Give My Regards To…
These Cornellians in the News
Agricultural economics professor Andrew Novakovic, named by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to the new federal Dairy Industry Advisory Committee.
Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the Faculty of Computing and Information Science, named to the board of the MacArthur Foundation.
Cornell computer science professor Fred Schneider '75, named to the federal Defense Science Board.
Hotel school marketing professor Chekitan Dev, honored by the Hospitality Sales
and Marketing Association International as one of the field's "top twenty-five most extraordinary minds."
Applied and engineering physics professor Watt Webb, winner of the Alexander Hollaender Award in Biophysics from the National Academy of Sciences.
Javaid Sheikh, interim dean of Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, named to the position on a permanent basis.
Nutrition professor David Levitsky, winner of the Excellence in College and University Teaching Award from the USDA.
Seventy-six-year-old Isao Fujimoto, who was granted a PhD in development sociology in February—nearly fifty years after he began his doctoral studies.
Engineering professor Jack Muckstadt, named a Weiss Presidential Fellow by the Cornell Board of Trustees.
Chemical engineering professor Matthew DeLisa, given a Young Investigator award from the American Chemical Society.
Computer engineering professor Salman Avestimehr, winner of a $442,000 NSF Early Career Development Award to support his work on wireless networks.
André Bensadoun, emeritus professor of nutritional sciences, awarded an honorary professorship at France's Institut Poly-technique de Toulouse, his alma mater.
R&D
More information on campus research is available at www.news.cornell.edu
Medical College researchers have designed a screening tool for adult diabetes. The survey assesses risk factors such as age, gender, and exercise levels, and advises high scorers to follow up with their doctors for diagnosis.
As New York debates legalizing supermarket wine sales, applied economics and management professor Bradley Rickard has conducted simulations of its economic impact. He found that while grocery stores and wineries would benefit, liquor stores could see sales drop by as much as 32 percent.
The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded chemistry professor emeritus Harold Scheraga and colleagues 6 million supercomputer processing hours. They'll study the mechanisms behind protein folding, which could lead to insights into such diseases as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and cancer.
Chemical engineer Paul Steen wants to help humans walk on walls. Inspired by a beetle that can stick to a leaf with a force 100 times its weight, his team has invented a palm-sized device that uses surface tension for rapid adhesion.
Tiny invertebrates known as bdelloid rotifers have evolved a novel method of escaping parasites and pathogens: when they sense danger, they dry up and blow away. Neurobiology and behavior professor Paul Sherman found that when the rotifers are exposed to water, they come back to life.
Fig trees retaliate when fig wasps fail to hold up their end of the bargain, neurobiology and behavior grad student Charlotte Jander says. Normally, figs house the wasps' eggs, and in return the insects pollinate the fruit. But if the wasps fail to do so, the tree drops the eggs, killing the larvae.
Aquatic animal medicine professor Paul Bowser '70 has found a deadly fish virus in Lake Superior—meaning it has now been documented in all of the Great Lakes. Viral hemorrhagic septicemia causes fatal anemia in fish, but poses no threat to humans.
To be happy, people need to be around others of similar beliefs, finds sociologist Matthew Brashears. He argues that collective norms—not just individual religious or philosophical beliefs—are key to helping humans make sense of a complex world and overcome adversity.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has awarded human ecology professor Gary Evans and colleagues $1.4 million over two years to study the effects of child poverty. The researchers plan to examine how factors such as chronic stress alter brain structure and function.