by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Researchers from varied disciplines are tackling the topic of inequality — asking questions about its sources and its impacts, as well as the policies and movements under way to reduce it.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Math matters in important ways, and each year Cornell’s Department of Mathematics sponsors a public lecture to illustrate just how much. This lecture takes place during the national Mathematics Awareness Month, with the goal of increasing public understanding of and appreciation for mathematics. This year’s lecture, held April 29 in Malott Hall, featured assistant math professor Lionel Levine on “The Future of Prediction.”
We are constantly bombarded with linguistic input, but our brains are unable to remember long strings of linguistic information. How does the brain make sense of this ongoing deluge of sound?
"Barbarians Rising,” a new History Channel series, dramatizes the stories of nine of history’s greatest warriors as they fight for freedom – and to ensure accuracy the filmmakers turned to Barry Strauss, Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
On May 22, Ithaca High School (IHS) seniors presented the mathematics research projects they did as part of the Senior Seminar, a course for Ithaca High School (IHS) students who have completed most or all of the IHS math classes. The seminar meets at the high school and is taught by three graduate mathematics or applied mathematics students each year, to introduce high-school students to three mathematics topics they normally would not see until college.
From left, government faculty members Gustavo Flores-Macias and Sarah Kreps with graduate students Colin Chia, Minqi Chai & Caitlin Mastroe.
Six doctoral students from the Department of Government presented papers and met fellow PhD students and faculty interested in issues of global security during a workshop May 23-25 in Sweden.
Maggie Wong ‘16 signed up for Chinese classes when she came to Cornell so that she could more effectively communicate with her grandparents.
Four years later, she’s using some of the classes she took in Asian studies and her language-learning abilities as she heads to a year-long internship with an international non-profit in Cambodia.
In recent years, Cornell has amassed an impressive stable of experts in an emerging field for modern times: The ecology and evolution of infectious disease.
College of Arts and Sciences faculty member Sarah Murray received the Robert and Helen Appel Fellowship for Humanists and Social Scientists, and Linda Nicholson received the Robert A. and Donna B. Paul Academic Advising Award in the College of Arts and Sciences at a May 28 trustee-faculty dinner which recognized universitywide teaching and advising and newly tenured faculty.
Two of the country’s foremost constitutional scholars – Michael Klarman and Michael Dorf – offered their thoughts on the history of the U.S. Constitution at a panel during the May 26 Klarman Hall dedication.
Interim President Hunter Rawlings, Cornell president emeritus and professor emeritus of classics, opened the panel he moderated with reflections on James Madison, America’s “greatest scholar-president.”
Doctoral student Tonia Ko was one of nine classical composers to win a Student Composer Award May 16 from Broadcast Music, Inc. The awards are given to composers age 15-27 who are recognized for their superior musical compositional abilities. The students are awarded scholarship grants, which help them with their musical education.
In the face of scientific dogma that faults the population decline of monarch butterflies on a lack of milkweed, herbicides and genetically modified crops, a new Cornell study casts wider blame: sparse autumnal nectar sources, weather and habitat fragmentation.
Richard W. "Dick" Pogue's '50 freshman class wasn't like most classes that enter Cornell together. In 1946, 75 percent of the first-year students were veterans returning from service in World War II. Another 10 percent were women, and the other 15 percent were "greenhorn high school boys" like Pogue.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
A conference on the writing of Bolivian author Edmundo Paz-Soldán, professor of Spanish literature in the Department of Romance Studies, was held at the University of Seville, Spain, on May 25. The conference explored Paz-Soldán’s “narrative path,” and featured speakers from Spain, France, Bolivia and Belgium.
“Me, my partner and [Flaubert’s] ‘Sentimental Education’ were on vacation in the south of France. And it wasn’t pretty,” said literary theorist Paul Fleming during the May 26 “Transformative Humanities: Faculty Reflections on Life-Changing Creative Works” panel celebrating the dedication of Klarman Hall.
Deputy Provost John Siliciano presented Cornell faculty members Sahara Byrne, (Kit-Yee) Daisy Fan, María Cristina García and James P. Lassoie with 2016 Kendall S. Carpenter Memorial Advising Awards May 28 at a trustee-faculty dinner.
A 10-day journey to cities in the Brazilian rainforest gave students a firsthand look at the complex conditions of urbanization in the Amazon. The field trip in March, part of the spring seminar Forest Cartographies, focused on issues of community, housing, resettlement, deforestation, political ecology, anthropology and archaeology.
Jason Lefkovitz invited his high school history teacher, David Miles, to join him at the 28th annual Merrill Presidential Scholars Convocation luncheon.
He also invited Ronald Ehrenberg, the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics, as each of the 33 Merrill scholars was asked to bring to the event two teachers who have made a great impact on their lives, academic and otherwise. Nine of the scholars are Arts & Sciences students.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Vikram Gadagkar MS ’10, PhD ‘13 was recently awarded a prestigious three-year, $234,150 Simons Foundation fellowship with the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain (SCGB). SCGB seeks to expand understanding of the role of internal brain processes in the arc from sensation to action, thereby discovering the nature, role and mechanisms of the neural activity that produces cognition.
In the early 1970s, in the basement of Clark Hall, the Cornell team of professors David Lee and Robert Richardson, along with then-graduate student Douglas Osheroff, first observed superfluid helium-3. For that breakthrough, the catalyst for further research into low-temperature physics, the trio was awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in physics.
Kendra Bischoff, assistant professor of sociology and the Richard and Jacqueline Emmet Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been chosen as a 2016 National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow.
The $70,000 fellowships are the oldest source of support for education research, nationally and internationally, for those who have recently earned doctoral degrees.
As Asia continues to expand its influence in the world, Cornell’s Department of Asian Studies has grown to reflect the importance of the region globally and now offers more Asian languages for study than any other American university.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Cornell's Topology Festival may be the longest running annual conference on a specific topic in math in the United States. The 52nd Topology Festival was held May 13-15 in Mallott Hall, with speakers from Israel, Germany, Sweden, and across the United States addressing topics in topological combinatorics.
Senior Millie Kastenbaum, a government major in the College of Arts & Sciences, has been named the inaugural winner of the Cornell Division of University Relations’ Campus-Community Leadership Award. The award will be presented annually to a graduating senior who has shown exceptional town-gown leadership and innovation.
Barry Strauss, the Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies in the Department of History, writes in this Wall St. Journal opinion piece that the protectionist and nativist viewpouints espoused by today's politicians are nothing new.
"While nationalism will always be fodder for politicians, today’s leaders need to understand the consequences," Strauss writes.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
In government professor Jonathan Kirshner’s new novel Urban Flight, the Big Apple is in Big Trouble: New York City is on the edge of bankruptcy, crime is out of control, the streets are gridlocked, and the corruption is so thick protagonist Jason Sims, a traffic helicopter pilot, can see it from the sky.
The geologic shape of what were once shorelines through Mars’ northern plains convinces scientists that two large meteorites – hitting the planet millions of years apart – triggered a pair of mega-tsunamis. These gigantic waves forever scarred the Martian landscape and yielded evidence of cold, salty oceans conducive to sustaining life.
The real estate maxim about the importance of location is true for teenagers too. Their intellectual and physical health depends on location, location, location.
Teens living in disadvantaged neighborhoods face a higher risk of obesity and reduced cognitive ability, according to new research by a Cornell sociologist. In addition, adolescent girls in the most disadvantaged environments are more likely than boys to become obese, he found.
Michael Lynch ‘70, professor of science & technology studies, has been awarded the 2016 J. D. Bernal Prize by the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) for his “long-term and highly influential contribution to Science and Technology Studies and to the intellectual life of 4S.”
Searching vast cosmic communities like real estate agents rifling through listings, Cornell astronomers now hunt through time and space for habitable exoplanets – planets beyond our own solar system – looking at planets flourishing in old star, red giant neighborhoods.
Astronomers search for these promising worlds by looking for the “habitable zone,” the region around a star in which water on a planet’s surface is liquid and signs of life can be remotely detected by telescopes.
The Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) has awarded grants supporting 40 projects, many involving students and faculty in the College of Arts & Sciences, to be presented or performed during the 2016-17 academic year.
When she was growing up in Harlem, Ginger So ’79 walked 10 blocks each way once a week to borrow books from the public library.
In those books, she saw photographs of an America she did not know – an America of houses with white picket fences – and images of other countries. Her reading made her want to travel, so she followed the advice of her mother and studied hard, gained entrance to a good high school and later was admitted to Cornell.
At a May 2 reception and award presentation, the first cohort of Ewing Family Service Award recipients presented updates on their projects to 40 students, faculty, staff and members of the Ewing Family.
Established in fall 2015 to support Cornell’s commitment to innovation in community engagement, the Ewing Family Service Award provides up to $2,000 per project to foster student, faculty or staff leadership and social responsibility in the Cornell campus community.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Alex Hayes, assistant professor of astronomy, will receive the 2016 Zeldovich Medal, in Commission B (planets) from COSPAR (Committee on Space Research for the International Council of Science) and the Russian Academy of Sciences. The award is given to young scientists who have demonstrated excellence and achievement in their field of research.
Hayes will be presented with the award at the inaugural ceremony of the 41st COSPAR Scientific Assembly on August 1 in Istanbul, Turkey.
Professor of performing and media arts Bruce Levitt is the inaugural recipient of Cornell’s Engaged Scholar Prize, Vice Provost Judith Appleton announced May 11.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Jonathan Boyarin, the Hendrix Director of Jewish Studies, the Diann G. and Thomas A. Mann Professor of Modern Jewish Studies and professor of anthropology, has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research (AAJR). The AAJR was founded in 1919 and includes about one hundred of the most eminent scholars of Jewish Studies in North America.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Identity goes far beyond belonging to a particular group according to race, religion or sexual orientation, faculty say, and it's more complicated today than ever before.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Migration is one of the major forces shaping the world today, with more than 60 million displaced people.
“Never in history have we seen this many simultaneous displacements across the globe and these people are not going home any time soon,” says Mostafa Minawi, assistant professor of history and Himan Brown Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow. “This is a global population redistribution and it will hit us whether we like it or not.”
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Artists today engage with a world very different from that of their predecessors: globally connected, technologically advanced and highly diverse. In the last fifty years the Western canon has been displaced as the benchmark for “good” and worthwhile art, opening the door to works intended to challenge viewers, rather than simply to aesthetically please.
