Can we relocate a sinking city to become a new political crossroads and hub of biocultural diversity? And how are emerging diseases like COVID-19 related to the increasingly mobile practices of humans and animals?
The world is on the move, and Cornell faculty members are finding answers to these questions with a boost from Cornell’s first Migrations grants, awarded by the Global Grand Challenge, Migrations, which launched in October 2019.
The Migrations initiative is supporting researchers and students from eight colleges and schools across Cornell, including Cornell Tech and Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. The grants include 14 multidisciplinary collaborations and projects – ranging from large team projects with awards up to $150,000 to individual faculty research, workshops and student engagement – all tackling the complex global issue of migration.
Three interdisciplinary research teams will launch Cornell’s new Migrations Lab. One of the teams, co-funded by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, is a multicampus collaboration focused on advancing the health of refugee and immigrant populations in the U.S. through research that is at the nexus of law, medicine and technology.
In the study – led by Gunisha Kaur (Weill Cornell Medicine), Stephen Yale-Loehr (Cornell Law School) and Deborah Estrin (Cornell Tech) – the researchers hypothesize that increased digital access to information about legal rights will increase engagement between refugees and immigrants and health care systems. Estrin is the founder of the Health Tech Hub on the Roosevelt Island campus; Kaur and Yale-Loehr have received dual funding and will serve as new Migrations faculty fellows, leading a group that will include two postdoctoral fellows in the fall.
“We were so excited by the proposals we received in response to the Migrations call. Collaborations between faculty across campus are what make Cornell so well-positioned to answer deeply interdisciplinary questions that cross historical periods, species and geographical borders,” said Wendy Wolford, vice provost for international affairs. “I believe that, taken together, these projects will transform how we understand, teach and engage with questions of migration.”