Born and raised in Connecticut, I completed an undergraduate degree in business from Siena College on a soccer scholarship. I joined the Army in 1990 and was commissioned an infantry officer in 1991. Later I earned an MA in Education that I have used to develop curricula and teach at numerous military and non-military institutes.

My service tours include South Korea, Panama and Germany, plus two deployments in Iraq (2004-2005 and 2008-2009) where I worked on economic development and reconstruction. I also have expertise in historical and contemporary insurgencies and on my last tour collected field data related to emerging trends in counterinsurgency operations.

I am an avid soccer player and fan who played on the soccer teams of United States Forces, Korea and the 1995 All-Army Soccer team. I coached the West Point Women’s Soccer team in 2006-07 and continue to coach youth soccer.

My wife, Laura is an educator at the middle school level. We have two sons in Lansing schools. Thomas, 14, is into cross-country and jazz band, and Patrick, 12, participates in baseball and band. We are avid supporters of the Boston Red Sox and the Gunners of England’s Arsenal Football Club.

Glenn Altschuler received his Ph.D. in American History from Cornell in 1976 and has been an administrator and teacher at Cornell since 1981. He is the author or co-author of eight books and more than one-hundred essays and reviews. In addition to his scholarly essays, he has written for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, the Los Angeles Times, the Jerusalem Post, the New York Observer, Barron’s Financial Weekly, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and American Heritage Magazine. For four years he wrote a column on higher education for the Education Life section of the New York Times. He was a regular panelist on national and international affairs for the WCNY television program The Ivory Tower Half-Hour, from 2002-2005. Glenn Altschuler has won several awards for teaching and undergraduate advising at Cornell. He is the recipient of the Clark Teaching Award, the Donna and Robert Paul Award for Excellence in Faculty Advising, and the Kendall S. Carpenter Memorial Award for Outstanding Advising. He is a Weiss Presidential Fellow. Altschuler has been an animating force in the rapidly growing program in American Studies, and has been a strong advocate on campus for high-quality undergraduate teaching and advising.

Mina Amundsen is the University Planner for Cornell University with Facilities Services. She directs the Campus Planning Office and is responsible for leading and overseeing physical planning on the Ithaca campus, including University-wide master planning, area and precinct plans, college plans, as well as the planning associated with specific projects, landscape, transportation, or utilities issues.

Mina Amundsen studied architecture at the Center for Environmental Planning and Technology in Ahmedabad, India and practiced architecture in India for several years before coming to the US. Mina has Master’s degrees in architectural studies and city planning from MIT, where her graduate studies focused on issues concerning the conservation of historic urban environments and the constant integration of historic and new development. Mina’s research on change in historic urban centers has taken her to Central Asia and to Morocco, to map the cities of Bukhara and Essaouira, and her graduate thesis studied the complex issues associated with the preservation of the historic Jewish quarter in the city of Rabat. Her interest in integrating the historic with contemporary development drew her to the complexities of campus planning and continues to engage her intellectually with planning for a campus, especially one as large, complex and diverse as Cornell's. Mina has previously worked as a planner on two other campuses - with the MIT Planning Office and with Harvard University’s Planning and Real Estate Office.

Mina lives in Ithaca with her husband Ole Amundsen III, and their two lively daughters, Surya and Keya. She generally enjoys the outdoors - hiking and cross-country skiing, bird watching and just rambling through nature and discovering new places. Mina is also an avid reader, and loves music - classical, jazz and folk, art, textiles and food from around the globe.

Chris Anderson is an assistant professor at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. Prior to his appointment in 2006, he was on faculty at the Ivey School of Business in London, Ontario Canada.  

His main research focus is on revenue management and service pricing.  He actively works with industry, across numerous industry types, in the application and development of RM, having worked with a variety hotels, airlines, rental car and tour companies as well as numerous consumer packaged good and financial services firms. Anderson's research has been funded by numerous governmental agencies and industrial partners and he serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management and is the regional editor for the International Journal of Revenue Management. At the Hotel School he teaches courses in revenue management and service operations management.  

Chris is married to Lindsay Anderson, also at Cornell in the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering.  Together they have three boys Carter(6), Wiley(4) and Koen(<1) each of whom enjoy hanging out at House dinners.

Chip Aquadro moved to Cornell in 1985 from the National Institutes of Health. He was drawn here by the strong biological sciences, the collaborative nature of the faculty and Cornell’s reputation as an outstanding undergraduate research institution. He and his wife Wendy, and their children, also were attracted by the proximity to nature and outdoor activities. They live a few miles from town where they enjoy their horses and abundant wildlife. Chip is an avid sailor who also enjoys skiing, hiking, backpacking, kayaking and horseback riding.

Aquadro mainly uses fruit flies (Drosophila) from around the world to study how DNA variation is transmitted through time and space in populations, and the functional significance of genomic diversity. He also has worked on the population genetics of humans, viruses, yeast, birds, fish, horses, and plants. Chip’s science allows him to travel extensively, most recently to China, Taiwan and Europe. His studies also involved him in early applications of DNA-based evidence in NY courts in the beginning 1990s. Currently Chip enjoys teaching a course in population genetics and a seminar to undergraduates about the impact of DNA studies on our understanding of human ancestry and personalized genomics.

Barazangi's forty years of combined active work with Arab, Muslim, and non-Muslim organizations and individuals has been intertwined with her scholarly research and achievements that resulted in over 45 published research articles and book reviews, edited journal, computerized instructional programs, and two monographs:

• The 2004 monograph Woman’s Identity and the Qur’an: A New Reading, The University Press of Florida.
• The co-edited volume: Islamic Identity and the Struggle for Justice. The University Press of Florida (1996).

• Senior Fulbright Scholarship from the Council for International Exchange of Scholars to Syria 2005-2006;
• United Nations Development Program TOKTEN Fellowships 1999 and 2002
• Visiting Fellowship from Oxford University's Centre of Islamic Studies (1994)
• Three-year (1995-1997) Serial Fulbright Scholarship from the Council for International Exchange of Scholars to Syria;
• Scholarship from The International Council for Adult Education (1993-94);
• The Glock Award for her 1988 Ph.D. dissertation "Perceptions of the Islamic Belief System: The Muslims in North America" from the Department of Education at Cornell University

Bio coming soon

Joe Burke holds very fond memories of his undergraduate education at St. Francis College, Pennsylvania. He was heavily involved in a variety of student groups and organizations and this sparked his interest in working with students outside of the classroom. He continued this interest professionally and has held various administrative positions in residence life and judicial affairs throughout his career at Ohio University, Villanova, and now at Cornell. He completed a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration and continues to learn and enjoy from the almost endless opportunities that are present on the Cornell campus.  

Joe enjoys reading (two of his favorite books are Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, and Einstein’s Dreams), photography, and spending time at the world renowned Cornell Ornithology Lab. He is a volunteer with the Family Reading Project in Ithaca. Joe and his wife (who also works for Cornell) came to Ithaca in 2006 and we are still exploring and enjoying the stunning gorges and magnificent waterfalls in the surrounding area. He is honored to be a part of Bethe House and looks forward to meeting the students who live in this dynamic house.

David Feldshuh’s career is living proof that there are some choices you don’t have to make. As an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, David was a philosophy major and pre-med, became a disc jockey on the college radio station and began acting in his junior year. He then trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, attended the University of Minnesota on a McKnight Fellowship and joined the prestigious, Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis as a young actor. He remained at the Guthrie for almost ten years, first as an actor and then as an associate director. During this time he also received a Ph.D. in theatre, writing about creativity and actor training. From this work he decided to become a psychiatrist, attended the University of Minnesota Medical School and then (changing his mind again) decided to specialize in emergency medicine. (David supported himself in medical school by directing plays.) Following his residency, David continued to direct professionally as well as work in a number of different emergency departments until he accepted a professorship in the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance at Cornell in 1984 and became the first Artistic Director of the Department and the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts. He continues to practice emergency medicine on a part-time basis.

During David’s twenty-one years as Artistic Director, he has directed numerous plays at Cornell and taught courses on directing, creativity and screenwriting. David has also written three published and widely produced plays, most notably Miss Evers’ Boys, a play about the infamous Tuskegee study. (David has spoken at universities and medical schools throughout the country about medical ethics and the use of theatre to address social issues.) Miss Evers’ Boys was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and (as an HBO movie with Alfrie Woodard and Laurence Fishbourne) won five Emmy awards including Best Picture as well as the President’s Award for Television Drama Exploring Important Social Issues. David’s wife, Martha Frommelt, is an active Ithaca volunteer in the field of arts in education and they live with their three children in Ithaca.

Trained in planning and architecture, Ann Forsyth is a Professor of City and Regional Planning who works mainly on the social aspects of physical planning and urban development. The big question behind her research and practice is how to make more sustainable and healthy cities. Forsyth's contributions have been to analyze the success of planned alternatives to sprawl, particularly exploring the tensions between social and ecological values in urban design. Several issues prove to be the most difficult to deal with in planning better places and provide a focus for some of her more detailed investigations: designing suburbs, providing affordable housing, maintaining social diversity, creating appropriate open space, and allowing for alternatives to the car.

In doing this work she has created a number of new tools and methods in planning -- an urban design inventory, GIS protocols, and participatory planning techniques. She is also a reflective practitioner/theorist and has developed some new ways of understanding social and intellectual diversity in planning and design education and practice.

Forsyth has mixed academic work and practice and has been director or co-director of two university-based design centers working with communities to solve urban planning and design problems. She is also interested in using the internet in planning education and practice. Her monthly blog column deals with planning education (Planetizen (Ann Forsyth's Blog) and she manages a number of educational web sites including Design for Health.

I was born in Havana, Cuba not long after Fidel Castro came to power. The early 1960s in Cuba were violent and unstable for many reasons, and my family decided to temporarily leave their homeland until conditions improved. Forty years later, we are still in the United States, but we now consider it home. I have lived in many cities: Coral Gables, Guaynabo (Puerto Rico), Washington, D.C., Austin, San Antonio, College Station (Tx), London (U.K.), and since 1999, Ithaca.

My experience as a refugee and immigrant in the United States has influenced much of what I now do in my professional life. I earned degrees in American Studies (A.B. Georgetown University, and M.A. and Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin), concentrating on immigration and ethnic history. I teach courses on immigration, Latinos in the U.S., and U.S.-Cuba relations, as well as the general surveys of U.S. history. I write books and articles about migration. My first book, Havana USA, is a study of Cuban migration. My second book, Seeking refuge, is a comparative study of refugee policy in Mexico, the U.S., and Canada.

There's a story about an anthropologist who left the East Coast for California, boarded the wrong flight, and discovered the Mid-West. That vast chunk of American geography, with its own dialects and customs, is where I grew up (Wisconsin). Not many know that Ezra Cornell purchased 5 million forested acres in Wisconsin to help capitalize our university, giving it its "Land Grant" status.

I hitch-hiked out of my home at a young age and before long was in Peru doing my junior year abroad. Then, after graduating, on to Colombia in the Peace Corps.

Today I am an environmental sociologist interested in the collisions between humans and nature -- who owns, controls, conserves, and messes with the world's resources. I am part of Cornell's Science of Natural and Environmental Systems (SNES) major and teach courses in environmental sociology as well as "Global Conflict and Terrorism."

If you drop by my office in Warren Hall (please do) chances are that the book in my hands will be on one of my research topics: national security, the war on terrorism, human displacement and dispossession, land-grabbing from indigenous peoples, or the environmental consequences of today's economic crisis.

Carla Gomes is a computer scientist interested in teaching computers how to solve tasks as diverse as playing chess or poker, planning the route for a driverless car, designing wildlife corridors for grizzly bears, performing content-based selection of music programs, scheduling airlines, or solving Sudoku, the latest puzzle craze.

Carla has an M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics (University of Lisbon) and  a Ph.D. in Computer Science (University of Edinburgh). She is a professor in Computing and Information Science, Applied Economics and Management, and Computer Science. She is also the director of the Intelligent Information Systems Institute (IISI) at Cornell and she is a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

Mary Beth Grant has served as Cornell’s Judicial Administrator since 1999.  She loves this work because she has the opportunity to help students through their challenging times and to help them learn from mistakes.   

Prior to joining Cornell, Mary Beth worked as a civil rights attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis, served as a judicial clerk and completed a stint in a law firm.  She graduated from Cornell Law School after receiving her BA from the University of Iowa.   

Mary Beth makes her home in Ithaca with her husband and two daughters, where she enjoys attending live music events, participating in a variety of volunteer jobs, poking around in her garden and relaxing with a good book.  Mary Beth loves to travel and has visited all but four of the states in the US; she hopes to see these in the next few years.

Vice-Provost Isaac Kramnick came to Cornell to accept a good job at one of the world's great universities with great students and to live in the wonderful city of Ithaca. He was an undergraduate and graduate student at Harvard, with a year at Cambridge University and before Cornell he taught at Harvard, Brandeis and Yale. His academic interests include the history of western political thought in general and in the U.S. and Great Britain from the 18th century to the present. He is also interested in church-state relations in the U.S.

Isaac grew up in a small farming community in Massachusetts and is cursed with being a life-long Red Sox fan, which makes him intimately aware of the inevitable triumph of evil in the world. i.e., the Yankees and other examples of power and privilege.

One of his hobbies is Cornell lore, derived from teaching here for 32 years. His program interests include anything political....church, state...films....Cornell lore.

Muna Ndulo is a Professor of Law Cornell Law School and Director of Cornell University's Institute for African Development.
He was formerly Professor of Law and Dean of the School of Law, University of Zambia. He served as Legal Office in the International Trade Law Brach of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). He also served as Legal Adviser and Political Adviser with the United Nations Mission Observer Mission in South Africa (UNOMSA) United Nations Assistance Mission to EAST Timor (UNAMET), United Nations Mission to Kosovo (UNAMIK) and United Nations Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA). He has published 11 books and well over 80 articles in academic journals.

Maureen O’Hara is the Robert W. Purcell Professor of Finance at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University. She holds degrees from the University of Illinois (B.S. Economics), Northwestern University (M.S. Economics and Ph.D. Finance), and Facultés Universitaires Catholiques à Mons (FUCAM), Belgium (Doctorate Honoris Causa). Dr. O'Hara joined the faculty at Cornell in 1979. She has had visiting faculty appointments at UCLA, the London Business School, the University of New South Wales, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Cambridge University and the Universite Paris Dauphine. Professor O'Hara's research focuses on issues in market microstructure, and she is the author of numerous journal articles as well as the book Market Microstructure Theory (Blackwell:1995). In addition, Dr. O'Hara publishes widely on a broad range of topics including banking and financial intermediaries, law and finance, and experimental economics. Professor O’Hara has served as President of the American Finance Association, and as President of the Western Finance Association, and she has recently stepped down as the Executive Editor of the Review of Financial Studies. Professor O’Hara is on the Board of Directors of Investment Technology Group, Inc. (ITG), an agency brokerage firm, where she serves as Lead Director and Chair of the Compensation Committee, and on the Board of Directors of NewStar Financial, a commercial finance company. Professor O’Hara has recently served as Chairman of the Board of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Rochester. She has consulted for a number of companies and organizations, including Microsoft, Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse First Boston, the New York Stock Exchange, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, and the World Federation of Exchanges.

Yes, it's true.

I did work tending bar through my undergraduate years to help pay for my college expenses. As I reflect, it was great training in terms of learning to really listen to others, developing an intuitive sixth sense about people and their stories, and keeping my cool in situations that had the potential to escalate-all qualities that have served me well in life.

I came to Cornell in 1996 after working 13 years at Harvard, so it's a particularly delicious thrill to cheer on the Big Red when Harvard comes to Lynah to play hockey.

One of the high points of my Cornell year is participating in the annual University Commencement, which I co-chair. To witness the joy and pride in the faces of new graduates, their families and faculty, is to be reminded again of why I choose to work in higher education.

I believe in the limitless power of caring, the restorative power of laughter and the emotional power of family. I take delight in connecting and re-connecting with my own family-daughter Emily, now in college; Will, a junior in high school; and my husband Kip, who works in the field of disability services.

I bring these life experiences-lessons learned from bartending, the joys of family life, years of professional service, and my strong convictions as to why I choose to be at this university-to bear as I work through the varied responsibilities and challenges of my day job: serving as Cornell's vice president for human resources.

Per Pinstrup-Andersen is the H. E. Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy, the J. Thomas Clark Professor of Entrepreneurship, and Professor of Applied Economics at Cornell University; and Professor of Development Economics at the University of Copenhagen (formerly KVL). He is past Chairman of the Science Council of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and Past President of the American Agricultural Economics Association (AAEA). He has a B.S. from the Danish Agricultural University (KVL) and a M.S. and Ph.D from Oklahoma State University. He served 10 years as the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Director General, 7 years as Division Director and 7 years as an economist at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Colombia. He is the recipient of the 2001 World Food Prize. His publications include “Seeds of Contention” published in five languages, and more than 500 other books, refereed journal articles, papers and book chapters.

As a faculty member, Sunny Power enjoys mentoring students, carrying out research, and trying to think synthetically about ecology. As Dean of the Graduate School, she enjoys working with students, faculty, and administrators to improve the quality of graduate programs and support for graduate students.

Sunny grew up in Seattle and spent summers in Alaska, living in Nome, Yakutat, and Soldotna as a child. These summers gave her a deep appreciation for wilderness and the natural world. After spending two years as an English major in college, she dropped out to work as a heavy equipment oiler on the construction of the Alaskan oil pipeline. She also spent a year traveling by local bus and train through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Burma and Thailand. The trip provided her with a remarkable exposure to diverse cultures and landscapes, and inspired her to study biology, in order to better understand the diversity of ecosystems that she had visited.

On returning to the US, she enrolled at University of Alaska in Fairbanks where she obtained her B.S. in biology. Along the way, she was lucky enough to spend several summers doing ecological research on seabirds in Northwestern Alaska, passerines in the Brooks Range, and herbivorous insects on the North Slope. These experiences convinced her to go on to graduate school in ecology at the University of Washington where she studied insect vectors of plant viruses in the tropics.

Sunny’s research focuses on the ecology of infectious disease in plant communities, interactions between agricultural and natural ecosystems, agroecology, and biodiversity in managed ecosystems. Current research addresses the role of host and vector diversity in disease ecology, the role of pathogens in plant invasions, and the ecological risks of genetically engineered crops. Currently, she is the President of the Association of Graduate Schools and President-Elect of the Ecological Society of America. 

Eswar received his Ph.D in economics from the University of Chicago and then started his career at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC. After many years there--including serving as head of the IMF's China division and, later, its Financial Studies Division--the lure of academia proved too strong to resist. He has been at Cornell since 2007 and teaches in the Department of Applied Economics and Management.

Eswar's research has spanned a number of areas including labor economics, business cycles, and international economics. His research has been published in top academic journals and has also been featured prominently in the international press. He has edited numerous books and monographs on China, Hong Kong and India. His recent research interests include topics related to financial globalization, monetary and exchange rate policies in developing countries, and the Chinese and Indian economies.

The highlights of his career include a meeting with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (when he was the IMF's mission chief to Burma) and various testimonies before U.S. Congressional Committees. More recently, Eswar was a member of the analytical team that helped draft the 2008 report of the Financial Sector Reforms Committee set up by the Government of India.

He used to run marathons but, following a revolt by his knees, now just tries to stay fit enough to keep up with his daughters.

Dr. Donald A. Rakow is the Elizabeth Newman Wilds Director of Cornell Plantations, and is an associate professor in the Cornell Department of Horticulture. Previous to becoming the director of Plantations in 1996, Dr. Rakow served as associate director from 1993 – 1996.

Dr. Rakow’s research interests include: the history of botanical gardens in Europe and North America; the management of public gardens; and the interactions between plants and people. He has written extensively on these subjects and is currently writing a book on the origins of the earliest botanical gardens in Europe.

Dr. Rakow is the instructor for HORT 485, Public Garden Management, and HORT 480, Plantations Lecture Series. He is also the director of the Master of Studies Program in Public Garden Leadership.

Don Randel grew up in Panama (where his father operated a small business) and then attended Princeton University, where he received bachelor’s, M.F.A., and Ph.D. degrees in music.

He joined the Cornell University faculty in the department of music in 1968. Thereafter he served as department chair, vice-provost, and associate dean and then dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. In 1995, he was named provost of Cornell University. He became President-Elect of the University of Chicago on December 13, 1999 and began his term of office on July 1, 2000.

His scholarly specialty is the music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Spain and France, but his interests incorporate music as diverse as Latin pop and jazz.

Under his editorship, the New Harvard Dictionary of Music was published in 1986, and he completed the companion Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music in 1996. Randel also edited the Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music and Musicians in 1999, and completed editing The Harvard Dictionary of Music, 4th ed. in 2003.

President Randel’s wife, Carol, is an alumna of the University of Michigan, where she majored in mathematics. They have four daughters: Amy Elizabeth Keating (Harvard, ’92), Julia Randel (Yale, ’93), Emily Catherine Pershing (Brown, ’94) and Sally Randel Eggert (Cornell, ’97).

He will become President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in July 2006. 

Chris Schaffer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and has been at Cornell since January, 2006. Chris received his undergraduate degree from the University of Florida, and his graduate degree from Harvard University, both in Physics.

Chris’s research focuses on the development and use of advanced optical techniques for in vivo studies of normal and disease state physiology. His research group is currently studying small strokes by using optical techniques to produce occlusions in the brains of rodents and study the consequences. Occlusions in the cerebral microvasculature are implicated in Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, but little is known about causes, disease progression, or possible treatment options. Chris’s research group occludes individual cerebral microvessels in rodent brain, and studies the changes in flow in the vascular network as well as changes in the activity and health of downstream neurons. A critical aspect of this work is the use of nonlinear optical techniques, utilizing femtosecond duration laser pulses, that allow individual vessels to be selectively clotted, and allow the resulting changes in blood flow and cell physiology to be characterized on a single vessel/single cell basis.

Steve Strogatz teaches applied math (mostly to engineering students) and is a professor in the incomprehensibly-named Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. But don't ask him to fix your car - his lack of common sense is a source of much amusement to his wife Carole. Steve and Carole also have two young daughters, Leah and Joanna. You'll often see the whole family eating together, come on over and join them anytime.

Steve loves sports, science, movies, writing, and joking around in general. He's interested in pretty much anything, and really enjoys working with students and getting to know them. In fact, when he was a grad student and postdoc at Harvard, Steve lived among the undergrads as a Resident Tutor in Winthrop House for 6 years, so the threat of dorm food is no deterrent to him. 

Jeff Tambroni has coached lacrosse at Cornell since 1997, first as assistant coach and then as the Richard M. Moran Head Coach of Men’s Lacrosse since 2000. He is a 1992 graduate of Hobart College with a bachelor of arts degree in American Studies. At Hobart he was a three-time All-American and named to first-team All-America as a senior. Following his graduation, Jeff coached at Hobart College, Loyola College, the Heaton Mersey Lacrosse Club of the English Lacrosse Union and the Czech-American Lacrosse Foundation in Prague.

Jeff’s time at Cornell has been filled with milestones and a resurgence of one of the greatest programs in the history of collegiate lacrosse. As important, his teams have been known for their performance in the classroom as well as on the field. Seven of his players have won ESPN/ Time Magazine CoSIDA Academic All-District honors. 

Jeff lives in Ithaca with his wife Michelle and daughters Carissa, Madison and Ella. 

Yervant Terzian, is “The David C. Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences”, in the Department of Astronomy and Space Sciences at Cornell University. He was Department Chairman from 1979-1999. His fields of expertise are the physics of the Interstellar Medium, Galaxies, and Radio Astronomy. He has been a Scientific Editor of The Astrophysical Journal (1989-1999). In 1984, he received the Clark Distinguished Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 1996, he was appointed Director of NASA’s New York Space Grant Program to enhance science education. He has been awarded Honorary Doctor of Science degrees from the University of Indiana (1989), the Yerevan State University in Armenia (1994), the University of Thessaloniki in Greece (1997), and from Union College (1999). In 1990, he was elected Foreign Member of the Armenian Academy of Sciences. In 2001 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2002 he was elected Chairman of the US Consortium of Universities and Institutes to construct the Square Kilometer Array giant radio telescope. In 2004 he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the American University in Cairo. He is the Chairman of the Research Council of the Armenian National Science and Education Fund. He is the author or co-author of more than 220 scientific publications and the editor of six books, including “Carl Sagan’s Universe”. At Cornell at present he teaches a senior seminar course on “Critical Thinking”.

Saul Teukolsky has been at Cornell since 1974. He has a joint appointment in Physics and Astronomy. He grew up in South Africa, where he did his undergraduate degree. He came to the US to do his Ph.D. at Caltech. He found himself well-prepared for the change in culture mainly by having grown up on a diet of American comic books. His research interests are general relativity, astrophysics, and computational physics. As a child, he was fascinated by Einstein and wanted to understand relativity. Thanks to bad teaching, he only achieved this goal as a graduate student. By then it was too late to do anything else but become a professor. He is still amazed that people are willing to pay him to do what he wanted to do anyway.

His research involves the study of black holes and neutron stars, often using large supercomputers to work out how they interact with each other and with their surroundings. Undergraduates play an important role in the research, making computer visualizations and movies that are used to understand the results. He is honored to hold a chair named after Hans Bethe, a giant of 20th century physics and the most important professor to Cornell ever.

Saul is an avid golfer. Fortunately, Ithaca's weather ensures that he still has plenty of time to get his work done. He plays tournament bridge and also enjoys classical music, especially opera.

Alfonso Torres earned a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from the National University of Colombia, a MS degree in veterinary pathology from the University of Nebraska, and a PhD in medical microbiology from the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Between Torres’ first appointment (in virology) at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine (1983-1987), and his return in 2002 to his current position, he was the Chief Veterinary Officer for the U.S., overseeing all animal health programs at USDA-APHIS Veterinary Services and serving as the U. S. delegate to the World Organization of Animal Health. Prior to his USDA duties in Washington DC, he directed the largest biocontainment center in the U.S. for the study of highly contagious animal diseases at the Plum Island Animal Diagnostic Center.

Scott Tucker is Associate Professor and Director of Choral Music at Cornell University where he has conducted the Cornell University Chorus and Glee Club since 1995. He also oversees the activities of the Cornell Chorale, Chamber Singers, and Sage Chapel Choir and teaches courses in music theory and conducting.       

Under Professor Tucker’s leadership, the Chorus and Glee Club have expanded the breadth of their activities. They have joined internationally known world music artist Samité of Uganda to present benefit concerts that combined to raise over fifteen-thousand dollars for AIDS Work of Tompkins County, NY. In 1997, the Glee Club appeared on National Public Radio with Garrison Keillor on “A Prairie Home Companion,” and in 1998, the Chorus was invited to Taiwan to perform for then President Lee Tung-Hui. Recently, the combined Glee Club and Chorus have shared the stage with such artists as Anonymous Four and Peter Schreier, and have sung with the Syracuse Symphony under the batons of Fabio Mechetti and Daniel Hege.

Prior to coming to Cornell, Professor Tucker was choral director of Milton Academy (MA) whose Chamber Singers toured the United States and Kenya and performed at the 1992 American Choral Director’s Association (ACDA) Eastern Convention and whose Glee Club was the sole featured choral ensemble at the 1995 National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) National Convention. Tucker received a Talbot Baker Award in 1993 for excellence in teaching.

In addition to his work at Milton, Professor Tucker was affiliated with choral music at Harvard University where from 1987 to 1993; he served first as assistant conductor of both the Harvard Glee Club and the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, and then as interim conductor of the Harvard Glee Club and the Harvard-Radcliffe Chorus.

Professor Tucker received a Master of Music degree in choral conducting from the from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1986, a Bachelor of Music degree in trumpet performance from the New England Conservatory in 1981, and a Bachelor of Science degree from Tufts University, also in 1981.    

In January 2000, Professor Tucker was listed in Who’s Who of American Music Teachers. He received a Talbot Baker Award for excellence in teaching in 1993, a St. Botolph Award for notable artists in the Boston area in 1985, and in 1980 was named a Presser Scholar.

Nicolas van de Walle (PhD. Princeton University, 1990) is the John S. Knight Professor of International Studies, Professor of Government and Director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. His primary field is comparative politics. His teaching and research focuses on the political economy of development, with a special focus on Africa; on democratization, and on the politics of economic reform.

Professor Van de Walle is a regular tennis player and skier in the winter. He spends too much time following college basketball and international soccer on TV, and he has two daughters in college.

Jane Wang is an associate professor of theoretical and applied mechanics. Her current research is about insect flight and falling leaves, two phenomena through which one can learn about the physical principles of locomotion in fluids, and searches for clues to the evolution of flapping flight in nature.