. 69.”
The new Sierra piece was a surprise gift to…
