Steven D. Tanksley, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics, is the winner of the prestigious 2005 Kumho Science International Award in Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology. The $30,000 prize is the world's largest in the field of plant molecular biology. The prize, awarded by the International Society for Plant Molecular Biology (ISPMB), is for Tanksley's pioneering work in genome mapping, comparative genomics and marker-assisted breeding of crop plants. (January 24, 2005)
At its meetings in New York City Friday, Jan. 21, and Saturday, Jan. 22, the Cornell University Board of Trustees approved a set of planning parameters for the 2005-06 budget that calls for a 4.3 percent tuition increase for most students in the endowed colleges. (January 24, 2005)
The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University has opened a search for a new director of the Cornell Migrant Program and is welcoming e-mailed nominations or inquiries at . (January 21, 2005)
A melody of staccato piano notes sings out from the speakers of Victor K. Wong's desktop computer. But it is not a melody made by Bach, or Liberace, or even Alicia Keys. It is the melody of color. Wong, a Cornell University graduate student from Hong Kong who lost his sight in a road accident at age seven, is helping to develop innovative software that translates color into sound. (January 21, 2005)
Cornell University Vice President Tommy Bruce has issued the following statement on the proposal by Northwest Airlines to bring new air service to Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport.
If there ever were a teachable moment when it comes to tsunamis, physics and fault lines, that moment is now. And Cornell University graduate student Evan Variano is making sure it's not lost. In the wake of the devastating Asian tsunami, he's taking a lesson plan he has developed -- and a portable teaching device -- to high schools in the Ithaca and Rochester areas. (January 18, 2005)
A Cornell University research group has made a sweet and environmentally beneficial discovery -- how to make plastics from citrus fruits, such as oranges, and carbon dioxide. In a paper published in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (Sept. 2004), Geoffrey Coates, a Cornell professor of chemistry and chemical biology, and his graduate students Chris Byrne and Scott Allen describe a way to make polymers using limonene oxide and carbon dioxide, with the help of a novel "helper molecule" -- a catalyst developed in the researchers' laboratory. (January 17, 2005)
The Cornell University Board of Trustees will hold its first meetings of 2005 at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City, Jan. 21 and 22. (January 18, 2005)
Susan A. Henry, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of Agriculture and Life Sciences, launched a monthlong trip in Asia by signing a memorandum of understanding with Dr. S.A. Patil, vice chancellor of the University of Agricultural Sciences in Dharwad, India, on Jan. 11. It is the third such agreement that CALS has established with universities in southern and western India. (January 17, 2005)
Cornell University's Department of Astronomy is inviting the general public and the media to witness, on NASA-TV, the historic first landing of the Huygens probe on the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, at an open house tomorrow, Friday, Jan. 14. (January 13, 2005)
Cornell University researchers have created a video simulation of the deadly Dec. 26 Indian Ocean tsunami that shows in graphic detail how the massive wave system spread outward from the epicenter of an undersea earthquake northwest of Sumatra, Indonesia. The simulation makes it clear how the tsunami struck the coastlines of Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India with such devastating force, then continued as far as East Africa. (January 12, 2005)
William P. Thurston, professor of mathematics at Cornell University and a world-renowned mathematician in the area of topology, has won the 2005 American Mathematical Society (AMS) Book Prize. The award, which is given every three years, recognizes "an outstanding research book that makes a seminal contribution to the research literature, reflects the highest standards of research exposition, and promises to have a deep and long-term impact in its area." The prize was awarded Jan. 6 in Atlanta, Ga. The prize honors Thurston's book Three-dimensional Geometry and Topology, edited by Silvio Levy. The book describes Thurston's "geometrization program," a major event in modern mathematics that has the celebrated Poincaré Conjecture as a corollary. (January 12, 2005)
