<p><span style="line-height: 20.8px;">Talented Cornell undergrad composers </span><span style="line-height: 20.8px;">showcased their work in a recent concert.</span></p>
<p>Thanks to generous alumni, the College of Arts & Sciences exceeded its Cornell NOW Campaign goals to support humanities, students and new faculty.</p>
<p>As a graduate student Peter Wittich, associate professor of physics, worked at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), located in an active nickel mine in Ontario, Canada. The observatory is deep underground to block out background radiation from other particles.</p>
<p>James R. Houck, a noted astronomer in the field of infrared spectroscopy for astrophysics, died in Ithaca Sept. 18 at age 74 from complications of Alzheimer's Disease.</p><p>Houck received his Ph.D. from Cornell in condensed matter physics in 1967, then switched fields to astronomy. After post-doctorate work at the Naval Research Laboratory, he worked at Cornell until he retired as the Kenneth A. Wallace Professor of Astronomy in 2012.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.8px;">A gift from Rona and David Picket ’84 helps our creative writing students focus on their work during summer break.</span></p>
<p>Jennifer Hanley '06 just began a new position at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, shifting her attention from Mars to Pluto and a moon of Saturn, but she's still focused on one goal – the search for water.</p><p>Hanley was one of eight authors of a paper, published in the Sept. 28, 2015 issue of Nature Geoscience, on the discovery that liquid water appears to exist on Mars.</p>
<p>When David S. Cohen ’85 was a student at Cornell, he was active in the Peace Studies Program as president of the Cornell Civil Liberties Union. He helped negotiate agreements between Cornell officials and apartheid protestors and stood on the steps of Willard Straight Hall to support ROTC members who had been kicked out of the military because of their sexual orientation.</p>
<p>In her new book, <em>The Ethical Dimension of the Decameron</em>, Marilyn Migiel, professor and chair of the Romance Studies department, examines the dialogue about ethical choices that Giovanni Boccaccio's <em>Decameron</em> <wbr></wbr>generates for readers.</p>
<p>What began as a project for two Cornell students working on an event for Human Rights Month has transformed into a play that will be previewed this weekend in Ithaca before moving to an off-Broadway theatre.</p>
<p>On Monday, Oct. 5, leading human rights lawyers and prison ethnographers will gather for an international symposium to discuss “Carceral Worlds and Human Rights across the Americas” at the Africana Studies and Research Center, 310 Triphammer Road, from 10 a.m. to noon.</p>
<p>George Paul Hess, professor emeritus of biochemistry in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, College of Arts & Sciences, died on September 9 at home in Ithaca. <span style="line-height: 20.8px;">Friends and colleagues are invited to a memorial service at 2 pm on Saturday, November 7 in the chapel of Annabel Taylor Hall. A reception will follow at 3 pm in the adjoining Founders Lounge.</span></p>
<p>When director Sam Gold ’00 thinks about whether he wants to take on a new project, it’s all about the challenge of creating something meaningful.</p><p>“I want to start with what I believe in and care about, a subject matter that speaks to me or a formal challenge that pushes me as an artist,” he says.</p>
<p>Someone’s asked you a question, and halfway through it, you already know the answer. While you think you’re politely waiting for your chance to respond, <a href="http://scitation.aip.org/content/asa/journal/poma/22/1/10.1121/2.0000006">new research</a> shows that you’re actually more impatient than you realize.</p>
<p>Michael Disare ’17 spent the summer as one of five undergrad researchers in Cornell’s Aye Lab, working with methods that are completely novel.</p><p>Disare and his colleagues at the lab work on studying signaling pathways in cells, and how specific molecules, like oxidants, affect those pathways. </p><p>“It’s the crossroads between chemistry and biology,” he says. “It’s almost like using chemistry as a tool for studying biology.”</p>
<p>If you happen to watch Nicolas Cage's new movie "The Runner" and stay for the credits, you'll see the name Andrea Fiorentini '16.</p><p>Working on the film's postproduction has been just one of the benefits of Fiorentini's internship the past two summers through the alumni-run Cornell in Hollywood program, which helps Cornell students learn about careers in the entertainment industry, find internships and network with Cornellians.</p>
<p>Like many good mysteries, it began with innocent curiosity. Michael Fontaine was on paternity leave and, wanting “a small project” to occupy him between baby duties, thought he’d write about “Mater-Virgo,” a 17th-century play by Lutheran pastor Joannes Burmeister, based on a work by the Roman playwright Plautus.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.8px;">Some hidden Cornell treasures soon will be available to scholars around the world, thanks to the Cornell University Library and the College of Arts and Sciences’ </span>Grants<a href="https://dcaps.library.cornell.edu/initiatives/asgrants" style="line-height: 20.8px;"> </a>Program for Digital Collections<span style="line-height: 20.8px;">, which this year awarded four grants.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.8px;">Following last year’s successful 150 Events series, the </span>Department of Performing and Media Arts (PMA)<span style="line-height: 20.8px;"> will continue its new tradition of student-led theater, film and dance performances in its 2015-16 season.</span></p>
<p>To understand the past – and, often, the present – we group people together, attributing the same characteristics to individuals in a group as we do to the group as a whole, especially when it comes to religion.</p><p><a href="http://history.arts.cornell.edu/faculty-department-rebillard.php">Éric Rebillard</a> challenges this approach in a new book, co-edited with Jörg Rüpke, titled “Group Identity and Religious Individuality in Late Antiquity.”</p>
<p>Ruby Rhoden ’17 expected her arrival at Cornell would be like landing on a new planet, with everything from the social environment to the academics substantially different from where she came from.</p>
<p>Anjum Malik ’16 used her undergraduate research award to explore the reasons for the destruction of museums and heritage sites in Iraq and Syria.</p>
<p>As Ellen Abrams considered math-related topics for her doctoral thesis, she knew the summer after her first year would be a good time to explore the options.</p><p>So the doctoral student in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) chose a two-pronged approach. For the latter part of the summer, she plans to hole up in a library studying the history of mathematics. But before that, she headed to Turkey to do an ethnographic study of a class at Nesin Mathematics Village.</p>
<p>If you happen to watch Nicolas Cage's new movie "The Runner" and stay for the credits, you'll see the name Andrea Fiorentini '16.</p><p>Working on the film's postproduction has been just one of the benefits of Fiorentini's internship the past two summers through the alumni-run Cornell in Hollywood program, which helps Cornell students learn about careers in the entertainment industry, find internships and network with Cornellians.</p>
<p>Google “Ivy league admissions” and up will pop thousands of sites that list the GPA requirements, SAT scores and stellar list of activities a high school student needs to make their application stand out to admissions counselors. As admissions deadlines loom, these sites are getting more traffic than ever.</p>
<p>While most Cornell students headed home for the summer – off to internships, work or play – a group of entrepreneurial undergrads and graduate students are staying in Ithaca for intensive business development as part of the new Life Changing Labs (LCL) summer incubator.</p>
<p>Among them was Naomi Gendler, a senior at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. In a few minutes, Gendler summarized her project, “Analysis of Methods to Excite Head-Tail Motion of Bunches within the Cornell Electron Storage Ring.” Her research could help improve the stability of electron beams in particle accelerators.</p>
<p><span style="background-color:transparent">For many teenagers, math is just a necessary component of earning a high school diploma. For others, though, math is a passion, a destination in itself.</span></p>
<p>Lori Khatchadourian teaches the Exploring Archaeology mini-course at the Elizabeth Anne Clune Montessori School of Ithaca.</p><p>The week of June 15-19, professors Adam T. Smith, anthropology, and Lori Khatchadourian, Near Eastern studies, led a mini-course on archaeology at the Elizabeth Anne Clune Montessori School of Ithaca. Nine children ages 5-8 spent five mornings exploring aspects of archaeological research.</p>
<p>Chinelo Onyilofor ’15 has found that her studies in chemistry and art history have taught her the art of looking for small details, whether she’s finding the hidden meaning in a painting or an answer to solve a chemical synthesis.</p><p>After she graduates this weekend, Onyilofor, a double major in the College of Arts and Sciences from Annapolis, Maryland, plans to travel for a year before going to graduate school to pursue a doctorate in organic chemistry.</p>
<p>When Irene Li ’15 isn’t hunkered down surveying the latest research on the local food movement and social change, she’s in a Boston kitchen, meeting growers or dreaming up new items for her food truck and restaurant.</p><p>Li, one of three sibling owners of Mei Mei Kitchen in Boston, is a College Scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences, who will return to her family business after graduating.</p><p>This year’s class of College Scholars presented their final projects April 17.</p>
<p>The course of Carol Rattray's '78 career has veered from finance to philanthropy to entrepreneurship, so she's a popular person when she volunteers her time for the Arts and Sciences Career Services office.</p>
<p>“We’re down one Democrat. It’s going to be a slaughter,” someone called out.</p><p>The students in Suzanne Mettler’s Introduction to American Government and Politics class huddled in small groups in eight different classrooms, bargaining, brokering deals and negotiating, trying to overcome gridlock and partisan loyalties to pass a budget.</p>
<p>If you hear Tim Novikoff, Ph.D. '13, speak and you're of a certain age, you might recognize him as the voice of Jeffy from MTV's "Daria" animated series from the mid-1990s.</p><p>But if you look at his LinkedIn profile, you'll see that his career has followed a path that marries his love of the technical world with the joy he finds in being creative.</p>
<p>Hundreds of students have just completed new courses in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Active Learning Initiative (ALI), part of a strategic effort by the college to embrace engaged learning models and emerging technologies. The ALI five-year pilot project is funded by Alex and Laura Hanson, both Class of 1987.</p>
<p>For the 15 students in a new interdisciplinary class this semester, the murals common throughout East Harlem have deeper meanings than passersby might realize.</p>
<p>Among the billions and billions of stars in the sky, where should astronomers look for infant Earths where life might develop? New research from Cornell University’s Institute for Pale Blue Dots shows where – and when – infant Earths are most likely to be found. The paper by Blue Dots research associate Ramses M. Ramirez and director Lisa Kaltenegger, “The Habitable Zones of Pre-Main Sequence Stars,” is forthcoming in Astrophysical Journal Letters.</p>
<p>Math, to a mathematician, is an aesthetic, creative endeavor. But for too many high school students, math has become a reviled, boring subject.</p><p>It doesn’t have to be that way, as Steven Strogatz aims to show the students in his new College of Arts and Sciences course, Mathematical Explorations. The course fulfills the math distribution requirement and has attracted seniors who put off taking a math class as long as they could, as well as freshmen intrigued by the course’s title.</p>
<p>Although Katrine Bosley '90 doesn't get a lot of time to talk to patients as CEO of Editas Medicine, she relishes the opportunity.</p><p>"You only have to talk to one patient with one disease that you're working on to know why you go to work every day," says Bosley, whose company is working to translate genome editing technology into new drugs and treatments for poorly treated diseases and patients.</p>
<p>Brian Lukoff '04 loves math.</p><p>This is not true for many Americans (30 percent according to a recent survey), who say they're just "not good at math."</p><p>Lukoff thinks there's a way to change that statistic, believing that part of the problem is the way students are learning in math and other disciplines as well. He has developed a tool that helps teachers and professors gauge what their students know and address gaps right away.</p>
<p>The fearless honey badger steals lions' prey and gobbles cobras for dinner. Tenacious and determined, it devours honeycombs despite countless bee stings. This is the totem animal of Sally Wen Mao, MFA '13, and an inspiration for her first book of poems, "Mad Honey Symposium," published in May by Alice James Books.</p>
<p>“Welcome to Cornell Ruins National Park,” Adam T. Smith tells his students. “We’re lucky today. We have a cache of objects to examine discovered in the ruins of McGraw Hall.”</p><p>This “Rise and Fall of ‘Civilization’” class examines traditional archaeological topics, like kingship and the origins of cities, partly by looking at our current civilization through the lens of a single site – the Cornell campus as it would look 1,000 years from now.</p>
<p>The scene is straight out of a disaster movie: melting glaciers wreaking havoc on the ecosystem, and a tundra-like wasteland where once forest reigned. Thirteen thousand years ago or so the spruces, firs and birches of central New York state vanished; dendrochronology researcher Carol Griggs '77, Ph.D. '06, is using ancient wood to figure out what happened when they finally reappeared.</p>
