Elucida Oncology, a biotechnology company based on C Dots – ultra-small nanoparticles developed at Cornell that show promise in identifying and fighting cancer – recently secured $44 million in financing, in addition to $28 million raised in 2018. C Dots, originally called Cornell dots, were created more than 15 years ago in the lab of Uli Wiesner, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Wiesner has been working to put C Dots to use in the fight against cancer ever since.

In your blood are thousands of bits of loose DNA. These short strands of genetic material come from all over your body; old cells die, and new ones take their place. “The tissues in your body are constantly replenishing,” said Iwijn De Vlaminck, the Robert N. Noyce Assistant Professor in Life Science and Technology in the Nancy E. and Peter C. Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering.

Héctor D. Abruña, the Émile M. Chamot Professor of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been honored by the American Chemical Society (ACS) with the ACS National Award in Analytical Chemistry for his pioneering work in electrochemistry, including the development of fuel cell and battery materials. The ACS award is a tribute to Abruña’s long, influential career, said Brian Crane, the George W. and Grace L. Todd Professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. “This is a major award,” Crane said, “perhaps the highest honor in this country for Professor Abruña’s field of chemistry.”

January 2021:A Cornell collaboration led by KIC Executive Committee member Huili Grace Xing has found a way to grow a single crystalline layer of alpha-aluminum gallium oxide that has the widest energy bandgap to date – a discovery that clears the way for new semiconductors that will handle higher voltages, higher power densities and higher frequencies than previously seen. 

A Cornell collaboration has found a way to grow a single crystalline layer of alpha-aluminum gallium oxide that has the widest energy bandgap to date – a discovery that clears the way for new semiconductors that will handle higher voltages, higher power densities and higher frequencies than previously seen. The collaboration was led by co-senior authors Debdeep Jena and Huili Grace Xing, both professors in electrical and computer engineering and in materials science and engineering. The team also included David Muller, the Samuel B. Eckert Professor in Applied and Engineering Physics, who specializes in electron microscopy, and Darrell Schlom, the Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Industrial Chemistry, who grows oxide materials for electronic uses.

Associate Professor Greg Fuchs and Professor Jie Shan both received 2020 Research Excellence Awards from Cornell Engineering, given to faculty in recognition of research contributions and leadership.

December 2020: A collaboration led by KIC faculty members Iwijn de Vlaminck, Ilana Brito, and Warren Zipfel has developed an imaging tool to create intricate spatial maps of the locations and identities of hundreds of different microbial species, such as those that make up the gut microbiome. The tool will help scientists understand how complex communities of microorganisms interact with each other and also their environment. 

November 2020: A Cornell-led collaboration by KIC members Jie Shan and Kin Fai Mak has developed a way to stack two-dimensional semiconductors and trap electrons in a repeating pattern that forms a specific and long-hypothesized crystal.

Like restless children posing for a family portrait, electrons won’t hold still long enough to stay in any kind of fixed arrangement. Now, a Cornell-led collaboration has developed a way to stack two-dimensional semiconductors and trap electrons in a repeating pattern that forms a specific and long-hypothesized crystal.

August 2020: A KIC-member led collaboration has created the first microscopic robots that incorporate semiconductor components, allowing them to be controlled – and made to walk – with standard electronic signals. The research team was led by KIC co-director Paul McEuen, member Itai Cohen, and former KIC member Marc Miskin.