Students can now choose anew minor in digital agriculture,a multidisciplinary field focused on food and agriculture production systems,but with an increasingly broader span of applications and interests.Development of the new minor was fueled by the founders and faculty of the Cornell Institute for Digital Agriculture(CIDA),an interdisciplinary community of leaders across Cornell in areas of expertise ranging from the life sciences to social sciences,engineering and computing science. 查看详细>>

In the evolutionary biology course(BIOEE 1780),students are clustered into teams of five–teams that remain constant throughout the semester,carefully composed based on apre-class survey that asks about prior preparation and collaborative experience.Empty rows between the clusters are traversed by at least 10 graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants,in addition to instructors and faculty,as they engage with students.The teams work together,debate and come to consensus.Their grades depend on it.They sometimes answer questions on scratch cards that look like lottery tickets–scratching until they reveal the right answer,with low-stakes points attached to the number of tries.They sometimes use iClickers,or an instructor may throw a“catch box,”a padded box with amicrophone in it,around the hall so groups can debate with each other.Students who have taken the course,which has been evolving for the last five years with help from Cornell’s Active Learning Initiative,call it acommunity,a collaborative space,a big family.“You could just see how dedicated the instructors were to helping you learn,”says Blake Martin’21.“They created acollaborative environment where you were really working with the content.”Faculty members across every college at Cornell are making both small and large shifts to do this–giving students amore active role in their own learning and building community in their classrooms.In addition to the still-valuable staples of lectures and textbooks,students are asked to debate and apply concepts,to work collaboratively,and to take on the mantle of decision-makers and problem-solvers.Veer Vekaria’19 says these strategies not only helped him retain material but brought to life and made relevant complex concepts.In his social inequality course,taught by Kim Weeden,the Jan Rock Zubrow’77 Professor of the Social Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences,he debated policy solutions to societal problems with his peers. 查看详细>>

For more than adecade,architect and educator Jenny Sabin has created aseries of large sculptural installations at the intersection of architecture,art and science.Integrating new technologies,inventive material and acombination of biological phenomena and mathematics,her latest work adds artificial intelligence,or AI.“Ada,”a responsive,photoluminescent fiber pavilion designed to“smile back at you,”has just opened,suspended in alight-filled atrium at Microsoft Research in Redmond,Washington.Sabin is the Arthur L.and Isabel B.Wiesenberger Professor in Architecture,director of graduate studies,and associate dean for design initiatives in the College of Architecture,Art and Planning.Among her recent works was“Lumen,”a temporary outdoor installation in 2017 that functioned as awork of art and provided shade,seating and cooling for visitors to the Museum of Modern Art PS1 in Long Island City,Queens.For“Ada,”Sabin and her team at Jenny Sabin Studio collaborated with agroup of engineers,data scientists and designers at Microsoft Research to create aresponsive,immersive space that uses AI to process facial patterns and the emotions they reveal as data–known as“sentiment data.”The project began to take shape in 2018,with Sabin’s appointment as Microsoft Research’s most recent artist-in-residence,a program that looks to artists and designers to bring inspiration,material and experimental form to Microsoft’s ongoing areas of research.。 查看详细>>

An online course on inclusive teaching,created and piloted last year at Cornell,will be available to all educators in November as amassive open online course(MOOC).The course,Teaching&Learning in the Diverse Classroom,explores strategies for creating and sustaining effective and inclusive learning environments where all students are positioned to excel,and it gives faculty the tools to teach across difference.“This course embodies Cornell’s commitment to diversity and accessibility,”said Mathew Ouellett,executive director of the Center for Teaching Innovation(CTI).“It is an effort to implement best practices and strategies in our increasingly diverse classrooms as we learn more and society changes.”Last fall,CTI launched Teaching&Learning in the Diverse Classroom to help instructors on campus create inclusive learning environments where this sense of belonging is accessible to all students. 查看详细>>

Cornell Law School professor Charles Whitehead has launched aventure to help boost tech startups in Ukraine,focusing initially on the two largest cities in the country.Whitehead,the Myron C.Taylor Alumni Professor of Business Law at Cornell Law School and founding director of the Law,Technology and Entrepreneurship Program at Cornell Tech,has been lecturing at Ukrainian universities,speaking at national and global conferences in Kiev and Kharkiv,and advising Ukrainian government officials for the past four years.“Kiev has adynamic tech and startup environment,but limited global exposure.Kharkiv is even less well-known,”Whitehead said.“It was nicknamed‘Science City’in the former Soviet Union,being one of the country’s principal academic centers,with more than 100 universities,research institutes and colleges,and roughly 200,000 students.“There are alot of smart people in Ukraine with great ideas,”he said,“and awealth of untapped technology,but little business expertise.” 查看详细>>

Online education was once hailed as apotential equalizer,offering science,technology,engineering and math skills to everyone regardless of gender,nationality or socioeconomic status.Online,students could avoid stigmas,such as being one of the only women in aclass.It didn’t turn out that way.Researchers created four versions of aFacebook ad:a default version with ageneric computer image,one with aphoto of women,one with the generic image and an inclusive message,and afourth with both an inclusive photo and text.“Very quickly we saw that’s not the case,”said Rene Kizilcec,assistant professor of information science.“Many of the same barriers we see in in-person environments do replicate online,and they get amplified,because so many more people have access to these platforms.” 查看详细>>

The age of artificial intelligence is just beginning.An avalanche of digital data,combined with sophisticated algorithms to analyze it,heralds atechnological transformation as important as the emergence of the internet,said panelists at the launch of the Cornell-r4 Applied AI Initiative,held Dec.6 at Cornell Tech.“The world has really undergone aseismic shift,”said Greg Morrisett,dean of Computing and Information Science(CIS)and co-chair of the new initiative,which aims to enable... 查看详细>>

Sirietta Simoncini In response to the growing need for structured creative thinking in the business world,Cornell has launched anewDesign Thinking certificate programonline througheCornell.The program was created to help learners adopt ahuman-centered approach to designing and improving products,experiences and systems at any scale.“It’s often achallenge to blend design thinking with traditional systems engineering,”says Sirietta Simoncini,lecturer at the Cornell College of En... 查看详细>>

hoppers browsing the freshly dug onions and dusky plums at the farmer’s market in Staten Island,New York,recently found an unusual offering:Cornell researchers who want to know what they think about the air pollution right there in their own neighborhoods on Staten Island.Over the course of the day,70 Staten Islanders stepped up to what appeared to be anormal RV,where graduate student Byungdoo Kim asked if they’d like to participate in a20-minute survey in exchange for$20 in farmers market vouchers.The RV actually houses amobile communication lab that’s changing social sciences research at Cornell and beyond.One of ahandful in the country,the lab enables researchers to diversify their pool of study participants to include people in socio-economic,racial and geographic groups who are rarely included in social science research–and who are hardest hit by society’s problems.“This lab really allows us to take research beyond the ivory tower,”said Neil Lewis Jr.’13,assistant professor of communication in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.“And it highlights astrength of Cornell as aplace where any person can be in any study.”Scholars at other universities are taking notice,he added.In academic circles,“everywhere Igo now,in Chicago,in Seattle,this is the thing that people want to talk to me about,”he said. 查看详细>>

Weill Cornell Medicine has been awarded afour-year,$2.7 million grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration(HRSA)to establish aDiversity Center of Excellence dedicated to increasing the number of minority physicians in academic medicine.The HRSA,an agency of the U.S.Department of Health and Human Services,is administering the grant through its Centers of Excellence program.Established in 1991,the program supports health professions schools that strive to train and retain underrepresented minority students and faculty.Weill Cornell Medicine is one of only 19 graduate schools across the country,and the only medical school in New York state,to receive the grant.“Our population is becoming more diverse,but our health care professional population hasn’t kept up,”said Dr.Susana Morales,associate professor of clinical medicine and co-principal investigator of the grant.“Here at Weill Cornell Medicine,we are committed to increasing diversity.This grant is exciting not only because there’s potential to do alot of good,it also allows us to be apart of the institution’s larger diversity efforts.”Weill Cornell Medicine’s Diversity Center of Excellence will operate under the auspices of the Cornell Center for Health Equity,which was established at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell’s Ithaca campus in March to better understand why health outcomes vary among demographic groups.“The Diversity Center of Excellence is acrucial piece of our Cornell Center for Health Equity strategic plan and we are thrilled to see it coming to fruition,”said Dr.Monika Safford,co-director of the Cornell Center for Health Equity,the John J.Kuiper Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and co-principal investigator of the grant.The Diversity Center of Excellence will focus on anumber of initiatives and priorities that strive to increase the number of minorities in health care.Using alongitudinal approach,the center will seek to nurture minority talent at all career levels.Center leaders plan to expand Weill Cornell Medicine’s middle school,high school and undergraduate pipeline programs with the goal of doubling the number of minority medical school applicants within three years.Morales and her team will have aparticular focus nurturing underrepresented Cornell pre-medical students,working closely with Avery August,co-director of the Cornell Center for Health Equity and vice provost for academic affairs at Cornell. 查看详细>>