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Noor El-Hawwat’s journey into the tech industry began with a simple decision to follow in her sister’s footsteps and major in computer science. However, what started as a straightforward choice soon blossomed into a passion for tech, combined with a drive to uplift underrepresented minorities, set her on a path that would lead her to Cornell Tech—first through its Break Through Tech program and now as a master’s student in the Master of Engineering in Computer Science program.

Founded by former Verizon CIO Judith Spitz, Break Through Tech is a Cornell Tech initiative that aims to provide Black, LatinX, Native American, low-income women, and gender non-conforming individuals the technical skills training, professional readiness support, and real-world project experiences to break into influential tech roles.

Currently, women make up only 35% of the tech workforce in the US. Break Through Tech’s programming works to bridge the gap by helping women from underserved backgrounds secure tech internships and launch their careers. They excel on their paths toward the industry through the opportunity to partner with companies in the wider tech industry, with more than 7,000 women from nearly 300 universities across the country participating to date.

Break Through Tech played a pivotal role in El-Hawwat’s decision to pursue her master’s degree at Cornell Tech. Reflecting on her experience, she describes the program as “unlike any other,” emphasizing the unique opportunities it offered. “It really sparked this positivity and optimism in me to get into other extracurriculars and become my best self – as a leader and advocate for marginalized groups,” she shared.

For El-Hawwat, the program was more than just a stepping stone; it was a transformative experience that helped her build confidence and solidify her passion for tech. “When I met the Break Through Tech participants and leadership, I felt like Cornell Tech and the tech industry would be places where I could belong,” she said.

Originally from Cedar Grove, Noor El-Hawwat received her bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Rutgers University-Newark. During her time in the Break Through Tech AI Program – a one-year extracurricular experience that equips undergraduate students with the skills needed to secure a job in the fastest-growing areas of tech, El-Hawwat participated in a machine learning foundations course, where she applied skills like data analysis and machine learning to tackle real-world challenges that pushed her to think creatively and collaborate closely with her peers.

As part of the program, El-Hawwat and her teammates were assigned a challenge project where they worked with industry-relevant tools and data-sets to identify the best location for a new coffee shop opening its first location in New York City. El-Hawwat and her team conducted extensive research on which factors made cafes in New York City successful, ultimately putting together a presentation that explored neighborhood datasets on everything from crime rate to budget and from access to transportation to foot traffic. El-Hawwat shared, “It was a very successful experience that brought out my best optimism to be an entrepreneur in the industry.”

El-Hawwat’s experience with the program also showed her how central the values of diversity, innovation, and entrepreneurship are to Cornell Tech’s mission. “As someone who wants to become an entrepreneur, the Break Through Tech program was something that stood out to me and made me eager to continue my journey with Cornell Tech,” she explained.

Her decision to pursue her master’s at Cornell Tech was inspired by a Zoom meeting she had during her time with Break Through Tech, where she had the opportunity to learn from current Cornell Tech students about their experiences. “I was really inspired by the thought of being in a space that embodied inspiring the next generation of entrepreneurs,” she said. “Cornell Tech is made up of diverse and innovative individuals who want to contribute to the next generation of AI, who mutually inspire each other to create and work toward changing the world, and who can develop new creations through access to Cornell Tech’s resources. It’s a community where what might seem like a crazy ambition elsewhere can actually come to life.”

Now, as a master’s student, El-Hawwat is thrilled about the future. She’s eager to continue learning, growing, and contributing to the AI revolution that the institution champions. She believes that the close-knit environment at Cornell Tech, combined with the mentorship from stellar practitioners, will help her become “a whole other individual… in a good way, someone that I never thought I could be otherwise.”

El-Hawwat’s story is a testament to the power of programs like Break Through Tech in shaping the next generation of leaders. Her journey from a high school student with a budding interest in computer science to a confident, driven master’s student at Cornell Tech illustrates the impact of providing opportunities and support for women and underserved communities in tech. “It’s through all these things in union that I do feel like I belong here and that this is where I should continue my experience and education.”

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By Patricia Waldron

Taking race into account when developing tools to predict a patient’s risk of colorectal cancer leads to more accurate predictions when compared with race-blind algorithms, researchers find.

While many medical researchers have argued that race should be removed as a factor from clinical algorithms that predict disease risks, a new study finds that, at least for colorectal cancer, including race can help correct a data issue – inaccurate recording of family history for Black patients.

Having relatives with colorectal cancer is a known risk factor for the disease, but Black patients are less likely to have an accurate recorded history in their medical records. Considering race can help correct for this, potentially identifying more Black patients who would benefit from cancer screening.

“If you don’t use race, what you’re effectively doing is you’re telling your algorithm, pretend that family history is equally useful for everyone, and that’s just not true in the data,” said Emma Pierson, senior author on the new study and the Andrew H. and Ann R. Tisch Assistant Professor of computer science at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.

She collaborated with Anna Zink of the University of Chicago and Ziad Obermeyer of the University of California, Berkeley on the new research, “Race Adjustments in Clinical Algorithms Can Help Correct For Racial Disparities In Data Quality,” which was published Aug. 13 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

To evaluate the impact of race on clinical algorithms for colorectal cancer, the researchers predicted the future risk of cancer for 77,836 racially and economically diverse participants in the Southern Community Cohort, a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded initiative aimed at understanding the causes of cancer and other major diseases. The participants, aged 40 to 74, had no medical history of colorectal cancer when they joined the cohort.

The research team developed a pair of algorithms for predicting colorectal cancer risk: one that included race, and another that did not. They used risk factors included in the NCI Colorectal Cancer Risk Assessment Tool, which considers a person’s age, weight, diet, exercise habits and family and medical history. Then they compared how well the two algorithms could predict colorectal cancer risk for Black and white participants.

The analysis showed that Black participants were more likely to report an unknown family history of cancer, suggesting this data might be less reliably recorded. Consistent with this finding, family history data was less helpful for predicting future cancer risk for Black participants.

Researchers found that the race-blind algorithms underpredicted cancer risk for Black participants and overpredicted the risk for white participants, while the race-adjusted algorithm more accurately predicted risk for each group. When the algorithm accounted for race, 74.4% of participants ranked in the half with the highest risk were Black, compared to 66.1% with the race-blind algorithm. When classified as high-risk, individuals may have better access to screening or other health care services.

There are important reasons to reconsider the use of race in medical algorithms, Pierson said. Many of these algorithms rely on outdated data, include false and biased beliefs about race or yield results that exacerbate health disparities. Some likely have led to Black patients being denied critical health care, such as kidney transplants, osteoporosis treatments or appropriate breast cancer screening.

The study by Pierson and her colleagues highlights the importance of comparing race-adjusted and race-blind algorithms before taking race out of the equation.

“A concern is that the removal of race might have unintended consequences, and we need to very carefully evaluate its impact,” Pierson said.

While tailoring algorithms with regard to race can sometimes lead to more accurate predictions by compensating for imperfect data, Pierson sees this as a stopgap measure.

“We need to design algorithms that make the best predictions we can for the patients we see today. That is our responsibility as designers,” Pierson said. “But on a longer time frame, it’s also really important that, yes, we improve the quality of medical data. This is not an acceptable state of affairs – we need to fight a two front battle.”

Pierson is also an assistant professor of population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Patricia Waldron is a writer for the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.

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As Cornell Tech looks toward future development, it aims to go beyond simply reducing its environmental impact. By continuing to innovate and incorporate new sustainable technologies, the New York City campus is a model for how urban spaces can thrive in harmony with natural systems, serving as a living laboratory for sustainable development in one of the world’s most iconic cities.

Walking across the Cornell Tech campus in the fall, visitors are bound to notice leaves changing color and Manhattan’s dramatic skyline rising across the East River, sights that have become the signature of the Roosevelt Island campus. Less apparent but just as much a part of Cornell Tech is the cutting-edge sustainable design woven into campus infrastructure. From thoughtful landscaping choices to high-tech energy saving techniques, sustainability is not just an extra at Cornell Tech – it’s what makes the campus run.

“When you see the campus without knowing the entire story, it’s easy to have no idea what’s going on under the surface,” said Biyoung Heo, Landscape Architect, from the firm Field Operations, which led the master landscaping planning and design for the campus. “It’s only when you get to talking about all of the innovations does the full picture of sustainability on campus become clearer and the entire vision starts to make sense. Everything from the recycled water to the bioswales are intentional and help make the campus incredibly environmentally friendly.”

Looking deeper into the campus’s innovative design features, such as the Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Center’s photovoltaic roof and rainwater collection system, it’s clear that efficiency, adaptive reuse of resources, and environmental stewardship are integrated into every aspect of the infrastructure. LEED certifications adorn buildings across the campus, best exemplified by “The House at Cornell Tech”, which, when it was unveiled in 2017, was the tallest and largest residential building built to Passive House standards – which requires reducing heating and cooling energy consumption by more than 75% compared to average new construction – in the world.

Underneath a long picnic bench area adjacent to the Bloomberg Center sits a 40,000-gallon rainwater collection tank. But this system does double duty: once water is collected, it is then cleaned and used in the Bloomberg Center’s refuse and nearby irrigation systems, reducing the need for municipal water sources. Additionally, the campus employs geo-exchange heating and cooling, an innovative and still uncommon system that drastically reduces annual energy consumption and cost, again, utilizing resources available right on the Island. In the colder months, the system through convection pulls warmth from the earth and, in warmer months, does the reverse.

While students, faculty and staff, as well as visitors and members of the Roosevelt Island community, interact with the campus every day, thoughtful, and oftentimes unnoticed details make a big difference when it comes to sustainability and resilience. The campus has been intentionally built several feet above sea level, which protects against flooding and also promotes intentional drainage. The small collections of flowers and shrubs on the perimeter of campus might be mistaken for decorative gardens, but are actually strategically placed and intentionally designed bioswales. The vegetated pathways act as natural filtration systems, capturing and cleaning stormwater runoff and holds it on site. , This reduces the rainwater impact on the city’s stormwater infrastructure while promoting biodiversity and natural filtration systems on campus.

The campus’s sustainable ethos extends to its material-sourcing practices as well. Rocks and stones used across the site, the porous pavement meant to assist with water draining and the strategically placed boulders, are sourced from a single quarry near Nyack, N.Y., reducing transportation-related energy and carbon use.

The commitment to sustainability doesn’t stop at infrastructure. Now, In addition to its technological advancements and infrastructure, Cornell Tech is working to embed sustainability as a core value in its campus culture. Through educational initiatives and local involvement from the Roosevelt Island Community, the campus is fostering a sense of shared responsibility for environmental stewardship among students, faculty, and the local community. As part of this effort, Andrew Fowler, Capital Project Manager at Cornell Tech, has also embraced a new and less formal position as a member of the institution’s sustainability committee. The committee, seeks to generate awareness and foster a culture of sustainability through initiatives within the campus community.

“We are all striving for continued improvement as our collective understanding of sustainability evolves,” said Fowler. “What this work really requires to be successful is to bring in more people to join our community. It is a process that requires everyone in order to change a culture.”

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By Tom Fleischman

Nicola Dell, associate professor of information science at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech, has been awarded a 2024 MacArthur Foundation fellowship for her work developing technology interventions to address the needs of overlooked populations, including home health care aides and survivors of intimate partner violence.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the awards on Oct. 1. Each of this year’s recipients will receive a no-strings-attached award of $800,000 over five years – known as the “genius grant” – to use however they wish.

“It’s a huge vote of confidence in the work we do and in the importance of doing this kind of work,” said Dell, also a faculty member in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. “And hopefully, it’s motivation to keep going and keep focusing on these kinds of topics and these communities.”

Novelist Ling Ma, MFA ’15, was also among the 2024 MacArthur recipients.

Dell’s research focuses on designing and building novel computing systems that improve the lives of underserved populations, including survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) and home health care workers. She co-founded the Clinic to End Tech Abuse at Cornell Tech to translate her research into practice and support IPV survivors through one-on-one security consultations. Dell also advises tech companies about risks posed by frequently exploited products, and her research has informed legislation to ensure more robust protections against tech abuse.

“All of us at Cornell Tech congratulate Nicki Dell on this well-deserved honor,” said Greg Morrisett, the Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and Vice Provost of Cornell Tech. “By addressing the widespread issue of technology abuse, Nicki has dedicated her career to helping vulnerable communities. Nicki is an inspiration to her students, her colleagues and to the many victims and survivors of abuse whose lives she has touched. It brings us all great pride to learn that she has received this fellowship in recognition of her work’s transformative impact.”

Abusers often exploit technology to surveil, threaten, impersonate or harass their targets; Dell conducted qualitative studies of survivor experiences through a partnership with the New York City Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence.

To investigate the tactics used by abusers, Dell and her collaborators also analyzed hundreds of posts in public online forums where potential perpetrators discuss strategies and spyware for surveilling their partners.

“We started out doing this sort of qualitative work to really just understand what people are experiencing,” Dell said. “Very quickly, the picture that emerged was devastating for survivors – that they were experiencing huge amounts of complex and persistent abuse, but really had nowhere to go.”

Exploring this problem exposed flaws in conventional security threat models, which are designed to guard against technologically sophisticated and distant adversaries, such as governments, and contributed new frameworks for security and privacy research to address closer, more personal types of threats.

“The analogy we draw is very much to things like health clinics, where if you have health problems, you can go and get help from a doctor, or if your car breaks down, you can go to a mechanic,” she said. “These survivors were trying to go to existing social services, or to law enforcement or to tech companies, and were really just getting no help.”

Dell also investigates how technology could improve patient outcomes and working conditions for home health care workers.

These essential caregivers are often among the most isolated and under-resourced workers in health care. Dell, director of technological innovation for the Initiative on Home Care Work, and her group explore the benefits of computer-mediated peer support programs, technologies to better integrate home health aides in the health care team and access to electronic training resources.

“There’s a huge need to try and improve the working conditions for these workers,” she said, “so that we can treat them with the respect and recognition they deserve, attract more people to the profession and, ultimately, make sure that folks are getting the care that they need to be able to age at home.”

A member of the Cornell Tech faculty since 2016, Dell is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for Applied Research on Work in the ILR School. Dell was the recipient of a 2018 National Science Foundation Faculty Early-Career Development Award and a 2023 SIGCHI Societal Impact Award.

Born in Zimbabwe, Dell received her bachelor’s in computer science from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, in 2004. She received her master’s (2011) and Ph.D. (2015) from the University of Washington.

Ma, who has taught creative writing and English at Cornell and at the University of Chicago, is the author of “Severance” (2018), an “apocalyptic office novel,” as she called it, about a pandemic in 2018 that eerily foreshadowed how the COVID-19 pandemic would empty offices and depopulate campuses.

She is also the author of 2022’s “Bliss Montage,” a collection of stories that blur genre distinctions and explore characters’ attempts to understand and be understood by others.

Ma received her bachelor’s in 2005 from the University of Chicago, where she will rejoin the faculty in 2025 as an associate professor in the Department of English Language and Literature.

Other Cornell professors to have won MacArthur Foundation fellowships include Deborah Estrin, computer science, Cornell Tech (2018); Will Dichtel, chemistry and biochemistry (2015); Craig Fennie, applied and engineering physics (2013); Jon Kleinberg, computer science (2005) and Paul Ginsparg, physics and computer science (2002).

Additionally, plant geneticist Barbara McClintock, Class of 1923, M.A. ’25, Ph.D. ’27, was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1981, the first year of the grants.

Tom Fleischman is a writer for the Cornell Chronicle.

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Thomas Ristenpart, a Professor at Cornell Tech and in the Computer Science Department at Cornell University, received the esteemed Test of Time Award at the 33rd USENIX Security Symposium. This accolade recognizes his co-authored 2014 paper, “Privacy in Pharmacogenetics: An End-to-End Case Study of Personalized Warfarin Dosing,” for its enduring impact on the field over the past 10 years.

The Test of Time Award is reserved for papers that have significantly influenced their areas of research and must have been presented at their respective conference at least a decade prior. The USENIX Security Symposium serves as one of the most prestigious academic venues for research on the latest advancements in the security and privacy of computer systems and networks.

“We are incredibly proud of Professor Ristenpart’s contributions and the long-term impact he has made,” shared Dean Greg Morrisett, the Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and Vice Provost of Cornell Tech. “This award is a testament to Cornell Tech’s commitment to pioneering research that addresses critical challenges in our society and to the distinguished scholars who make up our faculty.”

The paper, which appeared at USENIX Security 2014, was written by Ristenpart in 2014 alongside co-authors Matthew Fredrikson from Carnegie Mellon University, Eric Lantz, Somesh Jha, and David Page from the University of Wisconsin, and Simon Lin from the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation. It received the Best Paper Award that year.

“It’s really quite an honor that this paper won the Test of Time Award,” says Ristenpart. “I think it’s a testament to how important it is to understand privacy in machine learning, even more so now when we see explosive growth in use of it due to generative AI.”

In the paper, the team explores privacy concerns in pharmacogenetics, which uses machine learning to tailor medical treatments based on a patient’s genetic makeup. The paper specifically examines warfarin dosing — a critical medication for preventing blood clots — revealing how one can use a model for unintended purposes via what they termed “model inversion.” In particular, it shows experimentally that certain predictive models could be used to help predict a patient’s genetic information given their demographic data, especially for those people whose data was used in training the machine learning model in the first place.

To mitigate these risks, they tested differential privacy (DP), a method aimed at ensuring that models do not rely too heavily on an individual’s data. While DP can help prevent these attacks when applied carefully, it has drawbacks. Simulated clinical trials showed that using DP inappropriately could increase the risk of severe health issues like strokes and bleeding, threatening patient safety. The study concludes that future work would be required to understand the relationship between different kinds of privacy risks, countermeasures such as DP, and improvements to them. Subsequently, much follow-up research over the past decade has focused on addressing these specific issues.

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By Tom Fleischman

How do online crowds form, grow and behave? How do they wield influence? What distinguishes desirable crowd activism from mob harassment?

In the summer of 2022, Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School professor James Grimmelmann and postdoctoral fellow Charles Duan hosted a virtual workshop in which participants attempted to answer these questions and more.

At the end of the two-day online workshop Grimmelmann, the Tessler Family Professor of Digital and Information Law at Cornell Tech and at Cornell Law School, and co-organizer Duan, now an assistant professor of law at American University’s Washington College of Law, asked participants to reflect on the conversations and identify important themes about platforms and crowds.

The result: “The Barons and the Mob: Essays on Centralized Platforms and Decentralized Crowds,” an introduction to the complexities of online crowds and the importance of understanding their nature in the context of efforts toward online platform regulation.

The introduction references a pair of online user “revolts.” In 2007, one of the users of news aggregator Digg posted an encryption key that could be used to circumvent copyright protection on Blu-Ray discs. Sixteen years later, Grimmelmann and Duan wrote, “history rhymed with itself” when Reddit, in preparation for a rumored IPO, started charging developers to access its previously free application programming interface. Users of both platforms rose up in revolt. In Digg’s case, the crowd won the revolt – not so with Reddit.

“The Digg disruption and the Reddit rebellion,” they wrote, “demonstrate the conflict between the two great sources of power on the Internet: the centralized platforms that control the infrastructure of online communities, and the decentralized crowds of users who come together in them.”

In all, a dozen experts share their perspectives in “The Barons and the Mob,” tackling what makes an online crowd; the influence of money on crowds; identifying misinformation; authenticity; network economics and other topics.

Grimmelmann spoke with the Chronicle about the essay collection:

Question: What was the impetus behind the workshop?

Answer: The idea came out of seeing some of the ways that crowds were self-consciously being weaponized for political and commercial purposes. The “to the moon” sentiment of the wallstreetbets subreddit wasn’t all that different from the kind of online energy associated with political movements or with influencer beefs. But platforms seemed to consider some of these crowds to be serious problems they had to block, and some of them to be benign intended uses. That paradox led us to look more closely at how platforms and crowds related to each other.

Q: Are there other moments in history that radically changed the dynamic between the “barons” and the “mob” – perhaps the invention of the printing press?

A: The printing press definitely helped catalyze new kinds of distributed groups, from scientific collaborations to journalism for “the public.” The age of revolution – starting especially with the French Revolution – demonstrated the dramatic power of the mob on the street compared with old aristocratic hierarchies. The mobs prevailed in the long run: Old forms of centralized power were swept aside and gave way to new political forms that were more responsive to mass public sentiment.

Q: Has the power dynamic between platforms and crowds morphed over time? Have crowds learned how to wield greater power over the last 20 to 30 years?

A: The Reddit moderator revolt last summer was a really striking moment, because Reddit explicitly decided that it was willing to take on the full power of a highly organized user group. It was a big bet, and Reddit basically won: Its IPO went ahead, and today the site has much more effective power over its user base. The pendulum seems to have swung in the direction of the platforms; they’re better able to predict and steer crowd dynamics than they were a few years ago.

You can see TikTok as an extreme example of this trend: The site harnesses crowd energy and enthusiasm but systematically works to prevent crowds from forming and sustaining themselves in ways that would form durable power alternatives.

Q: Do you see an ultimate “winner” in this push-and-pull between the “lords” (platforms) and the “commoners” (users)? Can there ever be a winner?

A: No – the tension is eternal. Without either of these forms, social media wouldn’t function. Platforms need crowds in order to be viable businesses, and crowds need platforms as a place to gather. They each have an interest in the other’s existence.

Q: Are there other big questions to be addressed in this space?

Yes – we don’t know how online crowds are catalyzed and controlled. We don’t know how to think about them as groups with agency for economic purposes. We don’t know what legitimate and effective forms of moderation to respond to them look like. We don’t know how regulations will go awry when crowds respond to them. And there are many more: This report is just a starting point, and a way of inviting people to think seriously about these issues.

Tom Fleischman is a Senior Writer/Editor for the Cornell Chronicle.

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Cornell Tech today announced the newest cohort of 13 startup companies that will enter its established Runway incubator program this September. The program is run by the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute on the Cornell Tech campus and will welcome its largest cohort since the annual program began in 2014.

The 13 teams include eight Ph.D. founders, selected from 358 applications received this year for the Runway Startup Postdoc Program, and five “Spinout” teams, which are made up of 2024 Cornell Tech graduates who each won a $100,000 Start-Up Award at the conclusion of the 2023-2024 academic year.

Founders who participate in the program come from academic backgrounds and are focused on accelerating their young companies under the guidance of Cornell Tech faculty and advisors. To date, the program has launched more than 100 startups, including baby sleep monitor Nanit, real estate construction intelligence platform OnsiteIQ and infectious disease diagnostic Biotia. In total, the companies launched from the Runway Startups program have a valuation of more than $660 million and have created more than 500 new jobs in New York City.

Runway participants come to the Institute with early stage ideas and potential markets for their product(s). To help launch their startups and propel them into careers in the tech industry, they receive a package valued up to $325,000 for two years that includes a salary, a research budget, workspace on campus, and IP registration and use, as well as mentorship from academic and business experts in fields ranging from connective media, health technology, security and privacy, and computer vision.

“Runway is a proven catalyst for New York’s tech ecosystem. It creates entrepreneurship opportunities beyond those traditionally offered at universities and helps founders address the roots of real world issues and tackle them head on,” said Fernando Gómez-Baquero, Director of the Runway Startup Postdoc and the Spinout Programs at Cornell Tech. “The proposals from this year’s cohort have the potential to join alumni companies as they grow into fully realized startups, driving economic development, job growth, and New York’s leadership in innovation for years to come.”

Runway is part business school, part research institution, and part startup incubator. It helps tech founders translate their academic skills and mindset into entrepreneurial ventures. The incoming cohort plans to translate their ideas into startups utilizing tech, engineering and artificial intelligence, solving problems in fields ranging from healthcare to finance. The selected companies include:

  • Cipher, a marketplace that facilitates music licensing deals by connecting businesses to the biggest players of the music industry, tracking negotiations, and automating payments and licensing agreements.
  • Iriscience, integrating AR and VR into slit lamps, enabling remote eye examinations along with AI-assisted user interface to allow ophthalmologists and primary care providers to diagnose and treat patients in family clinics and underserved areas.
  • MercuryVote, a marketplace/auction house that provides a way for large and small retail investors to sell their unused and undervalued proxy votes for corporate elections, enabling activist investors to purchase the proxy votes to impact boards and proposals at the next corporate election.
  • MyophonX, a device consists of cutaneous electrodes embedded in a thin, flexible film, which capture Electromyography (EMG) signals from facial articulatory muscles. These signals are then processed by ANNs to produce speech, which can be transmitted via Bluetooth to an external device such as a phone, speaker, or headset and allow a person without a voice to speak.
  • mPulse-O2, a platform that enables accurate measurement of blood oxygen level and aims to transform the pulse oximetry technology by overcoming and changing the lack of inclusivity in design and validation of biomedical devices.
  • Onda Labs, addressing key challenges in water management, assisting utilities in boosting their revenue and improving overall efficiency by leveraging AI technologies.
  • Prendo, a digital platform for endometriosis that enables tracking patients’ symptoms individually on a daily basis and identifying the unique cyclic patterns and correlations of each symptom by generating “monthly symptom maps” and predicting the onset of symptoms.
  • PsyFlo, a platform that enables personalized, collaborative care for integrated behavioral health settings.
  • RapidReview, a platform that uses machine learning to accelerate research productivity by building tools that understand documents and help researchers navigate thousands of academic papers for literature review.
  • SensVita, a company that develops non-invasive sensors for wearable and furniture-integrated heart and lung monitoring by prioritizing no skin contact and broad application to clinical, at-home, and veterinary monitoring applications.
  • Simulacrum, an AI software venture that allows enterprises and institutions to make effective operational decisions in complex markets by providing them with behavioral market models learned from data to accurately predict future economic trends.
  • Vinci AI, a new ad format that combines the scale of interruptive ads and the engagement of in-video sponsored ads and that enables brands and creators to source sponsorship deals and automatically inserts brand advertisements into the background of creator videos.
  • WAVED Medical LLC, a medical software company developing technology that enhances breast cancer screening by using proprietary biophysical measurements that identifies pre-cancerous “at-risk” dense breast tissue most likely to progress to life-threatening disease.

Applications for the next cohort of Runway Startups, to begin in September 2025, will open on October 15, 2024 and close on February 15, 2025. For more information, go to https://tech.cornell.edu/programs/phd/startup-postdocs/ 

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Cornell Law School and Cornell Tech are pleased to announce that David Reiss joined their faculties on July 1, 2024, as Clinical Professor of Law and Research Director of the Blassberg-Rice Center for Entrepreneurship Law. Based at the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island, Reiss will co-teach Cornell Law School’s Entrepreneurship Clinic, allowing the law school to provide a clinical offering in New York City for the first time. Reiss will also teach in Cornell Law and Cornell Tech’s program in Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship.

Reiss’s hire represents a significant milestone in the growth of the Blassberg-Rice Center for Entrepreneurship Law. Created with the support of a transformative gift from Franci J. Blassberg ’75, J.D. ’77, and Joseph L. Rice III, the Blassberg-Rice Center for Entrepreneurship Law will deepen Cornell Law School’s commitment to supporting entrepreneurship initiatives through clinical education. Reiss will teach alongside Celia Bigoness, Founding Director of the Blassberg-Rice Center and the Entrepreneurship Clinic. With Bigoness in Ithaca and Reiss in New York City, the Blassberg-Rice Center will provide pro bono legal services to entrepreneurs and small businesses across New York State.

“Cornell Law has a distinguished record of clinical service to the community and we could not be more grateful to the Blassberg-Rice family for the support to extend our students’ experience and pro bono assistance to New York City,” noted Jens Ohlin, Allan R. Tessler Dean of Cornell Law School.

“We are thrilled to welcome David to our campus as he joins the new Blassberg-Rice Center for Entrepreneurship Law as well as Cornell Tech’s Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship degree program,” said Greg Morrisett, Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and Vice Provost for Cornell Tech. “David’s legal background, extensive research and academic experience, and New York City network will be a great inspiration to our students and will serve to enhance these unique offerings on our campus.”

Reiss joins Cornell from Brooklyn Law School, where he taught for over 20 years and founded the Community Development Clinic. In addition to his teaching, Reiss is active in research, scholarship and professional service. Reiss served as the Research Director for Brooklyn’s Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship, and he is a research affiliate at the NYU Furman Center, a collaboration between NYU Law School and the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. He serves on the New York State Bar Association’s Task Force on Emerging Digital Finance and Currency as an expert on the intersection of real estate and blockchain technology. Reiss is the author of the forthcoming book, Paying for the American Dream: How to Reform the Market for Mortgages (Oxford University Press).

“Training excellent 21st century lawyers requires law schools to keep up with technological innovation while also maintaining a focus on lawyering fundamentals: research, writing, and advocacy,” said Reiss. “Cornell Law School’s clinical program is keeping these two goals front and center as it educates tomorrow’s lawyers.”

“David is the perfect person to expand our clinical program to New York City,” said Bigoness. “He has a wealth of clinical teaching experience, and a strong professional network with government agencies, community organizations and businesses across the five boroughs. He’ll provide top-notch legal training to our students at the Cornell Tech campus, and will support the local community by empowering entrepreneurs and small businesses.”

Reiss earned his B.A. degree from Williams College in 1989, and his J.D., magna cum laude, from NYU Law School in 1996. After law school, Reiss spent five years as a corporate associate at pre-eminent firms – first at Morrison & Foerster, and then at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He then spent one year teaching at Seton Hall Law School, before joining the faculty of Brooklyn Law School in 2003.

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The lines between two of New York City’s defining industries – artificial intelligence/technology and design – are increasingly blurry. Many designers, who lead the process of centering a new product on user needs, are beginning to adapt their work to feed into the growing nexus of these markets, while also ensuring that their new tech-enabled designs are working to improve human wellbeing and social good.

Angela Chen M.S. ’22, who is an alumna of Cornell in Ithaca and Cornell Tech, pioneered and launched two AI healthcare design products during her time at Cornell Tech and brings to life the value of tech for good. Her AI designs, Calmspace and Argo Data Marketplace, recently won the 2024 A’ Design Award (Italy), 2024 MUSE Design Awards, 2024 New York Product Design Awards and London Design Awards for their ingenuity in helping address problems faced by those working in the healthcare industry.

Chen found her passion in the interdisciplinary study of design and technology in her undergraduate years in Ithaca. As she was graduating, she saw how the rapid development of AI could be integrated as a tool in her design work. She decided to apply to Cornell Tech to learn and refine the software and technical skills she needed and to help connect her to New York City’s tech industry.

“I wanted to enrich myself in becoming a UX designer, a more creative technologist, an entrepreneur, particularly by empowering myself in one of the largest tech communities in the world, working to advance New York City’s economic development,” Chen explained. “Cornell Tech helped me integrate my design values into technology and break into the tech industry, doing things that were more experience-driven and providing a bridge between my studies and the industry that allowed me to work on real world challenges.”

Chen developed Calmspace during the COVID-19 pandemic when she was a first year student at Cornell Tech. She noticed, in speaking with the faculty and students around her, that there was a high prevalence of anxiety relating to digital devices amongst young people. To help address this and promote better mental health, she designed the Calmspace app, which offered a wide range of wellness features for both individual self-care and group activities, including meditation and yoga, encouraging young people to utilize technology in a way that is beneficial to their wellness.

Argo Data Marketplace was a Cornell Tech Product Studio project that Chen developed in collaboration with The MITRE Corporation. Their work together was also in response to the pandemic, as more experts and decision makers began to need access to confidential health-related data. She and her team aimed to deliver a software solution that facilitated secure sharing among enterprises and institutions. Chen worked to design the user interfaces empowered by the cutting-edge blind learning technology (a machine learning tool), playing a pivotal role in creating Argo as the first platform that supported commercializing confidential datasets for healthcare experts and enterprise users that addressed the complex challenges inherent in data security and privacy.

Both of Chen’s projects are focused on responsibly addressing the social needs she recognized to improve the health and wellbeing of her community and society at large. In every aspect of her design, Chen emphasizes the importance of taking on projects that are created ethically with an eye toward the future.

“It is important that my mindset as a designer is cemented in building a bridge that makes technology more accessible and exploring complex real world applications,” Chen said. “In addition to considering the product needs and business value, it’s about ensuring that the design values of my projects are impactful, sustainable, and create user friendly experiences.”

Much of this mindset was influenced by Chen’s time in Cornell Tech’s Connective Media Program, which allowed her to take human-centered design courses on social perspective and technical classes focused on AI and machine learning simultaneously.

The Connective Media Program is one of Cornell Tech’s many cross-disciplinary programs that provides both students with both hard technical skills and fosters social and economic awareness. Other examples include their PiTech initiative aimed at building a commitment to responsible tech and public interest technology, as well as their MBA program which focuses on the impact of tech and AI innovations in transforming the business landscape.

Through Cornell Tech’s integrated approach to education, tech entrepreneurs and innovators like Chen are able to manifest their design ideas with highly complex engineering and technology while also ensuring that human interest on the user end is kept front and center to maximize public good.

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The Cornell Tech Council, the primary governance group for Cornell Tech and a subsidiary body of the Cornell University Board of Trustees, has announced the appointment of Howard Morgan Ph.D. ’68 as its new chairman and Adam Jacobs ’09 as its newest council member. Their appointments began on July 1, 2024.

The Cornell Tech Council comprises 15 business and technology leaders who oversee the mission and strategic goals of Cornell Tech, a graduate campus and research center of Cornell University founded in 2012. Located on Roosevelt Island in New York City, Cornell Tech develops new technologies through research, educates tech leaders, and builds new ventures through its business startup programs. The council advises the dean and senior leadership of Cornell Tech and its members serve as active champions and supporters.

Morgan succeeds David Siegel, who previously served as chairman since 2018, and who will continue to serve as a member of the council. “My term as Chair of the Cornell Tech Council has been immensely gratifying,” said Siegel. “Not only was I able to work with an exceptional group of leaders and civic-minded individuals, but I also had the opportunity to collaborate with them on ensuring the success of an institution that will continue to play an important role in Cornell and New York City’s tech ecosystem. I can’t think of a better successor than Howard, and I look forward to partnering with him as I continue to serve on the council”

Morgan, who has served on the Cornell Tech Council since 2021, co-founded First Round Capital in 2004, a firm that has been instrumental in funding early-stage technology startups. He retired in 2017 after leading a career that nurtured over 200 high-tech ventures. He currently chairs B Capital Group in New York, continuing his commitment to fostering innovative technology companies. An alumnus and longtime supporter of Cornell, Morgan has also served on the Cornell University Board of Trustees since 2019.

“Howard’s extensive academic, business, and tech ventures experiences, as well as his longtime support of Cornell Tech and leadership at Cornell University, make him the ideal person to lead the council as chairman at this critical time of growth for our campus,” said Greg Morrisett, Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and Vice Provost of Cornell Tech. “I look forward to working with Howard as we launch new initiatives that support our mission to educate tech leaders and contribute to the New York City tech economy. We are also thrilled to welcome Adam Jacobs, another esteemed Cornell alumnus, to the council this year. Adam’s focus on societal impact for businesses and entrepreneurial success make him a perfect fit, and we appreciate the influence and insight he brings to our campus.”

Morgan’s academic tenure includes professorships at the Wharton School and the Moore School at the University of Pennsylvania. He was pivotal in advancing user interface technology and optimizing computer networks. His work with ARPAnet in the 1970s laid the groundwork for modern internet technologies, influencing corporate and government agency communications. Beyond academia, Morgan’s leadership at Renaissance Technologies Corp. and his role in founding Idealab have underscored his influence in the tech industry. His contributions to public and

private boards, including Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Math for America and the New York Public Library, reflect his dedication to science, education, and service.

“I’m delighted to continue my service to Cornell by serving as the next Chairman of the Cornell Tech Council, especially, as we embark on this next phase of critical growth and expansion of the campus,” said Morgan. “I’m looking forward to building upon what David Siegel and other councilors have achieved.”

Adam Jacobs

New Cornell Tech councilor Adam Jacobs graduated from Cornell University in 2009 with a B.S. from the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. Today, as a founding partner of the San Diego-based Jacobs Scheriff Group, Jacobs works to enhance the value of businesses and organizations committed to societal impact. He is also a COO of a biotech startup and an investor in several startups focused on social change and a real estate entrepreneur. His philanthropic engagements in San Diego include volunteer leadership at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, La Jolla Playhouse, and the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce. Jacobs is actively involved with the San Diego Food Bank, San Diego Symphony, and the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, among other organizations.

His family’s legacy at Cornell includes his grandparents Irwin M. Jacobs ’54, BEE ’56, and the late Joan K. Jacobs ’54, who founded the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech with a transformational gift of $133 million in 2013. Irwin and Joan Jacobs also contr

ibuted to the education and aspirations of more than 500 Cornell University students through more than 1,300 awards over the past two decades.

“I am honored to join the Cornell Tech Council,” said Adam Jacobs. “As a proud alum of Cornell, I look forward to the opportunity to learn from the distinguished leadership, faculty, colleagues, and most importantly, students; contribute to the mission of creating lasting positive impact on our society; and continue my family’s connection and legacy with this esteemed institution.”

About Howard Morgan

Howard Morgan has more than 30 years of experience with over 200 high-tech entrepreneurial ventures. He is the Chairman of B Capital Group, New York, a venture capital fund that states that they back brash entrepreneurs building the next generation of groundbreaking technology companies. Dr. Morgan co-founded First Round Capital, a seed-stage venture capital firm, is president of the Arca Group, Inc., nurturing early-stage companies and taking them from seed stage through initial public offerings, and serves as a Director of Idealab, where he was a founding investor.

Previously, Dr. Morgan served as President of Renaissance Technologies Corp. in New York, where he supervised venture capital investments in high technology companies and was a founding board member and technical advisor of Franklin Electronic Publishers, one of the first manufacturers of personal computers. Dr. Morgan is a respected author and a frequent speaker at major industry conferences and has worked with many Fortune 100 companies and numerous government agencies.

Dr. Morgan also has an illustrious academic career; he was a professor at Cornell University and at the Wharton School and Moore School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has been a Visiting Professor at the California Institute of Technology and the Harvard Business School. Because of his early participation in the internet, he advised many corporate and government agencies on the uses of electronic and voice mail, implementing it throughout the Wharton School in the mid-1970s.

In addition, he has served on a number of public and private company boards and is a dedicated volunteer, leader and philanthropist. Dr. Morgan has been a member of the Cornell Tech Council since 2022, is a member of the Cornell Board of Trustees since 2019, and is an advisor to the Jacobs Institute Runway Program at Cornell Tech. He is also a Trustee of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Math for America, and the New York Public Library.

Dr. Morgan received a Ph.D in operations research from Cornell University and a B.S. in physics from City College of the City University of New York. Dr. Morgan and his wife, Eleanor Morgan, have made generous contributions to Cornell, including establishing the Howard and Eleanor Morgan Professorship at Cornell Tech and the Eleanor and Howard Morgan Professorship, both part of the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering.

About Adam Jacobs

Adam Jacobs is a founding partner of the San Diego-based Jacobs Scheriff Group, a business consulting company with a mission of enhancing the value of businesses and organizations that have a strong focus on societal impact, and the COO of a biotech startup. A graduate of Cornell University and three-year captain and starting catcher of the Big Red baseball team, Adam received a B.S. in applied economics and management from the Dyson School at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business in 2009. He is part of a multigenerational Cornell family, also including his grandparents Irwin M. Jacobs ’54, B.E.E. ’56, and the late Joan K. Jacobs ’54, who together founded the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech. The Jacobs Institute advances graduate tech education, academic entrepreneurship, and innovation, and spans the Cornell Tech campus in New York City and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.

In addition to his role with the Jacobs Scheriff Group, Adam is an investor in several startups focused on social change and a real estate entrepreneur. He is also highly involved in San Diego, enhancing and extending his family’s long tradition of engagement and philanthropy in the city. Adam serves as treasurer and executive board member of the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, as co chair of the La Jolla Playhouse’s Innovation Night, and as past chair of the board for the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce. He is also involved with the San Diego Food Bank, San Diego Symphony, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, Jewish Family Service, and other organizations. He actively supports initiatives addressing housing, homelessness, and food insecurity, and is a member of The Giving Pledge Next Gen cohort and a former member of Forward Global.

Adam and his wife Amy, a trustee of the Salk Institute, have established the Amy and Adam Jacobs Family Philanthropic Fund through the Jewish Community Foundation and have a young daughter and son.

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