NEWSPostdoc Becka Irwin has just accepted a position as a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in the Biomedical Engineering department at the University of Rochester, to begin July 2025. Congratulations Becka!
The project, led by SN-lab alumnus Seth Lieberman, developed a surgical technique to attenuate the spread of epileptic seizures in the brain by making precise incisions with femtosecond laser pulses around epileptic foci. Check out the Cornell Chronical article here!
Postdoc Matt Isaacson has just received a postdoctoral fellowship in Alzheimer's disease from the BrightFocus Foundation! The funded work will focus on imaging the neural mechanisms underlying the rescue of spatial learning and memory in AD model mice after treatment to restore cerebral blood flow. Congrats Matt!
Chris Schaffer is one of four Cornell faculty members awarded with the Kendall S. Carpenter Memorial Advising Award! The award honors professors and senior lecturers for sustained and distinguished contributions to undergraduate advising. Chris was praised for six years of service as a faculty-in-residence, and for making a "lasting impact” on undergraduates’ career trajectories by connecting them to conference and travel opportunities and offering guidance about next steps after graduation.
Congratulations to Chris Schaffer for winning an inaugural Sprout Award! The awarded project, proposed as a collaboration by Shaoyi Jiang and Chris Schaffer, aims to overcome the difficulty in targeting drugs to the brain due to the blood-brain barrier. Using retrovirus-like extracellular vesicles, the novel technique would be able to deliver new mRNA therapeutics into the brain simply using a traditional systemic injection.
BLOGCornell's new Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST) program, funded by the National Institutes of Health, was profiled in Science Careers. One track in Cornell's BEST program focuses on science policy and is led by Chris Schaffer.
A blog post on the AAAS Member Central website describes the goals of Chris Schaffer's new science policy course, BME 4440 Science Policy Bootcamp: From Concept to Conclusion. This course is being offered for the first time this Fall, with an enrollment of about 20 undergraduate and graduate student scientists.
There are too few scientists who understand how they might contribute to public policy. In an effort to address this problem, Prof. Chris Schaffer and Dr. Catharine Clark were recently awarded a faculty fellowship from the Cornell Center of Engaged Learning and Research. This award will be used to support a new and innovative course entitled “Science Policy Bootcamp", slated for implementation in the Biomedical Engineering Department in Fall 2013. In addition to academic and administrative support from the Center of Engaged Learning and Research, Faculty Fellows will receive a stipend of $2500.
To celebrate the month of March as National Women's History Month, the Scientista Foundation at Cornell University wanted to highlight some of our favorite women in STEM. Many times the achievements of women are overshadowed by those of their male counterparts or credited to the work of their male colleagues. We wanted to take the time to celebrate, a scientist a day, their achievements and their lasting contributions to not only the scientific world, but also the world we live in today. Today's post is our first faculty interview video featuring Scientista's current faculty advisor, Dr. Nozomi Nishimura.
Link to the Facebook Post
Chris will spend his sabbatical next year in Washington, DC working as a Congressional Science Policy Fellow. This program is organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the fellowship Chris received is jointly funded by the Optical Society of America and SPIE. Chris will be placed in the office of a representative or senator and will provide advice, from the perspective of a professional scientist, on science policy issues, education, health care, climate change, energy, and other pressing policy problems. An article in the Cornell Chronicle and a press release from the OSA each discuss Schaffer’s upcoming fellowship.