We propose a transformative partnership between Cornell University and King's College London to revolutionize community-engaged learning (CEL) and community-engaged research at King's. This collaboration comes at a crucial time as King's prepares to launch its new vision to more holistically align community engagement with its academic mission and develop a strategy dedicated to maximise faculty participation and student success. Our comprehensive approach to CEL will align with King's commitment to societal benefit and transformation, as well as advance a pilot design currently being developed at King's to maximise opportunities for faculty, student, and community partners. The project unfolds in two phases: (1) a foundation-building period of stakeholder engagement and needs assessment, (2) a hands-on implementation of adapted Cornell CEL models within the British context.

Aqueous zinc batteries are promising for safe, low-cost, and sustainable grid-scale energy storage. However, their long-term stability is limited by interfacial reactions that cause hydrogen evolution, corrosion, and dendrite growth. To address this challenge, we propose using aerosol-assisted chemical vapor deposition (AACVD) to form ultrathin, conformal coatings of microporous conjugated polymers as solid-electrolyte interphases (SEIs) on zinc anodes and cathodes. These polymers combine intrinsic porosity for fast ion transport with rigid conjugated frameworks that provide chemical stability and electronic insulation. Research teams from Cornell and Chulalongkorn University will jointly advance SEI synthesis, characterization, and battery testing. This collaboration will establish a new strategy for stable aqueous zinc batteries and large-scale energy storage technologies.

This project will initiate a collaboration between Cornell University (PI Ricardo Daziano), the Technical University of Denmark (Rico Krueger), and Imperial College London (Aruna Sivakumar) on modeling adaptive energy-use decisions in electric-vehicle (EV) charging. Using behavioral econometrics and machine learning, we will develop a dynamic Bayesian framework to capture evolving consumer preferences under smart-charging conditions. The seed funding will harmonize U.S. and Danish stated-preference data, prototype a variational-Bayes model, and integrate behavioral estimation with reinforcement-learning decision tools. The one-year collaboration will yield a joint peer-reviewed paper and preliminary results for NSF, UKRI, and ERC proposals, establishing a sustainable tri-institutional partnership for energy-smart mobility research.

Droughts are among the most socio-economically impactful natural catastrophes. Knowing their future frequency and intensity is critical for adaptation and infrastructure planning. However, future projections of drought remain uncertain, in part due to climate models disagreeing on the sensitivity of terrestrial water fluxes to changes in temperature and precipitation. Here, we propose to integrate two new methods to benchmark climate models, one focused on runoff sensitivity developed at Cornell University by PI Lehner and one focused on evaporation sensitivity developed at National Taiwan University by PI Hsu, with the goal of constraining projections of regional drought risk. The seed grant will support an in-person exchange and hackathon to determine in which global regions the two approaches yield consistent results and where further work is required to unify the two methodologies.

Tropical cyclones bring extreme winds, rainfall, and storm surge to coastal areas, posing significant threats to infrastructure and human life. Climate change is expected to worsen these hazards, raising concerns for coastal communities like Taiwan. However, projections of cyclone impacts are highly uncertain due to the rarity of these events, and the sensitivity of tropical cyclone activity to global ocean warming patterns. This project aims to better constrain tropical cyclone dependence, by using a quantitative framework to understand the contribution of large-scale circulation changes to the thermodynamic potential of tropical cyclones. We will use a combination of climate model simulations and an open-source tropical cyclone downscaling model in our approach. This work will be able to inform coastal resiliency in areas such as Taiwan that are prone to tropical cyclones.

I propose that a gendered analysis of everyday labor—with ritual care as devotional practice and environmental awareness—can enlighten otherwise obscured areas of agency and possibilities for change in the "modernization" of Indonesia. I address the question of how religion (as ritual, beliefs, and a shared cultural vocabulary) can be activated as a social and economic force to ensure environmental protection and regeneration in Bali's tourism-led economic development, and what role do women—as mothers and wives, ritual assistants and performers—play therein. This is a multilayered project: on the foundations of a political economic analysis that brings into focus the capitalist development of Bali over the past century, I apply the lens of religious studies to address three concerns: gendered labor, indigenous knowledge, and environmental degradation.

This project explores a new 3D integrated circuits (IC) architecture that co-designs vision sensors and accelerators for patch-sparse Vision Transformers (ViTs). By detecting spatial and temporal activity directly within the sensor, only active patches are tokenized and processed, dramatically reducing compute and data movement. This work will investigate a two-tier 3D IC design where the top die performs event-driven patch activation and the bottom die executes sparse ViT inference using digital accelerator design. This one-year project will deliver a simulation-validated 3D IC design and sensor-accelerator co-design framework, demonstrating that coupling activity-driven sensors with adaptive transformer accelerators can achieve order-of-magnitude gains in energy efficiency for always-on intelligent vision.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has had a profound impact on engineering. To stay at the forefront of these changes, higher education institutions are increasingly embedding AI instruction into engineering programs. However, an important question emerges: are engineering students adequately equipped with the mathematical foundations and competencies necessary to effectively develop, deploy, and evaluate AI models? This project develops a framework for a skills-based mathematical assessment instrument that bridges the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical AI-oriented, engineering applications. We will establish a synergistic collaboration between Werth at Cornell and Shah at QMUL involving data collection, and analysis involving student researchers from both institutions. The project will culminate in a proof-of-concept, cross-national mathematical skills inventory for engineers.

This project investigates how farmers, cooperatives, extension agents, and youth innovators advance circular agrifood transitions in New York State (NYS) and Yangtze River Delta (YRD). Building on prior Cornell-SJTU collaboration on the Circular Bionutrient Economy (CBE), we will combine interviews, household surveys, and system dynamics modeling to examine how emerging practices close agrifood waste loops through nutrient recovery and recycling pathways, including food-waste composting, manure management, and agro-plastic reuse. The project will generate a comparative typology of practice bundles, identify enabling and constraining institutional conditions, and co-develop concise practitioner guidelines for scaling CBE-based innovations in rural and peri-urban contexts. Our project will offer actionable insights and seed next-phase collaborative research and joint proposals.

The goal of this project is to use fermentation to develop novel, plant-based high protein food products that will facilitate the increased consumption of plant-based proteins. This collaborative project will combine the expertise of the Cornell PI in innovative processing with the fermentation expertise of the DTU collaborator and team. Specifically, we plan to investigate the effect of innovative techniques such as membrane filtration, fermentation, and high pressure processing, on creating novel food products. The groups have been in contact for the past 2 years, and are already working together in co-advising a PhD student from DTU who is working on this project. The data that we will generate in this project will be used as preliminary data to apply for additional funding, by both research groups. These funds will allow us to travel and greatly speed up progress on the project.

Transportation policies are often judged by cost-benefit analysis, which can ignore which subgroups benefit and who is harmed. This project launches a Cornell-DTU collaboration to design equity-aware optimization methods for congestion pricing and transit planning. We will integrate welfare economics, operations research, transport modeling, and machine-learning notions of fairness to build and test tools that reveal equity-efficiency trade-offs. Methods will be evaluated with large-scale simulations using case studies in Denmark and the United States. Seed funds will support Cornell PI and postdoc visits to DTU for intensive working sessions and a mini-workshop, enabling joint manuscripts and positioning the team for competitive external proposals.

A challenge of studying and teaching evolutionary biology is the geologic timescale of evolutionary change. One of the experiments that revolutionized how we study and think about evolution occurred on the small island of Daphne Major in the Galápagos, where evolutionary change is observable in real time. Unfortunately, this study ended in 2012. Here, we propose an international collaboration that will bring together scientists from the US and Ecuador to restart this long-term monitoring effort. Importantly, the scientists involved share a vision to bring a leadership role in running this important long-term study to Ecuadorian scientists. Together, these scientists will probe a pivotal moment in the island's history, where species are more genetically admixed than ever before and offer an opportunity to understand the ecological and evolutionary impacts of species interactions.

Black vultures (Coragyps atratus) are scavengers commonly found near human settlements and poultry farms where they may play a role in the transmission of zoonotic pathogens, such as Salmonella. This project aims to investigate the occurrence, genetic diversity, and potential epidemiological connections of Salmonella isolates obtained from black vultures with those from commercial poultry and clinical sources. Salmonella isolates will undergo whole-genome sequencing to determine their serovar, virulence gene content, and antimicrobial resistance profiles. Phylogenetic analyses will be performed using available Salmonella genomes from poultry and human cases to assess potential transmission pathways and shared evolutionary lineages. This project will provide novel insights into the role of scavenger birds in Salmonella ecology and antimicrobial resistance dissemination.

We aim to develop a scalable approach to functionalize natural (i.e. cotton) and synthetic (i.e. polyester) fibers with layered nanomaterials such as single- and multi-layer graphene. Using liquid-phase exfoliation and roll-to-roll wrapping of CVD-grown graphene, we will evaluate how fiber's morphology and surface chemistry affect graphene adhesion, conductivity, and durability. By comparing natural and synthetic fibers, we will identify key parameters for uniform coating while maintaining fiber's flexibility. Overall, this project will establish the groundwork to design functional fibers for wearables and will open future development of sustainable, large-scale, and industrially compatible production of graphene-functionalized fibers, offering new opportunities for smart textiles, healthcare wearables, and energy-harvesting fabrics.

This project examines the externalisation of migration control (EMC) in the Americas, where states extend border enforcement beyond their territories, often through unlawful means that violate migrants' rights. With the Trump administration claiming 2 million removals by September 2025, EMC practices have intensified, straining receiving states and eroding humanitarian protections. The project focuses on how US-based grassroots organisations strategically engage the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), instead of or in conjunction with other fora, to contest harmful policies when domestic legal avenues narrow. Through an interdisciplinary workshop in Washington DC, we will bring together researchers, IACHR representatives, and advocacy organisations to: (1) clarify the conceptual framework of EMC; (2) examine its human rights consequences; (3) analyse advocacy strategies; and (4) establish foundations for comparative research across the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Outputs include a policy brief, academic article, and larger grant proposal.

While some societies suffer from lawlessness, others suffer from what could be called “the pathologies of legalism”.  Here, while citizens and officials adhere to “the letter of the law”, they frequently flout something more fundamental in ways that erode the rule of law.  In addition to the familiar uses of technicalities to game the legal system, there are much more serious instances, such as “lawfare”, in which political officials weaponize the law in order to attack their political opponents.  This project aims to illuminate the nature of the rule of law by investigating these and other pathologies of legalism. Questions to be posed include: What exactly is flouted when citizens or officials resort to legalism?  Wherein lies the wrong or harm in such floutings?  What kinds of measures would be suitable to address them effectively?  Are there certain virtues that, if cultivated, would protect against the pathologies of legalism?

How do individuals living in urban informality voice concerns and demand accountability? Often urban democracy does not work for informally housing residents in Africa’s rapidly growing cities. We propose here the first quantitative investigation into multiple types of informal housing to better understand the challenges to collective action and thus the ability for these communities to improve their livelihoods. We anticipate the diverse forms of informality in any given community, the proportion of citizens in a community that live in informality, the legal standing of one’s home, and the degree to which local leaders – both in the state and beyond – determine who has access to the benefits of the city. We propose to investigate these questions using a highly clustered survey of informally housed residents in Tembisa, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Effective biodiversity conservation often depends on predictions of how species will respond to environmental change. This project explores the relative roles of DNA sequence (the A, C, G, and T letters that vary among individuals and populations) versus “on/off” epigenetic switches that influence gene use. Focusing on Atlantic silverside—a small coastal fish that adapts quickly—we will compare methylation across alternative versions of growth-linked DNA regions, test patterns in wild and lab-reared fish, and examine inheritance within families. The work intentionally strengthens a strategic partnership: Cornell contributes a decade of system expertise and samples; UCPH brings leading methylation analytics. Outputs are shared products that cement the collaboration and lay foundations for a larger joint program.

This project advances recent interest in art from Renaissance Europe that engages the chronologies of nature: calendar cycles, allegories of the elements or seasons. We are reorienting that conversation from studies of nature to questions of ecology, and by integrating artistic evidence with literary sources such as natural philosophy, pastoral poetry, and natural histories. We argue that ecology and temporality came, during the early modern period of c. 1400-1800, to shape each other through new genres and forms of mapping chronologies of nature. In uncovering Renaissance time's ecological inflections, we will question the idea of anachronism that has long impeded Renaissance studies from shaping present-day ecological discourses. Our goal is to establish a transdisciplinary model of productive anachronism in research on Renaissance ecologies.

Amidst the hype surrounding AI, focus has largely been on the promise and frailties of the technology itself rather than what the sector is arguably seeking to obscure: the concentration of wealth and power among a technocratic elite. The proposed work aims to map globally distributed research on the financialized logics of the tech industry and build a coherent program critically examining the political economy of AI. This mapping effort will provide an open, public resource of people and activities addressing this area, forming the basis for workshops to refine shared understandings. We will conduct a case study focused on data centers, seen as exemplary of the AI's current hype and the concomitant financial investment and capital expansion. Finally, we will develop a large funding bid to reinforce emergent ties between critical scholars at Cornell and Edinburgh.

Seed systems are vital to agricultural productivity and resilience but face persistent challenges in seed health and quality. This project, a collaboration between Cornell University and the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI), will conduct a comparative, stakeholder-driven survey in Ghana and the Northeastern U.S. to identify constraints in seedborne disease management, diagnostics, and quality assurance. By engaging seed producers, regulators, and extension professionals, the study will generate actionable insights and strengthen institutional capacity. Findings will inform a joint workshop in Ghana, guiding policy and research priorities while laying the foundation for future collaborative funding. The project aims to enhance transcontinental understanding of seed system resilience and accelerate innovation in seed health diagnostics.

Despite recent advances, self-driving cars remain sensitive to environmental shifts, particularly in dense, occlusion-heavy urban settings where they were not explicitly trained. Existing approaches often require costly and time-consuming retraining using newly collected and annotated data for each deployment location. Our project aims to explore a new, geo-context-guided framework that enables self-driving vehicles to flexibly adapt to localized environmental knowledge. We will contribute across four key areas: (1) challenging experimental scenarios that emphasize uncertainty, occlusion and the value of location-specific context; (2) compact, scalable representations for multimodal local knowledge; (3) interactive and on-demand communication protocols with local infrastructure; and (4) novel evaluation metrics that assess saliency, uncertainty resolution, and communication efficiency.

Newcastle Disease (ND) is a leading cause of poultry mortality in Zambia, with recent outbreaks reported in vaccinated flocks. This suggests systemic vaccine failure, which threatens food security and livelihoods in all poultry sectors. An unexplored factor is maternally derived antibodies (MDAs), which offer early protection to chicks but may interfere with the establishment of vaccine-induced immunity if antibody titers remain high. Chicks may be vulnerable in the period between MDA depletion and the onset of vaccine protection. We aim to quantify MDA levels in layer chicks and assess their decline relative to vaccination programs currently used in Zambia. Using ELISA-based assays, antibody titers will be measured on day 1 to day 21 post-hatch. Findings will inform optimal timing of vaccination and contribute to disease control strategies. The results will enhance vaccine efficacy.

Climate change intensifies heat exposure in sub-Saharan Africa. Zambia faces 2-3°C temperature increases by 2050 (1), yet the temperature threshold for neonatal risks remains undefined. This retrospective cohort study will identify critical temperature thresholds and sensitive exposure windows during pregnancy associated with adverse neonatal outcomes in Zambia. Using de-identified maternity records from University Teaching Hospital and Livingstone Central Hospital for singleton births (January 2019-December 2024; nˆ6,000), linked with daily meteorological data, we will employ distributed lag non-linear models (DLNMs) (2) to quantify exposure-response relationships, identify temperature thresholds (32-35°C), and pinpoint vulnerable gestational windows. The study will generate the first evidence-based temperature thresholds for Lusaka, informing heat-health warning systems.

Mosquito-borne flaviviruses such as Zika, dengue, and West Nile virus threaten billions globally, yet control remains heavily dependent on insecticides. The gut microbiota is a key determinant of mosquito vector competence and an untapped resource for sustainable interventions. We recently discovered Klebsiella strains from saprophagous insects that reduce Zika virus infection by 90% in Aedes aegypti. This project will expand the discovery of antiviral microbes from diverse insects, test their efficacy in mosquitoes, and identify the mechanisms by which they block viral replication. By transforming insect-associated microbes into transmission-blocking symbionts, this Cornell—Zhejiang collaboration aims to build an environmentally friendly, evolution-resistant strategy to reduce arboviral disease spread.

The Great Recession and COVID-19 put increased fiscal pressure on local governments in both the US and China. The American Rescue Plan (ARPA) sought to mend a broken fiscal federalist system and provided unprecedented levels of fiscal support to local governments to invest in public health and transformative programs to address the structural inequities exposed by the pandemic. In China spatial inequality is also rising, and the national government is exploring new policy approaches.  We use cutting edge methods—AI, Large Language Models—to analyze local government plans and expenditures to understand how local governments have invested their funds. We will study the structure of policy design—how national policy influences local action, as well as the role of local planning. Insights and methodologies tested in the US case will inform future study in China.

New scholarship on the Cold War in Thailand highlights vernacular agency. Not mere puppets of superpowers, Thai leaders initiated change in their society that did not always align with U.S. interests. A focus on local agency does not let the U.S. off the hook but circumscribes the authority of the superpower by showing how locals redirected it in ways that buttressed particular political factions, cultural hierarchies, and economic policies over others. Our project examines several Thai intellectuals whose writings shaped international, regional, and domestic agendas between the 1950s and 1970s. We focus on the works of royalist anti-communist Prime Minister M.R. Kukrit Pramoj, diplomat Prince Wan Waithayakon, radical Buddhist monk Buddhadasa Bhikku, and Thailand’s foremost cultural intellectual, Phraya Anuman Rajadhon. These men and their philosophies expanded Thailand’s intellectual, political, and cultural space in ways that complicated their country’s alliance with the U.S. and enabled underground ties with the PRC.

The cement industry contributes 7-8% of global CO2 emissions, producing nearly 0.9 ton of CO2 per ton of cement. As demand increases, the need to reduce emissions through sustainable materials becomes crucial. This study focuses on an innovative approach by incorporating biochar (BC) and Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) into cement composites to enhance CO2 sequestration. BC, with its high surface area and porosity, can adsorb and store CO2, while MOFs, known for superior CO2 capture, further improve sequestration. The method replaces up to 20% of cement with bamboo waste and chopped wood biochar, using both CO2-saturated and unsaturated forms. MOFs will be added at 0.1%-5% dosages to enhance CO2 sequestration. The composites will undergo exposure in carbonation chambers, followed by CO2 absorption testing, TOC analysis, and mechanical property assessments. This approach provides a cost-effective, environmentally sustainable solution to reduce the cement industry's carbon footprint, supporting long-term reduction in CO2 consumption.

Although the menopause is a natural life event for all women, many women experience negative physical and mental health symptoms at this time. Physical activity can help reduce these symptoms and provide many other health benefits as women move into older adulthood. Unfortunately, less than 25% of women in this life stage are sufficiently physically active. Healthcare professionals are well-placed to promote physical activity to women during the menopause, but this is rarely done. The aim of this proposal is to bring together complementary expertise on physical activity research during the menopause (Edinburgh: Niven, Fitzsimons) and clinical and psychiatric expertise in women’s midlife mental health (Cornell: Wilkins) to better understand how to promote physical activity for mental health in healthcare settings. The project will include a series of meetings with the applicants and their wider networks in both Cornell and Edinburgh and the development of a preliminary data collection tool.

What percentage of the population is lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, or queer? For whom might this figure matter? And how is this data used and misused? Around the world, more censuses and surveys are asking about sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). While often well-intentioned (e.g., addressing health and socioeconomic disparities), these data practices assume demographic categories are fixed and measurable, creating challenges for the most marginalized LGBTQ individuals. Gender and sexuality scholars doctors Kevin Guyan and Jamie Budnick map the use (and misuse) of SOGI data in the UK and U.S. between 2020-25. The project convenes a Future of SOGI Data Forum, the first global gathering of policymakers, community groups, and academics engaged in SOGI data to learn from shared challenges and identify and mitigate “hidden harms” of collecting more data. The project will also publish an industry/policy brief, draft academic outputs, and establish the groundwork for future funding proposals.

This proposal is for a research partnership between the Department of Science & Technology Studies (S&TS) at Cornell and the Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (STIS) subject area at Edinburgh. These are the longest-established centers for STS in the two countries. Despite this, there have not been major formal partnerships between the departments to date. This application aims to remedy this with specific projects of intersecting interest: “Innovative Bioscience and Farming for Sustainable Futures” (IB) and “Ethics of Information and Mechanisms” (EIM). Both have clear applied and public-interest dimensions. IB will contribute directly to addressing future-proof food production and environmental protection — major global challenge issues. EIM is increasingly acknowledged as a leading issue for governance and security worldwide.

Regional food systems that support environmentally friendly production methods provide a potential opportunity for increased resiliency and sustainability, yet few projects have allowed for the development of transdisciplinary methods for cross-country comparisons. We aim to fill this gap by co-developing methods to map regional agroecological grain networks in Scotland and Upstate New York and explore the social, environmental, health, and economic impacts of each network. This pilot project will facilitate the development of transdisciplinary methods by bringing together sociologists, economists, and health/nutrition researchers to map regional grain networks, a major staple food of both the UK and U.S. diet. Outputs will include a peer-reviewed paper comparing the two networks along with workshops to facilitate the transfer of knowledge between stakeholders in each network.

This proposal aims to address the critical challenge of balancing accurate forecasting and topology discovery in the energy grid with the imperative of user privacy. As decentralized energy resources proliferate and smart meters become commonplace, the complexity of energy management increases, necessitating detailed data for effective prediction. We propose a novel framework that leverages state-space models and particle filters to enhance forecasting accuracy while incorporating advanced privacy-preserving techniques, including differential privacy and federated learning. This integrated methodology will allow localized prediction capabilities on devices such as smart meters, ensuring that only aggregated data is shared, thus protecting sensitive user information. Our approach aims to foster trust among users and facilitate the transition to a more resilient and efficient energy grid, ultimately contributing to sustainable energy management in an increasingly decentralized landscape.

This project will support a workshop, public event, and follow-on collaboration and grant writing by the Cornell and Edinburgh team. “Recomputing the Planet” will be held in Edinburgh in May 2025 (to immediately precede the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) World Summit). It will bring together artists, scholars, designers, activists, and community members dedicated to imagining new and more sustainable computational infrastructures for more hopeful planetary futures. Bringing together PI strengths in participatory and speculative design, sustainability, redistributive computing and human-centered computing, it seeks to build new sociotechnical imaginaries that extend and improve the practice of planetary computing, including its key moments of sourcing and extraction, energy and water, and waste and repair. It will also support follow-on PI collaborations towards future gallery installations in the U.S., UK, and Europe, planetary computing teaching modules and public engagement, and pursuit of larger grant-supported collaborations in Europe and the U.S.

Cities consume significant amounts of energy and contribute substantially to global carbon emissions. However, they also have the potential to mitigate these impacts, as the built environment profoundly influences behaviors and decision-making related to energy use and consumption. Rapidly urbanizing cities in Sub-Saharan Africa face unique challenges, including the prevalence of informal settlements and an energy sector primarily driven by residential consumption, compounded by issues of energy justice. Despite this, these contexts remain largely understudied. This research aims to address this empirical gap while enhancing the theoretical understanding of the relationship between the built environment and energy consumption in African cities. Using Accra, Ghana, as a case study, we employ a mixed-methods approach that includes spatial analysis and a quantitative survey of households. Our expected outcomes are to deepen the understanding of energy consumption within the context of informal settlements and energy justice concerns, ultimately contributing to the development of more equitable and energy-efficient built environments.

Children born to HIV-infected mothers who are HIV-free (CHU) experience higher hospitalization and mortality rates than their unexposed peers. These children demonstrate delays in neurodevelopmental milestones. Such challenges adversely impact their educational performance and long-term income potential. As the CHU population grows, understanding the mechanisms underlying their compromised immunity and vulnerability to infections is crucial to improving their health and quality of life. This study aims to identify maternal and neonatal factors affecting the long-term maintenance of vaccine-induced immunity. We will recruit HIV-infected pregnant women in their third trimester and their unexposed infants post-delivery for a longitudinal study. We will determine maternal clinical status and the timing of antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation on the effectiveness of passive antibody transfer. This pilot study will lay the groundwork for funding a well-characterized cohort of HIV+ mothers and uninfected infants to longitudinally examine the induction and maintenance of vaccine-induced immune responses comprehensively.

This project brings together Cornell Engineering students and Ghanaian students of English to collaboratively investigate the cultural and ethical issues emerging from the use of Generative AI (GenAI) tools in writing. Working virtually in teams, they will test various GenAI tools and explore whether these tools favor Western narratives, language, and values and how well they understand non-Western cultural contexts, such as Ghanaian traditions and idiomatic expressions. Students will also examine whether GenAI perpetuates harmful stereotypes about certain cultures or professions and how it addresses sensitive topics such as gender, identity, and race when viewed from different cultural perspectives. Together, they will co-author a proposal offering recommendations for addressing these issues and present it to a large group (both groups). Through this project, students will emerge with a well-rounded, interdisciplinary skill set, deeper cultural awareness, and a critical understanding of how GenAI and ethics intersect in both local and global contexts.

Ultrashort pulses of light, with durations measured in femtoseconds (a millionth of a billionth of a second), allow precision material processing by ablating material without thermal effects. The Cornell-Ghana team proposes to develop femtosecond-pulse lasers made of optical fiber that have the parameters required by the most effective approaches to material processing. Basic physics of nonlinear wave propagation must be understood to design such lasers. The lasers will find applications that range from precision cutting of hard materials such as metals to surgery.

This study explores how cultural and individual differences influence sustained engagement and emotion regulation in virtual retail environments within the Metaverse. By focusing on retail therapy and window shopping experiences, the project compares user behavior across the U.S. and Asia, examining differences in regulatory focus (promotion vs. prevention) and cognitive styles (holistic vs. analytic thinking). Virtual simulations will be designed to assess how these individual and cultural factors shape consumer interaction and emotional responses within retail spaces. By leveraging insights from consumer psychology and metaverse technology, this project aims to understand how virtual retail environments can be optimized for diverse cultural contexts, encouraging sustained use and positive emotional outcomes. The findings will contribute to the development of culturally adaptive Metaverse designs that enhance user experience and emotional well-being across different populations.

Power and transportation systems are fundamental infrastructures that contribute significantly to carbon emissions. This necessitates efforts to reduce carbon emissions across both sectors, such as promoting electric vehicles (EV) in transportation and enhancing renewable integration in power systems. Notably, these systems are deeply coupled, as the spatio-temporal charging patterns of EVs affect power grid operations, which further influences the overall carbon emissions. However, current carbon-reduction efforts typically address them in isolation. To bridge this gap, we propose this project to explore coordinated planning and operation of coupled transportation-power networks, aiming for joint carbon reduction. We will explore integrated planning for renewables and EV charging infrastructure and utilize EVs for grid balancing under high renewable penetration. Through real-world case studies in Hong Kong and New York, we will provide practical insights for achieving joint carbon reduction goals, demonstrating how synchronized improvements in both sectors can significantly enhance overall sustainability.

Breast cancer, particularly triple-negative breast cancer, presents significant challenges due to its high recurrence rates. Copper chelation therapy using tetrathiomolybdate (TM) offers a promising strategy to prevent metastatic relapse by depleting copper in the tumor microenvironment and inhibiting metastatic spread. Building on the expertise of Professor Mittal (Weill Cornell) and Dr. Imberti (King’s College London), this proposal aims to establish a new partnership between the two laboratories to study TM's effect on copper distribution in metastatic breast cancer models using radionuclide imaging techniques. The proposed research visit of experienced postdoctoral researcher Dr. Firth will be key to the new collaboration and enable transfer of expertise in murine metastatic models. The project will generate imaging-based biomarkers that could inform patient stratification and monitoring during copper depletion therapy. Data from this research will support future funding applications, advancing the use of PET imaging in copper depletion clinical trials.

This project builds on Quercia’s previous work at King’s, the "Atlas of AI Risks in Urban Computing," which used interactive tools to convey AI's risks and benefits to the public. The focus of the seed grant is to establish a partnership with Cornell Tech’s Urban Tech Hub. Building on the Urban Tech Hub’s horizon scan “The Future of Urban AI,” this partnership will pursue a focused exploration of critical issues such as accountability in AI-driven climate adaptation strategies and conflicts between privacy and environmental monitoring. Through an expert workshop, we will lay the groundwork for data collection and the future development of interactive tools to raise public awareness, inform policy, and ensure ethical AI implementation that supports sustainable, resilient, and just urban development.

Joining the increasing reflection that is taking place in public debate and academia on the ongoing impact of colonialism, this project investigates the practices, norms, and imaginaries of the global colonial past and present. Going beyond the Anglosphere, we aim to trace how various colonial realities that are located within specific local, regional, and imperial contexts overlap and connect to larger structures of oppression that may, however, still be internally heterogeneous and sometimes even contradictory. Bringing together a team of four scholars from King’s College London and Cornell University, the project will develop a broader theoretical framework of distinct but also overlapping trajectories and reverberations of colonial enterprises around the world. It will do so through connecting research that is taking place across a variety of empirical historical and contemporary sites, such as the Ottoman Empire, France, Finland, Tunisia, and Germany (to name only a few).

Can we still speak of “global health” in the post-Covid-19 world? This project examines how the pandemic exposed the limitations of "global" health and highlighted the resurgence of state medicine, particularly in India and South Africa. Through a two-day workshop at King’s College London, we will explore how pandemic responses in these localities were shaped by their particular bio-histories, including colonial medicine, anti-colonial struggle, and segregated social structures. The workshop will investigate: 1) whether pandemic governance in South Africa and India indeed marked a re-institution of state medicine; 2) the role digital health and surveillance tools played in this re-emergence and the concerns this raises about exclusionary practices and biopolitical control. Through a comparative analysis of India and South Africa as specific biopolitical locations, researchers from Cornell University, King’s College London, and beyond will work together to explore what remains of “global” health in the ruins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Machine listening — acoustic applications of machine learning — appears to be on the cusp of exponential advance. How might new possibilities of automating our most subtle and emotive sense be leveraged for creative, interpretive, and engaged research? How to listen with machines to support more diverse and situated ways of knowing environments? This collaboration will support the development and exchange of critical, creative, computational, and participatory research methods for socio-environmental listening. It will build on engaged forest soundscaping research at King's College London and sociopolitical listening projects at Cornell. The collaboration will convene an interdisciplinary research network of our respective researchers together with artists, technologists, and environmental groups, with a particular focus on how expressive coding, machine learning, and participatory research can be used to support polyphonous environmental understandings. The collaboration will support the development of a machine-listening research network for cross-institutional and community engagement.

This study is concerned with understanding how geopolitics and political economy have shaped and been shaped by successive waves of Chinese migration to Singapore. Most research focuses one-sidedly on domestic or international migration. But migration from China to Singapore — consisting of blue-collar workers, students, and economic elites — shows how domestic and international mobilities are entwined, with the politics and economics of China’s internal migration regimes reverberating across Asia and the world. Our study investigates three overarching questions: 1) How China’s economic rise, and more recent stagnation, has shaped Singapore's status as a major hub for diverse migrants from China; 2) How U.S.-China rivalry, and Singapore’s efforts to maintain neutrality, have influenced the contours and reception of migration in the city-state and beyond; and 3) How Singapore fits into Chinese migrants’ broader mobility patterns, as these exert political-economic effects across the region and the world.

This proposal aims to develop a new collaborative research agenda focusing on transport policy, specifically around electric vehicles. The research agenda seeks to analyze the range of electric vehicle policies developed by cities worldwide and their effectiveness in addressing climate change, air quality, and social equity. We intend to use quantitative and qualitative research methods to examine the impact of electric vehicle policies on vehicle ownership and usage. This is a new collaboration, and this project will seed our initial analyses with the goal of funding future research collaborations based on our research agenda.

This proposal aims to overcome the current limitations in characterizing the atomic-scale dynamics of high-entropy alloys (HEAs), which hold great potential for energy storage, catalysis, and other advanced applications. HEAs are composed of multiple elements in nearly equal proportions, leading to complex interactions that enhance their mechanical strength, wear resistance, and thermal stability. However, understanding their phase stability and sluggish diffusion remains a challenge due to the difficulty in tracking atomic movement. We propose a data-driven machine learning approach to virtually augment high-angle annular dark field scanning transmission electron microscopy (HAADF-STEM) with chemical data, enabling rapid, high-precision chemical mapping. Preliminary work shows success in simulated environments, and this project will extend the approach to real experimental data from HEA samples. This collaboration between experts in materials science and machine learning seeks to uncover the spatiotemporal mechanisms governing HEAs, guiding their rational design for energy-related applications.

The development of chiral Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) has remained a great challenge because of the limited availability of chiral ligands, despite the potential applications in sustainable catalysis and chemical production, drug delivery, and complex separation processes. This proposal aims to explore novel chiral MOFs that exhibit extended pore sizes and diverse functionality. Structurally diverse chiral ligands will be synthesized using the new methodologies developed by NUS Co-PI. Novel MOFs will be prepared by conjoining the chiral ligands and metal ion clusters. The Cornell PI will characterize the resulting MOFs using X-ray diffraction, gas adsorption, and spectroscopic techniques to evaluate their structural integrity and chiral properties. Furthermore, we will explore the performance of these materials in practical applications, including chiral separation and asymmetric reactions, focusing on their efficiency and selectivity in processes that minimize waste and energy consumption.

The proposed study aims to evaluate the impact of environment on migratory birds along the East Asian — Australian Flyway (EAAF) in 2010–23. The environmental conditions at key stopover sites of migratory birds can play a key role in bird migration and population across borders. Most of the stopover sites in EAAF are located along the coastline of China, which has witnessed dramatic changes in environmental quality in recent years. Such environmental changes may include the protection or destruction of bird habitats, as well as air quality degradation and improvement over time and space. These variations due to local policy changes in mainland China are exogenous to birds observed elsewhere, including Taiwan and Australia. We will further compare migratory birds with non-migratory birds to document the causal impacts of environment on migratory birds. The findings will provide novel and important implications for scientific research and policy practice.

This project investigates the potential of academic green spaces to enhance students' psychological health and well-being. Through cross-national research, the project examines how various campus locations influence students' biophilic perceptions and environmental awareness. Utilizing a questionnaire monitoring system with GPS (i.e., HealthCloud Survey), we aim to measure and quantify the correlation between students' psychological stress levels and the characteristics of outdoor spaces. Research tools include the Maslach Burnout Inventory–Student Survey, the Connectedness to Nature Scale, the Perceived Biophilic Design Scale, the Scale of Sense of Place, the Restoration Outcome Scale, and assessments of landscape preference. Based on the findings, we plan to develop a database of healthy campus spaces, track environmental perception on wellbeing and biodiversity models, and provide recommendations for addressing depression among students. Academic workshops throughout the project will foster international collaboration, creating a foundation for ongoing research and cross-institutional partnerships supporting student mental health in urban green space.

Large-scale laboratory experiments offer critical insights into earthquake mechanics by simulating fault rupture processes under controlled conditions. This NTU-Cornell collaboration harnesses Cornell’s expertise in large-scale laboratory earthquake experiments and National Taiwan University’s strengths in experimental design and data analysis to explore scaling laws, rupture velocities, stress interactions, and validate seismological methods in meter-scale fault systems. Advanced instrumentation, including ultrasonic sensors for acoustic emission monitoring, will capture high-resolution data on fault processes, linking laboratory observations to seismological phenomena. This work enhances experimental methodologies and provides a deeper understanding of earthquake physics. By combining complementary resources and expertise, the collaboration establishes a robust foundation for advancing global earthquake research and fostering sustained NTU-Cornell partnerships.

Efforts to achieve sustainable development often focus on national policies, yet their benefits frequently transcend borders. These cross-border spillovers highlight the need for international cooperation to ensure socio-economic efficiency in sustainability initiatives. Understanding how these benefits are distributed across countries is critical but remains underexplored. This project investigates a novel case of cross-border environmental spillovers through the lens of migratory birds along the East Asian–Australian Flyway (EAAF). We aim to assess how development and policy-driven changes in environmental quality in China influence migratory bird populations and sightings in Taiwan. We will also explore the potential interactions between impacts on birds along the EAAF and the adjacent West Pacific Flyway (WPF). To achieve this, we will construct a comprehensive spatiotemporal database—integrating data on bird abundance, environmental quality, and socio-economic factors—and leverage state-of-the-art causal inference methods for conservation impact evaluation. Additionally, we will use cellphone signaling data to quantify the economic benefits/costs stemming from birdwatching.

This project aims to investigate the rise of ethnic majoritarianism and its impact on democratic governance in South Asia, focusing on India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. Utilizing historical, legal, and anthropological perspectives, the research will identify key sources of majoritarian threats and evaluate strategies for resistance. The project’s outcomes include a workshop and an edited volume that will inform both academic and non-academic communities about the complexities of majoritarian politics and the potential for democratic resilience. By amplifying marginalized voices and fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration, the project seeks to advance scholarship on democracy in postcolonial contexts and contribute to global debates on resisting authoritarianism.

This project will explore how two machine learning paradigms — finite automata and neural networks — can improve and explain each other. It consists of two tracks. The first, led by QMUL, will use finite automata to understand compositionality and modularity in neural networks. Finite automata form a rich suite of classification problems that can be combined to form new problems. Using this feature, we will compare how a neural network solves a combination of two problems with how it solves the individual problems. This should reveal some mechanisms of modularity in neural networks, a key step towards explainable AI. The second track, led by Cornell, will use neural networks to improve the state-of-the-art algorithm for learning finite automata. This task has many industrial applications but faces a computational bottleneck consisting of generating certain counterexamples. We will use generative AI, i.e., specialist neural networks, to solve this problem.

Reversing climate change through sustainable fuels and CO2 conversion is a global imperative shared by faculty at both Cornell and Queen Mary. The proposed work will strengthen a nascent experimental collaboration between Dr. Volpe (QMUL) and Professor Goldfarb (Cornell), who share complimentary expertise in biomass pyrolysis. We will co-develop bio-based sustainable catalysts for CO2 conversion technologies. Bringing together biomass impregnation techniques developed separately by the two groups, our results will first illuminate the ill-understood mechanism of formation of Fe- carbides and oxides on biochar surfaces. By exploring the biochars’ catalytic activity, we will jointly deepen the fundamental understanding and practice in the synthesis of biochar-supported catalysts for the reduction of CO2 via the reverse water-gas shift (RWGS) reaction. This funding will strengthen the existing collaboration between the universities and groups and lead to joint publications and a larger collaborative research proposal.

Collaborative learning environments (CLE) are vital for aligning education with the demands of the modern world. In these settings, students work together in groups to achieve shared learning goals, fostering critical thinking, peer learning, and social skills. Yet, realizing the benefits of CLE can be challenging due to numerous obstacles faced by students and instructors. Thus, there is a pressing need for a tool that can effectively support students and instructors. This project will investigate students’ experiences working in CLE to identify barriers and develop targeted interventions that enhance student experience and graduate employability. Through focus groups and stakeholder interviews, the project will demonstrate how these interventions drive meaningful change. We will develop inclusive teaching toolkits, co-create student-staff support guides, and long-term international capacity building through QMUL-Cornel collaboration and invited expertise to improve student and instructor experiences, particularly for those facing intersectional disadvantages.

This project aims to foster deep collaboration between Cornell and QMUL through a large-scale, interdisciplinary research grant application for the UKRI-SBE Lead Agency Opportunity. Building on existing academic partnerships, the project will focus on organizing an in-person workshop at Cornell that will involve key faculty members from both institutions. The workshop will finalize the grant writing process for a collaborative research proposal aimed at securing external funding from UKRI and the National Science Foundation’s Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate (NSF/SBE). The proposed project will support travel expenses for additional QMUL faculty members to participate in this workshop. It will also provide funding for an external grant writing consultant, who will offer expert guidance on crafting a competitive proposal that meets the rigorous standards of UKRI and NSF funding bodies. This workshop is a critical step in finalizing a comprehensive and competitive grant application, allowing faculty to brainstorm, review drafts, and ensure alignment across institutions. The resulting proposal will address the consequences of fragmented governance for addressing social and health outcomes related to people experiencing homelessness with migrant status in the UK and U.S.

This project will enhance global capacity for monitoring companion animal coronaviruses through advanced sequencing technologies. Through this Cornell/Sydney collaboration, we will establish a Southern Hemisphere sequencing core at the Veterinary Pathology and Diagnostic Services Laboratory (VPDS) to complement Cornell’s existing sequencing core in the Northern Hemisphere. This project will facilitate the training of the Sydney team, led by Cornell experts, in next-generation sequencing techniques (Nanopore, with expansions to Illumina planned). This pilot will support the detection and management of feline coronavirus infections, including those causing feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), with potential expansion to other companion and wildlife species. The project aligns with Sustainable Development Goals, promoting global health (SDG 3), quality education (SDG 4), gender equality (SDG 5), and biodiversity (SDG 15). Results will be shared through publications and outreach, advancing both academic and societal understanding of zoonotic threats.

Bats are the known or suspected reservoir hosts for multiple zoonotic viruses. Climate change is impacting wild bats, leading to changes in behavior that can increase the frequency of viral excretion and contact with humans. Our recently funded research will use complementary datasets on viral shedding from wild bats in Australia and South Africa to examine the role of climate change in driving viral shedding patterns, the spatial behavior of bats, and the risk of human exposure to viruses. Currently, there are multiple outstanding early and mid-career researchers (ECMR) associated with the project, each with experience in either the Australian or South African systems but with limited ability to make cross-system inferences. This proposal will enable EMCR research exchanges to foster collaboration, share expertise, and enhance integration — contributing to ECMR development and ultimately strengthening the project’s overall impact.

The application outlines a project combining our expertise in bioengineering, stem cells, developmental biology, pharmaceutical sciences, and 3D printing to address the timely issue of artificial organ development. In particular, the project will focus on the development of bioengineered live membranes to mimic human skin using a 3D printing method. To develop this method, novel biomaterials will be formulated for 3D printing, which are also suitable for tissue growth and medicinal use. Particularly, the biomaterials need to possess the proper mechanical strength and porosity suitable for vascularization and innervation. This can be achieved by mixing aerogel with hydrogel to form hierarchical interpenetrating networks. These live membranes have important applications in pharmacological and cosmetic testing and basic skin biology research. At the end of this project, a novel manufacturing method will be developed to engineer cell-based membranes, suitable for medical and pharmaceutical applications.

Large language models (LLM) and AI systems are increasingly used for content generation, raising concerns about copyright infringement. Artists and researchers have claimed that AI systems may reuse their original work without attribution. This project proposes a novel framework that challenges traditional statistical learning, aiming to ensure AI-generated content is both accurate and dissimilar to its training data, a notion that we call AI creativity. By encouraging creativity and controlling how much the output deviates from the training data, we can prevent unintentional copying while maintaining correctness. Our framework can be wrapped around any existing AI model, allowing companies to measure and control the creativity of their AI's output. We will partner with Kura AI, a San Francisco-based company, to demonstrate the practical effectiveness of this approach, helping ensure AI-generated content remains innovative and avoids repetitive or derivative outputs.

The brain can hold a vast amount of information, but its capacity is limited, requiring a selection process for what to remember or forget. Although the mechanisms of this "memory triage" are not fully understood, research indicates that consolidating experiences into long-term memories depends on hippocampal replay and sharp-wave ripple oscillations, where memory traces are reactivated. This memory reactivation is believed to facilitate plastic changes in the brain, leading to stable representations crucial for long-term retention. Importantly, more salient experiences, such as novel or rewarding events, tend to be replayed more often during sleep, which may prioritize them for consolidation. Optogenetically manipulating hippocampal ripples presents a valuable method for studying this memory triage process, enabling researchers to gain deeper insights into how memories are prioritized and consolidated, ultimately enhancing our understanding of memory formation and retention.

EPHEUS addresses the critical challenge of urban heat extremes in megacities by enhancing preparedness through improved near-surface temperature predictions. The preparedness of megacities to heat extremes encompasses multi-sectoral efforts, ranging from issuing early heat warnings for vulnerable groups to predicting the household cooling energy demands for the operation of electricity grids. The near-surface temperature, i.e., the 2-meter air temperature, is a fundamental meteorological quantity important in almost all measures to improve a city’s preparedness to heat extremes. However, it remains a recalcitrant problem in current urban climate models to predict the near-surface temperature accurately since the urban climate models are often based on forest canopy concepts, leading to biases and inaccuracies within complex urban environments. As a first necessary step to improve the preparedness of global megacities to heat extremes, this project aims to develop a novel modeling framework for near-surface predictions tailored specifically to urban street canyons. Integrating Dr. Qi Li's expertise in Large Eddy Simulation (LES) with our advanced urban climate modeling capabilities, will significantly enhance the accuracy of urban temperature forecasts. The improved models will be implemented into the Surface Urban Energy and Water balance Scheme (SUEWS), which is a widely adopted global community urban climate model. The simulated extreme heat events in selected megacities will provide a deeper understanding of the magnitudes and spatial extents of near-surface temperatures, informing the strategies to improve a city’s preparedness to heat extremes. This collaboration between Cornell and UCL leverages our complementary expertise to address a pressing global challenge, potentially transforming urban climate resilience worldwide.

Cardiovascular calcification, which is characterized by the formation of mineralized lesions in heart valves and/or vascular walls, is a widespread phenomenon involved in multiple diseases, contributing to over 17 million deaths annually. When heart valves lose their ability to function due to accumulation of mineral, the only currently available treatment is surgical replacement of the valve. The deposition of mineral in cardiovascular tissues is an active cellular process, involving complex mineral-matrix-cell interactions that play a key role in driving the formation of the mineral. This project aims to identify the system-specific biological moieties (e.g., cells, proteins, lipids, proteoglycans) that modulate mineral nucleation and growth. We will compare the mineral-matrix “signatures”, or mineralomics, of calcified mitral valves from patients with rheumatic fever and of calcified aortic valves from patients with calcific aortic valve disease (CAVD). This study lays the groundwork for identifying therapeutics that can disrupt mineral deposition within the valves.

This project will evaluate cultural differences in mobility by developing a comprehensive toolkit through preliminary investigations and collaborative workshops. We will host two workshops—one at UCL and one at Cornell Tech—to explore and establish methodologies for assessing cultural driving differences using machine-learning-supported traffic evaluations. Between these workshops, we will develop a preliminary toolkit based on the identified requirements and conduct an initial data collection. The second workshop will assess this toolkit and discuss insights gained, which will inform further dissemination efforts and future funding applications. By uniting expertise from UCL and Cornell Tech, this initiative seeks to enhance our understanding of how cultural factors influence driving behaviors and mobility patterns, contributing to more effective and inclusive mobility solutions.

The Cordillera del Cóndor in southern Ecuador harbors unique ecosystems due to its geographic isolation and ecological diversity. Anurans in this region exhibit high levels of diversity and endemism, making them especially vulnerable to human activities. This study will assess anuran composition and diversity along an altitudinal and microhabitat gradient, examining the influence of environmental factors like temperature, humidity, and precipitation across four mountains. Using standardized methods, it will explore alpha and beta diversity to reveal local patterns and variations among communities. Additionally, the project will analyze how anuran traits, such as body size, are linked to environmental conditions. The findings will enhance our understanding of species composition and biogeographic patterns, providing insight into whether these respond to local isolation and environmental characteristics. The study will offer valuable information for future conservation strategies and contribute to understanding ecological processes affecting species susceptible to global change.

The Galapagos Islands face significant challenges in balancing conservation with the demands of tourism and local agriculture. Its dependency on mainland imports to meet tourism demand contributes to a higher carbon footprint and increases the risk of invasive species. Additionally, current agricultural practices on the islands generate considerable waste, further threatening the delicate ecosystems. This proposal seeks to examine how enhancing local sourcing strategies, promoting local food consumption, and integrating local products into the Galapagos tourism industry can support sustainable agriculture, enhance food security, and protect biodiversity in the Galapagos Islands. This research aims to assess existing practices, consumer preferences, and the feasibility of local sourcing. The goal is to develop a framework to measure and manage the multidimensional impact of practices and initiatives to support sustainable tourism, reduce environmental impacts, and safeguard the Galapagos Islands' unique natural heritage for future generations.

The spread of political polarization around the world has led to alarming outcomes, including the rise of populist and extremist movements, weakened social cohesion, and democratic backsliding. While scholars have focused on understanding polarization and its sources, key questions remain about how specific events, such as elections, shape these dynamics. This project examines how electoral cycles affect levels of polarization among Ecuadorian citizens. Through four surveys conducted during Ecuador's 2025 two-stage electoral cycle, the project will assess how polarization levels change over time in response to the dynamics of electoral competition. Ecuador is a particularly interesting case to study because of its recent history of high polarization, driven by the divide between supporters and opponents of ex-president and populist figure Rafael Correa. The country's recent elections have highlighted the durability of this political cleavage, making it an ideal setting to study the relationship between electoral cycles and polarization dynamics.

This project aims to characterize genomic variants responsible for phenylketonuria (PKU) and cystic fibrosis (CF) in Ecuador by analyzing disease-associated genes (Universidad San Francisco de Quito) and ancestral markers (Cornell University). Our objective is to uncover new and under-reported variants unique to the Ecuadorian population, given its high consanguinity rates and diverse genetic admixture. Through comprehensive genetic analysis and bioinformatics, we will establish correlations between PKU/CF variants and ancestral backgrounds, contributing to the broader understanding of genetic diversity in Latin America. We will collaborate with the national pediatric hospital, Baca Ortiz, to sequence DNA samples from CF and PKU patients. The findings will inform genetic counseling practices and public health strategies, helping policymakers address genetic disease hotspots. The project will contribute to precision medicine and establish a model for future research in inherited disorders across the region. Results will be disseminated through scholarly publications, conferences, and direct reports to the Ministry of Health.

The headwaters of the Amazon bring life-sustaining nutrients from the Andes to the diverse plant, animal, and human communities lower in the basin. Although recognized for its global importance, the area faces threats from increasing human expansion and climatic anomalies. The resulting changes to river ecosystems and their biota jeopardize both human livelihoods and the world’s crown jewel of biodiversity. We will partner with a kayaking-oriented school, Yaku Churi, that connects Indigenous youth to their culture and waters. During their weekly runs down a set of six rivers, school students will collect environmental DNA and chemistry data across one year. The results will provide unprecedented insights into fish migrations and environmental dynamics. This exciting collaboration between Cornell and USFQ will break new ground in environmental science while empowering Indigenous youth to know and conserve their home waters.

Rotavirus infection is a major cause of acute gastroenteritis in children, posing a significant public health threat in lower-middle-income countries (LMIC). While rotavirus vaccines demonstrate high efficacy in high-income countries, their effectiveness often drops below 60% in Zambia and other LMIC. Current measures of immune responses, primarily serum IgA, are inadequate correlates of protection, and a better understanding of immune responses after rotavirus vaccination is essential. To address this gap, the Caddy Lab has developed two neutralization assays—extracellular and intracellular—to evaluate rotavirus-specific antibodies in serum samples. These assays both use a fluorescent readout and have shown promise in predicting antibody effectiveness in mice. This study aims to validate these neutralization assays using serum samples from a Zambian rotavirus vaccine trial. In addition, we want to transfer these assays to an immunology laboratory in Zambia. This collaboration has the potential to enhance the evaluation of candidate rotavirus vaccine efficacy in children.

Recent decades have seen a surge in extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric in many countries and regions, including Southern Africa, despite the African Union's emphasis on continental mobility as a key aspect of sustainable development. We propose a collaboration to assess and promote research on anti-xenophobia policies in Southern Africa. The deliverables will include a fall 2025 Workshop, a Report or Symposium with recommendations, and an article on the international, regional and comparative normative framework. We will also launch the first collaboration between the co-PIs. Our work will be informed by UNZA’s expertise in African regional comparative law and human rights, and Cornell’s research on anti-xenophobia policy. We will also assess the utility of collaborating to test our online xenophobia ML model in the context of Southern Africa, using nation-states with historical challenges in addressing xenophobia as a case study.

The African eggplant (Solanum aethiopicum) is an indigenous African vegetable grown mainly for its fruit and is among the target crops for promotion in Zambia under the recently launched crop diversification strategy, which aims to improve food security and climate resilience. The African eggplant has the potential to contribute to food security because of its resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses and its high content of dietary fiber, minerals, and vitamins. However, despite its local significance, crop improvement efforts and research investment have lagged behind in African eggplant compared to other crops. This proposal supports the initiation of a collaboration between African eggplant researchers at Cornell and the University of Zambia and aims to contribute to the development of this crop for improved food security and agro-biodiversity, through a preliminary characterization of local variety diversity and traditional farmer knowledge in Zambian communities.

Health equity is a fundamental human right, and the WHO advocates for everyone’s “full potential for health and well-being” regardless of their social, economic, demographical, geographical, or other socially determinant factors. Unfortunately, underserved, marginalized, and vulnerable (UMV) populations around the world still experience limited access to care and/or receive poor healthcare quality because of bias and discrimination based on racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, economic, cultural, and/or linguistic characteristics. Our project aims to improve healthcare for UMV populations at the King Chulalongkorn Medical Center by incorporating cultural competency and diversity/equity/inclusion (DEI) frameworks into training initiatives and institutional policies. Through this strategic collaboration award, we hope to strengthen bi-campus ties, share resources and best practices, and plan future joint efforts in research, education, and policies. Our target groups for intervention include: 1) the indigent/socioeconomically underserved; 2) LGBTQ+ communities; 3) patients in palliative and end-of-life care; and 4) the disabled.

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is commonly used in textiles and plastic packaging. Unfortunately, its consumption produces nondegradable waste plastics, causing landfill and water contamination. Chemical depolymerization can enable the recycling of post-consumer PET by depolymerizing PET into the monomer building block. This method, however, requires post-depolymerization purification to remove functional additives (e.g., coatings and colorants). This proposed research focuses on studying the separation technologies for this post-depolymerization purification. Researchers from Chulalongkorn University and Cornell University will work to separate monomers from waste plastics by turning them into a metal-organic framework (MOF) and disassembling them into purified monomers to remove impurities. The outcome is the scientific knowledge of how the reactive crystallization purifies recycled TPA and how to reuse chemicals during depolymerization and purification to enable circular PET technologies.

This research explores the emerging phenomenon of "kopitiams," a type of traditional cafe in the gentrifying historic districts of Bangkok. Originating from the historic port cities of Southeast Asia, kopitiams were vibrant local centers serving affordable meals and fostering urban sociability. Economic shifts and middle-class migration led to their decline. However, recent trends in historic Bangkok nod at their revival, driven by young entrepreneurs who infuse traditional aesthetics into a modern cafe business. The study will address three themes. First, the kopitiams capitalize on nostalgia and historical aesthetics to evoke bygone eras, thus distinguishing their enterprises. Second, the new kopitiams risk decontextualizing traditional elements, potentially simplifying cultural narratives and perpetuating tokenistic representation. Lastly, the modern revival of kopitiams hints at the dynamics of neighborhood change. These establishments cater to a wealthier clientele, potentially sidelining local patrons and increasing property values, thus reflecting the challenges and opportunities of urban renewal.

A cure for HIV has proven elusive given that HIV can hide in immune cells that are resting or in a latent state in people living with HIV. To achieve an HIV cure, our Weill Cornell Medicine team is currently developing a one-time immunotherapeutic for durable remission of HIV in the absence of anti-HIV treatment using pre-clinical models. Our Chulalongkorn University has developed clinical manufacturing protocols for cell therapies. Together we plan to advance knowledge using an engineered T cell (CAR-T) which involves removing a type of white blood cell—T cells—from a person’s blood, then genetically engineering it to make proteins and allow the CAR-T to enter the hiding place of HIV, attach, and kill the infected cells. We hope to make this a scalable global HIV cure and advance this work against cancer. Our joint expertise and collaborative spirit will create a foundation for innovative research towards success.

Smart City frameworks are revolutionizing urban sustainability through technology. This project aims to develop an immersive urban modeling platform for Bangkok's Bantadthong neighborhood. This data-driven platform will serve as an essential tool for urban planning, benefiting policymakers, local communities, government agencies, and developers. Cornell University will spearhead the technological development of the platform, while Chulalongkorn University will develop data-acquisition methods, offer localized insights, and formulate policy recommendations. The project aims to generate a replicable model for Smart City initiatives and university-led urban revitalization. Knowledge dissemination will occur through academic publications, policy briefs, and public forums. By forging this inter-institutional collaboration, the project lays the groundwork for sustainable, long-term partnerships, addressing a pressing need for cohesive, technology-driven urban planning in Bangkok and similar environments.

• Realtime Urbanism Lab, Farzin Lotfi-Jam
• Regional, Urban, & Built Environmental Analytics Lab, Sutee Anantsuksomsri

Viruses can cause devastating illnesses and global pandemics, yet bats exhibit a remarkable resistance and remain symptom-free when exposed to many deadly viruses. We are teaming up to learn from bats how they fight off diseases and to unlock the mysteries of bat antiviral defense to outwit lethal viruses such as Nipah, Ebola, and Coronaviruses. We will combine the cutting-edge viral entry and membrane fusion techniques from Aguilar-Carreno’s lab together with host-virus interaction research from Umthong’s lab to uncover bats’ antiviral mechanisms. Focusing on bats' MARCH2 protein, we've found a unique part in this protein that does not exist in humans but can boost human immunity against HIV-1. This intellectual fusion promises to advance our understanding of viral defenses, potentially leading to new treatments. Our joint efforts exemplify the benefits of international scientific collaboration and could lead to breakthrough treatments, enhancing our readiness for future viral outbreaks.

After two decades of post-civil war security sector reform, Sierra Leone and Liberia have now deployed forces to UN peacekeeping missions. Those who were once involved in civil war are now the ones leading the efforts for peace in other countries such as Mali. This project seeks to understand how security force personnel in Liberia and Sierra Leone experience their role as peacekeepers and what effects the deployment has on them once they return home. Each PI has collected data on the topic in these countries but using a different methodology. This project will bring together an international team of researchers from the Global North and Global South to explore the complementary data to advance understanding of post-conflict peacekeeping. Project findings will be written for academic audiences as well as public audiences. Additionally, the findings will serve as a starting point for future joint funding bids and engagement with practitioners in the realm of peace and security.

After decades of denial and obstruction, the global right is increasingly willing to acknowledge that climate change is a threat to lifeways everywhere. From attacks on reproductive rights to increased policing at the border, a repertoire of climate interventions is emerging that targets population, rather than production and consumption. We propose to study these developments under the banner of “right-wing environmentalisms,” developing collaborative, cross-field research attentive to their deep roots and contemporary forms, with a focus on the shapes these movements take in different contexts. Because there is virtually no anthropological research on the rise of right-wing climate interventions, we lack an understanding of how these movements are unfolding in real time, and what draws people to support them. Our partnership will yield a sustainable, interdisciplinary, cross-campus platform intent on building an understanding of right-wing environmentalisms in different parts of the world, and producing rigorous public-facing scholarship. 

The 2022 Hunga volcanic eruption underscored the significant hazards of explosive volcanism amplified by Earth's abundant water. The eruptions occurred 200 m underwater, propelled an ash column to a record 57 km height, and formed tsunamis. The partial collapse of the column fed pyroclastic flows, which transformed into underwater turbidity currents that severed seafloor cables, isolating a nation from the rest of the world. Despite the prevalence of underwater volcanoes, our understanding of hydro-volcanism is limited. This project leverages advances in computational modeling of multiphase flows to study volcanic jets interacting with water and the transformation of pyroclastic flows in fast and long runout turbidity currents. By unraveling the interplay between water and volcanism, we aim to improve models to predict and mitigate the multifaceted hazards of explosive eruptions. This collaboration opens a new avenue for research at the frontiers of physics and geoscience capable of seeding new funding opportunities.

The innate immune system becomes dysregulated as we age - inflammation induces tissue damage, and our ability to fight infection decreases. We understand little about how aging shapes the immune system’s two seemingly opposing functions: to control invasive pathogens and to maintain a healthy relationship with microbiota. Both functions deteriorate with age, exemplified by the higher susceptibility of older people to infections such as COVID, and the rise of pathobionts in the aging gut microbiome. Whether this is due to a common mechanism is unknown. We will test this in Drosophila, which has a conserved immune system, by comparing the gene expression in tissues that respond to septic and oral infection over age, in genotypes that show different magnitudes of immune aging. This will reveal mechanisms underpinning systemic and intestinal immune decline and their co-dependency, forming the basis for a large, collaborative grant application on the biology of immune aging.

We assess the socioeconomic and health implications of a possible strategic hydrogen hub located in Perth West, Scotland. This transport hub will produce hydrogen on-site using renewable energy to serve directly or adjacent electricity grids to refuel trucks, buses, and coaches. This will serve as the first case study to launch a broader set of collaborative projects between Cornell and the University of Edinburgh. Through this effort, Cornell team members will gain insights into hub development to benchmark hydrogen hubs in the United States. Edinburgh will expand its analytical understanding to socioeconomic and health dimensions, thus leveraging Cornell’s expertise in infrastructure policy and methodology across disciplines. We will disseminate this knowledge broadly through co-produced workshops, key stakeholder sessions, and site visits to explore innovative methods for constructing a joint collaborative framework. The union of Cornell-Edinburgh research teams will generate a blueprint to ensure positive outcomes in these crucial sectors through the formulation of evidence-based policy recommendations and interventions.

Accra, Ghana, like many cities around the world, is urbanizing at an unprecedented pace. Rapid urbanization and unplanned growth has forced many urban residents into informal settlements that lack municipal services, such as water, basic sanitation, and solid waste management. Conditions in informal settlements leads to environmental degradation, negative public health outcomes, and hinders economic vitality. What can be done to improve lives and livelihoods in these underserved communities? This project will address this question by co-developing a research agenda that informs action on the ground. The project team, co-led by Professor Victoria A. Beard and Dr. Austin Ablo of the University of Ghana, will conduct a literature review, site visits to four informal settlements, and a one-day workshop in Accra. This initial collaboration will lay the groundwork for future research and action on informal settlement upgrading, develop a diverse stakeholder group dedicated to improving conditions in settlements, and target the resources necessary to achieve meaningful and scalable impact for these communities.

• Mui Ho Center for Cities

In recent years, we have seen great examples of how artificial intelligence (AI) may be applied to image-based diagnostic tasks. However, there is no universal solution for training large-scale foundation models for the respective clinical downstream applications. This proposal will integrate advances in medical image analysis and NLP to solicit novel approaches and computational solutions to promote chest X-ray foundation models and their use to address open and challenging clinical problems (e.g., disease classification, lesion detection and segmentation, and report generation and summarization) in a robust and data-efficient way. Successful completion of this project will also lead to a cross-disciplinary, AI/ML-ready ecosystem that will enable researchers to easily access and explore the value of foundation models and medical imaging data and to support integrated analyses with non-imaging data. It will also improve our ability to make the model and biomedical image data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR).

Navigation and wayfinding can be difficult for older adults, especially those with cognitive decline. Digital environments, such as digital games, may improve cognitive functions and wayfinding performance. This project tests the effects of wayfinding training in virtual reality on wayfinding performance in the real world. This study is cross-cultural: half the subjects will be recruited and assessed in the United States (at Cornell) and the remaining half in Hong Kong (at HKUST). This bifurcated approach ensures a broader spectrum of participant backgrounds, thereby facilitating the design of the application for a more diverse group of older adults. This study aims to shed light on the potential advantages of virtual reality intervention, offering valuable insights guiding the future development of applications designed to enhance wayfinding and navigational skills in older adults.

The PIs are also collaborating with:

• Tristan Braud
• Ge Lin KAN

As content-sharing platforms (e.g. YouTube, TikTok, Netflix, among others) compete in an expanding digital market, the integration of new creators becomes vital for differentiation and capturing a diverse audience. Such integration, however, comes with varied financial challenges, particularly as quality and reputation often correlate with higher costs. This proposal delves deep into a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis, leveraging recent advances in operations research, machine learning, and causal inference. In particular, we aim to unravel the economic implications of onboarding creators against the potential uplift in platform value through user satisfaction and content diversity. With this foundation, our research aspires to arm platforms with actionable policy for strategic creator integration, powered by innovative tools from constraint optimization. Ultimately, we seek to shed light on strategies that platforms can adopt, effectively expanding their content repertoire while maximizing consumer satisfaction.

We propose to investigate the financial market impacts of consumer responses, including brand boycotts and buycotts, following firm-level environmental and social (E&S) scandals. We study the discrepancy between anticipated ethical consumption and actual consumer actions. Stock price reactions after the E&S scandals can hardly be explained by cash flow effects from consumption changes. We posit that short-term changes in ethical consumption might be misconstrued in financial markets due to extrapolative beliefs investors hold about ethical consumers, potentially overestimating the boycotts' and buycotts' effects on the implicated firm's cash flows. Our approach is to quantify these extrapolative beliefs using granular consumer purchase panel data in the U.S. We'll leverage variation in firm-level customer inertia, inferred from the firm’s consumer profiles and historic purchase patterns, notably brand loyalty and switching patterns. We'll then explore if this inferred brand-level inertia can explain the gap between firms’ immediate cash flow changes and stock price reactions post-scandal.

This project brings together cross-disciplinary PIs from marketing and finance. Liaukonyte (Cornell) brings expertise in consumer boycotts and boycotts in the consumer product arena, while Zaldokas (HKUST) has expertise on E&S scandals and their influence on investor behavior."

This project aims at unpacking the political and social policy preferences of labor market outsiders in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). If funded, we will conduct a pilot survey in Tunisia, which would serve as the foundation for a larger grant proposal. The pilot study would allow us to refine our measurements and better develop a subsequent survey instrument to be used on a larger scale across several countries in the MENA region. Labor market outsiders comprising informal, irregular, and unemployed workers constitute the bulk of the labor force in MENA. Despite this, we lack fine-grained data on the composition of this group and its economic and political preferences. Theoretically, compared to countries in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the literature on the political economy of labor market dualism in MENA and the Global South more widely remains extremely underdeveloped. This project sets out to correct this imbalance.

Our research collaboration looks at how to radically reshape democracy by better incorporating citizens directly into democratic policymaking. We focus on two institutions—citizens assemblies and petitioning—and their use in the past, to better inform best practices today. We will bring together a set of scholars who study collective governance, across the US and Europe, for a foundational conference to share modern research and policy recommendations. The conference will provide the opportunity for building a research network to continue transatlantic collaboration in 2024-25.

What is modern war? What is the nature of the violence it entails? What are the boundaries between the legitimate and illegitimate uses of force? To answer these fundamental questions, the “War and the State” project analyses war as a conflict not just between armies but between societies, a social activity that is shaped by the economic and political structures of the society from which it emerges and made possible by the capacity of the modern state for organized violence. In so doing, the project brings together traditional operational histories as well as new work on civil-military relations, recognizing that the structures of warring societies—including their race and gender hierarchies, divisions of labor, and conceptions of citizenship—are a central factor in understanding changes in battlefield tactics, grand strategy, the new technologies with which wars are won and lost, and the kinds of demands that the state can make on its people.

Migrants undertake complex resettlement processes, including integration into digital infrastructures. For example, immigrants often need to obtain smartphones and associated apps that share personal data. Unfortunately, the urgency of daily life needs often leads to the neglect of digital security for refugee and migrant communities, leaving them vulnerable to scammers, political surveillance, and more. Furthermore, technologies that ensure people’s online safety and security are often designed with a one-size-fits-all model that does not match the unique needs of marginalized populations. We will conduct interviews to improve our understanding of the digital security experiences and needs of migrants to the United Kingdom and the United States, two nations that have experienced a tremendous influx of migrants, including many refugees. We will also propose ways of ensuring that digital safety and security technologies better these migrants, advancing social justice while also laying the groundwork for a larger research collaboration between Cornell and KCL.

Organic bioelectronic devices promise revolutionary medical treatments for chronic pain or spinal cord injury. They exploit novel “mixed” conducting organic molecules able to transport both electrons and ions, bridging the signaling gap between biology and electronics. Despite this potential, only a few suitable materials have been identified, leaving the vast chemical space for mixed conductors largely unexplored.

This project uses data-driven computational modeling (KCL) and synthetic chemistry (Cornell) to perform proof-of-concept side-chain engineering studies and design novel, optimized materials for bioelectronics. This new collaboration will bridge a fundamental knowledge gap in bioelectronics and result in new design rules for organic mixed conductors.

• Ober Research Group
• Matta Research Group

Microwave-assisted pyrolysis (MAP) is a promising technology to recover energy from various waste materials, including biomass and plastics while offering higher energy efficiency than today’s waste-to-energy incinerators. One of the barriers hindering MAP commercialization is the vast variety of feedstocks, of which the composition varies with waste sources and impacts the energy density of MAP products. This project aims to unravel the complex correlations among feedstock properties, MAP operating parameters, and product characteristics, by performing structured data mining from MAP-related literature, followed by machine learning model development and training. Our data-driven approach will identify critical factors to advise future process design and potential digitalization, with the goal of securing a steady supply of compliant feedstocks and high consistency in product quality. The project outcomes will facilitate field-scale MAP to produce energy-dense bio-oils and H2-rich pyrogas, promoting energy transformation and driving toward Sustainable Development Goals.

Urban communities rely extensively on trade networks for bringing in resources and on infrastructure networks that deliver resources. Climate shocks can fragment trade supply networks and cripple infrastructure grids. Existing approaches to climate risk analysis typically simulate impacts from gradual shifts in key climate variables with less focus on the short-term shocks and rarely consider compound effects locally or simultaneous events at separate points on a spatial network. Compound hydroclimate extremes, usually induced by anomalous large-scale circulation patterns, can simultaneously hit multiple major suppliers of a city, and greatly exacerbate the associated climate risks. We examine the resilience of trade networks under various climate extreme scenarios conditioned on large-scale circulations. The resulting climate-hedging approach will guide geographic supply chain decisions toward a climate-resilient city. We begin focused on food supply networks, but plan to expand the collaboration effort to consider energy supplies and urban infrastructure as well.

Theories of global capitalism often occlude Singapore, a uniquely multicultural and global hub of commerce with one of the highest GDPs per capita in the world. This proposed seminar brings together scholars from Cornell and NUS in anthropology, history, science and technology studies, and environmental history. We will facilitate both a workshop in January 2025 for collaborative field research and a podcast series. Both will consider the global emergence of Singapore from a fishing village to a global hub of capitalism. The workshop and podcast field sites include wet markets, wetlands, the causeway border, and construction sites. The podcast recordings will feature perspectives from people who illuminate conditions of capitalism in Singapore and their ambient soundscapes. The podcast offers contrast and comparison to other global hubs of capitalism and will be accompanied by a collection of essays generated from the workshop. Together they seed future conference and research grant proposals. 

This initiative brings together humanists and social scientists who are doing groundbreaking work on race and racialization in the Balkans, the MENA, and East Africa, regions with a common legacy of Ottoman rule and influence. The two-day workshop will lead to an edited volume to address how racialization arose across these geographies in the 19th century and how modern racism took hold there in the 20th century. Though historically minded, this workshop and edited volume will be multidisciplinary to help contextualize the more recent emergence of racist violence in places like Greece, Tunisia, and Lebanon, and to provide theoretical and conceptual frameworks that move beyond the assumed black-and-white binary of racism. This initiative will begin with a workshop to be held in May/June 2024 and an edited volume; a step in the direction of an expanded synergetic collaboration not only between Cornell and QMUL, but potentially also with institutions like Exeter University, the University of Sharjah, and UCL.

Osteocytes are the most abundant bone cells and form a network that is crucial to the osteocyte’s role as the major regulator of how bones sense and respond to exercise. The network is key to healthy bone remodeling and likely differs between bones and individuals. However, little is known about how local osteocyte network characteristics impact their responses to tissue-level mechanical cues. Dr. Lewis has developed a novel intravital imaging technique for direct in vivo observation of osteocyte signaling events with simultaneous whole bone loading, while Dr. Verbruggen uses computational modeling to measure network integrity and predict the likely mechanical stimulation experienced by individual cells. This project will, for the first time, map the osteocyte network architecture to their molecular activation patterns. Combining these methods will provide an unprecedented understanding of micro/nanoscale characteristics that contribute to bone health, alongside a new tool to characterize how this is disrupted in disease. 

Current patterns of genetic variation carry important information about demographic processes, such as population growth, contraction, or migration, that have shaped species in the past. Deep learning algorithms have recently emerged as a powerful framework for recovering that information, but it is still unclear how they cope with the uncertainty and error that result from cost-effective sequencing strategies often used for non-model species. We propose to design and deploy a novel deep learning algorithm which accommodates for sparse and uncertain low-coverage sequencing data, and test this on an empirical example, using data on the American shad, a fish species of conservation concern with known major demographic shifts in the recent past. This new algorithm and proof-of-concept should make demographic inference more accessible for a broader set of organisms, which can help yield a better understanding of evolutionary history and valuable insights for conservation.

We are proposing a joint seed grant to support preliminary coordination and planning for a larger external grant application that will launch a $500,000 research study on democratic erosion pathways and the strategies of democratic resistance, and understand the impact of such contestations on citizens’ levels of trust and perceptions of effective governance, and support for democracy. Moving to the micro-level focus on the political behavior of individual citizens, we can interrogate the mechanisms that moderate citizen perceptions of democratic performance in reaction to particular pathways of democratic erosion and resistance. The research project will produce new understandings of citizens’ concepts and understandings of democracy; their needs and preferences; and which policies and strategies reinforce pro-democratic institutions, and behaviors, and increase trust. In drawing upon different modes and methods of democratic erosion and resistance, we will assess leaders’ exclusionary rhetoric and marginalization strategies, to test how those relate to citizens’ perceptions, support for democracy, and trust in the system.

Indigenous Peoples globally continue to struggle for their land rights, health, food security, and livelihoods. Increasing pressures to combat climate and planetary crises, coupled with increasing global demand for energy and minerals, have fueled conflicts in areas of high bio and cultural diversity. Often such places are also rich in fossil fuels and minerals. Continued forest and ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss pose increasing risks for local people’s livelihood and potential zoonotic spillovers and pandemic risks.

In Ecuador, Indigenous Nations and Nature itself have legal rights in the constitution. These rights are threatened by the forces described above. Our project will co-produce—with Indigenous leaders in the most biodiverse area of the Amazon—a research proposal that addresses two linked phenomena: the challenges of illegal mining and livelihood and ecosystem implications of cessation of fossil fuel extraction. This project will contribute to decolonizing and indigenous methodologies, and continued efforts to empower Indigenous Nations and sustainable development.  

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a powerful human cancer imaging exam for tracking tumors throughout the body based on their higher sugar consumption, following injection into the blood of a dose of radioactive sugar, known as Fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG). However, 18F-FDG PET exams can be confusing when part of the absorbed 18F-FDG escapes back into the blood or when immune-boosting therapies increase body sugar consumption through inflammation to fight cancer. To improve the exam’s accuracy, we combine the Siemens Biograph Vision Quadra, a state-of-the-art ultra-sensitive PET scanner at the Australian National Total-Body PET Facility and the University of Sydney, with direct generalized Patlak image reconstruction, an advanced dynamic PET analysis method developed at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, to display the rate of body sugar consumption after accounting for blood sugar levels. This novel combination will help researchers better distinguish treatment effects from inflammation, advancing our understanding of cancer therapy.

This project extends a research collaboration between USYD, Cornell, and ICDDR,B on the Shonjibon Cash and Counselling (SCC) Trial. The SCC Trial involves an unconditional cash transfer and nutrition counseling delivered on a mobile app, aiming to reduce childhood stunting in rural Bangladesh. Previous work has shown when nutrition counseling is provided in-person, knowledge "spills over" to non-participant households. Providing information via mobile phones is less expensive than in person; however, it is not known if the same degree of spillover occurs when information is provided through mobile telephony. We will use mixed methods to survey  "neighboring" mothers and assess the SCC Trial spillover.

Co-Sense aims to elevate autonomous vehicle technology by establishing a robust multi-sensor fusion and collaborative communication framework. Utilizing a pioneering machine learning architecture, the project integrates camera data alongside 3D sensors, facilitating enriched environmental perception even under challenging conditions. By fostering multi-agent collaboration, Co-Sense ensures efficient information exchange between vehicles and infrastructure, enhancing navigational safety and operational efficiency. The methodology encompasses meticulous data collection and annotation, innovative machine learning algorithms design, the development of a cooperative communication protocol, rigorous model training and evaluation, and comprehensive field testing. This endeavor promises obstacle detection and classification advancements under varied lighting and weather conditions. It ensures bolstered road safety and reliability of autonomous navigation through real-time, accurate data provision and cooperation.

This partnership will form an international and multi-sectoral network of scholars and practitioners working jointly on improving equitable outreach and care in health communication partnerships to investigate the central role of communication in contemporary health equity debates. It will analyze the ways that political leaders, health officers, journalists, and health promoters shape public narratives about healthcare, health inequity, and structural determinants of health, with the goal of arriving at strategies or interventions that facilitate the reduction of health inequalities. Through generative conversation and convening in Sydney in the summer of 2024, we will launch the first large-scale investigation of the multi-layered communicative and policy dimensions across the United States and Australia, producing both scholarly and public-facing reports on narrative change and health policy equity. In the months following the symposium, we will build on this foundation to develop competitive grant proposals to broaden the scope and impact of the collaboration.

The Ashe lab at the University of Sydney and the Lee lab at Cornell have previously demonstrated that the protein SET-26 plays a key role in controlling when and where genes get expressed and, as a result, has a major impact on how organisms age and how gene expression "memories" get passed on from parents to offspring. Our joint proposal aims to investigate how SET-26 achieves its fascinating roles by identifying and studying the protein partners of SET-26 and by testing whether SET-26 acts differently in different cell types. The proposed research will be conducted using the powerful genetic model soil nematodes and will focus on developing the necessary genetic tools. The SET-26 protein is highly conserved from nematodes to humans, and mutations in the human counterpart of SET-26 likely result in the development of cancer and neurological diseases. Our joint research study will likely illuminate key aspects of how SET-26 function and will have important implications in multiple aspects of human health.

Poor mental health has been identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a global crisis. However, individuals seeking mental health and wellness support can profit from access to research-informed programs and appropriately designed physical environments. The purpose of this proposal is to create an event that supports conversations around this topic and to select and visit sites for cross-cultural research. Our proposal, therefore, has two components. The first is to convene specialists in health, hospitality and design to discuss wellness and mental health and to provide an interdisciplinary context for the proposed research. The second is to support the UCL co-investigator’s visits to mental health facilities in North America with the purpose of identifying study sites and, in some locations, collecting checklist data. Data from several locations in Europe and Oceania have already been obtained (Chrysikou et al., 2022), and sites in North America are sought for comparison.

This joint research project aims to foster collaborative research between UCL and Cornell and advance our understanding of environmental health equity in the context of globalization. It will leverage UCL's expertise in investigating the environmental consequences of international trade and Cornell's expertise in assessing health equity resulting from environmental pollution. The project will focus on the tele-coupled nature of global trade to examine how consumption patterns in one region lead to cross-border pollutant emissions, which further impact populations disproportionately along the Global Value Chain. By adopting a consumption-based perspective, we will quantify the air pollution embodied in international trade and assess its induced health ramifications. Through a decade-long retrospective analysis, the study will also explore how evolving trade patterns have altered environmental impacts. Our findings will shed light on the unequal health consequences arising from global trade and provide insights for coordinated pollution mitigation strategies.

Rapid shifts in technology demand an engineering workforce prepared to leverage large amounts of data for evidence-based decision-making. However, many engineering programs have not kept pace with the data literacy skills needed. Additionally, current engineering undergraduate enrollment and job placement trends indicate slow progress in increasing gender and racial/ethnic diversity in the United States and the United Kingdom. This project brings together engineering education research across Cornell University and University College London to build capacity for cross-national research to support student development of knowledge, skills, and attitudes to support a diverse and well-prepared engineering workforce in three research foci: 1) experiential learning, 2) data literacy, and 3) broadening participation in engineering to support workforce development. As engineering education emerges as a research field capable of creating solutions to these pressing problems, the growing expertise at these institutions provides an opportunity to develop cutting-edge scholarship to support these essential student outcomes.

Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) is a proposal to create a layer of reflective aerosols to cool the planet, offsetting some of the impacts of climate change. Whether and how to deploy SAI would be a choice, as the location and volume of aerosol injections could be fine-tuned to achieve different climate outcomes. With this grant, the team would seek to integrate engineering, scientific, and policy perspectives, at a workshop at Cornell and a follow-up meeting at UCL. The team will bring together expertise on the technical deployment characteristics of SAI, knowledge of control systems science, an awareness of the model uncertainties and the challenges of detection and attribution, with an appreciation of the constraints that policymakers would face in deciding on a course of action. The result of this effort will be a research agenda to be jointly pursued by a collaboration between UCL and Cornell.

What is modern war? What is the nature of the violence it entails? What are the boundaries between the legitimate and illegitimate uses of force? To answer these fundamental questions, the “War and the State” project analyses war as a conflict not just between armies but between societies, a social activity that is shaped by the economic and political structures of the society from which it emerges and made possible by the capacity of the modern state for organized violence. In so doing, the project brings together traditional operational histories as well as new work on civil-military relations, recognizing that the structures of warring societies—including their race and gender hierarchies, divisions of labor, and conceptions of citizenship—are a central factor in understanding changes in battlefield tactics, grand strategy, the new technologies with which wars are won and lost, and the kinds of demands that the state can make on its people.

Listeria monocytogenes is a foodborne pathogen that causes listeriosis, a severe infection with a 15-25% mortality rate afflicting mainly immunocompromised individuals, the elderly, and pregnant women. In Ecuador, listeriosis is not a notifiable disease, so reliable estimates of the burden of the disease are unknown. Nevertheless, previous studies suggest contamination with L. monocytogenes in different foods (36% in artisanal cheeses, and 16% in meat products). In this study, we will sequence the genomes of 51 L. monocytogenes isolates from ten types of ready-to-eat foods commonly found and consumed in Ecuador. These data will then be used to identify virulence genes and assess whether these Ecuadorian food isolates are closely related to previously sequenced Ecuadorian clinical and cheese isolates, and to global clinical L. monocytogenes isolates present in public databases. In addition, isolates showing different pathogenic potential will be assessed for their lethality in the zebrafish embryo model system.

The Andean blueberry (Vaccinium floribundum) is found in the paramo, a high-altitude ecosystem unique to the Andean highlands. In order to live in this habitat, it has evolved remarkable adaptations to withstand the harsh environmental conditions and seasonally limited access to nutrients and water. A collaboration between the Plant Biotechnology Laboratory (USFQ) and the Specht Laboratory (Evolution of Plant Form and Function) at Cornell University aims to better understand the genetic and evolutionary basis of these adaptations. Through comparative genomic analyses, we aim to discover the genetic signatures that distinguish high-altitude populations from their lower-land counterparts. Using genomic techniques within an evolutionary framework, we aim to identify the genetic factors that allow the Andean blueberry to adapt to extreme paramo conditions such as high altitude, intense UV radiation, freezing temperatures and limited oxygen. With profound implications for understanding and mitigating the effects of climate change, this research promises to develop strategies to protect vulnerable ecosystems and the conservation of endemic plant species of biological and cultural value to the Andean region.

Ecuador is the first country to enshrine 'rights of nature' in its constitution. Since 2008 advocates have used this to push for the protection of rivers, forests, and wildlife. In the US, advocates are beginning to use 'rights of nature' as a legal argument as well, but without the constitutional support found in Ecuador. In Ecuador, these cases open up new avenues for protecting nature and have been used by urban residents, youth and indigenous people to protect their rivers and water supply and force attention to climate change. This study will explore these legal approaches, and their impacts on the environment, the city, and the state. The research will be presented to the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program at Cornell, the Land, Climate, and Justice Conference at the University of Virginia School of Law, and to a workshop in Ecuador on how cities can protect the rights of nature.

Identification of songs and calls is the best way to monitor imperiled Amazonian bird communities. There are few trained observers in this region but an ever-increasing amount of audio survey data from automated recorders. There is thus an urgent need to train AI tools to identify bird sounds in audio recordings. Merlin Sound ID is an AI tool for bird sound identification developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Merlin's precision, efficiency, and scalability make it an ideal tool to monitor bird populations in the Amazon, yet 65% of the region's species are not yet supported. To improve the identification abilities of Merlin, USFQ and Cornell will increase the number of recordings of Amazonian birds by expanding local capacity to record bird sounds. This project will be based at USFQ's Tiputini Biodiversity Station, where we will pilot the use of Merlin to analyze standardized audio survey data collected there.

In northern Ecuador, the tropical province of Esmeraldas hosts a richly biodiverse marine landscape. Resulting tourism, fisheries, and aquaculture support local livelihoods. However, a shift in drug trafficking from Colombia to Ecuador has increased piracy. That piracy is negatively impacting the ecosystem and fishing communities. The proposed research takes a systems approach to understanding the cascading impacts of narco-trafficking piracy and abandoned, lost, or discarded fishing gear (ALDFG) - or ghost nets. Pirates often force fishers to discard fishing gear; the resulting ALDFG then harms reef ecosystems, cetacean health (as whales are caught by the discarded nets) and fisheries. Piracy harms locals by threatening safety, food security, and incomes. We use data from ecosystem monitoring and interviews with local fishers to analyze the connections between ecosystem status, fishery health, and well-being of the local population. We aim to provide a baseline for future collaborations to enhance the integration of ecosystem and social health.

Scientific Collaborators: Annalise Povolo, Gabriela Navarrete

Photosynthetic organisms make sugars from carbon dioxide (CO2) using an enzyme called Rubisco. Rubisco is considered inefficient because oxygen can compete with CO2 for its active site. To enhance Rubisco’s performance, some organisms condense Rubisco into a liquid-like micro-compartment called a pyrenoid that is fed with CO2. One-third of global carbon capture is mediated by a pyrenoid, and they have considerable untapped potential to improve growth in important crop plants. Rubisco has small and large subunits; the small subunit (RbcS) interacts with linker proteins that bring Rubisco together into the pyrenoid. We have identified a peculiar version of RbcS in hornworts that appears to have its own in-built linker protein. We aim to characterize the role of this unique RbcS in pyrenoid formation, evaluate the influence of this RbcS on Rubisco performance, and reconstitute a basic Rubisco condensate in a model land plant as a ‘proof-of-principle’ of the transferability of the hornwort pyrenoid to crop plants.

Contemporary Kenya is a leading site for financial innovation, with a stream of new products being designed to meet a range of needs. Part of a wider effort, sometimes called “financial inclusion,” these products explicitly seek to incorporate demographics previously marginalized by finance. Yet the risks of over-indebting and further marginalizing the poor are stark. Our collaborative project will explore the ‘frontiers of finance’ in Kenya. Analyzing micro-insurance schemes and digital debt products, we will consider what financial expansion looks like in practice. We will also use this research as an opportunity to cultivate a broader conversation about financial frontiers—both in our teaching and through the creation of a research network that can bring together scholars working on similar questions in other regional contexts.

Life in seasonal environments means facing extreme environmental fluctuations. The re-emergence of mosquito vectors at the end of the dry season means that malaria parasites must switch from persistence within a host to transmission. The rapid increase in malaria cases at the beginning of each wet season suggests malaria parasites achieve this by sensing the presence of vectors. We propose that malaria parasites respond to the introduction of chemicals in the saliva injected by mosquitoes during blood feeding - as demonstrated for another insect-borne pathogen, Leishmania. We will test this hypothesis, revealing new and sophisticated strategies for malaria parasites and establishing a novel target for interventions that are urgently needed to break the transmission cycle. By establishing proof of principle that malaria parasites up/down-regulate their transmission activities in line with seasonal increases/decreases in mosquito population dynamics, we will use the resulting publication as the basis for a large, collaborative grant application.

The proposed project will consist of a new collaboration between the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell (CSI) and the UK Center for Astrobiology (UKCA) at Edinburgh, two of the world’s leading hubs for astrobiological research. PI Kaltenegger at Cornell has previously pioneered the use of hemispherical reflectance measurements from biological materials as analogs for the biosignatures that may be resolvable on exoplanets. Co-I McMahon at Edinburgh has led the study of “false biosignatures”: signals that mimic evidence of life but, in fact, arise from non-biological processes. In this new collaboration, we will test the novel hypothesis that certain combinations of minerals, organic matter, and atmospheric conditions may lead to false biosignatures in exoplanet reflectance spectra obtained by the next generation of telescopes. We anticipate important and eminently publishable results which will pave the way for significant further collaboration between the CSI and the UKCA in future years.

Estimating the geographical range of a species from in situ observational data is a challenging and important geospatial prediction problem. Given a set of locations indicating where a species has been observed, the goal is to learn a model that can predict how likely it is for the species to be present at any other location. While this is a well-studied problem, traditional approaches do not avail of the latest methodology in machine learning. We will investigate new approaches for spatial representation learning that jointly estimate the geographical ranges of thousands of different species. We will apply the developed models to data from the citizen science platform eBird which will result in efficient range estimation solutions that can be deployed on mobile devices. Success will be measured by using our estimated ranges as a geographical filter for the machine-learning predictions of the popular Merlin Sound ID app.

From the impact of net zero targets on energy systems to the impact of acute heatwaves on health, climate change is driving innovations in thermal technologies and infrastructures. A new thermal future is being made. This project seeks to understand the social and economic implications of the thermal future. Our focus is on the emerging solutions to heating and cooling that connect diverse communities of people: from those who see heating and cooling innovations as sources of commercial value, to those who see heating and cooling as something to be technically managed, to those who see heating and cooling through the prism of labor and justice. Our collaboration will establish an interdisciplinary, cross-campus scholarly network capable of seeding future research and funding opportunities, and it will catalyze disciplinary work in the qualitative social sciences on the making of the thermal future.

Our project will establish GEOHUB, a trans-Atlantic deep geothermal energy research collaboration between Cornell, Edinburgh University, and King’s College London. Recent advances in deep geothermal systems, like Cornell’s Earth Source Heat Project, have made considerable renewable energy extractable worldwide. Widespread adoption of this emerging technology could significantly address climate change and energy insecurity. Past resistance to new energy technologies exemplifies why research is needed to avoid communication failures and engage the public before controversies occur. To establish durable foundations for GEOHUB, we will: (1) Conduct a cross-national comparative US-UK survey to define a baseline of public concerns, values, and perceptions of deep geothermal energy, (2) Publish the findings in a scientific journal, (3) Organize a multi-stakeholder workshop at King’s to strengthen our European network, (4) Conduct an academic workshop at Edinburgh to discuss GEOHUB’s future directions, and (5) Submit a joint international grant application to help guarantee the durability of our collaboration.

Current environmental, economic, and social crises require urgent action at global, national, and local levels. Local communities can respond by taking civic actions—such as engaging in environmental policy-making and political activism, critiquing and influencing social norms, facilitating civic ecology education, and organizing stewardship projects. Through this research, the Cornell-Edinburgh partnership will lay the foundation for an online sustainability education course for community leaders and educators globally to prepare them to take local civic actions for sustainability. The Cornell-Edinburgh research team will conduct a series of interviews with government and civic informants in the UK and the U.S. to inform online teaching focused on sustainability and civic action. We will create recommendations for an online course focused on equity, cultural contexts, civic engagement, and horizontal exchange of ideas to strengthen local sustainability actions. The research results will also be published and used to leverage funding for the development of the collaborative online sustainability education course. Alex Kudryavtsev is working closely with Co-PIs Marianne Krasny and Beth Christie on this project.

Since the inception of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, it has attracted much scholarly, media, and policy attention to the ways that China is challenging the existing world order. Existing research has explored the geo-strategic, geo-economic, and geo-cultural dimensions of the BRI. Yet, there are fewer studies that examine traditional powers’ responses to the BRI and the effects of those responses. This collaborative project synthesizes the various initiatives, strategies, and cooperation platforms emerging in the developed world to counter the BRI. We ask in what ways these responses are competitive or complementary to the BRI and whether/how they influence the contours of the BRI. The outcomes of this project aim to foster a critical understanding of a rising China in the global political economy and guide the development of future interdisciplinary research agenda to unpack the regional impacts. 

The Dang Group (HKUST), Bik-Kwoon Tye (Cornell), together with the Zhai Group (HKU) are currently collaborating on the study of the structure of the yeast/human replisomes in normal and S-phase arrested cells using single particle cryo-electron microscopy. Marcus Smolka is an expert on phosphoregulation of replication machinery, especially in cells under DNA replication stress. We envision a possible future collaboration that involves Smolka, Tye, Shangyu Dang, and Yuanliang Zhai studying the phosphoregulation of replisomes at the atomic structural level, which will inform the dynamic mechanistic functions of replisomes as they encounter cellular stress. This bold, challenging, and high-impact vision requires time, scale, and resources to realize. We will use this seed grant to develop a liaison among these groups to form a platform for global collaboration on a high-impact project.

The set of mid-20th urban redevelopment interventions in the United States, generally initialized with the demolition of poor, urban, and often minority neighborhoods, was transformational for the physical urban fabric and socioeconomic trajectories of these neighborhoods and their displaced residents. Despite the depth of research on particular cities, there is sparse research that systematically investigates these programs at a national level. A crucial reason is the lack of detailed, neighborhood-level data on the sites of urban renewal. Using a combination of archival records from the Housing and Home Finance Agency and the Urban Renewal Administration, partially digitized maps records from the Digital Scholarship Lab, and aerial imagery from Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, this demonstration project will begin to create a national dataset of urban renewal sites and estimate the impact of urban renewal on the socioeconomic, racial, and housing outcomes on neighborhoods around the area.

More than half of the global population lives in cities, and urbanization and climate change impose new sustainability challenges. The urban heat island (UHI) effect makes cities vulnerable to heat waves. Moreover, compound heat waves (CHWs) – multiple heat waves occurring in sequence with cool breaks between them, are predicted to constitute a greater proportion of heat wave hazards due to global climate change. However, the interactions between the CHWs and UHI have so far remained elusive. This collaborative project will advance the fundamental knowledge of how CHW affects UHI under global climate change and how mitigation strategies work differently in distinct global cities. The research design involves multiple global cities, which will inform science-based decision-making in adapting to climate change, given the diversity of urban environments. As important global issues will be investigated, this project will inspire and increase awareness of students in both institutions about climate change and sustainability.

A collaborative research project between Liam McAllister’s group at Cornell and David J.E. Marsh at King’s will uncover new limits on string theory. McAllister’s group specializes in computing the properties of axion fields in string theory, while Marsh has expertise in the physics of axions, including astrophysical and cosmological constraints. Through joint work, measurements of X-rays from astrophysical sources can be translated into limits on the quantum-mechanical properties of gravity. Graduate student Naomi Gendler and postdoctoral researcher Jakob Moritz, both of Cornell, will visit King’s for periods of two weeks at a time in order to catalyze this collaboration and lay the foundation for publication. They will perform on-site adaptations of computational software developed at Cornell and simultaneously learn analysis techniques from Marsh and his group at King’s.

Will robots take over our jobs? This Cornell-King's collaboration examines how artificial intelligence (AI) has influenced major knowledge-intensive services sectors, such as telecommunications and health care -- and how governments, employers, and workers have responded to the challenges that smart technologies pose for the world of work. Taking the United States and the United Kingdom as our case studies, we will explore a wide range of emerging issues and countervailing forces (e.g., public policies, professional associations, vocational training systems, licensing bodies and laws, unions, and labor market regulation). The study aims to be the first to systematically map these issues in the United States and the United Kingdom, with the goal of launching a mixed-methods project that covers a broader set of country cases. In so doing, the collaboration leverages the interdisciplinary expertise of our institutions to inform policy debates at the intersection of AI and work.

What role do pivotal states play in great power competition and transition? Drawing from existing works on hedging and middle powers, we propose a novel understanding of "pivotal powers"—secondary states with regional influence that operate in overlapping spheres of great power influence—to analyze their strategies for shaping and revising global governance institutions amid rising systemic uncertainty. To illustrate our framework, we trace the strategies of four pivotal powers in the context of the current U.S.-China competition: Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, and South Africa. In doing so, we show how pivotal powers can constrain or exacerbate great power competition and the implications their strategies hold for the future of global governance in the post-hegemonic world.

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) are growing in extent, duration, and scope around the world. Beset by widespread and frequent HABs, East Africa’s Lake Victoria offers an exceptional context to study the dynamics and impacts of blooms. We propose here to integrate satellite-based monitoring tools to detect bloom conditions and extent developed by King’s College researchers with on-the-ground data collected by Cornell researchers, both in collaboration with the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI) and Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD). This partnership will facilitate satellite-based monitoring of HAB seasonal patterns and long-term trends and link HABs to public and ecosystem health challenges, including toxin accumulation in fish and drinking water and environmental impacts of aquaculture. The team’s regional investment, strong connections to KMFRI/RCMRD, and commitment to jointly advancing knowledge, publications, and external funding applications will enable us to leverage this project for long-term impacts.

The proposal aims to establish a common framework for analyzing Covid and Long-Covid presentations, pathways, and outcomes across the UK and U.S. health systems. The Post Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Infection (PASC), or Long-Covid, is a new and widely spread condition, defined as fatigue, breathlessness, cognitive dysfunction, and a variety of other symptoms occurring after Covid-19 infection. The teams at Cornell and King’s are both engaged in large research programs around PASC (recover and locomotion, respectively) and share an interest and expertise in computable phenotypes. During this initial collaboration, we shall design a collaborative framework that will enable joint studies based on sharing phenotypes and models. All methodological outputs will be shared with the community, promoting reproducibility and reuse. The project will pave the way toward a larger joint grant exploring the use of phenotypes for federated machine learning and disease-focused assessment and evaluation of health systems.

Our project will establish GEOHUB, a trans-Atlantic deep geothermal energy research collaboration between Cornell, Edinburgh University, and King’s College London. Recent advances in deep geothermal systems, like Cornell’s Earth Source Heat Project, have made considerable renewable energy extractable worldwide. Widespread adoption of this emerging technology could significantly address climate change and energy insecurity. Past resistance to new energy technologies exemplifies why research is needed to avoid communication failures and engage the public before controversies occur. To establish durable foundations for GEOHUB, we will: (1) Conduct a cross-national comparative US-UK survey to define a baseline of public concerns, values, and perceptions of deep geothermal energy, (2) Publish the findings in a scientific journal, (3) Organize a multi-stakeholder workshop at King’s to strengthen our European network, (4) Conduct an academic workshop at Edinburgh to discuss GEOHUB’s future directions, and (5) Submit a joint international grant application to help guarantee the durability of our collaboration.

This project explores agrarian transitions in the eastern Himalayas through family histories. Assistant Professor Sahana Ghosh and Associate Professor Sarah Besky will co-locate for ethnographic fieldwork in the Kalimpong and Darjeeling districts of the Indian state of West Bengal during the summer of 2023. The primary objectives of this fieldwork are 1) to develop a historical anthropological methodology to study agrarian transformations through family histories; 2) to seed long-term collaborative ethnographic fieldwork and writing; 3) to bring together inquiry into the two forms of labor that have long shaped life in the region but are often taken as discrete processes: military service and agricultural surplus production. Family histories bring together diverse livelihoods and economies and highlight the interconnections between types of migratory and agrarian labor, the value of land, and the futures of indigenous communities in the age of climate catastrophe.

Natural history collections form the backbone of organismal biology. They document global biodiversity, provide the longest—and in some cases only—time-series data about populations, and help solve conservation problems. Despite the value of specimens, legal, ethical, and public perception challenges make it ever more difficult to justify the active collecting of many vertebrates, thereby limiting our ability to document changes in biodiversity and ecosystem health. Museums must therefore re-image how specimens are acquired and prioritize "salvage" efforts to gain specimens from unintended animal deaths (i.e., window collisions). Researchers at Cornell and the NUS have long salvaged bird carcasses for scientific discovery and conservation. Through this collaboration, we will re-imagine how natural history collections support the global research community by initiating a scalable, collaborative specimen salvage network that results in continued collections growth. This initiative will further strengthen Cornell’s and NUS’s position as leaders in biodiversity science.

Developing meaningful solutions for robotic caregiving requires roboticists and other stakeholders, such as care recipients, caregivers, and occupational therapists, to come together to design, develop, and evaluate use-inspired technologies. Through this project, we are proposing to organize an interdisciplinary workshop that would enable roboticists and healthcare professionals to come together to engage in a dialogue to define key problems and brainstorm meaningful solutions. In addition to defining key problems in this field, one of the barriers to developing real-world solutions is the lack of realistic data. We propose to use this workshop to also collect multimodal data of realistic human caregiver-care recipient physical interactions for some of those key identified problems. Key outcomes of this project would be a network of interdisciplinary teams and problems in the domain of physical robotic caregiving and a public dataset of multimodal (vision, tactile, etc.) physical human-robot interaction scenarios.

Seaweed can contribute significantly to climate change mitigation through its capture and storage of carbon and by providing a biofuel alternative to deforestation-causing palm oil. Indonesia is the world’s largest tropical producer of seaweed, with significant small-scale production undertaken by females. This project asks whether algae-based biofuel can be a significant part of Indonesia’s renewable energy transition and whether algae-based biofuel is a source of renewable energy globally. This project will investigate the multi-scalar benefits and harms of expanded algae production on marine ecosystems, local communities’ livelihoods, and climate mitigation. This Global Strategic Collaboration project thus places social sciences scholarship at the core of strategies involving nature-based solutions to climate change and will involve fieldwork in Indonesia and meetings of collaborators in Singapore. The research will also contribute to both universities’ efforts to build resilience to climate change challenges by developing low-carbon initiatives with social, economic, and environmental co-benefits.

Urban models, like digital twins, are used by decision-makers to manage and plan for uncertain futures. Digital twins are models that abstract reality and test ‘what-if’ scenarios in a virtual environment. This collaboration bridges pre-existing projects on digital twin models conducted at the National University of Singapore and Cornell University. The NUS team is examining the human-model interaction in the model-making process of a digital twin project in Singapore. The Cornell team has surveyed digital twin models globally, constructing a database of over 50 digital twin platforms to examine the gap between rhetoric found in marketing literature and the technical realities of each software platform. This grant will support collaborative workshops, journal paper writing, and model development. The objective of this collaboration is to establish a comparative lens on digital twin models, to develop a multidimensional method, and to prototype an alternative practice of digital twin model construction.

Misinformation leads to increased social stigma and crises. Although technologies may help detect and curb misinformation, they might strengthen false beliefs when falsely responding to misinformation. Recently, the demonstration of the chatGPT has not only shown the potential of a Conversational Agent (CA) but alarmed people that it could lead to detrimental consequences. Therefore, this project aims to facilitate the development of new interventions to enhance human abilities to identify misinformation, building on the CAs which have been adopted to combat misinformation during COVID-19. Previous studies showed CAs could facilitate fact-checking and myth-busting; however, the effects of such CAs on people’s attitudes and immunity toward misinformation and the potential of CAs to strengthen people’s critical thinking and help them become resilient to information manipulation remain under-explored. We will leverage the PIs’ expertise in computer-mediated communication and human-robot (AI) interaction to contribute to the design for reducing the effects of misinformation.

Tauopathies, which include Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD), are fatal neurodegenerative conditions for which no disease-modifying treatment is available to date. One of the main reasons why therapeutic approaches for AD and FTD have failed so far is that the early stages of the disease are not well understood. The overall goal of this project is to capture the role of early microglia-neuron interactions, an issue so far inaccessible in human experimental in vivo models. We will achieve this by combining transplanted patient-induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (iPSC)-derived cortical progenitors and neurons, which in the adult mouse brain self-assemble in large vascularised territories with complex cytoarchitecture and functionality, complemented with patient iPSC-derived microglia, a major population of brain cells implicated in tauopathies. Overall, this project will create a more advanced human multicellular in vivo model and tackle the early stages of axon and synaptic dysfunction in neurodegenerative diseases.

The principle of "liquid-liquid phase separation" (LLPS) has recently captured the attention of scientists, as it provides an intriguing mechanism by which molecules within a cell can form separate compartments, similar to the separation of oil and vinegar in a vinaigrette over time. Most prior research has focused on chemical signals governing LLPS; here, the two PIs, Jan Lammerding and Andrew Holle will investigate how external mechanical cues can modulate LLPS inside living cells. Using complementary molecular biology approaches and microfabricated devices developed in their laboratories, they will determine how the physical stress associated with cells migrating through microscopic constrictions that mimic the confined spaces within the human body can alter the organization of intracellular structures via LLPS. These studies will provide an improved understanding on the effect of confined migration on various biological processes, ranging from the recruitment of immune cells to sites of infections to the metastasis of cancer cells.

The Emergency Department (ED) is crucial in ensuring public health worldwide. Established research teams at Cornell and NUS aim to tackle the challenge of imagining and innovating the future of the emergency department through technology. As a first step, we will study ED triage, a complex clinical judgment process that determines the level of care and ED resources. We will validate two existing and published machine learning algorithms to predict and triage according to the risk of hospital admission and mortality. The algorithms, the Score for Emergency Risk Prediction (SERP) tool, and Deep Significance Clustering (DICE) for ED triage were developed in our respective research studies using large-scale data in Singapore and the U.S. We will jointly review common data elements and refine our work into a universal ED triage tool through in-person workshops and discussions. Our effort will lead to a widely applied and validated ED triage tool across countries.

Peripheral nerve damage can have devastating effects on a person’s quality of life. Regrowing nerves must navigate through a complex environment and interact with surrounding cells to reach their appropriate targets. Recent advances in imaging-based technology enable the examination of these interactions with unprecedented resolution in three dimensions. By combining these new tools with existing mutant models, this Project will shed light on the mechanisms underlying regeneration, with the potential for identifying new therapies that can enhance regrowth. It involves the combined strengths of a bioinformatician and a neurobiologist that will establish a strong foundation for future collaborations.

In 2008 the Catalan architect and urbanist Manuel de Solà-Morales suggested urban environments benefit from ‘small interventions, which create a ripple, not comprehensive development’. A decade on, cities now house over half the world’s population, and the health of cities has never been more precarious. This project focuses on socially and ecologically strained urban environments, exploring small-scale tactical interventions that significantly reduce the burden of large-scale development. This project will document the techniques, technologies, and support structures involved and will cultivate new knowledge about how a 'minimally disruptive urbanism' might better support complex and diverse cities and their ever-growing populations.

Electronic devices based on the interaction of light with matter are central to our technology-driven world. Semiconductors such as silicon are used to harvest sunlight in solar cells, while others are used to encode information into optical pulses that are sent around the world via fiber-optical cables. When semiconductors emit or absorb light, energy is exchanged between particles of light (a photon) and electrical current (an electron). Instead of discreet ‘jumps’, it is possible to make devices in which photons and electrons are mixed together by placing certain semiconductors between closely spaced mirrors. The mirrors act like tiny boxes, 'trapping’ photons so that they interact with the electrons and make them behave in entirely new—sometimes unexpected—ways. Bringing together expertise in molecular semiconductor devices, photonics, and ultrafast lasers, researchers at Cornell and the University of Sydney are exploring ways to harness these effects to make more efficient semiconductor devices.

The recent rapid, large-scale shift to online delivery in higher education has prioritized research to ensure the quality of online teaching, learning, and assessment. This collaborative study aims to validate a framework for evaluation and design of quality online assessments in a global context, building on a recent research project on Australia-wide online assessment practices. The expected outputs from this research will include the design of an online assessment interactive tool which enables the framework to be utilized at scale, presentation at a Learning at Scale conference, and submission of a larger grant between both universities. This project addresses a significant gap in the literature and practice of online assessment with implications for education, professional bodies, and employers by providing a comprehensive, evidence-based framework to enhance world-class online assessment practices.

Optoelectronic devices such as photovoltaics, photodetectors, and light-emitting diodes incorporating new, inexpensive materials show tremendous promise to alter the energy landscape by reducing the cost of both energy production and consumption. Furthermore, the development of eco-friendly low-cost high-performance product-integrated photovoltaics and photodetectors is vital for the widespread adoption of wireless sensor networks and the Internet of Things that is set to disrupt the way we live and work. However, impacting these markets requires that new materials lower production costs and outperform the current technology in terms of cost and efficiency. Lead-free perovskite semiconductors are great candidates to address these requirements. Here, the UCL and Cornell research teams will perform a systematic study on the photophysical and structural properties of the novel eco-friendly perovskites with a scope of exploring their utility in highly efficient photovoltaics and photodetectors. The teams will establish long time collaborations to tackle the global sustainable energy challenges.

Have you ever wondered how people decide whether or not to trust and use artificial intelligence (AI) technology in educational practice? The adoption of AI is impacted by many human factors, including misconceptions, myths, and fears about AI, but there isn’t much research on how these factors shape human-AI interactions in educational settings. We want to understand how different ways of presenting information about AI can affect people’s trust and adoption of AI-based educational technology. This understanding can help to design AI technologies that are more effective and easier for people to adopt. We can also provide educators with insights on how to responsibly adopt AI in their practice. The collaboration between Kizilcec and Cukurova brings together a unique blend of expertise in the fields of education and AI, and this project aims to start a potential long-term collaboration between both PIs’ teams at their respective institutes.

Building on the interdisciplinary strengths in migration and refugee studies across Cornell and UCL, the “Migration and Refuge” Working Group will foster new opportunities for dialogue and sustainable collaboration among faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars, producing academic and public-facing outputs. We aim to advance understandings of borders, mobility, displacement, and refuge through interdisciplinary collaboration oriented around critical approaches to migration and refugee studies. We respond both to the realities of our global age of migration and displacement, as well as to the longer histories of policy and scholarship on borders and asylum that have centered Western and statist perspectives, rather than prioritize the voices and experiences of those crossing borders. Inter alia, we will build synergies around Southern perspectives on migration and displacement-Scholarship and praxis that meaningfully recognize refugees as producers of knowledge-Refuge - rather than fetishization of the refugee - as a starting point of analysis.

Our project brings together researchers in the humanities, social, and life sciences. “Exposure” is widely used in ecology (biological forms are exposed to foreign agents, perhaps toxic) and from photography (before the digital). We speak of limiting our exposure to ecological and financial risk. When we talk of invisible non-toxic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the question becomes more complex. At heart, our project asks about translation: what does it mean to take a term from one set of disciplines and apply it or scale it to another, say, from laboratory work in chemistry to narratives about survival, the emergence of radically new social and aesthetic constellations, or images of landscapes? Can such moves yield "solutions" beyond narrow spheres of expertise? Can exposure serve as a method for significant realignment in the Anthropocene?

How a school is managed has important implications for pupils’ learning outcomes, with better management practices leading to better learning outcomes across the globe. However, the focus of outcomes has mostly been on grades or test score achievements, with less attention paid to outcomes such as socio-emotional development. This is despite an increasing body of evidence showing that socio-emotional skills matter for labor market and other life outcomes. For example, recent work has identified overconfidence as important in driving labor market success. This project will link existing international assessment data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) with new international management practice data for a range of countries to explore the relationship between school-level management practices and pupils’ socio-emotional skills, including overconfidence, work ethic, and perseverance.

Hillstars are extraordinary creatures as they weigh only a few grams but can maintain a high metabolism at the low temperatures and low oxygen pressures of the Andean highlands. The Ecuadorian Hillstar from Chimborazo volcano differs in coloration patterns and in their high-frequency songs from those in other volcanoes of Ecuador, a signal of the insularity of volcano faunas. This project will sequence the genomes of Ecuadorian Hillstars, with the aim of understanding their evolutionary history. Genomic tools, while powerful, are not equally accessible, with limited opportunities for training outside of North America and Europe and private companies offering services at a marked-up and prohibitive cost. This project will foster international collaboration between USFQ in Ecuador and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and train an Ecuadorian student in genomic wet lab and bioinformatics techniques, transferring skills that can be used in subsequent studies and taught at their home institution.

The green energy revolution will require a significant increase in the use of mineral resources for the renewable energy technologies needed for a low-carbon future. Around the world, global needs for intensified mineral production must be reconciled with local concerns about environmental impact. This Global Strategic Collaboration Award will support collaborative research between Melany Ruiz Uriguen (USFQ) and Matthew Reid (Cornell) to partner with the Canadian Mining Company Lundin Gold to mitigate the water quality impacts of mining. Specific research tasks that this research will support include (a) geospatial analysis of water quality around Lundin Gold’s Fruta del Norte Mine (FDN); (b) field sampling of water, soil, and sediment at FDN; and (c) development and testing of bio-leaching methods that can avoid the of use cyanide in mining operations.

Despite being one of the world’s most biodiverse regions, paradoxically, the Amazon rainforest is in short supply of many nutrients critical for supporting biodiversity. This is particularly true for sodium (Na), which can be limiting for herbivorous animals. In response to Na limitation, large herbivores can seek and consume Na-rich soils in areas called mineral licks. These sites are ecologically and culturally significant due to their influence on animal movement; however, the importance of mineral lick use by animals for broader ecosystem processes remains unexplored. Nutrient dispersal by animals may have vital implications for ecosystem functioning, with overlooked consequences of anthropogenic disturbances (e.g., overhunting, oil extraction). Our collaborative research, based at USFQ’s Tiputini Biodiversity Station, bridges animal ecology and biogeochemistry to examine animal roles in rainforest nutrient cycling. Our goal is to highlight animal impacts on the functioning of rainforest ecosystems to better understand the consequences of biodiversity loss.

Contrary to popular belief, Ecuador is aging. Our collaborative research in Ecuador will help us understand the challenges associated with aging and develop solutions adapted to regional specificities. The research will take an all-ages approach to designing communities and planning that better meets the needs of residents across the life cycle. Local governments perceive aging as a profound change and need to plan and develop local responses according to a broader understanding of the challenge. This requires new approaches to planning and community policy. No Ecuadorian city has joined the WHO framework for Age-Friendly Cities, but this may provide a model for local action. We will determine which domains of the WHO framework are relevant in the Ecuadorian Andean context and which are not. Using a case study approach, we will explore the issues being faced on the ground, the possible responses, and the implications for planning and future research.

This study will assess community knowledge and practices related to cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) in Pichincha province, Ecuador. CL is a zoonotic vector-borne disease that leads to skin lesions and scarring in infected humans. Urbanization, deforestation, and climate change impact CL disease distribution and have contributed to recent increases in the disease in Ecuador, including Pichincha, and little is known about the CL epidemiology in this province. Prevention and control of leishmaniasis require a combination of strategies, including community education. The research team will use the study results to inform public health CL disease prevention programs in Ecuador. This is the first collaboration between USFQ’s medical school and Cornell’s Department of Public and Ecosystem Health. The project will be used for community-engaged learning, allowing students from both institutions to gain public health practice and research skills.

Plants produce a large diversity of secondary metabolites of which some have been shown to function as defenses against herbivores. One of the major driving questions in plant biology and chemical ecology is why individual plants maintain such a high diversity of compounds and why natural selection seems to drive further metabolic diversification on the population and species levels. Here we address major hypotheses that explain population-level variation in phytochemical diversity. We measure phytochemical diversity as a function of arthropod species diversity by taking advantage of steep elevational and population density gradients along the slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes. This project addresses rarely-tested fundamental hypotheses in ecology and evolution but also integrates concepts of two very impactful and fast-growing subfields, biodiversity research and chemical ecology. This later merger also unifies research that was traditionally focused in the tropics with that focused on temperate biomes, respectively.

Given the experience of remote physics lab courses during the pandemic, with virtual, simulation, and online collaboration labs being implemented at Imperial and Cornell, it is important to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of the different modalities for student learning to inform the development of future lab courses. Hence, we propose the question: Are remote/online physics labs as effective as in-person labs for students to learn experimental skills? However, to answer this question, we have to compare the two modalities, which is a challenge because they have not been contemporaneous. Therefore, we have identified artifacts that students produced during both remote and in-person physics labs that will provide evidence of experimental skills —these being lab notebooks (from Cornell) and lab reports (from Imperial). Due to the qualitative nature of these artifacts, we propose to use Natural Language Processing (NLP)—a form of machine learning – to systematically analyze a large number of lab artifacts. However, before answering the principle question, we first have to know whether NLP can be used to evaluate student learning of experimental skills from lab artifacts. This is the question we propose to address with the seed funding to build a foundation for further funding applications.

We propose to organize a series of Wikipedia editing hackathons ("Wikipedia edit-a-thons") to empower students, staff, and faculty at the departments of Materials at Imperial College London and Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell to contribute to the free online encyclopedia. In the process, community members will (i) improve the (technical) content available at Wikipedia, (ii) hone their (science) communication skills (both written and visual), (iii) ameliorate the ways and the degree to which systemic inequities present in society are mirrored on Wikipedia, and (iv) establish connections between both campuses by collaborating on these editing projects. We will organize several edit-a-thons with different topical focuses (topics within the materials science curriculum, scientist biographies, etc.) and different target audiences (undergraduate students in different years or courses, graduate students, faculty, et al.). For each event, we will identify an overarching theme (e.g., electrochemistry, nanomaterials, mechanical properties of materials), specify comprehensive suggested editing targets, provide editing training and feedback, as well as organize follow-up mechanisms that allow the editors to finalize their work on an improvement or creation project.