 | Cornell's Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future |  | Sustainability News |
| In this Issue | September 2014 |
| Profile: NatureNet Fellow Joleah Lamb Events: The Resilient Ones, Cornell Geospatial Forum, and PUMP Funding: TNC NatureNet Fellow Applications Due Research: Critical Needs in Food Security, Hybrids in HOV Lanes, Dengue Mosquito Bites, Cornell NutriPhone Connecting Cornell: ACSF Tops 400 Fellows Newsmakers: Alex Travis and Amanda Rodewald, Sara Pritchard, Drew Harvell, Lou Derry, Harold van Es What We're Reading: Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio, by Amara Lakhous Multimedia: One Health, USDA Funding, Starfish Die-off
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| New Year, New Growth Welcome to academic year 2014–15, as Cornell launches its Sesquicentennial celebration! This is an exciting time for ACSF. We are in a very strong position, with a growing endowment and more than 400 faculty fellows. The Academic Venture Fund, our main seed program, is expanding; we have announced a new postdoctoral fellowship program; and the leadership team is firing on all cylinders. Our strategic plan focuses on building partnerships with external organizations to cocreate solutions that can be implemented at a meaningful scale.
I have served as the Atkinson Center’s director since September 2007. It is time that I become director emeritus, which I plan to do on June 30, 2015. After that, I hope to remain engaged as a volunteer with ACSF and with our many supportive alumni and friends. The search for my successor is ongoing, with applications accepted until October 15.
I am very proud of what we have all accomplished together. Thank you for your engagement, passion, and friendship. Cornell’s 150th anniversary will be the best year yet for ACSF! Sincerely, Frank DiSalvo Atkinson Center Director
|  Frank DiSalvo
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| Profile Joleah Lamb: 2014 NatureNet Fellow
Marine ecologist Joleah Lamb is Cornell’s newest NatureNet fellow. Working with marine ecosystems expert Drew Harvell and leadership at The Nature Conservancy, she is studying oceans and waste, including natural methods for mitigating the spread of run-off pollution that causes infectious disease in coral reefs.
Lamb launched her research this summer in Indonesia and Washington’s San Juan Islands. See photos...
|  Joleah Lamb
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| | | Research Food Security: 10 Critical Needs
Cornell researchers will guide the next steps toward global food security when the United Nations’ Committee on World Food Security meets in Rome next month. The committee’s High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) asked for help in defining the most pressing challenges in food and nutrition security today. Cornell’s team, led by ACSF’s Wendy Wolford, pinpointed 10 essentials—from broader access to food markets to strategies to reduce agriculture’s climate impact.
Read a summary of the Cornell team’s report. Save Sane Lanes for Carpoolers
Allowing solo drivers of hybrids to use high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes is a popular policy tool to encourage commuters to drive low-emission vehicles, but new research by economist Antonio Bento shows the shift in carpool lane rules can backfire. Promoting buses in HOV lanes is a smarter policy choice, Bento’s recent study concluded.
Bite Size
A new study by entomologist Laura Harrington found that size matters, when it comes to the dining tastes of the mosquitoes that carry dengue fever. The insects feed on larger people and adults significantly more often than smaller people and children. Visitors and tourists are also more likely to be on the menu than residents of the Thai villages that hosted the research—a finding that provides new clues about how the dengue virus spreads. NutriPhone: Calling for Better Health
Biomedical engineer David Erickson and his collaborators recently received a five-year, $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation to fund their work on the NutriPhone, a smartphone device that monitors users’ nutrition, blood, and stress. The team developed a prototype of the device with seed funding from the Atkinson Center. |  Food Security: 10 Critical Needs
 Who do dengue-carrying mosquitoes bite?
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| Connecting Cornell ACSF Tops 400 Fellows Renewable energy. Climate change. Water management. Food security. Rural development. The Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future’s 2014 class of faculty fellows includes leading experts in these and many other urgent areas of sustainability research. Fifty Cornell faculty joined the Atkinson Center this fall, bringing the total number of ACSF faculty fellows to 410.
|  New Class of Faculty Fellows
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| | What We're Reading Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio (Europa, 2008), by Amara Lakhous Faculty director of economic development Wendy Wolford says: "Several of us at ACSF read the book chosen for Cornell's first-year reading program, Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio. The somewhat frenetic novel recounts several residents' perspectives on Italy, Italians, and life together in an immigrant-filled apartment complex in Rome, after a murder in the building's elevator. While the stereotypes and prejudices people display in the novel may seem unrelated to sustainability, an investigation of how to unite people—or not—around a common issue when they are separated by differences of identity, status, community, and long-held beliefs and cultural norms speaks directly to the many difficulties involved in addressing a global issue like climate change or sustainable development. We all might learn from Amadeo, the book’s main character, who is 'truly Italian' and 'belongs' in everyone’s mind, because he seems to listen to everyone without imposing his own worldview." |  Clash of Civilizations...
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