News

Sean Manning Udell (CC’11) is less than three years out of college, working as an administrator at a new charter school in Denver. Yet he’s getting emails from academic researchers seeking his help.

Last fall, the last card catalogs that stood since 1934 in room 310 of Butler Library were carted away. In place of the drawers that once held 5.4 million cards, the wood-paneled, two-story room will house a digital humanities library, staffed by experts in digital research techniques and lined with computers that will connect scholars and students alike to the millions of titles and tools to be found in Columbia Libraries’ vast system.

Called a collaboratory, the studio is one of many initiatives at the University using digital technology and making it easier than ever for faculty, students and staff to have access to the necessary tools—and the expertise to use them.

As the digital revolution sweeps through academia as surely as it has other fields, it has created new opportunities not just for science but for the humanities, enabling interdisciplinary research on an even grander scale.

A research team led by Ken Shepard and Lars Dietrich has demonstrated that integrated circuit technology, the basis of modern computers and communications devices, can be used for a most unusual application—the study of signaling in bacterial colonies. 

Mariusz Kozak, who joined Columbia’s Department of Music last July, is studying the connection between how people listen and move to music. “Every known culture has some sort of combination of dance and music.”

Over 65 years as a crusading civil rights lawyer, Law School Professor Jack Greenberg (CC’45, LAW’48, CC Dean'89-93), argued the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court and won Martin Luther King Jr. the right to march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. 

Born in the Dominican Republic, Gil studied literature and pre-medicine at Florida International University.

Anna Hyatt Huntington was a pioneering American sculptor. Wallach Art Gallery’ exhibition Goddess, Heroine, Beast: Anna Hyatt Huntington's New York Sculpture, 1902–1936 focuses on Hyatt Huntington’s early work, including anumal sculpture, the life-size work of Diana of the Chase and various versions of Joan of Ark.   

Dipali Mukhopadhyay's new book focuses on two provincial governors, Atta Mohammad Noor and Gul Agha Sherzai, who, she writes, demonstrate that a strong warlord who faced local competition could make the transition from "strongman to strongman governor."

In most cases of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease, a toxin released by cells that normally nurture neurons in the brain and spinal cord can trigger loss of the nerve cells affected in the disease, Columbia researchers reported today in the online edition of the journal Neuron. The toxin is produced by star-shaped cells called astrocytes and kills nearby motor neurons. In ALS, the death of motor neurons causes a loss of control over muscles required for movement, breathing, and swallowing. Paralysis and death usually occur within 3 years of the appearance of first…

Using a dazzling technology to watch proteins collide, clutch, and slide along strands of DNA, researchers at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and UC-Berkeley report online in Nature that they have uncovered some of the secrets behind a powerful new genetic engineering technique.

Chris Wiggins, associate professor of applied mathematics, has just been appointed to an exciting new role at "The New York Times:" chief data scientist. 

Nima Mesgarani, assistant professor of electrical engineering, is the lead author of a new study on how speech sounds are identified by the human brain, offering an unprecedented insight into the basis of human language. 

Columbia University recruits local workers for the new Manhattanville construction and hopes to provide more jobs to minorities and women in the community.