<p><a href="http://history.arts.cornell.edu/faculty-department-norton.php">Mary Beth Norton</a>, the Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History, has been elected president of the American Historical Association (AHA), the principal umbrella organization for the profession. Her one-year term as president will begin in January 2018.</p>
<p><a href="http://falcon.arts.cornell.edu/asl22/Home.html">Adam Seth Levine</a>, assistant professor of government, has won two awards from the American Political Science Association (APSA), the leading professional organization for the study of political science. The awards will be presented in Philadelphia at the beginning of September.</p>
<p>On July 12, a United Nations tribunal ruled on an arbitration case involving contested territory in the South China Sea. Government professors <a href="http://government.arts.cornell.edu/faculty/carlson/">Allen Carlson</a> and <a href="http://government.arts.cornell.edu/faculty/weiss/">Jessica Chen Weiss</a>, both on the faculty of the <a href="http://caps.cornell.edu/">China-Asia Pacific Studies</a> (CAPS) Program, reflected on the verdict.</p>
<p>The Cornell Summer School in Theory explored contemporary international debates in media studies, visual studies, literary studies, philosophy and contemporary art.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.8px;">Researchers in the collaboration between the Colleges of Arts & Sciences and Engineering will work on technologies and new tools to reveal the inner workings of the brain.</span></p>
<p>Cornell will host the Conference in Laboratory Phonology (<a href="http://www.labphon.org/labphon15/node/2">LabPhon 15</a>), an international meeting for researchers taking experimental approaches to the study of human speech sounds, July 13-17.</p><p>The conference theme, “Speech Dynamics and Phonological Representation,” will address sounds in human language as part of a linguistic, cognitive and communicative system.</p>
<p>On July 4, the veil over Jupiter’s mysteries will be ripped away with the arrival of NASA’s Juno mission, and <a href="http://astro.cornell.edu/members/jonathan-lunine.html">Jonathan Lunine</a> will be there to watch it happen.</p><p>Like cosmic archaeologists, astronomers will use Juno’s instruments to understand what went into the icy planetesimals that Jupiter swept up after it formed.</p>
<p>Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy and director of <a href="http://carlsaganinstitute.org/">Cornell's Carl Sagan Institute</a>, has been name the inaugural recipient of the Barrie Jones Award by The Open University (OU), United Kingdom, and the Astrobiology Society of Britain (ASB). The award will be presented in a ceremony on July 7 at the OU campus.</p>
<p>Forty-one years after graduating, on May 22 Charles ("Chip") Aquadro was presented with an honorary Doctor of Science degree from St. Lawrence University, his alma mater, in recognition of his achievements in science. </p>
<p>"This is an exciting moment for Jewish studies,” said Gretchen Ritter, the Harold Tanner Dean of Arts and Sciences, in her introduction to a Reunion Weekend panel on “Jewish Studies at Cornell, Today and Tomorrow,” held June 10 in the Physical Sciences Building.</p><p>The panel included Jonathan Boyarin, Jewish Studies Program director, and Kim Haines-Eitzen, incoming director of the Religious Studies Program.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.8px;">Researchers from varied disciplines are tackling the topic of inequality — asking questions about its sources and its impacts, as well as the policies and movements under way to reduce it.</span></p>
<p>Math matters in important ways, and each year Cornell’s Department of Mathematics sponsors a public lecture to illustrate just how much. This lecture takes place during the national Mathematics Awareness Month, with the goal of increasing public understanding of and appreciation for mathematics. This year’s lecture, held April 29 in Malott Hall, featured assistant math professor Lionel Levine on “The Future of Prediction.”</p>
<p>We are constantly bombarded with linguistic input, but our brains are unable to remember long strings of linguistic information. How does the brain make sense of this ongoing deluge of sound?</p>
<p>On May 22, Ithaca High School (IHS) seniors presented the mathematics research projects they did as part of the Senior Seminar, a course for Ithaca High School (IHS) students who have completed most or all of the IHS math classes. The seminar meets at the high school and is taught by three graduate mathematics or applied mathematics students each year, to introduce high-school students to three mathematics topics they normally would not see until college.</p>
<p>"Barbarians Rising,” a new History Channel series, dramatizes the stories of nine of history’s greatest warriors as they fight for freedom – and to ensure accuracy the filmmakers turned to Barry Strauss, Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies.</p>
<p>College of Arts and Sciences faculty member Sarah Murray received the Robert and Helen Appel Fellowship for Humanists and Social Scientists, and Linda Nicholson received the Robert A. and Donna B. Paul Academic Advising Award in the College of Arts and Sciences at a May 28 trustee-faculty dinner which recognized universitywide teaching and advising and newly tenured faculty.</p>
<p>Two of the country’s foremost constitutional scholars – Michael Klarman and Michael Dorf – offered their thoughts on the history of the U.S. Constitution at a panel during the May 26 Klarman Hall dedication.</p><p>Interim President Hunter Rawlings, Cornell president emeritus and professor emeritus of classics, opened the panel he moderated with reflections on James Madison, America’s “greatest scholar-president.”</p>
<p>“Me, my partner and [Flaubert’s] ‘Sentimental Education’ were on vacation in the south of France. And it wasn’t pretty,” said literary theorist Paul Fleming during the May 26 “Transformative Humanities: Faculty Reflections on Life-Changing Creative Works” panel celebrating the dedication of Klarman Hall.</p>
<p>A conference on the writing of Bolivian author <a href="http://romancestudies.cornell.edu/people/faculty-directory/jose-edmundo-paz-soldan/">Edmundo Paz-Soldán</a>, professor of Spanish literature in the Department of Romance Studies, was held at the University of Seville, Spain, on May 25. The conference explored Paz-Soldán’s “narrative path,” and featured speakers from Spain, France, Bolivia and Belgium.</p>
<p>Vikram Gadagkar MS ’10, PhD ‘13 was recently awarded a prestigious three-year, $234,150 <a href="https://www.simonsfoundation.org/about-us/" target="_blank">Simons Foundation</a> fellowship with the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain (SCGB). SCGB seeks to expand understanding of the role of internal brain processes in the arc from sensation to action, thereby discovering the nature, role and mechanisms of the neural activity that produces cognition.</p>
<p>Cornell's Topology Festival may be the longest running annual conference on a specific topic in math in the United States. The 52nd Topology Festival was held May 13-15 in Mallott Hall, with speakers from Israel, Germany, Sweden, and across the United States addressing topics in topological combinatorics.</p><p><img alt="" src="/sites/as/files/Topology-festival-1.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 400px;" /></p>
<p>In government professor <a href="http://government.arts.cornell.edu/faculty/kirshner/">Jonathan Kirshner</a>’s new novel Urban Flight, the Big Apple is in Big Trouble: New York City is on the edge of bankruptcy, crime is out of control, the streets are gridlocked, and the corruption is so thick protagonist Jason Sims, a traffic helicopter pilot, can see it from the sky.</p>
<p>Michael Lynch ‘70, professor of science & technology studies, has been awarded the 2016 <a href="http://www.4sonline.org/prizes/bernal">J. D. Bernal Prize</a> by the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) for his “long-term and highly influential contribution to Science and Technology Studies and to the intellectual life of 4S.”</p>
<p>Alex Hayes, assistant professor of astronomy, will receive the 2016 Zeldovich Medal, in Commission B (planets) from COSPAR (Committee on Space Research for the International Council of Science) and the Russian Academy of Sciences. The award is given to young scientists who have demonstrated excellence and achievement in their field of research.</p><p>Hayes will be presented with the award at the inaugural ceremony of the 41st COSPAR Scientific Assembly on August 1 in Istanbul, Turkey.</p>
<p>Jonathan Boyarin, the Hendrix Director of Jewish Studies, the Diann G. and Thomas A. Mann Professor of Modern Jewish Studies and professor of anthropology, has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research (AAJR). The AAJR was founded in 1919 and includes about one hundred of the most eminent scholars of Jewish Studies in North America.</p>
<p>Identity goes far beyond belonging to a particular group according to race, religion or sexual orientation, faculty say, and it's more complicated today than ever before.</p>
<p>Migration is one of the major forces shaping the world today, with more than 60 million displaced people.</p><p>“Never in history have we seen this many simultaneous displacements across the globe and these people are not going home any time soon,” says Mostafa Minawi, assistant professor of history and Himan Brown Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow. “This is a global population redistribution and it will hit us whether we like it or not.”</p>
<p>Artists today engage with a world very different from that of their predecessors: globally connected, technologically advanced and highly diverse. In the last fifty years the Western canon has been displaced as the benchmark for “good” and worthwhile art, opening the door to works intended to challenge viewers, rather than simply to aesthetically please.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.8px;">Scholars in medieval studies say many of the issues they explore resonate with those confronting </span>modern society.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.8px;">Although the intent is good, humanitarianism is fraught with risks for those on the receiving end, researchers say.</span></p>
<p><a href="http://africana.cornell.edu/people/ndri-assie-lumumba.cfm">N’Dri Assié-Lumumba</a>, professor of Africana, recently co-edited a special issue of the International Review of Education-Journal of Lifelong Learning (IRE) titled, “Rediscovering the Ubuntu Paradigm in Education," Birgit Brock-Utne (University of Oslo) and Dr. joan.Osa Oviawe (visiting scholar at Cornell) were co–editors.</p>
<p>Isabel Hull has received a Certificate of Merit from the American Society of International Law for her book, “A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law During the Great War” (Cornell, 2014). The award, for “a preeminent contribution to creative scholarship,” was presented at the ASIL’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. in March. </p>
<p>Jennifer Maclaughlin has been named the new Assistant Dean and Director of Arts & Sciences <a href="https://as.cornell.edu/careers">Career Development</a>. In her role, she will design and implement strategies to support the career development of A&S undergraduates at all stages in their education: as they engage in career planning, obtain experiential learning, consider and pursue graduate school options, and conduct job searches.</p>
<p>Historian Mary Beth Norton has been nominated for president-elect of the <a href="http://historians.org/">American Historical Association</a>, the principal umbrella organization for the profession. If elected, she would serve as president beginning in January 2018, for one year. The results of the on-line election are expected in July.</p>
<p>Hear faculty explain <span style="line-height: 20.8px;">gravitational waves and ponder </span>this year's election mayhem — while connecting with old friends and making new Cornell memories — at Reunion 2016.</p>
<p>Is language innate? How did we get language? While researchers continue to debate, a new book offers a revolutionary, unifying framework for understanding the processing, acquisition and evolution of language. The book, “Creating Language: Integrating Evolution, Acquisition, and Processing” by Cornell Professor of Psychology Morten H.</p>
<p>Technology has changed all aspects of our lives, even ancient fields of study in the humanities. The College of Arts and Sciences’ fourth Big Ideas Panel, part of its <a href="http://as.cornell.edu/humanities">New Century for the Humanities</a> celebration, explored technology in the humanities March 15 in Klarman Hall’s Groos Family Atrium.</p>
<p>Science Foundation Ireland presented its prestigious St. Patrick’s Day Science Medal March 16 to <a href="http://davisgroup.lassp.cornell.edu/cv.html">Séamus Davis</a>, Cornell’s James Gilbert White Distinguished Professor in the Physical Sciences. The presentation was made by Charles Flanagan, Ireland’s minister for foreign affairs and trade, as part of St. Patricks’ Day celebrations in Washington, D.C.</p>