Cornell University is one of eight academic institutions and four not-for-profit organizations forming a statewide consortium with corporate and economic development partners to improve environmental quality through the development of new integrated systems that enhance human health and performance, reduce lifecycle costs and improve the quality of built and urban environments.

New York Gov. George Pataki announced the creation of the consortium – the Center of Excellence in Environmental Systems (CoE-ES) – with support of $37 million from the state to fund the center, on June 5, at Syracuse University. The CoE-ES, which has headquarters at Syracuse, is a regional partnership founded to coordinate and channel the research, development and production of environmental system solutions.

Through a network of shared facilities in central New York, CoE-ES will seek to improve human health and performance, reduce energy consumption and improve quality of life by focusing on research and development, technology transfer and education in the areas of built environment systems (indoor air quality, comfort, lighting, acoustics, energy efficiency and intelligent control systems) and urban ecosystems (renewable resources, ambient air quality, water resource management, waste management and sustainable development).

The College of Human Ecology at Cornell will be involved with the center's human health and performance segment, including researching human responses to a range of environmental disturbances, such as air quality, sound, lighting, ergonomics and thermal comfort. Alan Hedge, a professor in the college's Department of Design and Environmental Analysis, will serve on the center's Science and Technology Advisory Committee. Associate Professor Joseph Laquatra will be the leader for outreach in the business development area, which is focused on technology transfer and commercialization of the center's research and intellectual property. Ann Lemley and Kay Obendorf, professors in the college's Department of Textiles and Apparel, also will be involved in both research and outreach education. In addition, faculty members from the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell, including Sidney Leibovich, John Lumley, Zellman Warhaft and Albert George, will work with the center's built-environment segment in the area of thermofluid engineering and acoustics, specifically on turbulence modeling, flow control, atmospheric flows and atmospheric turbulence.

While in Syracuse, Pataki was given the first Dr. Willis Carrier Achievement Award, named in honor of Carrier, a 1901 Cornell 1901 graduate who invented the concept for air conditioning in 1902 and was a co-founder of the Carrier Engineering Corp., a sponsor of CoE-ES.

The members of the consortium, with Syracuse and Cornell, include the Metropolitan Development Association of Syracuse and Central New York, the New York Indoor Environmental Quality Center Inc., the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Clarkson University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, SUNY Albany, SUNY Buffalo, the Institute of Ecosystem Studies and the Upstate Freshwater Institute.

To date, the CoE-ES has generated more than $170 million in public and private support from a consortium of university, research, corporate and economic development partners and from New York state and the federal government. With this support, the partners are addressing the full spectrum of scientific, engineering and policy issues pertaining to environmental systems. The CoE-ES is supported by more than 50 corporate and economic development partners who have pledged $100 million in support of the center. Of the 50 partners, six have pledged a combined $90 million: Pyramid Management Group Inc. ($45 million); Niagara Mohawk Power ($15 million); McQuay International ($10 million); Syracuse Research Corp. ($10 million); Carrier Corp. ($6.5 million); and Welch Allyn ($4 million).