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A major gift from Trustee David Croll ’70 CE will help support research on energy and its environmental impacts—a strategic focus of the College of Engineering. Croll has pledged $5 million for the
“Both education and research will benefit from this wonderful gift from the Croll family,” said W. Kent Fuchs, the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering. “Their gift to Cornell’s sustainable energy systems initiative will enable us to recruit a senior faculty leader in this area of strategic importance.” The Croll Professor will work closely with the new Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future. In its infancy but growing quickly, the center will bring together researchers across campus to address issues related to energy, the environment, global warming, and poverty. Interim Associate Director Sidney Leibovich, who oversees both the center’s and the college’s focus on energy, is leading the search for the Croll Professor. “This is the first major investment allowing the college to implement its plans to focus on energy and the environment,” said Leibovich, the Samuel B. Eckert Professor of Mechanical Engineering. “Resources are required to attract new faculty and to equip their laboratories: the overall investment needed is large, but alumni are rising to the challenge and helping us both financially and with sound advice.” At least 20 percent of the college’s faculty members are working on some aspect of energy research, according to Leibovich, but they are often unaware of each other’s work. “We realized that the collective impact on this colossally large and complex problem could be made much greater by fostering communication and interaction, and that this would best be facilitated by a senior faculty member globally recognized in the area of energy-environment interaction,” he said. “We want Cornell to be the place people everywhere look to first to learn the state of the art on these questions.” —Lauren Gold, Cornell Chronicle and Robert Emro |
