Back

Discover CALS

See how our current work and research is bringing new thinking and new solutions to some of today's biggest challenges.

Search for News & Stories

A young man looks out over a bustling street

Spotlight

Across the developing world, the youth bulge means more mouths that need to be fed, but also more hands that need to be kept busy. According to the World Bank, in order to accommodate population growth and existing unemployment issues, countries...
  • Department of Global Development
  • Global Development
Water droplet falling

Spotlight

For decades, everyone from the United Nations to the New York Times quoted the same agricultural statistic: “70 percent of all the world’s food is produced by small-scale farmers.” Working in international development in places like Cambodia...
  • Department of Global Development
  • Global Development
  • Water
a man and a woman stand in a farm field looking at a tractor in the distance

Spotlight

If all goes as planned, the addition of rock dust — rich in potassium, iron and zinc — will help increase the crop’s overall yield, nutrient density and sequester carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. “Each time these natural rock particles...
  • Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
  • Agriculture
  • Global Development
A man in a lab coat holds a slide up to the light.

Spotlight

Ensuring food products meet with consumer expectations isn’t easy. Take vitamin C–infused gummies: keeping the vitamin C stable is so tricky that gummy manufacturers regularly add up to 200 percent more vitamin C to the product than they list on...
  • Food Science
  • Food
  • Health + Nutrition
Two yellow and green moths pinned to a box

Multimedia

Spotlight

As director and head curator of the Cornell University Insect Collection , Corrie Moreau has numerous tasks on her to-do list, including one that could last her entire career: digitizing the collection’s 7 million specimens. Digitization is a...
  • Department of Entomology
  • Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
  • Biology
hands hold black ashes

Spotlight

Johannes Lehmann, School of Integrative Plant Science, Soil and Crop Sciences, is leading a revolution. Over the past two decades, he has been instrumental in overturning a long-held scientific belief regarding the fundamental nature of soil...
  • Cornell Atkinson
  • Department of Global Development
  • School of Integrative Plant Science
Dean Kathryn J. Boor

Multimedia

Spotlight

Before she moves on to new roles – as dean of the Cornell Graduate School and vice provost for graduate education – Boor joined Cornell Cooperative Extension’s “Extension Out Loud” podcast to reflect on her journey through agriculture, as both...
  • Cornell Cooperative Extension
  • Food Science
  • Agriculture
Four people with binoculars look at a bird in the distance

Spotlight

With a network of more than a dozen live-streamed cameras located as far away as New Zealand, the Lab of Ornithology ’s Bird Cams project offers a constant dose of eye (and ear) candy — from the breeding habits of a bonded pair of Bermuda...
  • Lab of Ornithology
  • Animals
  • Environment
Leader speaking at podium

Spotlight

  • Department of Global Development
  • Global Development
A black cell phone with social media icons on it

Spotlight

Stories abound of so-called social media influencers who earn thousands of dollars for a single post. The New York Times reported in July 2019 that the YouTube star du jour, Emma Chamberlain, made as much as $2 million a year from her videos...
  • Department of Communication
  • Behavior
  • Communication

Spotlight

Rebekah Jones ’20 grew up in Queens, New York, observing the everyday lives of New Yorkers. This sparked her enthusiasm for social science research. After completing a social science research-oriented program in high school, Jones applied to...

  • Development Sociology
  • Global Development
a bald man with glasses writes a complex equation on a whiteboard

Spotlight

“Statistics is unique; it’s like a language of science,” says Sumanta Basu, Statistics and Data Science/Computational Biology. “It gives researchers a rigorous framework to clearly present the logic behind their algorithms and analyses, as well...
  • Computational Biology
  • Statistics and Data Science
  • Molecular Biology and Genetics
A headshot of a woman with glasses standing in front of flowers

Spotlight

There are species named after scientists like Charles Darwin ( Geochelone nigra darwini ) and figures in popular culture ( Notiospathius johnlennoni ). Dick Korf, who worked as a fungal taxonomist in Cornell's Plant Pathology Department from...
  • Long Island Research & Extension Center
  • School of Integrative Plant Science
  • Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology Section
Man draws on chalkboard

Spotlight

In a seminar room in the Physical Sciences Building last fall, Brian Lee ’20 delivered a short lecture on cancer research at CURBx – the Cornell Undergraduate Research Board ’s TED-style talks. He packed a thesis-full of detail into a few...
  • Microbiology
  • Molecular Biology and Genetics
  • Biology
pink flowers in front of a clock tower

Spotlight

As this semester draws to a close, we would like to take moment to recognize the CALS graduating class of 2020 and echo the sentiments President Pollock shared in her recent address to the Cornell community . During their time at Cornell...
  • Animal Science
  • Department of Global Development
  • School of Integrative Plant Science

Spotlight

“I think where most girls have their horse phase at 10 or 11, I was obsessed with cows instead,” she says. When she took a course at the University of New Hampshire that gives students experience managing a registered herd of Holsteins, her mind...

  • Cornell Dairy Center of Excellence
  • School of Integrative Plant Science
  • Soil and Crop Sciences Section

Spotlight

Horticulture Professor Mark Bridgen serves as the director of the Long Island Horticultural Research and Extension Center in Riverhead, NY. There, the 68-acre facility is dedicated to providing research and extension services that support Long...

  • Long Island Research & Extension Center
  • School of Integrative Plant Science
  • Horticulture Section

Spotlight

Research focus : I study how the physical and spatial attributes of food processing environments influence the formation of microbial communities on those environmental surfaces and make it easier or more difficult to manage that environmental...

  • Food Science
  • Food
  • Bacteria

Spotlight

Research focus : proximal and remote plant disease sensing and applied grape pathology Research summary : I study how proximal and remote sensing can be used to make earlier, faster, and more accurate grape disease detection and management...

  • School of Integrative Plant Science
  • Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology Section
  • Plants
Prabhu Pingali

Spotlight

  • Department of Global Development
  • Nutritional Sciences
  • Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management