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  • For an Energy Recovery Linac (ERL), the National Science Foundation awarded $18 million to a research team at Cornell’s Laboratory of Elementary-Particle Physics (LEPP) and Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) to begin development of this new super-advanced synchrotron radiation x-ray source.
  • The historic groundbreaking for Cornell’s $146-million Life Sciences Technology Building marked the beginning of a new era in life sciences research, education, and outreach. It is the centerpiece of Cornell’s $600-million New Life Sciences Initiative.
  • Cornell’s Northeast Sun Grant Institute of Excellence, directed by Larry P. Walker, Biological and Environmental Engineering, is one of five Sun Grant Centers of Excellence. With federal funding of $8.2 million, Cornell will lead research, education, and outreach activities in the use of plant biomass in energy and chemical production for this regional hub serving 14 states and the District of Columbia.
  • For a Cornell Information Campus, the Bill and Linda Gates Foundation awarded Cornell $25 million to support the construction of the signature building that will bring together the several units of the Faculty of Computing and Information Science.
  • Fred B. Schneider, Computer Science, became chief scientist for the Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology (TRUST). This new nationwide Science and Technology Center funded by the National Science Foundation with $19 million will develop long-term solutions to computer security problems. TRUST, a consortium of researchers from eight academic institutions (including Cornell), and its industrial and government partners aim to create new technologies to enable the development of secure computer software and networks.
  • The Peace Studies Program received a $1.86-million John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation award for additional research and training in science and security studies, aiming to expand the base of independent experts who can provide objective technical analysis on international security issues.
  • To study Listeria monocytogenes, Martin Wiedmann, Food Science, is co–primary investigator of a three-university research collaboration awarded $2 million by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The project is searching for ways to curtail the pathogen’s spread along the food chain, through comprehensive research and outreach.
  • For mosquito control, Laura C. Harrington, Entomology, became a member of a global team of scientists granted $19.7 million by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH). The researchers will develop and implement genetic strategies for controlling the Aedes aegypti mosquito that transmits dengue fever. Harrington’s share of the grant enables her lab to assess mating competition and fitness of wild and modified mosquitoes.
  • Thomas Eisner, Neurobiology and Behavior, a world authority on animal behavior, ecology, and evolution, won the Rockefeller University’s 2005 Lewis Thomas Prize for writing about science. The prize honors “the rare individual who bridges the worlds of science and the humanities.”
  • Cornell’s Laboratory of Ornithology led the search for the ivory-billed woodpecker after a reported sighting in the Big Woods of eastern Arkansas. The bird, the largest woodpecker in North America, had not been seen for 60 years in the United States. After intensive searches and video documentation and thousands of hours of in-depth acoustics analysis using some of the world’s most advanced natural sounds recording and analysis tools located at Cornell, the evidence is convincingly strong that the bird survives.
  • Cornell University Library’s exhibition, “From Dublin to Ithaca: Cornell’s James Joyce Collection,” celebrated the spectacular collection of letters, manuscripts, and books documenting the life and work of James Joyce held in the library’s collection. For the first time in 30 years, the library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections exhibited highlights from the Cornell Joyce collection, one of the richest in the world, covering Joyce’s early life and writing career. The 11-case exhibition of more than five dozen artifacts—including letters, first drafts, photographs, postcards, and other documents—were only some of the most prominent items of Cornell’s major collection of Joyceiana.

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