Provost Michael I. Kotlikoff will serve as interim president beginning July 1. At that time, Pollack will be given the title of president emerita by the Cornell Board of Trustees in recognition of her contributions and legacy.

“Serving as the president of Cornell has been an amazing privilege; there are few roles that afford so much opportunity to make a positive difference in the world,” Pollack said. “After seven fruitful and gratifying years as Cornell’s president – capping a career in research and academia spanning five decades – I’m ready for a new chapter in my life. I greatly appreciate the continued support of our Board of Trustees and the many faculty, students, staff and alumni who have shared words of encouragement through my time as president, especially over the past academic year.”

Under Pollack’s leadership, the university created the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy; named the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science and the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration; launched new programs in areas ranging from sustainability and digital agriculture to artificial intelligence and design and technology; and expanded external research expenditures by nearly 50%. She also oversaw upgrades to academic facilities, including the ongoing construction of a new building for Cornell Bowers CIS and the multidisciplinary Atkinson Hall.

Over the course of her tenure, Pollack has significantly expanded the accessibility and affordability of a Cornell education, from increasing by 1,000 the number of undergraduates receiving grant-based financial aid to creating a debt-free education program at Weill Cornell Medicine, among other measures. She enriched and enhanced the student experience in numerous ways, including through the Active Learning Initiative, which now reaches around 10,000 students a year; the implementation of an Intergroup Dialogue Program for all incoming undergraduate students; and the expansion of mental health services.

Pollack also advanced Cornell’s ongoing commitment to operational sustainability, spearheaded a communitywide effort to develop a statement of core values, and, in 2023, launched the university’s first-ever theme year celebrating free and open expression and inquiry.

“President Pollack has been a transformational leader of Cornell, and her positive impact on our university will be felt for decades to come,” said Kraig H. Kayser, MBA ’84, chair of the Cornell Board of Trustees. “Beyond her achievements in academics, research and affordability, I and my fellow trustees deeply value her intelligence, integrity, candor and warmth, as well as her unwavering commitment to Cornell being a community of belonging.”

Pollack, a professor of computer science, information science and linguistics, is an expert in artificial intelligence and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Formerly provost and executive vice president for academic affairs of the University of Michigan, she succeeded the late Elizabeth Garrett as Cornell’s president in 2017. Pollack led Cornell through challenging times, navigating a global pandemic, a national racial reckoning, and the terrorist attack in Israel and subsequent war in Gaza – the impacts of which have continued to reverberate across the nation, particularly in higher education.

At the request of the Board of Trustees, Kotlikoff will serve a two-year term as interim president; the board will form a search committee to select Cornell’s 15th president six to nine months before Kotlikoff’s term ends. In addition to his nine years as provost, Kotlikoff previously served as acting president, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine, chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences and professor of molecular biology.

“We’re confident that Provost Kotlikoff will do an exceptional job leading the university during this important transition,” Kayser said. An interim provost will be named before June 30, and Kotlikoff will then conduct a search for a permanent provost.

Cornell’s remarkable community and ethos ensure that it will have a bright future, Pollack said.

“Cornell is unique, embracing a combination of core values that make the university exceptionally well placed to have an outsized impact on the world – across and beyond its many areas of exploration,” she said. “Leading this institution, helping to build its strengths and realize its potential, and seeing the transformational impact of our teaching, research and engagement, has been a true joy.”

The post Cornell President Martha Pollack to Retire After Transformational Tenure appeared first on Cornell Tech.

Known for her integrity, warmth and generous spirit, Joan served Cornell for nearly two decades as a presidential councillor, the university’s highest alumni honor. She and her husband of 69 years, Irwin M. Jacobs ’54, BEE ’56, founding chairman and CEO emeritus of Qualcomm, have been lifelong philanthropists, championing education, health care, the arts and other causes.

“Joan Jacobs, along with her husband, Irwin, played a pivotal role in helping establish Cornell Tech as a premier institution for driving innovation and economic development, and remained deeply involved for decades in supporting students, faculty and innovative programs on the Ithaca campus,” President Martha E. Pollack said. “As a trusted adviser and friend to several Cornell presidents and one of the university’s most prolific philanthropists, she has left a lasting impact on Cornell, and on the lives of generations of Cornellians.”

As devoted benefactors of the university, the Jacobses have been strong advocates for their colleges, naming scholarships, fellowships and professorships in the College of Human Ecology and Cornell Engineering.

Their most transformational gift came in 2013, when they gave $133 million to Cornell and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to create the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, a centerpiece of Cornell Tech. In making the commitment, they noted its special significance in allowing them to give back to their alma mater and to New York City – Joan’s hometown.

Since its founding, the Jacobs Institute has incubated 47 new startup companies, which have filed nearly 75 patent applications and employ more than 280 people in New York City.

Jacobs was born Jan. 17, 1933 in New York City, where she attended the Barnard School for Girls. She and Irwin met as sophomores at Cornell on a blind date and married in 1954, just after Joan graduated with a bachelor’s degree in nutritional sciences from the College of Human Ecology. Trained as a dietician, she worked for Groton Central Schools while Irwin continued his studies at Cornell.

In 1956, they moved to Boston, where Joan worked at Boston Lying-in Hospital (now Brigham and Women’s Hospital) while Irwin completed his Sc.D. and joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 1966, the couple and their four sons moved to California when Irwin accepted a position at the University of California, San Diego, later founding Linkabit and Qualcomm. The Jacobses became leading members of the San Diego community, helping transform educational, health, and cultural organizations and institutions throughout the area. In 2015, she received the College of Human Ecology’s most distinguished alumni honor, the Helen Bull Vandervort Award, in recognition of her work and achievements.

The Jacobses’ dedication to community service, they said, sprang from growing up in homes that honored the Jewish obligation of tzedakah – the Hebrew word for philanthropy and charity.

“Our families were philanthropic, but on a very different level,” Joan Jacobs said in a 2017 interview. “They gave to the local synagogue, but not in any major way. We both came from very humble homes. We’re very fortunate to be able to do what we’re doing now.”

Joan Jacobs donated to Cornell nearly every year since her first gift to the annual fund in 1958. Seeking to create opportunities to make education more accessible, she and Irwin established the Joan Klein Jacobs ’54 Cornell Tradition Fellowship in 1999 to provide annual support for undergraduate students in the College of Human Ecology. In 2014, they made a $10 million gift to the college – at the time, the largest gift in its history – to advance faculty renewal with the Joan K. and Irwin M. Jacobs Professorship and Joan K. and Irwin M. Jacobs Graduate Fellowship, while also sponsoring a fundraising challenge that resulted in four more endowed professorships for the college.

The Jacobses likewise established the Irwin M. and Joan K. Jacobs Scholars and Fellows Programs in Cornell Engineering with a $30 million commitment in 2006; they’d created the Irwin and Joan Jacobs Professorship in Electrical and Computer Engineering several years earlier. The programs have supported the educations and aspirations of more than 500 students – through more than 1,300 awards – over the last two decades.

Their most recent gift came in 2023, when they again committed $10 million to the College of Human Ecology. The gift benefits the college’s new Center for Precision Nutrition and Health, endowing its executive directorship, two postdoctoral fellowships and funds to advance faculty innovation and student experiential learning – all named in honor of Joan.

The Jacobses’ giving places them among the world’s most generous philanthropists. In 2018, they were among the first to join Bill Gates’ and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge initiative, which calls upon individuals of considerable means to donate the majority of their wealth during their lifetimes, in order to have an impact on today’s most pressing needs and challenges.

The couple, along with their son and daughter-in-law, Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs, were honored as the 2008 recipients of the Cornell Hillel Tanner Prize, which celebrates service to the Jewish people and to Cornell. The same year, she received an honorary doctorate in fine arts from the University of Massachusetts, and in 2015, she and Irwin were honored with the prestigious Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy.

Joan Jacobs is survived by Irwin, their four sons, 14 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

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More than 200 guests attended the event, which recognized Feeney’s $8 billion in philanthropy worldwide and nearly $1 billion in giving to his alma mater – including $350 million, his foundation’s largest individual grant, to help establish and sustain Cornell Tech on New York City’s Roosevelt Island.

Cornell’s leaders often refer to Feeney as the university’s “third founder,” behind only Ezra Cornell and the university’s first president, Andrew Dickson White, in the magnitude of his influence and impact. He died in October 2023 at the age of 92.

“Supporting Cornell Tech was an enduring way to extend to others the opportunities from which I benefited,” Feeney said in April 2023, when the university announced the creation of Feeney Way at Cornell Tech. “I am grateful for this recognition of my approach to giving while living and hope that Feeney Way will guide a path for similar success for many others to come.”

In 2021, East Avenue on the Ithaca campus was renamed “Feeney Way” in honor of Feeney’s 90th birthday. Cornell Tech is now home to Cornell’s second Feeney Way, recognizing Feeney’s transformative impact on the university as well as his role in supporting the creation of Cornell Tech’s campus.

“Wherever you stand on any of Cornell’s campuses – at Cornell Tech, at Weill Cornell Medicine or in Ithaca – you are surrounded by a living memorial to the quiet greatness of Chuck Feeney,” said President Martha E. Pollack, noting that Feeney’s approach to philanthropy aligned with his selfless nature. “It wasn’t about what he wanted, it was about what was needed: how to do the greatest good.”

Feeney Way is a pathway that leads through the heart of the Cornell Tech campus, beginning just south of the 59th Street Bridge and extending a quarter-mile through campus buildings and the central plaza.

“We are so grateful that Chuck had the vision for what this campus could mean for Cornell’s and New York City’s future, and for the opportunities he has created for all of us who have the benefit of being a part of the Cornell Tech community,” said Greg Morrisett, the Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and Vice Provost of Cornell Tech. “Today, just days shy of what would have been Chuck’s 93rd birthday, we are honored to be opening Feeney Way – the walkways that lead to every path and every building on our campus. We know this will be an inspiration to current and future generations of Cornell Tech students and alumni encouraging them to give back, in whatever way they’re able, to their communities.”

A self-made entrepreneur who co-founded Duty Free Shoppers in 1960, Feeney became one of the world’s greatest and most inspirational philanthropists. He was an early and passionate proponent of “giving while living” – encouraging people of means to give away the majority of their wealth during their lifetimes. In this regard, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have referred to him as an inspiration for their “Giving Pledge” effort that has been embraced by many of the world’s leading philanthropists.

Feeney’s gifts through The Atlantic Philanthropies over four decades supported people and causes around the world, from education and human rights to medical research, health equity, peacemaking and social justice. The nearly $1 billion of this giving to Cornell, made mostly anonymously, transformed and continues to impact the university and the lives and experiences of its students and faculty.

During the event – which also included performances by alumni singers from the Cornell University Glee Club, and by Joe Beyrer, a bagpiper from the County Armagh Pipers Band – Itai Dinour ’01 spoke about the impact of the Cornell Tradition, a scholarship program created and endowed by Feeney.

“I am one of the 6,000 proud Cornell Tradition alumni who benefited from the catalytic, innovative philanthropy of Chuck Feeney,” Dinour said. “I am doing my part to stay involved as an active alumnus with Cornell’s efforts to develop a future generation of empathic, engaged citizens – in many ways, helping to plant and nurture seeds of service for future generations of Cornellians – and continuing the cycle that the Cornell Tradition, and Chuck Feeney, invested in me.”

The celebration also included remarks by Deborah Rhodes, M.D. ’92, daughter of the late President Emeritus Frank H.T. Rhodes; Christopher Oechsli, president and CEO of The Atlantic Philanthropies; Juliette Feeney-Timsit ’84 and Caroleen Feeney, daughters of Chuck Feeney; Robert Steel, former New York City deputy mayor for economic development during the Bloomberg administration; and Kraig Kayser, MBA ’84, chair of the Cornell Board of Trustees.

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Researchers from Cornell Tech have developed a method to identify delays in the reporting of incidents such as downed trees and power lines, which could lead to practical insights and interventions for more equitable, efficient government service.

Their method, which works without knowing exactly when an incident occurred, uses the frequency of reports of the same incident by separate individuals to estimate how long it took for the incident to be first reported. The first report establishes that the incident occurred, and subsequent reports are used to establish the reporting rate.

Applying their method to more than 1 million incident reports in New York City and Chicago, the researchers also determined that a neighborhood’s socioeconomic characteristics are correlated with reporting rates.

“We’ve devised a fairly general method that works for a large class of these problems, known as ‘benchmark problems,’ where you can get duplicate reports of an incident,” said Nikhil Garg, assistant professor of operations research and information engineering (ORIE) at Cornell Tech, as part of the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute.

Garg is senior author of “Quantifying Spatial Under-reporting Disparities in Resident Crowdsourcing,” which published Dec. 5 in Nature Computational Science.

“We’re optimistic that this method can be used to understand underreporting,” he said, “not just in 311 (citizen “hotline”) systems, but more broadly where these benchmark problems appear.”

Garg’s co-authors are Zhi Liu, lead student author and a doctoral student in ORIE, and Uma Bhandaram, deputy chief for data systems and analytics for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

Crowdsourcing is an essential component of city management; crews can’t be everywhere at the same time, and they rely on residents to report issues to the proper authorities so they can be addressed. Large cities – including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston, the four largest U.S. cities – have reporting systems that residents can log into to report problems.

“The 311 system is a big one,” Garg said. “New York City, for instance, can’t know where all the problems are all the time with something like 700,000 street trees – NYC gets over 3 million service requests a year from the public. For us, this started with a general question: Who is actually participating in all of these participatory mechanisms underlying government?”

“That’s also one of the questions that city agencies are interested in – the fact that people behave differently,” Liu said. “So how do they respond to these requests?”

Garg and Liu’s model takes the available information – the occurrence of an incident, and the public’s reporting behavior related to that incident – and converts it into a Poisson rate estimation task, which expresses the probability of a given number of events occurring in a fixed interval of time or space.

Without knowing exactly when the incident happened, the method uses the number of reports between the time of the first report (but not including it) and an estimated incident resolution time to quantify an incident’s rate function. The method could allow city managers to determine the reporting rates of different types of incidents in different neighborhoods, and address problems more equitably.

The researchers applied their method to more than 100,000 resident reports made to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, and to more than 900,000 reports made to the Chicago Department of Transportation and Department of Water Management. Even after controlling for incident characteristics, such as the level of emergency response needed, they found that some neighborhoods reported incidents three times faster than others.

The disparities corresponded to socioeconomic characteristics of the neighborhoods. In New York City, reporting rates were positively correlated with higher population density; the fraction of people with college degrees; income; and the fraction of the population that is white.

The researchers were able to further validate their method by testing it on incidents for which exact times were known.

“We find overwhelming evidence that people use 311 systems differently,” Liu said. “And when we’re thinking about the downstream response to those reports, this can serve as a very good reference point. Say no one reports an incident and it’s been sitting there for a prolonged period: We might want to respond to it faster, so that the overall delay is similar across neighborhoods.”

And as Liu said, their system promotes equity in terms of responding to the most urgent problem first.

“One key finding is that equity and efficiency don’t have to trade off,” he said. “Sometimes they’re in accordance – the most severe incidents should be addressed across the city at a faster rate, no matter where they are. So in that sense, equity and efficiency are actually aligned.”

Said Garg: “There’s so much work left to do, and that our team is continuing to do, to make these systems more efficient and equitable.”

This work was funded in part by the Urban Tech Hub at Cornell Tech.

This story originally appeared in the Cornell Chronicle.

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Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell Tech and Cornell’s Ithaca campus have demonstrated the use of artificial-intelligence (AI)-selected natural images and AI-generated synthetic images as neuroscientific tools for probing the visual processing areas of the brain. The goal is to apply a data-driven approach to understand how vision is organized while potentially removing biases that may arise when looking at responses to a more limited set of researcher-selected images.

In the study, published Oct. 23 in Communications Biology, the researchers had volunteers look at images that had been selected or generated based on an AI model of the human visual system. The images were predicted to maximally activate several visual processing areas. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record the brain activity of the volunteers, the researchers found that the images did activate the target areas significantly better than control images.

The researchers also showed that they could use this image-response data to tune their vision model for individual volunteers, so that images generated to be maximally activating for a particular individual worked better than images generated based on a general model.

“We think this is a promising new approach to study the neuroscience of vision,” said study senior author Amy Kuceyeski, professor of mathematics in radiology and of mathematics in neuroscience in the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine.

The study was a collaboration with the laboratory of Mert Sabuncu, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell Engineering and at Cornell Tech, and of electrical engineering in radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine. The study’s first author was Dr. Zijin Gu, who was a doctoral student co-mentored by Sabuncu and Kuceyeski at the time of the study.

Making an accurate model of the human visual system, in part by mapping brain responses to specific images, is one of the more ambitious goals of modern neuroscience. Researchers have found for example, that one visual processing region may activate strongly in response to an image of a face whereas another may respond to a landscape. Scientists must rely mainly on noninvasive methods in pursuit of this goal, given the risk and difficulty of recording brain activity directly with implanted electrodes. The preferred noninvasive method is fMRI, which essentially records changes in blood flow in small vessels of the brain – an indirect measure of brain activity – as subjects are exposed to sensory stimuli or otherwise perform cognitive or physical tasks. An fMRI machine can read out these tiny changes in three dimensions across the brain, at a resolution on the order of cubic millimeters.

For their own studies, Kuceyeski and Sabuncu and their teams used an existing dataset comprising tens of thousands of natural images, with corresponding fMRI responses from human subjects, to train an AI-type system called an artificial neural network (ANN) to model the human brain’s visual processing system. They then used this model to predict which images, across the dataset, should maximally activate several targeted vision areas of the brain. They also coupled the model with an AI-based image generator to generate synthetic images to accomplish the same task.

“Our general idea here has been to map and model the visual system in a systematic, unbiased way, in principle even using images that a person normally wouldn’t encounter,” Kuceyeski said.

The researchers enrolled six volunteers and recorded their fMRI responses to these images, focusing on the responses in several visual processing areas. The results showed that, for both the natural images and the synthetic images, the predicted maximal activator images, on average across the subjects, did activate the targeted brain regions significantly more than a set of images that were selected or generated to be only average activators. This supports the general validity of the team’s ANN-based model and suggests that even synthetic images may be useful as probes for testing and improving such models.

In a follow-on experiment, the team used the image and fMRI-response data from the first session to create separate ANN-based visual system models for each of the six subjects. They then used these individualized models to select or generate predicted maximal-activator images for each subject. The fMRI responses to these images showed that, at least for the synthetic images, there was greater activation of the targeted visual region, a face-processing region called FFA1, compared to the responses to images based on the group model. This result suggests that AI and fMRI can be useful for individualized visual-system modeling, for example to study differences in visual system organization across populations.

The researchers are now running similar experiments using a more advanced version of the image generator, called Stable Diffusion.

The same general approach could be useful in studying other senses such as hearing, they said. Kuceyeski also hopes ultimately to study the therapeutic potential of this approach.

“In principle, we could alter the connectivity between two parts of the brain using specifically designed stimuli, for example to weaken a connection that causes excess anxiety,” she said.

Many Weill Cornell Medicine physicians and scientists maintain relationships and collaborate with external organizations to foster scientific innovation and provide expert guidance. The institution makes these disclosure public to ensure transparency. For this information, see profile for Amy Kuceyeski.

Jim Schnabel is a freelance writer for Weill Cornell Medicine.

This story originally appeared in the Cornell Chronicle.

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As journalists and professional fact-checkers struggle to keep up with the deluge of misinformation online, fact-checking sites that rely on loosely coordinated contributions from volunteers, such as Wikipedia, can help fill the gaps, Cornell research finds.

In a new study, Andy Zhao, a doctoral candidate in information science based at Cornell Tech, compared professional fact-checking articles to posts on Cofacts, a community-sourced fact-checking platform in Taiwan. He found that the crowdsourced site often responded to queries more rapidly than professionals and handled a different range of issues across platforms.

“Fact-checking is a core component of being able to use our information ecosystem in a way that supports trustworthy information,” said senior author Mor Naaman, professor of information science at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. “Places of knowledge production, like Wikipedia and Cofacts, have proved so far to be the most robust to misinformation campaigns.”

The study, “Insights from a Comparative Study on the Variety, Velocity, Veracity, and Viability of Crowdsourced and Professional Fact-Checking Services,” published Sept. 21 in the Journal of Online Trust and Safety.

The researchers focused on Cofacts because it is a crowdsourced fact-checking model that had not been well-studied. The Taiwanese government, civil organizations and the tech community established Cofacts in 2017 to address the challenges of both malicious and innocent misinformation – partially in response to efforts from the Chinese government to use disinformation to create a more pro-China public opinion in Taiwan. Much like Wikipedia, anyone on Cofacts can be an editor and post answers, submit questions and up or downvote responses. Cofacts also has a bot that fact-checks claims in a popular messaging app.

Starting with more than 60,000 crowdsourced fact-checks and 2,641 professional fact-checks, Zhao used natural language processing to match up responses posted on Cofacts with articles addressing the same questions on two professional fact-checking sites. He looked at how quickly the sites posted responses to queries, the accuracy and persuasiveness of the responses and the range of topics covered.

He found the Cofacts users often responded faster than journalists, but mostly because they could “stand on the shoulders of giants” and repurpose existing articles from professionals. In this way, Cofacts acts as a distributor for information. “They carry those stories across language, across the nation, or across time, to this exact moment to answer people’s questions,” Zhao said.

Importantly, Zhao found that the Cofacts posts were just as accurate as the professional sources. And according to seven native Taiwanese graduate students who acted as raters, articles by journalists were more persuasive, but Cofacts posts often were clearer.

Further analysis showed the crowdsourced site covered a slightly different range of topics compared with those addressed by professionals. Posts on Cofacts were more likely to address recent and local issues – such as regional politics and small-time scams – while journalists were more likely to write about topics requiring expertise, including health claims and international affairs.

“We can leverage the power of the crowds to counter misinformation,” Zhao concluded. “Misinformation comes from everywhere, and we need this battle to happen in all corners.”

The need for fact-checking is likely to continue to grow. While it’s not yet clear how generative artificial intelligence (AI) models, such as ChatGPT or Midjourney, will impact the information landscape, Naaman and Zhao said it is possible that AI programs that generate text and fake images may make it even easier to create and spread misinformation online.

However, despite the success of Cofacts in Taiwan, Zhao and Naaman caution that the same approach may not transfer to other countries. “Cofacts has built on the user habits, the cultures, the background, and political and social structures of Taiwan, which is how they succeed,” Zhao said.

But understanding Cofacts’ success may assist in the design of other fact-checking systems, especially in regions that don’t speak English, which have access to few, if any fact-checking resources.

“Understanding how well that kind of model works in different settings could hopefully provide some inspiration and guidelines to people who want to execute similar endeavors in other places,” Naaman said.

The study received partial support from the National Science Foundation.

Patricia Waldron is a writer for the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.

This story originally appeared in the Cornell Chronicle.

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Aaron Gokaslan, a prominent researcher and PhD student from Cornell Tech, has received the PyTorch Award for 2023. PyTorch’s codebase is a popular deep-learning framework, and the PyTorch Award for Excellence in Code Review is a recognition of Gokaslan’s dedication to maintaining the highest standards in AI technology.

“I am deeply honored to contribute to the PyTorch community and receive the PyTorch Award for Excellence in Code Review. Code review is a vital part of maintaining the quality and reliability of open-source software,” says Gokaslan. “This award reflects the collective efforts of the entire PyTorch community, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to work with such dedicated and talented individuals. I look forward to continuing to ensure that PyTorch remains a trusted and robust platform for AI research and development.”

Gokaslan currently works with Volodymyr Kuleshov, Assistant Professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and in the Computer Science Department at Cornell University, and is presently researching open and efficient generative models, specifically looking at how to bring the cost down of training and deploying. He also continues to work on using large language models on DNA sequences and biological data for science, drug discovery, and gene editing.

“The award presented by the PyTorch Foundation is a testament to Aaron’s contributions to the world of machine learning,” says Kuleshov. “Aaron has a significant impact on the PyTorch community, particularly in code review, which plays a critical role in advancing the field of artificial intelligence. His work and research are vital to the growth and strengthening of A.I. infrastructure.”

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The Google Inclusion Research Award acknowledges individuals who research computing and technology and are dedicated to addressing the needs of marginalized groups and creating a more inclusive and equitable tech ecosystem. This award will allow Taylor to further her research and continue to work on providing safer healthcare practices.

“We must continue to bridge the gap between cutting-edge research, technology, and patient care to create a healthcare system that serves everyone. I am excited to continue this research with the support of Google and receive the Google Award for Inclusion Research,” says Taylor.

In an ever-changing healthcare landscape, Taylor’s research has pushed her students and healthcare professionals to explore original and unexpected solutions. Receiving the Google Inclusion Research Award recognizes her outstanding contributions and advocates her vision of making healthcare more efficient and patient-centered.

The post Angelique Taylor Receives the Google Inclusion Research Award appeared first on Cornell Tech.

The funding will allow the growing repository with more than 2 million articles to migrate to the cloud and modernize its code to ensure reliability, fault tolerance and accessibility for researchers.

“I am deeply grateful for this tremendous support from both the Simons Foundation and the NSF,” said Greg Morrisett, the Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and Vice Provost of Cornell Tech. “This investment ensures that the arXiv service will continue to scale, to serve an even broader constituency, and better serve the arXiv scientific community.”

“This generous funding from the Simons Foundation and the National Science Foundation will allow arXiv to expand its critical growth in the scientific community, where it allows thousands of researchers to freely disseminate, exchange and explore their findings,” said Ramin Zabih, arXiv faculty director and professor of computer science at Cornell Tech. “By modernizing the code base and transitioning to the cloud, we are strengthening arXiv’s infrastructure and ensuring that it will continue to be a source of innovation in the sharing of scholarly publications. We are grateful to the Simons Foundation and the NSF for their support and for sharing in our vision for arXiv.”

The next stage of arXiv’s development will include hiring multiple software developers to support the modernization effort. In parallel, faculty members in the Department of Computer Science, with funding provided by the NSF grant 2311521, will develop new search and recommendation techniques that can be tested and deployed on arXiv’s large and active user community, supported by state of the art privacy guarantees. In addition, arXiv will provide substantially better access to the visually impaired by producing HTML as well as PDF versions of its content.

“The arXiv has been a critical piece of research infrastructure for decades, and just as important, part of the foundation of open science that the world relies on every day,” said David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation. “Through our partner Cornell Tech, the foundation is proud to continue its investment in arXiv. This gift will help modernize the arXiv and ensure its sustainability for the community of scientists and mathematicians whose contributions have made it what it is.”

arXiv was founded in 1991 by then-Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist Paul Ginsparg, Ph.D. ’81, prior to his return to Cornell in 2001. The repository is now maintained and operated by Cornell Tech, and serves researchers in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics.

“The Simons Foundation has provided essential behind-the-scenes support for arXiv since 2011, as a natural partner in support of the research enterprise,” said Ginsparg, professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, and of information science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. “The additional support to facilitate a transition to long-term sustainability should permit arXiv to enhance through an even longer period the transformative effects it has had on research communication over the past three decades.”

In addition to the Simons Foundation’s ongoing support, arXiv is supported by academic and research libraries, universities, research organizations, professional societies and individual donors.

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By Joe Wilensky, Cornellians

Charles F. “Chuck” Feeney ’56, founding chairman of The Atlantic Philanthropies and Cornell University’s most generous donor, died Oct. 9 in San Francisco. He was 92.

Feeney, who quietly devoted his fortune to worldwide causes for decades, invested nearly $1 billion in Cornell through the foundation since 1982. The late President Frank H.T. Rhodes referred to him as Cornell’s “third founder” – behind only Ezra Cornell and the university’s first president, Andrew Dickson White, in the magnitude of his influence and impact.

However, for more than two decades, Feeney’s giving through The Atlantic Philanthropies was completely anonymous – neither his name nor Atlantic’s appeared on any university building, professorship or program. Even after he was thrust into the limelight when his association with Atlantic became public, he resisted any memorials to his giving, preferring instead for the focus to be on the beneficiaries of his support.

In 2021, Cornell renamed East Avenue on the Ithaca campus “Feeney Way” in honor of his 90th birthday, to recognize his impact on the university, and as an inspiration to future generations of Cornellians. A second “Feeney Way” will be named on a central thoroughfare on the Cornell Tech campus in New York City, Cornell announced earlier this year.

“Chuck Feeney, in his life and in his lasting legacy, set an inspirational standard of what it means to be a Cornellian,” said President Martha E. Pollack. “His life’s mission of consequential philanthropy, the breathtaking impact of his giving to his alma mater, and the way his quiet example has motivated so many others, has been immeasurably transformative to Cornell and to Cornellians.

“I am heartened by the fact that Chuck – who famously never sought recognition for his generosity – had recently granted Cornell’s wish to express our appreciation for him and celebrate his impact and vision by naming main thoroughfares on our Ithaca and Cornell Tech campuses in his honor,” Pollack said.

Feeney’s legacy

The story of Feeney’s legacy and The Atlantic Philanthropies’ impact on Cornell is vast and inspiring. Among the highlights of the foundation’s giving are:

• the record-setting $350 million grant, initially made anonymously in 2011, that funded much of the construction and program development for the first phase of the Cornell Tech campus, while also creating a generous permanent endowment, and was transformational for both Cornell and New York City;
• the creation of, and endowment gifts for, the Cornell Tradition, which awards fellowships to outstanding Cornell undergraduates who demonstrate a commitment to scholarship, work and service; and
• support that touched nearly every corner of Cornell, transforming undergraduate residential life; increasing access to financial aid; and revitalizing the sciences, humanities and social sciences.

Beyond Cornell, Feeney and The Atlantic Philanthropies gave $7 billion over three decades, dramatically advancing global education, health, research and innovation, human rights and peacemaking efforts.

“Chuck was as passionate about making a positive difference in the lives of others as he was about being successful at business,” said Christopher G. Oechsli, president and CEO of Atlantic and longtime adviser to Feeney. “He cared more about being effective at what he did than about amassing wealth or collecting awards. In philanthropy, that meant being present and engaged in an unassuming manner with the people and their work who, with his support, could improve the lives of others in meaningful and lasting ways.”

“Chuck Feeney was a cherished Cornellian whose impact is immeasurable,” said Kraig Kayser, MBA ’84, chair of the Cornell Board of Trustees. “His philanthropic support across many campus priorities – including the founding gift for Cornell Tech – will be felt for generations. He traced his visionary commitment to ‘giving while living’ to Cornell’s ‘… any person … any study’ principles, and just as Cornell’s ethos was foundational to Chuck, he became foundational to Cornell. The entire community sends its condolences to his family, as he will be missed.”

Early years and The Atlantic Philanthropies

Charles Francis Feeney was born April 23, 1931, into a working-class, Irish-American immigrant family in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He enrolled in Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration – now the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration – in 1952 with support from the G.I. Bill. He was the first in his family to go to college.

His entrepreneurial drive was apparent immediately: He famously created a sandwich business at Cornell that became so profitable his freshman classmates dubbed him “the sandwich man.”

After graduation, Feeney traveled to Europe, enrolled in a graduate program in political science at the University Grenoble in France and started a summer camp for children of American military personnel.

In 1960, Feeney and fellow Hotelie Robert W. Miller ’55 co-founded Duty Free Shoppers – at first selling to sailors serving with the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic fleet, then at Honolulu International Airport, and subsequently expanding to airports in Europe, Hong Kong and beyond. Duty Free Shoppers soon became the largest seller of luxury goods in the world.

In 1984, Feeney secretly gave away nearly all his fortune by transferring the vast majority of his stake in Duty Free Shoppers (estimated at more than $500 million at the time) to create and establish The Atlantic Philanthropies, reducing his own wealth to less than $5 million.

In its early years, Atlantic directed much of its giving to higher education; it later refined its areas of focus, identifying four key priorities: aging; children and youth; population health; and reconciliation and human rights.

Feeney insisted on anonymity for the foundation’s donations and his involvement. According to his authorized biography, “The Billionaire Who Wasn’t: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune” (2007) by Conor O’Clery, this was partly due to modesty, and partly out of concern that giving publicly and generously to an organization might discourage others from giving to the same organization.

Atlantic eventually concentrated its grant-making in seven countries across the globe and targeted giving in particular sectors for each: the United States (higher education, health care reform, medical research and social justice); Bermuda (nonprofit organization support, philanthropy and social change); Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (peacemaking and higher education); South Africa (justice, health equity, human rights and social change); Vietnam (health care and higher education); and Australia (modern facilities for translational research and pharmaceuticals).

Based on his belief that people should use their wealth to better the world during their lifetimes, Feeney purposely limited the lifespan of The Atlantic Philanthropies so it would make a difference sooner rather than later. In 2002, he committed to spending down the foundation’s endowment completely and set 2016 as its final year of grant-making. He said he was very proud to accomplish this goal during his own lifetime.

Atlantic and Cornell

The Atlantic Philanthropies’ very first investment in Cornell, in 1982, was an anonymous grant of $7 million to establish The Cornell Tradition, an undergraduate fellowship program combining work, service and scholarship opportunities to instill a strong work ethic in civic-minded students. The program was envisioned as a contemporary expression of Ezra Cornell’s vision that all students who were willing to work hard, earn good grades and dedicate themselves to serving their communities would find a place at the university, regardless of their financial situation.

The foundation gave nearly $41 million to The Cornell Tradition over time, supporting more than 6,000 students and, through student loan relief, enabling many of them to pursue careers in public service.

Fittingly, The Atlantic Philanthropies’ final official grant as it wound down its operations in 2016 was another $7 million for The Cornell Tradition, creating core endowments for operations and for students with financial need who wish to pursue international service experiences. Both endowments were named for Rhodes to honor his long connection with The Atlantic Philanthropies, which was fostered and flourished during his presidency at Cornell and afterward, when he served on Atlantic’s board from 1995 to 2000 and as chairman from 2000-08.

Between those first and final grants to Cornell, The Atlantic Philanthropies nurtured a three-decade partnership with the university and its leaders, supporting and creating:

• scholarship challenge campaigns to support access for all deserving students, allowing Cornell to maintain its need-blind admissions policy;
• the construction of more than a dozen buildings, notably on North and West campuses, creating and transforming first-year student residential experiences and living-learning communities;
• athletics endowments and facilities, including Bartels Hall and Cornell Outdoor Education;
• Nolan Hotel School support, through contributions to the Robert A. and Jan M. Beck Center and the Center for Hospitality Research;
• challenge grants to inspire alumni giving for university priorities;
• the Presidential Research Scholars Program, which was later named for former President Hunter R. Rawlings III;
• the acquisition and development of the Cornell Club property in New York City as a presence for the university and a gathering place for alumni and guests; and
• the Martin Y. Tang Welcome Center on Beebe Lake – a building that Atlantic helped restore in the 1980s and renovate in 2018 as Cornell’s first standalone welcome center.

The Atlantic Philanthropies also supported challenge campaigns that boosted endowment for faculty positions, deanships, directorships and graduate fellowships; provided seed funds for top academic programs and initiatives; helped to create the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development, the Center for the Study of Inequality, and the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide; and established The Atlantic Philanthropies Archives, now housed at Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.

Cornell Tech

The Atlantic Philanthropies’ largest single investment, and what has been described as the crowning achievement of its long collaboration with the university, came in the form of a $350 million grant in 2011 – the largest-ever grant to Cornell and one of the largest ever given in higher education – to build the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City.

The grant was a deciding factor in Cornell’s winning New York City’s competition to build a new graduate applied sciences and engineering campus in the city. It marked a historic and transformative moment for Cornell and was critical in allowing the university to begin all facets of the campus’s development, from the first construction phase to its faculty and programs. That early support served as the linchpin of what is now growing into a $2 billion plan for Cornell Tech and is reshaping the tech landscape in New York City by positioning the entire metro region as a global tech center.

Recognition and inspiration

Feeney, a member of what Rhodes often referred to as the “Super Class of 1956” for its record-breaking philanthropy and service, was long known for being shy and modest, flying coach, wearing $15 watches and sweaters with holes, and not owning a home or tuxedo.

It wasn’t until the 1997 sale of Duty Free Shoppers that Feeney became known as the philanthropist behind The Atlantic Philanthropies and its many billions of dollars in giving over the years, and for his tremendous impact on Cornell. He later authorized his biography to encourage others to follow his example.

In 2011, Feeney became a signatory of the Giving Pledge, created by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates with the aim of motivating the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to commit to giving away the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes and charitable organizations of their choice, preferably while the donors are still alive – the essence of Feeney’s philosophy.

In 2014, Feeney was honored with the Forbes 400 Lifetime Achievement Award for Philanthropy, presented to him by Buffett.

“Chuck has set an example,” Buffett said. “He is my hero and Bill Gates’ hero. He should be everybody’s hero.”

In 2015, Feeney was one of three Cornellians awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy, given to families and individuals worldwide who have dedicated their private wealth to the public good.

In 2020, when the university announced that it would, with Feeney’s permission, rename East Avenue in his honor, he said he was humbled.

“Cornell’s culture of affording any person an opportunity for study in any area of interest informed my commitment to ‘give while living’ – to use wealth to create opportunities for others, especially for those who have not historically had those opportunities,” he said. “I hope Feeney Way will help awaken and nurture that spirit in those who walk Cornell’s paths.”

Feeney is survived by his wife, Helga; five children from his first marriage to Danielle Feeney of France: Juliette Feeney-Timsit ’84 of Paris; Caroleen Feeney of Los Angeles; Leslie Feeney Baily of London; Diane Feeney ’90 of London; and Patrick Feeney of Brussels; 16 grandchildren; and four nieces and nephews.

Memorial gifts may be made to a charitable organization of choice or The Cornell Tradition at Cornell University, 300 Kennedy Hall, Ithaca, N.Y.; Hear & Say, 29 Nathan Ave., Ashgrove Qld 4060, Australia; or The Atlantic Institute/Atlantic Fellows, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3RG, United Kingdom.

Joe Wilensky is a writer for Cornellians.

This story originally appeared in the Cornell Chronicle.

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