Coming soon to your favorite outdoor campus events @cornelluniversity ! 🔋🎉
If you’ve ever walked by a major campus event, you’ve probably heard the diesel generator before you saw it: loud, fuel-hungry, and hard to ignore. Now, Cornell partners are testing a different way forward to utilize clean power at outdoor campus events like Slope Day, Reunion and Graduation.
Here Tess Williams ‘15, project manager at Viridi, explains our new sustainable ‘living laboratory’ — a 8.5-by-3-foot mobile battery energy storage system designed to quietly power signature events and even support emergency backup needs. Funded by @nypaenergy and developed with Viridi and @epri_news , the system offers a clean, quiet alternative to traditional generators. @sustainablecornell@cornellresearch
Methane and hydrogen leaks may be invisible — but their climate impact isn’t.
In this video, researchers at @cornelluniversity and the @environmental_defense_fund show how data-driven science is turning invisible emissions into measurable, actionable insights. Using innovative mobile sensing technology and field tests with industry partners, researchers are identifying where leaks occur and how to prevent them.
The result? A clearer picture of how to reduce methane emissions that contribute to global warming and how to deploy hydrogen energy responsibly.
🎥 Watch the story of how our decade-long partnership between Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability and EDF is driving hope for a cleaner energy future through impact-driven science.
Next stop: Colombian mangroves ✈️
Over the past year, @cornelluniversity students have been hard at work alongside @cornelluniversitycals and @cornelleng faculty to design and build an affordable and portable device to measure methane and carbon dioxide emissions across diverse wetland environments. Now, Cornell and @environmental_defense_fund researchers will take that methane sensor to mangroves in Colombia. In this video, professor Todd Cowen (@cornelleng ) explains how the team will bring together engineering, biogeochemistry, and policy-focused research to support more effective climate and restoration solutions, including efforts to strengthen the resilience and carbon storage potential of mangrove ecosystems.
We look forward to sharing much more as the fieldwork begins and the research progresses — stay tuned!
What happens when campus food scraps + cow manure meet cutting-edge sustainability research? ♻️🐮
Cornell’s newest Living Lab project will turn organic waste into renewable energy through a small-scale biodigester. Using microbes in sealed tanks housed at the Cornell Teaching Dairy, the system will create biogas that can help power dairy operations while supporting research on carbon capture, biofuels and sustainable waste solutions.
The project is bringing together students, researchers and staff from across @cornelluniversity — including @cornelluniversitycals , @cornellvet , @cornelleng , the Cornell @atkinsoncenter for Sustainability, and @sustainablecornell — to test real-world climate solutions right here on campus.
Stay tuned to learn how the biodigester will serve as a hands-on learning and research platform with potential benefits for farms across New York state.
Cornell students are helping tackle one of the more complex challenges in climate science: understanding methane emissions from waterbodies and mangrove ecosystems 💦
Through a collaboration brought together by the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, students worked with @cornelluniversity researchers to design a low-cost, portable device to measure methane emissions.
Then, the device was deployed in mangrove ecosystems in Colombia with partners at @environmental_defense_fund . Working alongside local community partners, this effort is expanding access to critical data needed to better understand these ecosystems and support long-term restoration and climate resilience.
This is what it looks like to connect student innovation with real-world impact—where hands-on learning, cross-sector partnerships, and community collaboration come together to advance solutions.
📌 Read more about the research: link in bio
A big thank you to our collaborators: students and researchers in @cornelleng and @cornelluniversitycals , @defreeslab@cornellbirds and @coastalsolutionsfellows , and the community of Punta Soldado, Colombia 🇨🇴🤝
Students are turning their passion for sustainability into action at @cornelluniversity ! 🌳
Earth Day offers a moment to reflect, but for many students, this work is part of their everyday lives. Through their classes, campus involvement, and the paths they’re preparing to pursue, they’re thinking deeply about how to create a more sustainable future.
Here’s how they describe what Earth Day means to them 💚
Student-built methane sensor aids mangrove restoration efforts.
In fall 2024, a team of Cornell students and faculty set out to build something that didn't exist yet: a low-cost, rugged, portable methane sensor that could run off a light battery, survive wind and rain, and measure emissions from water anywhere in the world.
"The real-world application was really motivating," said Grace Lo '24, M.Eng. '25, now a computer engineer at IBM. "Knowing people are going to actually put this out in a lake or in a real mangrove forest inspired me to make this the best device I could."
Fast forward 16 months: in partnership with the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability and Environmental Defense Fund, the sensors were deployed in Colombia for the first time. They're now informing global greenhouse gas assessments and supporting mangrove reforestation. Mangroves matter because they can store up to four times more carbon per hectare than tropical rainforests.
Next up: lakes, wetlands, dairy lagoons, abandoned gas wells, and more.
Over 5 million ground nesting bees make home in Ithaca cemetery 🐝
Rachel Fordyce would walk through East Lawn Cemetery to her job as a technician in an entomology lab on Cornell’s campus. One spring day in 2022, she arrived at work with a jar full of bees.
“These are all over the cemetery,” she told her boss, Bryan Danforth, professor of entomology in the College and Agriculture and Life Sciences. They identified the bees as Andrena regularis (also known as the "regular mining bee"), a wild, solitary, ground-nesting species that is an important pollinator.
Fordyce’s jar of bees led to the discovery that the Ithaca cemetery is home to one of the largest and oldest recorded aggregations of ground nesting bees in the world, with an estimated 5.5 million individual bees. That’s the equivalent of more than 200 honeybee hives in a 1.5-acre plot of land, and more than three times the population of Manhattan.
“I’m sure there are other large bee aggregations that exist around the world that we just haven’t identified, but in terms of what is in the literature, this is one of the largest,” said Steve Hoge ’24, first author of a new study published April 13 in the journal Apidologie.
Hoge conducted the research as an undergraduate in Danforth's lab. The study describes a novel method for documenting bee biology, showing these wild bees are key pollinators for New York apples and other specialty crops, and pointing to cemeteries as preserves of biological diversity.
The study was funded by the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, the National Science Foundation, and the Federal Capacity Funds program.
We’re proud to announce this year’s student awardees at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability! ⭐️
Forty undergraduate and graduate students have been selected to advance sustainability solutions through their research—from developing sustainable strategies for coffee and strawberry production, to applying cutting-edge technology to protect pet food systems and pollinators, to designing new approaches for conserving energy and ecosystems.
Together, these projects represent more than promising ideas. They are investments in the people who will lead the future of sustainability.
This year, Cornell Atkinson is providing over $325,000 in funding to support student-led research, reinforcing our commitment to training the next generation of sustainability leaders. By supporting students early in their academic and professional journeys, we are helping to build the knowledge, skills, and networks needed to drive impact across industry, government, academia, and the non-profit sector.
The awards announced today span three key programs:
🔬 15 Graduate Research Grants 🦋 17 Sustainable Biodiversity Fund grants ☀️ 4 Summer Undergraduate Mentored Research Grants
Congratulations to this remarkable cohort, and stay tuned to learn more about their impact!
📌 Link in bio to explore all 2026 awardees and abstracts across the 3 programs!
⭐️ Postdoc Spotlight: Jintong Gao ⭐️
To meet the rising needs for green hydrogen and clean drinking water, Cornell Atkinson Postdoctoral Fellow Jintong Gao seeks to improve a novel technology he helped develop that would enable efficient co-production of green hydrogen and potable water from sunlight and seawater. It is expected to cost $1 per kilogram of green hydrogen and to produce, rather than consume, water.
Jintong received his Ph.D. in Power Engineering and Engineering Thermophysics from @shanghai_jiao_tong_university . His doctoral research focused on low-emission energy storage, building energy saving, and clean water production. The most representative works include (1) a passive, solar-powered desalination approach for clean water production cheaper than the tap water (Joule, 2023, 7(10), 2274-2290, Nature Communications, 2024, 15, 7890) and (2) a sorption-based high-density energy storage for build heating and cooling (Applied Energy, 2020, 262, 114476). These works were recognized as the Best Inventions of 2023 (TIME Magazine) and Top 10 MIT Research Stories of 2023.
In the Cornell Atkinson Postdoc Fellowship, Jingtong is mentored by Lenan Zhang Cornell (@cornelleng ) and Ryuichi Iwata (JERA Co., Inc.).
We are thrilled to announce Emily Bernhardt, Ph.D. ‘01 as the next Francis J. DiSalvo Director of the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, effective September 1!
Emily is a freshwater ecologist and biogeochemist – a scientist who studies how chemical elements and energy cycle through ecosystems. Her research aims to document the extent to which the structure and function of aquatic ecosystems is being altered by land use change, global change and chemical pollution, and examines the efficacy of efforts to protect and restore streams and wetlands.
Emily joins us from Duke University, where she is James B. Duke Professor of Biogeochemistry. She has chaired the Department of Biology for six years, and has been a key contributor to Duke’s Climate Commitment.
She received her Ph.D. from @cornelluniversity in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Emily is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (@thenasciences ) and a fellow of the Ecological Society of America (@ecologicalsociety ), the Society for Freshwater Science and the American Geophysical Union (@americangeophysicalunion ). She will hold a joint academic appointment in the new Ashley School of @cornellglobaldevelopment and the Environment in @cornelluniversitycals .
Welcome back to Cornell, Emily! 🎉
📌 Read more: Link in bio
Put on your headphones! 🎧
Cornell music professor Annie Lewandowski and the Hawaii Marine Mammal Consortium (HMMC) are in the midst of a lively field season in Hawaii collecting audio recordings of singing humpback whales with a newly developed tetrahedral hydrophone array.
Male humpback whales sing some of the most complex songs known in nature, primarily during their winter mating season. So far, the team has recorded 7 unique singers with amazing migratory histories from places like Mexico, Chukotka (Russia), and Alaska, revealed by @happywhale_official automated fluke matching. One goal of the project is to understand how whale song complexity may respond to marine heatwaves and changing ocean climate.
The resulting audio is outstanding. What you’re hearing now is the binaural audio of a humpback whale singer recorded just a few days ago off the west coast of Hawaii Island. The ratchet sound you hear is made by humpback whale singers as they surface to breathe.
Cornell Atkinson is pleased to have supported this work through its Academic Venture Fund.
The tetrahedral array was inspired by Delikaris et al, 2018 and developed by Cornell Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics engineer Patrick Chaopricha and Lewandowski. This year’s fieldwork is just one facet of “Saved by the Whales: Science, Art, and Public Outreach” in collaboration with the project team led by Annie Lewandowski including Katy Payne, Michelle Fournet, and Alia Payne together with the HMMC (Chris Gabriele, Adam Frankel, Suzanne Yin, and Susan Rickards).
📌 Stay tuned for the latest information on this research on Soundcloud: /gHs7IAxSKNCGE4xfsf
@cornellbioacoustics@musicatcornell@soundsciencecollective@_aliasalias_@mbellalady
