Institute for Computational Sustainability

Thomas Dietterich, Deputy Director of the ICS, will join fellow organizers J. Zico Kolter and Andrew Ng in presenting a symposium titled "Machine Learning for Sustainability" on December 10th, 2009 at the Twenty-Third Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) in Vancouver, Canada. The mini-symposium will bring together leading researchers with both machine learning backgrounds and energy/sustainability backgrounds to address questions such as how machine learning can help address the world's sustainability problems.

Researchers at RIT and ASU will create curricula and coursework in sustainability ethics for science and engineering graduate students. Courses developed through the project which is funded by the US NSF will create a collaborative classroom setting that draws on science and engineering students’ predilection for experimental learning and teamwork to explore ethical approaches to problems in sustainability using a game-based, deliberative, and participatory setting.

On October 16, 2009 ICS postdoctoral fellow Theodoros (Theo) Damoulas will present an overview of Computational Sustainability to the University of Glasgow's Department of Computing Science. He will introduce and discuss some of the unique computational problems and characteristics that motivate this novel direction, the relationship with existing computing fields and the potential impact on ecology, society and economy.

On September 21, 2009 ICS Director Carla Gomes delivered an invited talk "Challenges for Constraint Reasoning and Optimization in Computational Sustainability" at the 15th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2009) in Lisbon, Portugal. The International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming is the annual conference on all aspects of computing with constraints, including: theory, algorithms, applications, environments, languages, models and systems.

On September 10, 2009 ICS Director Carla Gomes delivered the invited talk "Computational Sustainability: Computational Methods for a Sustainable Environment, Economy, and Society" at the 2009 NAE U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Sympsium in Irvine, CA. The U.S. Frontiers of Engineering is an annual three-day meeting that brings together 100 of the nation's outstanding young engineers from industry, academia, and government to discuss pioneering technical and leading-edge research in various engineering fields and industry sectors. Participation is by invitation following a competitive nomination and selection process. The program provides an opportunity for top-notch engineers, early in their careers, to learn about cutting-edge developments in fields other than their own, thereby facilitating collaborative work and the transfer of new approaches and techniques across fields. Through both formal sessions and informal discussions, the meetings have proven an effective mechanism for the establishment of cross-disciplinary and cross-sector contacts among this country's future engineering leaders.

ICS member and director of Conservation Science for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ken Rosenberg, is interviewed in the news segment, "Researchers look for ways to eliminate bird, bat deaths from wind turbines" on Vermont Public Radio. Rosenberg explains the concerns and uncertainties regarding buildout of windpower in the U.S. and its potential effects on birds

Communications of the ACM, the leading print and online publication for the computing and information technologyfields, reports on the 1st International Conference on Computational Sustainability. Reporter Karen Frankel notes that the conference enabled conservationists and environmental scientists to expand their knowledge of computational techniques applicable to the problems they want to solve, while raising awareness among computer scientists and mathematicians regarding the the way ecological problems often translate into interesting computational problems. Throughout the conference, environmental scientists encouraged computer scientists to collaborate with them, and steps were taken to achieve the goal of establishing and developing a research community around the field of computational sustainability.

Inside Higher Ed interviews ICS team member Steven Strogatz regarding his new book, "The Calculus of Frienship," released by Princeton University Press. For 30 years, starting in the spring of 1977, Steven Strogatz maintained an occasional correspondence with his high school calculus teacher, Don Joffray. During that time, both Strogatz and Joffray experienced great changes in their lives -- from professional successes to family tragedies -- yet their letters focused almost entirely on mathematics, rarely mentioning personal matters at all. In his book, Strogatz shares many of the letters he exchanged with his old teacher, and explains what led him finally to try to learn more about the man he’d hardly known for so many years.

ICS team member Chris Barrett will lead the new NSF-sponsored Food Systems and Poverty Reduction Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) program, administered through the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development. Open to U.S. citizens and permanent residents, the program is scheduled to begin in August 2010 with more than 20 graduate fields participating. The program will train a cadre of graduate students to use interdisciplinary approaches to tackle food systems and agricultural problems that contribute to extreme poverty. The curriculum will include a seminar series; field research in Kenya and Ethiopia to study both highland and dryland agricultural systems in collaboration with partners at Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia and the International Livestock Research Institute; and a three-semester core course sequence that takes interdisciplinary approaches to addressing such problems as water shortages, climate change and vulnerability to food systems, soil degradation, pests and diseases, and food supply chains. The NSF IGERT grant is funded through federal stimulus money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, intended to spur economic development by expanding educational opportunities, among other things.

ICS team member and associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences, Natalie Mahowald, joined professors of English, labor history, and management in a faculty panel and question- and-answer session with 3,500 incoming Cornell University freshmen and new transfer students. The event provided new students an opportunity to discuss their summer reading assignment, John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath." The book was chosen in the spring for Cornell's ninth annual New Student Reading Project, as "an extraordinarily rich account of major economic and social upheaval during a pivotal era in American history," Michele Moody-Adams, then-Cornell vice provost for undergraduate education, said about the selection. Mahowald brought a scientific perspective to the dust storms and flooding described in Steinbeck's work, relating it to current environmental concerns.

ICS team member and Cornell associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences, Natalie Mahowald, presented the talk, "Mineral Aerosol Interactions with Climate and Biogeochemistry on August 20, 2009 as part of the Laboratory for Atmospheres Monthly Lecture Series at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The main emphasis of the Laboratory for Atmospheres series is on an integrated approach to atmospheric hydrological processes and climate change focusing on precipitation, clouds, aerosol and their physical/chemical linkages. Mahowald's lecture discussed research results with fully coupled carbon cycle models including mineral aerosol perturbation within the CCSM3, and how dust perturbation impacts future climate and biogeochemistry.

An interview with ICS team member Steven Strogatz appears in the radio production of "Six Degrees of Separation" by John Guare, staring Alan Alda, Swoosie Kurtz, and Chuma Hunter-Gault. Steven Strogatz, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University, co-authored a groundbreaking paper in the journal “Nature” on what we popularly call the “Six Degrees” theory. This production is part of LA Theatre Works' radio theater series, and may be heard on a number of local radio stations across the country and online as streaming video. A full interview with Steven Strogatz is available as an online "web extra."

Killer robots have once again gone on the rampage in central London, causing widespread damage and loss of life. Electronic engineering experts Bart Selman, of Cornell University and the Institute for Computational Sustainability, and Alan Winfeld, of the University of the West of England, discuss the fear from experts that one day in the not-so-distant future, this headline could become a reality.

Inside Higher Ed featured an article titled Schools of Sustainability, Colleges of the Environment, exploring how sustainability related efforts are growing at a very fast pace amongly institutes of higher education throughout the U.S.

Thomas Dietterich, Deputy Director of ICS and professor at Oregon State University, gave an invited talk at the IJCAI-09 Conference in Pasadena, CA, titled Machine Learning in Ecosystem Informatics and Sustainability.

Eighty-eight of the nation's brightest young engineers, including ICS Director Carla Gomes, have been selected to take part in the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) 15th annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium. Engineers ages 30 to 45 who are performing exceptional engineering research and technical work in a variety of disciplines will come together for the 2-1/2-day event. The participants -- from industry, academia, and government -- were nominated by fellow engineers or organizations and chosen from approximately 240 applicants. The symposium will be held September 10-12 at the National Academies' Beckman Center at the University of California, Irvine, and will examine engineering tools for scientific discovery; engineering the health care delivery system; nano/micro photonics and new applications; and resilient and sustainable infrastructures.

Science and technology journalist Karen Frankel reports for Communications of the ACM on the opening day of the 1st International Conference on Computational Sustainability. Ms. Frankel interviews Carla Gomes, the Director of the Institute for Computational Sustainability, who describes the goals of the conference.

Over 200 researchers from universities, private laboratories and government agencies will converge on Cornell June 8-11, 2009 for the first conference on computational sustainability -- how to use computing to balance environmental, economic and societal needs for a sustainable future. Hosted by the Institute for Computational Sustainability, the conference will bring biologists, conservation workers, economists and others together with computer scientists to share goals and methods.

On May 27, 2009, ICS team member and Cornell professor Antonio Bento presented the seminar, "The Effects of Increased U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard to experts at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) National Center for Environmental Economics. sThe EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE) offers a centralized source of technical expertise to the Agency, as well as other federal agencies, Congress, universities, and other organizations. NCEE’s staff specializes in analyzing the economic and health impacts of environmental regulations and policies, and assists the EPA by informing important policy decisions with sound economics and other sciences. NCEE also contributes to and manages EPA's research on environmental economics to improve the methods and data available for policy analysis.

Cornell's Institute for the Social Sciences kicked off its new theme project, "Persistent Poverty and Upward Mobility," whose team will be led by ICS member Chris Barrett. The project brings together professors with expertise ranging from government and nutritional sciences to labor economics and city and regional planning. The researchers hypothesize that the prevalence, depth and persistence of poverty varies radically among groups that differ based on region, education, health, family status, race, ethnicity and gender. They believe that poverty and mobility experiences among different groups are analytically linked. In 2009-10, the Persistent Poverty team will launch individual and collaborative research and conduct weekly seminars, public lectures, conferences and workshops, and offer the course Comparative Perspectives in Poverty Reduction Policy. The goal is to integrate theory, empirical measurement, causal inference and policy analysis around these issues, cutting across a variety of regions around the globe.

ICS team members and Cornell faculty members John Guckenheimer, John Hopcroft, and Steve Strogatz have been named to the inaugural class of fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). The fellows program honors SIAM members recognized by their peers as distinguished contributors to the fields of applied mathematics and computational science. John Guckenheimer, professor of mathematics, was cited for contributions to theoretical and computational dynamical systems and mathematical neuroscience. John E. Hopcroft, the IBM Professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics in the Department of Computer Science, was cited for advances in the design and analysis of algorithms. Steve Strogatz, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics, was cited for investigations of small-world networks and coupled oscillators and for outstanding science communication.

On April 28, 2009 the National Academy of Sciences elected ICS team member and Cornell faculty member John Hopcroft as one of its 72 new members. The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to the furtherance of science and its use for the general welfare. It was established in 1863 by a congressional act of incorporation signed by Abraham Lincoln that calls on the Academy to act as an official adviser to the federal government, upon request, in any matter of science or technology.

Yahoo! announced it will partner with four universities (Cornell, UC-Berkeley, UMASS-Amherst, and Carnegie Mellon) to advance cloud computing research. These universities will receive access to the Yahoo! cloud computing cluster, also known as M45, which has approximately 4,000 processor-cores and 1.5 petabytes of disks. Previously, academic researchers have had limited access to Internet-scale supercomputers for conducting systems and applications research. At Cornell, the cloud computing facility will be used for a project undertaken by members of the Institute for Computational Sustainability titled "A Computational Platform Supporting Research on Computational Sustainability.

On March 19, 2009, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar released the first ever comprehensive report on bird populations in the United States, showing that nearly a third of the nation’s 800 bird species are endangered, threatened or in significant decline due to habitat loss, invasive species, and other threats. The report also highlights examples, including many species of waterfowl, where habitat restoration and conservation have reversed previous declines, offering hope that it is not too late to take action to save declining populations. ICS member Kenneth Rosenberg served as a member of the project's science team. The website, video, and printed report were produced for the partnership by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

On March 17, 2009, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) announced that ICS team member John Hopcroft is the 2008 winner of the Karl V. Karlstom Outstanding Educator Award for his vision and impact on computer science as a prolific author of field-defining texts on theory and algorithms. Hopcroft, professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics at Cornell University, also advised Ph.D. students who are now contributing greatly to the field. He has also been recognized for influential leadership in computer science research and education at the national and international level. The Karlstrom Award recognizes educators who advanced new teaching methodologies; effected new curriculum development in Computer Science and Engineering; or contributed to ACM’s educational mission.

ICS team member John Guckenheimer and Julio Ottino, co-chaired the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics' (SIAM) September 2008 workshop, Foundations for Complex Systems Research in the Physical Sciences and Engineering. This workshop led to a report on research challenges and opportunities in this area, which is now publicly available.

ICS member Mary Lou Zeeman is serving as an organizer of Math Awareness Month 2009, sponsored by the American Mathematical Society, the American Statistical Association, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. The theme of this year's Math Awareness Month is "Mathematics and Climate." The selection of this theme highlights that calculus, differential equations, numerical analysis, probability, and statistics are just some of the areas of mathematics used to understand the oceans, atmosphere, and polar ice caps, and the complex interactions among these vast systems. Mathematics Awareness Month is held each year in April, with the goal of increasing public understanding of and appreciation for mathematics. Each year a national theme is selected and theme materials are developed and distributed. Activities for Mathematics Awareness Month are generally organized by college and university departments, institutional public information offices, student groups, and related associations and interest groups. They have included a wide variety of workshops, competitions, exhibits, festivals, lectures, and symposia. This year Cornell will host a Mathematics and Climate Change panel event on Cornell's Ithaca, NY campus on April 8, 2009 featuring Mary Lou Zeeman as well as experts from the University of Vermont, Cornell University, and Ithaca College.

On November 21, 2008 the Institute for Computational Sustainability held a kick-off meeting on the Ithaca, NY campus of Cornell University for its NSF Expeditions in Computing grant. The meeting brought together approximately 60 participants and served as a key forum for bringing together researchers from various institutions and organizations participating in the Expedition (Bowdoin College, Howard University, Oregon State University, and the Conservation Fund). The meeting provided an opportunity to exchange ideas, discuss potential collaborations, and present brief overviews of challenge problems in sustainability and promising computational techniques to solve them. Short talks at this day-long meeting included topics such as: fire management, nonlinear dynamics, bird conservation, machine learning, biofuels, fishery management, dynamical systems, African pastoral systems, optimization, dynamical systems of exploited fish populations, ecological dynamical models, uncertainty in natural systems, air quality monitoring, and strategic conservation planning. Following break-out sessions and working group dinner meetings, the ICS Executive Committee met to discuss research and other activities the ICS will pursue.

On November 13, 2008, ICS team member and Cornell professor John Hopcroft presented an invited talk, "Research Directions Supporting the Information Age" to attendees at the Nobel Laureates Beijing Forum 2008. The event, held in Beijing, China, is part of the series "Dialogue between Nobel winners and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)."

Seed Magazine's Seed Salon pairs experts to hold discussions with one another regarding science and culture. Its November 2008 video interview paired ICS team member and mathematician Steven Strogatz with architect and designer Carlo Ratti. The two consider whether there are laws that govern urban behavior, how feedback loops behave in dynamic systems, and how they might shape the cities of the future.

ICS team member Steve Strogatz has created a 24 lecture series on DVD covering the science and math behind chaos theory. Strogatz, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell, and the Teaching Company, a company that offers courses taught by top-rated university faculty from around the country, collaborated to create the DVD series which is available through the Teaching Company's website. The course -- which includes more than two hours of animation, multiple in-studio demonstrations, more than 150 photos, diagrams and video clips -- is an introduction to the discoveries of Poincaré and Lorenz; the significance of fractals, iterated maps and Mandelbrot sets; and to the way chaos theory has influenced the evolution of modern mathematics and physics. It covers applications of chaos theory as they appear in medicine, philosophy, religion, pop culture and art.

The Cornell Chronicle reports on the National Science Foundation's (NSF) $10 million grant award to launch the Institute for Computational Sustainability, which will be based at Cornell. The grant is part of an NSF program designed to pursue "far-reaching research agendas that promise significant advances in the computing frontier and great benefit to society." The Institute will be directed by Carla Gomes, Cornell professor of Computing and Information Science, and will involve a number of Cornell faculty members and students along with scientists at Oregon State University, Howard University, Bowdoin College, the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Conservation Fund. The Institute's vision is that computing and information science can -- and should -- play a key role in increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the way we manage and allocate our natural resources.