Eight Cornell research degree students will be advancing to the final round of the 2024 Three Minute Thesis competition (3MT), having competed in a pool of 22 students in the preliminary round. The students and their fields are:
Cátia Dombaxe, biomedical engineering
Amanda Domingues, science and technology studies
Sharada Gopal, biomedical and biological sciences
Viviana Maymi,…
Amber Bal is a doctoral candidate in romance studies from London, England. She earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Oxford and now studies the urban-rural divide in 20th and 21st century French and Francophone literature under the guidance of Imane Terhmina at Cornell.
What is your area of research and why is it important?
My research highlights the varied importance of …
The New York Senate and Assembly are calling for housing deals that offer incentives for developers while also providing tenant protections. It’s part of a push ahead of the due date for the state budget. However, the proposals don’t fully align with Governor Kathy Hochul’s plans.
Jacob Anbinder, a Klarman postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University, researches how America’s most progressive…
Students are organizing Cornell’s first undergraduate philosophy conference March 23, which will include students from Northeastern University, New York University, Barnard College, Cornell and other campuses.
Sophie Gottfried ‘25, conference organizer, said she held a philosophy conference on Zoom in high school during the pandemic. “It was really, really rewarding, and everyone…
This data visualization shows the geodesic training trajectory of different deep neural networks as they advance from total ignorance to full certainty
While some Arts & Sciences students choose to focus on one field of study, many also choose a more interdisciplinary pathway. Sarah Cutler ‘16 majored in Near Eastern studies and government, and leveraged her time at Cornell by adding in several experiences abroad.
Now, she's the city of Boise reporter at the Idaho Statesman and is pursuing her interest in political polarization. She…
With majority of opposition leaders in prison or abroad, Russians are preparing to vote in a presidential election that is unlikely to bring significant change.
Bryn Rosenfeld is an assistant professor of government at Cornell University and studies post-communist politics and public opinion. She suggests that after the election, we can expect the announcement of an unpopular policy.
…
Ryan Young/Cornell University
Yuval Grossman, professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been visiting Arab villages in Israel during academic breaks since 2019 to teach math to school children. His last trip was in January.
When Yuval Grossman was 5, his father, an Israeli soldier, died during the war with Syria. Then he lost a good friend – a neighbor who lived on his street in Nahariya, Israel – in a terror attack in 1974.
“These two big events affected me a lot as a child,” said Grossman, now a professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. “But at some point, I realized that I had to get over…
Margarita Amalia Suñer, professor of linguistics emerita in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), died in Ojai, California on Feb. 29 after a long bout with Alzheimer’s disease. She was 82.
An expert in the field of Hispanic theoretical linguistics, Suñer is remembered for her insights, her dedication to students and the personable way she shared her love of language.
“Magui was a…
Cheyenne Reuben-Thomas, a doctoral student in the field of ecology and evolutionary biology, does field work on land management.
This year’s Culler Theory Lecture at the Society for the Humanities will examine philosophical accounts of the ways in which we organize the concept of reality.
Entitled “Beyond the World as Picture: Worlding and Becoming the Whole World [devenir tout le monde],” the Culler Lecture will be delivered by Pheng Cheah Ph.D. ’98, professor of rhetoric at the University of California at Berkeley…
Herbie Ziskend
Prof. Ross Brann, the Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Jewish and Near East Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences (front row, far right) organized a tour of the White House for students in the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy's Cornell in Washington program in February.
Cornell media scholar Anna Shechtman published her first New York Times crossword at age 19 and has since been crowned “the new queen of crosswords” in the media for reenergizing this puzzle genre and cracking into its white male power base. These days, most crossword editors and constructors are men, but it wasn’t always this way.
“I’ve learned how woman-coded the puzzle was in the first half…
Doctoral student Megan Jeffreys just couldn’t seem to get Ailcey’s runaway slave ad out of her head.
“A yellow girl about 12 years of age,” reads the 1803 ad from the Alexandria Advertiser and Commercial Intelligencer that Jeffreys discovered. “She is a girl of bold countenance, tolerable straight hair, quite a large mouth…”
“This was one of the first moments when it hit home for me,…
Richard Ying and Tangui Morlier/Creative Commons license 3.0
French National Assembly
French lawmakers voted to add abortion as a guaranteed freedom in France’s constitution. The vote makes France the first county in the world to include a right to an abortion in its constitution.
Landon Schnabel is an assistant professor of sociology at Cornell University. He focuses on gender inequality alongside other dimensions of social inequality, including sexual orientation and race. He…
On April 8, the moon will sweep across the sun, casting a shadow over the Earth and etching a ring of fire in the sky. This total solar eclipse is a must-see, as it marks the final opportunity for many to witness this cosmic phenomenon on such a grand scale until 2045. Cornell students can travel right to the heart of the eclipse’s path, thanks to the student-led Astronomical Society at Cornell,…
On March 13, the Department of Near Eastern Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences will host “Academic Freedom and Middle East Scholars after Oct. 7,” one of Cornell’s Freedom of Expression theme year events.
The 5 p.m. talk will feature scholars Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, and Marc Lynch, Ph.D. ‘97,…
Provided
Dr. Yunn-Shan Ma will conduct the Empowerment Through Music concert March 9.
The annual Empowerment Through Music concert, presented by the Cornell Department of Music and Chorus and Glee Club in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), will be held Saturday, March 9 at 7:30 pm in Sage Chapel. In celebration of International Women’s Day, the choirs will present a concert of music centering women composers and music at the intersection of Asia and the Asian diaspora.
…
The College of Arts & Sciences is preparing for Giving Day on Thursday, March 14 and we hope the whole Cornell community can join in to support the work and growth of our students and faculty.
Last year, A&S alumni, parents, students, and friends joined together to raise more than $1.1 million for the College of Arts & Sciences on Giving Day.
Your gift allows the College to…
Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections/Cornell University Library
Vladimir Nabokov taught Russian literature at Cornell, where he had an office in Goldwin Smith Hall.
A giant of 20th century literature known for such novels as “Lolita” and “Pale Fire,” Russian émigré and former Cornell professor Vladimir Nabokov was also a prodigious lepidopterist who collected and studied butterflies since the age of five.
“It is not improbable that had there been no revolution in Russia, I would have devoted myself entirely to lepidopterology and never written any…
Between 2010 and 2013, the southern U.S. and Mexico experienced a historic drought. Said to be the worst in 70 years, the drought hit Mexico particularly hard, causing food and water shortages. Many migrated.
This drought and its effects prompted scholar Carolyn Fornoff, who is from Texas, to think about how artists and filmmakers in Mexico document environmental issues.
In her book …
Provided
From left, Christine Balance, Alexis Boyce, Yu An Chen ’22, Alexandria Kim ’23 and Pearl Ngai ’23 at this year’s Cornell Asian Alumni Association Pan-Asian Banquet in New York City’s Chinatown.
A new $500,000 alumni gift to the Asian American Studies Program (AASP) in the College of Arts and Sciences will allow the program to increase the number of special events and speakers it brings to campus and provides support for an ongoing oral history project, which connects current students to alumni and tells the story of the history and activism that led to the establishment of Cornell’s…
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Purchase, Isaacson-Draper Foundation Gift, 2005
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Mont Blanc Seen from the Massif, Les Aiguilles Rouges, 1874. Watercolor heightened with gouache over traces of graphite on two sheets of blue-gray wove paper (glued together in a vertical seam at left), 11 7/16 × 26 1/8 in. (29 × 66.4 cm).
A prestigious Millard Meiss Publication Fund award will allow a new book by Kelly Presutti, assistant professor of history of art and visual studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, to be published at the highest quality possible.
Her book, “Land into Landscape: Art, Environment, and the Making of Modern France,” is forthcoming from Yale University Press in fall 2024; the grant,…
Daniel A. Baugh, professor emeritus of history, died Feb. 9 at his home in Williamsburg, Virginia. He was 92.
Baugh was an historian of British history who specialized in 18th century maritime, naval and geopolitical issues. He was considered the definitive historian of British naval administration.
Colleagues and former students remember him for the breadth and depth of his expertise, his…
Provided
Architecture graduate students Zachary Sherrod M.S. ’23 and Chi-Chia Tsao M.S. ’23 created an exhibition model of St. James AME Zion Church with funding from a Rural Humanities Grant.
Faculty and students who have projects focused on the rural humanities can apply for grants through Cornell’s Society for the Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Cornell faculty from any discipline can apply for up to $10,000 in support of public-facing research humanities projects and/or engaged community humanities initiatives on rural New York State issues…
Julia Fritsch ’25, Cristina Kiefaber ’25, and Ashley Koca ‘25 have been selected as the 2024 Harry Caplan Travel Fellows.
Fritsch will conduct exploratory research in preparation for her honors thesis in classics through the Humanities Scholars Program.
She plans focused tourism across Italy including (but not limited to) Pompeii and Herculaneum, Rome and the Vatican, and the…
Sarah J. Thornington/Provided
One recent Engaged Opportunity Grant project will support shore clean-up efforts in Massachusetts.
Artificial intelligence applications perform amazing feats – winning at chess, writing college admission essays, passing bar exams – but the complexity of these systems is so large they rival that of nature, with all the challenges that come with understanding nature.
An approach to a better understanding of this computer science puzzle is emerging from an unexpected direction: physics. Lenka…
Tanya Kapitonava/Provided
Valzhyna Mort, associate professor of Literatures in English.
Six first-year students from the Colleges of Arts & Sciences and Engineering and the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science came away with top honors for their agricultural innovation idea to address India’s pollution problem during the Digital Agriculture Hackathon Feb. 16-18.
“The Freshmen,” as they cleverly named themselves, entered the hackathon knowing they…
Sreang Hok/Cornell University
Kimberlé Crenshaw, a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law and at Columbia Law School, delivers the 2024 Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture in Sage Chapel.
Lindsay France/Cornell University
Writer J. Robert Lennon, the Ann S. Bowers Professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences, has previously played around with genre elements – from mazy, existential mysteries to dystopian satire – but his new novel, “Hard Girls,” is his first straight-up thriller.
Hero of Alexandria, ancient Greek mathematician and engineer, is a figure known almost entirely through his writings. We have little of his biography, including his timeframe, but his books on things like pneumatics, pure geometry and catapults have influenced many others through the ages and his principles touch early modern inventions including the player piano and the fire engine.
“The…
Gary Todd from Xinzheng, China, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Statue of Mao
A series of lectures — two in each semester — will focus on “Unmasking the CCP: History, Politics, and Society in Post-1949 China."
The first lecture will feature Andrew Walder, the Denise O'Leary & Kent Thiry Professor at Stanford University, speaking about “China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed.” It will take place from 4:45 to 6:15 p.m. March 7 in Room 120 of the Physical Sciences…
NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/CXC/Univ. of Ariz.
A superdense neutron star is spewing out a blizzard of extremely high-energy particles into the expanding debris field known as the Crab Nebula.
NASA has approved a new mission to survey ultraviolet light across the entire sky, which will enable scientists to probe ever more deeply into how galaxies and stars evolve.
The space telescope, called UVEX (UltraViolet EXplorer), is targeted to launch in 2030 as NASA’s next Astrophysics Medium-Class Explorer mission. Anna Y. Q. Ho, assistant professor of astronomy in the College of Arts and…
Over winter break, students in Cornell’s Barbara & Richard T. Silver ‘50, MD ‘53 Wind Symphony traveled to Cuba for a community-engaged performance tour in collaboration with the National Concert Band of Cuba. The tour honored both music and culture.
The nine-day trip, with eight days spent in Havana and one in Matanzas, was led by James Spinazzola, the Barbara & Richard T. Silver ‘50,…
Ryan Young/Cornell University
Jake Turner, NASA Hubble/Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow in astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences and part of the Carl Sagan Institute, is a science adviser on a radio telescope made of four antennas that each extend to eight feet long and are packed into an eight-inch canister for launch.
When Jake Turner was a kid in rural Colorado, he had pictures of all the Apollo lunar missions thumbtacked to his bedroom walls, along with Neil Armstrong’s words, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
“I would look at those every day before I went to bed, but I don’t think I ever imagined I would be working on a NASA mission going to the moon,” said Turner, NASA Hubble/Sagan…
Despina Galani Unsplash
Church doorway in Paros, Greece
On Thursday, Greek parliament will vote on whether to legalize same-sex marriage. It would be the first Orthodox Christian country to take that step.
Landon Schnabel is the Robert and Ann Rosenthal Assistant Professor of sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences. He studies social inequality with a focus on religion. He says that legalizing same-sex marriage in Greece would show…
In the new book-length work, “School of Instructions: A Poem,” Ishion Hutchinson narrates the psychic and physical terrors of West Indian soldiers volunteering in British regiments in the Middle East during World War I. The book also follows the story of Godspeed, a schoolboy living in 1990s rural Jamaica.
The poem maps Godspeed’s daily experiences – at school, at home, outdoors – onto the…
