The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/engineering/page/2/)
In what some have called the most important month in U.S. climate policy, Cornell is making a dent in its own carbon emissions in its development of an innovative way to heat the campus during its notorious winter months.
While bugs in my code seemed impossible despite my line-by-line dissection, having a program finally run correctly would mitigate all the head-wracking hours that led up to the triumph. Every problem had its reason — if something wasn’t running correctly, you could pinpoint the exact line where values were being incorrectly set.
After a quick morning Zoom class in my dorm room or a hefty dinner and bubble tea from Collegetown, I can typically be found climbing my way back to the engineering quadrangle and opening the partially transparent doors to the humble abode that has become my second home. I definitely am not alone — the simultaneous relief and motivation that sitting in Duffield gives me is a drug that hooks every engineer immediately after their first semester at Cornell. I will take this to my grave and to every life I am reborn into afterwards: If there was housing connected to Duffield, I would not hesitate to live there.
The Duffield-Upson-Phillips conglomerate is clearly the shining star of the engineering quad. While the other surrounding buildings may be a classic brick and mortar structure, my second home glimmers in the sunlight in all of its silver glory. As the sun streams into the atrium, the students sitting there are refueled by probably their only source of vitamin D. The atrium’s floor-to-ceiling windows are not only stunning to look at but also completely functional for the wellbeing of all the struggling students inside.
Within its walls, the various seating arrangements can also cater to almost any type of study session.
The Artificial Intelligence of Hollywood has gotten everyone worried about a future run by robots. However, there are many aspects of our day-to-day interactions that AI is, as of yet, incapable of mirroring. Emotion, morality and personality are things not easily reduced to the positive and negative values of code. We’re safe for now.
My motivation is absolutely shot. I have absolutely no idea who that sophomore was who took four lab classes simultaneously one semester, but she absolutely wasn’t me. I suppose it’s a combination of COVID-19 making my classes all online as well as my senioritis, but I’m hardly the student I used to be. Instead of reviewing the week’s material in the A.D. White Library on a free Friday afternoon like I did as a freshman (haven’t done that since then), I curl up in my bed after every lecture I attend, exhausted. But thankfully, my grades haven’t slipped too much; I like to think that for every ounce of motivation I’ve lost, I’ve gained a little more savvy in how to work with efficiency.
I could easily have gone through high school without writing a single line of code.
The one computer science course I did take was selected on a whim, a simple space-filler for my senior year schedule. Science and math were enjoyable enough, and tech seemed like the next unexplored realm. But I was also on the edge of taking a random biotechnology elective, zoology class or just leaving the space free to take extra naps. There was little to no initiative — or requirement — to learn about computing other than the fact that I found phone apps addictive and played around with Scratch when I was a kid. AP Computer Science had the same weight as my elective journalism or strings classes, not AP Chemistry or AP Language and Composition.
A recent Cornell graduate makes history within the mechanical engineering department.
With Zoom classes becoming the forefront of students’ education, Cornell provides online classes to alumni and the general public.
With nationwide shortages of personal protective equipment, members across the Cornell community are contributing to the pandemic effort.
With the help of Prof. Christopher Alabi, chemical and biomolecular engineering, our cracked cell phone screens may one day heal themselves. Alabi’s research focuses on polymers, molecules formed from smaller subunits that can be found in many aspects of our daily lives — ranging from almost any kind of plastic to the proteins in our bodies.