News Archive

Don’t be fooled by the name. Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library has thousands of objects in its collection that are neither books nor manuscripts.

It’s an unlikely place to build a NASA telescope: a leafy estate in Irvington, N.Y., that once belonged to the son of Alexander Hamilton. Inside a hangar-like building on the site, which is home to Columbia’s Nevis Laboratories for experimental physics, Charles Hailey assembled mirrors for NuSTAR, the most sensitive X-ray telescope ever constructed. Its mission: to conduct a census of black holes, map exploding stars known as supernovae and observe other dynamic events in space.

Daniel Hillel, an adjunct senior scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, has been awarded the World Food Prize for his work in conceiving and promoting water-saving methods that have increased crop production on arid lands in 30 countries. The announcement was made today in Washington at an event led by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Hillel is best known for demonstrating the scientific basis for “micro-irrigation”–the steady drip and trickle of small, finely calibrated amounts of water onto crops, instead of traditional cyclic flooding and drying of fields. Due…

The search committee for the Dean of Columbia College has concluded its work. After considering a long list of nominations and interviewing four candidates over several days, we recommended to President Bollinger that he appoint Interim Dean Jim Valentini to the position.

Shelley Mayer has traded her Morningside Heights office for a seat in Albany.

Under, directed by Mark Raso ('12 SOA), written by Raso and Jake Crane (4th year Screenwriting) and produced by Jean-Marceau Sécheret ('11 SOA) won a Gold Medal in the Narrative category at this year's 39th Annual Student Academy Awards. The Gold Medal is the highest honor presented to student filmmakers by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the Student Academy Awards and automatically qualifies the winning films to compete in the corresponding shorts categories at the upcoming Oscars. The Gold medal also carries a $5,000 cash award.

A professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center and the first Columbia University Artist, Sacks was the featured speaker at a June 1 panel titled "Reawakening the Brain Through Music."

I am very pleased to announce that Professor James J. Valentini, interim Dean of the College for the 2011-12 academic year, will officially become Dean of Columbia College and Vice President for Undergraduate Education.

According to a new study, children exposed to high levels of the common air pollutant naphthalene are at increased risk for chromosomal aberrations (CAs), which have been previously associated with cancer. These include chromosomal translocations, a potentially more harmful and long-lasting subtype of CAs.

 

 

Columbia University’s environmentally sustainable design and overall project plan for its 17-acre Manhattanville campus in West Harlem has earned LEED® Platinum under the LEED for Neighborhood Development rating system established by the U.S. Green Building Council—its highest designation and the first LEED-ND Platinum certification in New York City, as well as the first Platinum certification for a university campus plan nationally.

A novel robotic platform for minimally invasive single-port surgery that they say is the world’s smallest in required diameter (∅15 mm) that can enter the body while enabling dual-arm-dexterous operation, 3-D visualization, and automated instrument tracking.

Five members of the Columbia community—including President Emeritus George Rupp—were elected to the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States.

Has Texas executed an innocent man since it began lethally injecting convicted murderers in 1982 after an 18-year hiatus in executions? 

Claremont, a renowned comic book writer who is credited with turning the "X-Men" into one of the biggest blockbusters in comics history, recently donated his archives to Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library. 

Many strands of Eric Kandel’s life come together in his latest work, "The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present."