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.


Pandemic injects new urgency into coronavirus collaborations

Susan Daniel and Gary Whittaker discuss their collaborations and others across Cornell’s campuses that are working to better understand the COVID-19 virus.

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Cornell Atkinson awards $1.1M to innovative projects

Cornell Atkinson has awarded seven Academic Venture Fund seed grants, totaling $1.1 million, for projects that engage faculty from eight Cornell colleges and 16 academic departments.

Researchers control elusive spin fluctuations in 2D magnets

A Cornell team developed a new imaging technique that is fast and sensitive enough to observe critical spin fluctuations – which are highly correlated electron spin patterns – in two-dimensional magnets.

Evergreen idea turns biomass DNA into degradable materials

A Cornell-led collaboration is turning DNA from organic matter – such as onions, fish and algae – into biodegradable gels and plastics. The resulting materials could be used to create plastics and methods for drug delivery.

Expanding precision medicine’s potential for humans, dogs

Researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine and the College of Veterinary Medicine are expanding the potential of precision medicine for canine and human patients, by studying a lymphoma that occurs in both people and dogs.

U.S. social distancing stabilized, but did not reduce, spread

A statistical analysis of all 50 states and Washington, D.C., found that social distancing measures slowed the spread of coronavirus on the whole, but did not reduce the number of new infections per day.

Crossing boundaries: Cornell’s thriving research ecosystem

Collaborating across disparate disciplines to tackle the grand challenges facing humanity is intrinsic to Cornell’s unique brand of research innovation.

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For a student with diabetes, research is power

When Kaavian Shariati ’20 learned he had Type 1 diabetes shortly before arriving at Cornell, he was shocked not only by his new responsibilities – monitoring his insulin levels day and night – but by the state of diabetes research.

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Digital ‘virus’ helps researchers map potential spread

A team including a Cornell researcher has developed a digital “virus” that could piggyback on contact-tracing apps and spread from smartphone to smartphone in real time, helping policymakers predict COVID-19 spread.