ITHACA, N.Y. -- The centennial year for Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) will come to a close Friday, April 29, with "The Golden Age of Innovation" -- a symposium featuring major contributors to human health, nutrition and education.

"Having Maxine Singer, Per Pinstrup-Andersen and Norman Borlaug together in one room for a public symposium is truly an historic event and a wonderful way to wrap up our centennial year activities," says Susan Henry, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of Agriculture and Life Sciences, who will moderate the event.

The symposium will take place in the David L. Call Alumni Auditorium in Kennedy Hall from 1 to 5 p.m. with a reception following from 5 to 5:30 p.m. Both are free and open to the public. Cornell President Jeffrey Lehman will offer welcoming remarks.

Borlaug, a wheat geneticist, won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his decades-long efforts to combat world hunger. As the research scientist in charge of a wheat improvement program initiated in 1944 by the Mexican government and the Rockefeller Foundation, Borlaug established himself as a pre-eminent wheat researcher and agent for technology transfer. The pilot program led to the establishment of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, where Borlaug held several positions, including director of the wheat program. Borlaug will look ahead to the next century of agricultural innovation with his lecture, "From the Green to the Gene Revolution: A 21st-Century Challenge."

Pinstrup-Andersen, the H.E. Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy and a professor of applied economics at Cornell, will present "The Food and Nutrition Challenge, International Agriculture Research and CALS." Pinstrup-Andersen won the 2001 World Food Prize for his contributions to the improvement of agricultural research, food policy and the lives of the poor. In addition to holding several concurrent professorships at European universities, he chairs the Science Council for the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, the world's largest publicly funded agricultural research organization.

Singer, a molecular biologist, first gained note for her National Institutes of Health studies of chromatin structure, the structure and evolution of defective viruses and enzymes that work on DNA and RNA. Additionally, throughout her career, Singer has worked on public policy issues, leading to her appointment in 1988 as president of the Carnegie Institution, a position she held until 2002. During her tenure there, Singer initiated the Carnegie Academy for Science Education, a teacher-training program in the District of Columbia designed to increase knowledge of science and present new methods of bringing science to elementary students. Singer's honors include the National Medal of Science, awarded in 1992. Singer's talk is "The Cornell Maize Genetics Community: Its Legacy of Lessons for Today."

The symposium is sponsored by the CALS Centennial Committee. For information, contact June Losurdo at (607) 255-7771 or jml235@cornell.edu .