Radical Collaboration

Cornell faculty are reaching across disciplines to tackle society’s most complex challenges and to make breakthrough discoveries. These radical collaborations—collisions of thoughts and perspectives from vastly different fields—lead to unexpected and unconventional solutions and deepen our thinking.


NIH-funded research to address rising male infertility

Paula Cohen, associate vice provost for life sciences, is leading an eight-year, $8 million, multi-institution grant to untangle the complex genetic rulebook for how sperm develops.

Meet Jinhua Zhao, Dyson’s new dean

From his research on environmental and resource economics to the high value he places on diversity and cross-disciplinary collaboration, learn about Jinhua Zhao in this Q&A.

Around Cornell

$25M center will use digital tools to ‘communicate’ with plants

The new Center for Research on Programmable Plant Systems, or CROPPS, funded by a five-year, $25 million National Science Foundation grant, aims to grow a new field called digital biology.

Weaving inclusivity, style into wearable tech

Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao, assistant professor in the College of Human Ecology, uses knitting and weaving techniques to make on-skin devices that express the wearer’s personality.

Tech/Law Colloquium features privacy, COVID and incarceration

The Technology and Law Colloquium – a hybrid Cornell University course and public lecture series – returns this semester with talks from 13 leading scholars who study the legal and ethical questions surrounding technology’s impact in areas like privacy, sex and gender, data collection, and policing.

Around Cornell

Cornell Bowers CIS welcomes 13 faculty members

The Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science is welcoming 13 new faculty members in the departments of Computer Science, Information Science and Statistics and Data Science. Collectively, their work ranges from developing robots that assist people with mobility limitations to using computational tools to study inequality and graphical models to solve real-world problems.   

Around Cornell

Scientists harness machine learning to lower solar energy cost

A Cornell-led collaboration received a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to use machine learning to accelerate the creation of low-cost materials for solar energy.

Academic Integration efforts lead to $33M in grants

Seed grants and symposia based on themes from the Office of Academic Integration have bridged researchers from the Ithaca and New York campuses and have brought a high return on investment to Cornell. 

Grad student is breath of fresh air for C2C filtration project

The Cornell Campus-to-Campus buses have resumed service thanks to a new air filtration system that was designed, built and installed by a team of faculty and staff, and at the center of the collaboration, a master’s student who decided to do something challenging with his summer break.