CSV21: Tech in Focus

Martha E. Pollack is the fourteenth president of Cornell University and professor of computer science, information science, and linguistics. She took office on April 17, 2017.

As the only land-grant university in the Ivy League, Cornell combines the highest standards of teaching and research with a public mission to discover, preserve, and disseminate knowledge. President Pollack is committed to building upon Cornell’s academic distinction and unique strengths, investing in the creativity and experience of our exceptional faculty while also enhancing our culture of “educational verve” through new, evidence-based approaches to teaching and learning. She sees Cornell’s foundational commitment to diversity and equity as central to our identity and success, and has engaged the entire university in the work of building an open, inclusive community whose members communicate effectively across differences. In her leadership of Cornell’s many units and campuses, President Pollack works to cultivate productive and meaningful synergies across disciplines and geographies, realizing a vision of “One Cornell” that capitalizes on the complementary strengths of our urban and rural identities.

An expert in artificial intelligence with a research focus on natural-language processing, automated planning, and the design of assistive technology for people with cognitive impairment, President Pollack earned a Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics at Dartmouth College and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. She was previously provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Michigan, where she was also a professor of computer science and information.

Lynden Archer joined the Cornell University faculty in 2000. He received the Ph.D. degree in chemical engineering from Stanford University in 1993 and a B.S. degree in chemical engineering (polymer science) from the University of Southern California in 1989. During the period 1993-94 he was a postdoctoral member of the technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories, and from 1994-1999 was a member of the chemical engineering faculty at Texas A&M University. During the period 2010-2016 he served as the Director of the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell, and in fall of 2017 was appointed Director of the Cornell Energy Systems Institute. Prof. Archer is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a Member of the National Academy of Engineering.

He was elected the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering on July 1, 2020.

His research contributions have been recognized with a variety of awards, including the National Science Foundation award for Special Creativity, the American Institute for Chemical Engineers Centennial Engineer & Nanoscale Science and Engineering Forum awards, and the Thompson-Reuters “World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” recognition in Materials Science. At Cornell, his contributions to teaching have been recognized with the James and Mary Tien’s award for excellence in teaching and thrice by Merrill Presidential Fellows as the most influential member of the Cornell University faculty.

Kavita Bala, computer scientist, entrepreneur, and professor, became the 17th provost of Cornell University on January 1, 2025.

Bala previously served as the inaugural dean of the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, for which she helped to secure the naming gift, after being named dean of the Faculty for Computing and Information Science in 2020. In her role as dean, Bala led the school through a time of rapid growth. She expanded the faculty by 30%, in a highly competitive market, to meet student demand and fulfill the school’s mission to benefit society. Under her leadership, Cornell Bowers CIS secured funding for a new 135,000-square-foot building, set to open in 2025, which will provide space for new labs, experiential student learning, and continued faculty growth.

As the lead dean of the Cornell AI Initiative, Bala has worked toward the creation of minors in AI and AI in Society (to launch in 2025), as well as the establishment of the NewYork Presbyterian–Cornell Cardiovascular AI Initiative and the Schmidt AI in Science postdoctoral program. Bala was also co-chair of a cross-campus task force convened to develop guidelines for generative AI usage in Cornell classes.

During her tenure as dean, Bala prioritized increased access and retention for women and underrepresented minorities. As of 2024, women made up 44% of the college’s majors – more than twice the national average – and 18% of the majors came from underrepresented groups. To expand access to summer research opportunities, Bala helped establish the Bowers CIS Undergraduate Research Experience (BURE) program. Through her leadership, Bowers CIS will become a degree-granting college in December 2025.

Prior to her dean appointment, Bala was chair of Cornell’s Department of Computer Science. As chair, Bala expanded the department’s presence in robotics and artificial intelligence, increased opportunities for undergraduate research and entrepreneurship, and expanded diversity efforts for students and faculty.

Bala’s research expertise is in computer graphics and computer vision, and she has made fundamental contributions to the fields, including in the rendering of computer-generated images, representing and modeling complex materials, and visual discovery in satellite images and large photo collections. Her current research in computer vision is in visual recognition and discovery in satellite images, and recognition of styles and attributes in images. Her early research focused on realistic, physically-based rendering and includes seminal work on scalable rendering, notably the development of approximate illumination algorithms, as well as deep contributions to modeling of textiles.

In addition to numerous teaching awards and publishing a graduate textbook, Bala has received a variety of awards and accolades including the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award (2020) and the IIT Bombay Distinguished Alumnus Award (2021). She is an Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellow (2019) and a Fellow of the SIGGRAPH Academy (2020).

Bala received a B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Silvia Ferrari is the John Brancaccio Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. Prior to that, she was Professor of Engineering and Computer Science at Duke University, and Founder and Director of the NSF Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) and Fellowship program on Wireless Intelligent Sensor Networks (WISeNet). Currently, Professor Ferrari is the Director of the Laboratory for Intelligent Systems and Controls (LISC) at Cornell University, and her principal research interests include robust adaptive control of aircraft, learning and approximate dynamic programming, and optimal control of mobile sensor networks. She received a B.S. degree from Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University. Professor Ferrari is a senior member of the IEEE and a member of ASME, SPIE, and AIAA. She is the recipient of the ONR young investigator award (2004), the NSF CAREER award (2005), and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2006).

Wendy Ju is an associate professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and in the information science field at Cornell University. She is also on the faculty at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Dr. Ju comes to Cornell Tech from the Center for Design Research at Stanford University, where she was Executive Director of Interaction Design Research, and from the California College of the Arts, where she was an Associate Professor of Interaction Design in the Design MFA program. Her work in the areas of human-robot interaction and automated vehicle interfaces highlights the ways that interactive devices can communicate and engage people without interrupting or intruding. Dr. Ju has innovated numerous methods for early-stage prototyping of automated systems to understand how people will respond to systems before the systems are built. She has a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford and a Master’s in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT. Her monograph on “The Design of Implicit Interactions” was published in 2015.

Karen Levy is an assistant professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University, and associate member of the faculty of Cornell Law School. She researches how law and technology interact to regulate social life, with particular focus on social and organizational aspects of surveillance. Much of Dr. Levy’s research analyzes the uses of monitoring for social control in various contexts, from long-haul trucking to intimate relationships. She is also interested in how data collection uniquely impacts, and is contested by, marginalized populations.

Dr. Levy is also a fellow at the Data and Society Research Institute in New York City. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University and a J.D. from Indiana University Maurer School of Law. Dr. Levy previously served as a law clerk in the United States Federal Courts.

One of the world’s leading experts on invasive species, David Lodge has extensive research experience in freshwater ecology, invasive species biology and bioeconomics, ecological risk analysis, global changes and biodiversity, and environmental ethics and policy.

Professor Lodge has a long history of collaborating with economists, historians, theologians, and philosophers, and has partnered with organizations to bring his scientific work to the public policy arena. He has testified before Congress on numerous occasions, served on national and international policy boards, and was a senior science adviser to the U.S. Department of State. From 2013 to 2016, Professor Lodge was a member of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Science Advisory Board. He has published 240 scientific papers and edited two books.

Professor Lodge’s Cornell appointment began in May 2016. He serves as the first Francis J. DiSalvo Director of the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, thanks to a gift from David ’60 and Patricia Atkinson in honor of the Center’s founding director.

Professor Lodge’s past research in rural Kenya and Zambia identified ways to improve human livelihoods and health while also providing energy and minimizing environmental impact. While at Notre Dame, he founded two centers and coordinated externally funded research projects totaling $13 million in his last decade there. Professor Lodge led a formal partnership with The Nature Conservancy and annually convened representatives from 30 state, provincial, and federal agencies from the United States and Canada to enhance the relevance of university research and hasten its application in natural resource management. At Cornell, Professor Lodge leads projects funded by NSF, EPA, DoD, and NOAA.

Professor Lodge’s academic home at Cornell is in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He has a joint appointment with the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Arts & Sciences.

Natalie Mahowald’s research investigates Earth system feedbacks affecting climate change, with a focus on the atmospheric transport of biogeochemically important aerosols, like desert dust, and their role in the carbon cycle.

A faculty fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, Professor Mahowald conducts research combining global transport and climate models with satellite and in situ observations. She was a lead author on the 2018 U.N. IPCC Special Report on Global Warming, an AAAS and AGU fellow, and a Guggenheim and AMS awardee. Professor Mahowald is also recognized as a Thomson ISI Highly Cited Researcher.

Greg Morrisett is the Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and Vice Provost of Cornell Tech and a faculty member in the Computer Science Department at Cornell University. As Dean, he has overall responsibility for the campus, including the academic quality and direction of the Cornell Tech degree programs and research. Working with both internal and external stakeholders, Dean Morrisett is developing approaches for working with companies, nonprofits, government agencies, and early-stage investors, as well as overseeing the faculty recruitment and entrepreneurial initiatives of the campus.

Prior to joining Cornell Tech, Dean Morrisett was Dean of Computing and Information Science (CIS) at Cornell University from 2015-2019. Previously, he held the Allen B. Cutting chair in Computer Science at Harvard University from 2004-2015, where he also served as Associate Dean for Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Before Harvard, Dean Morrisett spent eight years on the faculty of Cornell’s Computer Science Department.

Dean Morrisett’s research focuses on the application of programming language technology for building secure, reliable, and high-performance software systems. He received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Richmond and both his Master’s and Doctorate degrees from Carnegie Mellon University.

CEO and co-founder of Biotia, a startup working with hospitals and researchers to leverage high-complexity tests and artificial intelligence for rapid precision infectious disease discovery to guide patient treatment and improve health outcomes.

Armando Olivera ’72 is the retired CEO of Florida Power and Light (FPL), one of the largest investor-owned electric utilities in the United States. Mr. Olivera served in a variety of positions with FPL, including Vice President of Construction Services, Vice President of Distribution, and Senior Vice President of System Operations.

After his retirement from FPL in 2012, Mr. Olivera served as senior advisor at Britton Hill Partners, a private equity firm. In 2017, he joined Ridge-Lane LP, a venture development firm, where he is currently a venture partner in the sustainability practice.

Mr. Olivera has served on the boards of directors of Nicor Inc. and AGL Resources, and he is currently serving on the boards of Con Ed, Fluor Corp, and Lennar.

Mr. Olivera has served on Cornell’s Engineering Advisory Council, University Council, Board of Trustees, (Chair) Student Life Committee of the Board, Executive Committee of the Board, and Presidential Counselor. He currently serves on the Cornell Atkinson Advisor Council.

Julie Weed has written 100+ articles for the New York Times business section, and in 2015 began covering the legal marijuana industry for Forbes online. She has also written articles and cover stories for Inc. magazine, Entrepreneur magazine, Fast Company, The Seattle Times and others. Her first book, All I Really Need to Know in Business I Learned at Microsoft was a national best seller and published in fourteen languages. Julie graduated from Cornell University with a degree in economics and received her MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.