Curiosity moves the world.

Research, Scholarship & Creative Works

The body of research, scholarship and creative works emerging from the College of Arts & Sciences is vast, with one common thread -- ALL of our research is curiosity-based. This model of inquiry confers intellectual flexibility, a precursor for innovation, creativity and discovery.

As the nexus of the only Ivy League, land grant university, we encompass both practical and theoretical approaches to knowledge: in science departments that integrate highly skilled experimentalists with researchers pondering the theoretical bases of natural laws; in an English department that joins critical literary theorists with creative writers expanding the boundaries of their genres; or in social science departments that offer rigorous theoretical and empirical analyses of the social, political and economic foundations of modern life.

By the Numbers

>100

More than 100 interdisciplinary research organizations, 18 Cornell research centers and 2 national research centers

>30%

Let curiosity motivate you. More than 30 percent of our students work closely with faculty in research and independent study.

Physicists creating cell-sized robots

Physicists at Cornell are pushing the edge of what can be done with microrobots, from using origami folds in graphene and glass to using magnets for self-assembling systems.

In a TED talk, Paul McEuen, John A. Newman Professor of Physical Science, describes creating microbots the size of a single cell, showing how these machines could one day be "piloted" to battle crop diseases or study the individual neurons in your brain.