Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future Symposium

Cornell is cultivating a “culture of sustainability” with faculty expertise in climate change, food safety, energy, environment, poverty and the green economy. So said Mike Hoffmann, professor of entomology and director of the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station, and other faculty members affiliated with the Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future (CCSF), addressing about 100 Cornell alumni and researchers at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., April 28.

All these issues can be described as “system problems for which sustainability is the appropriate response,” said Frank DiSalvo, the J.A. Newman Professor of Physical Science and director of the CCSF. Cornell leads the way, he said, with President David Skorton's commitment to carbon neutrality, the LEED Gold design of Weill Hall as well as the recent selection of Cornell by the U.S. Department of Energy as a site for one of the Energy Frontier Research Centers. He also pointed to Cornell's hydropower plant, Lake Source Cooling and Combined Heat and Power Plant projects as “living laboratories for Cornell research.”

Also on the panel were Jeff Tester, the Croll Professor of Sustainable Energy Systems and CCSF associate director for energy programs, who said he recently relocated from MIT because of Cornell's “commitment of the entire institution to sustainability”; and Anurag Agrawal, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and CCSF associate director for environment programs, who noted that his “dreams are coming true with Cornell fostering growth in my own areas of expertise and helping bridge to partnerships in vast areas of sustainability.”