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.


$750K awarded for intercampus research

The Office of Academic Integration has awarded $750,000 in seed grants to 10 studies ranging from refugee health and legal rights, to a vaccine treating fentanyl addiction and overdose, to pancreatic cancer and antibiotic tolerance.

NSF challenges Cornell to tame winter, natural disasters

In partnership with New York community groups, Cornell researchers are developing a hyperlocal weather forecasting system designed to help emergency response.  

New initiative engages communities in neuroscience

The Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research is launching a new project – the Community Neuroscience Initiative, or CNI – that will build connections between neuroscience, the social sciences and communities.

Around Cornell

From vaults to virtual classes, library archives enrich teaching

Archivists, curators and librarians are finding virtual ways to help faculty members teach, using gems from Cornell University Library’s rare collections, from medieval texts on parchment to punk show flyers.

Ultrawide bandgap gives material high-power potential

A Cornell collaboration has found a way to grow a single crystalline layer of alpha-aluminum gallium oxide that has the widest energy bandgap to date – a discovery that clears the way for new semiconductors that will handle higher voltages, higher power densities and higher frequencies than previously seen.

Study: Americans skeptical of COVID-19 contact tracing apps

Mobile contact-tracing technology has emerged as one way to contain COVID-19, but contact tracing apps, which require a critical mass of adopters to be effective, face serious obstacles in the U.S., Cornell researchers have found.

New imaging method views soil carbon at near-atomic scales

A new study describes a breakthrough method for imaging the physical and chemical interactions that sequester carbon in soil at near atomic scales, which may have implications for mitigating climate change.

COVID-19 patient registry helping track disease’s evolution

A Cornell-led COVID-19 patient registry, organized by Weill Cornell Medicine, continues to be a source of medical insight into the workings of the novel coronavirus and treatment of infected patients.

Spatial maps give new view of gut microbiome

Cornell researchers developed an imaging tool to create intricate spatial maps of the locations and identities of hundreds of different microbial species, such as those that make up the gut microbiome.