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The University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology have joined the Empire AI consortium. The founding members of Empire AI include Cornell University, SUNY, CUNY, Columbia University, New York University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the Flatiron Institute.
Through her research, Jennifer Sun wants to help human experts and AI models collaborate to unearth new insights from ever-growing stockpiles of data in diverse fields.
Most pandemics in the past century were sparked by a pathogen jumping from animals to humans. This moment of zoonotic spillover is the focus of a multidisciplinary team of researchers led by Raina Plowright, the Rudolf J. and Katharine L. Steffen Professor in the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Public and Ecosystem Health.
In two new papers, Cornell plant-herbivore experts and researchers from the Cornell Institute for Computational Sustainability joined forces to show the significant impacts of herbivores like sea snails on the spread of seagrass wasting disease. Grazing by small herbivores was associated with a 29% increase in the prevalence of disease, which contributes to huge losses in meadow areas from San Diego to Alaska.
Cornell’s AI Initiative supports university faculty, staff, and students as they explore models to optimize the use of generative AI for practical purposes. Eight local teams stunned a hybrid audience with presentations proving generative AI applications could simplify and solve problems that previously required intense manual effort. Each project team was led by one or two faculty or staff members and supported by students from the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science (Cornell Bowers CIS).
After brief opening remarks by Chief Global Information Officer (CIO) Curt Cole and by CIO for Cornell’s Ithaca campus and Cornell Tech Ben Maddox, eight projects from the Fall 2025 cohort of the university’s AI Innovation Lab were presented to in-person and Zoom audience members. Among the participants gathered in Bill and Melinda Gates Hall were three co-chairs of the Generative AI Plenary Council at Cornell: Vice Provost for Academic Innovation Steve Jackson, Vice President for Research and Innovation Krystyn Van Vliet, and Provost Kavita Bala.
A team from Cornell led by Kevin Ellis, assistant professor of computer science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, has developed a set of AI models that together, solve about 56% of the problems – scoring within 4 percentage points of the average human. Their paper, “Combining Induction and Transduction for Abstract Reasoning,” received a first-place-paper award at the 2024 ARC Prize competition. Lead authors on the paper were Wen-Ding Li, a doctoral student in the field of computer science, and Keya Hu, a visiting undergraduate student in Ellis’ group.
A research team led by Cornell has demonstrated how quantum computing and artificial intelligence can be used to design new peptides capable of capturing microplastics that pose serious risks to ecosystems and human health.
