The National Science Foundation has granted Cornell $15 million over five years to oversee the establishment of the Innovation Corps Hub, a group that will support science and technology entrepreneurship in rural and economically underserved regions.
If you caught a Lyft recently, you’ve already encountered the work of Prof. Siddhartha Banerjee, operations research and information engineering, whose studies online decision making to explain how Lyft decides what car to send to a customer requesting a ride.
The National Science Foundation announced Monday that it will gift a $23 million grant to fund a Science and Technology Center, led by Prof. Ritchie Patterson, physics, director of the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-Based Sciences and Education. The center, which will be called the Center for Bright Beams, has a two-fold research goal. The first is to reduce the cost of key accelerator technologies, which are used to produce, accelerate, and finally store or transfer particles, according to Patterson. “The advances can affect all sorts of accelerators, from the really big ones that are used as particle colliders … to the electron microscope,” Patterson said. The center also aims to also to increase the intensity of charged particle beams. Patterson says he hopes to “increase the brightness of the beam by a factor of 100, [which will] get particles in a very tight bunch and focus them better.”
“There’s the potential to make a better battery, a more secure airplane wing, develop new drugs,” Patterson said.
Cornell’s world-class faculty has continued to garner accolades, as six professors were recently recognized for their teaching and research. Three faculty members received Early Career Development Awards through the National Science Foundation, while three other young faculty were recognized as Sloan Foundation Research fellows.