Cornell Design & Tech Initiative

By Grace Stanley Six new faculty members will join Cornell Tech during the coming year, bringing expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, programming languages, and operations research at a pivotal moment for the future of computing. Their work tackles some of the field’s most pressing questions: How can AI systems become more trustworthy, adaptable, and efficient? How can they learn from data more responsibly and sustainably?

By Grace Stanley Ari Juels — the Weill Family Foundation and Joan and Sanford I. Weill Professor at Cornell Tech, the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, and the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute — has received the 2026 USENIX Security Test of Time Award for the paper “Stealing Machine Learning Models via Prediction APIs.” The award was announced Aug. 12 at the 35th USENIX Security Symposium in Baltimore.

By Grace Stanley Cornell Tech has appointed two longtime faculty leaders to new academic leadership roles, naming Mert Sabuncu as Associate Dean for Research and Huseyin Topaloglu as Associate Dean for Education. The newly created positions will help advance Cornell Tech’s strategic priorities in research, academic innovation, industry engagement, and student success as the campus continues to expand its impact. “Huseyin and Mert exemplify the extraordinary depth of talent within our faculty.

By Patricia Waldron Cornell researchers are investigating the potential for using artificial intelligence to give robots social intelligence – the ability to read facial cues, anticipate the needs of those around them and function within society.

By Sarah Marquart During nine years in the United States Marine Corps, Harold Reed was responsible for complex systems, high-stakes decisions, and the people behind them. Now, as a graduate from the 2026 class of the Johnson Cornell Tech MBA program, he is applying that experience to a new mission: building and leading within the technology sector.

By Louis DiPietro Artificial intelligence agents – also known as agentic AI – can now build and launch software based on a few prompts. But AI agents can produce incorrect, misleading, and even malicious code that hackers can exploit. Thanks to a gift from Amazon, a pair of computer scientists from the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science and Cornell Tech will lead the development of safety protocols to shore up AI agents and the code they produce.

By Grace Stanley Vitaly Shmatikov, professor of computer science at Cornell Tech and the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, has received a Test of Time Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) at the 47th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. The award was announced at the 2026 conference, a leading international forum for cybersecurity and digital privacy research, held in San Francisco, California, from May 18 to 21.

By Tom Fleischman, Cornell Chronicle Some people have a gift for creating beautiful works of art. Others appreciate art but do not have the talent to create it. Researchers at Cornell Tech and the Cornell Bowers College of Computing and Information Science have created an artificial intelligence framework, ShadowDraw, that can create “shadow art” – partial line drawings that are completed by the shadow cast from an object – by simply scanning the object.

By Grace Stanley On May 27, nearly 300 researchers, industry leaders, and nonprofit innovators gathered at Cornell Tech for the inaugural Frontiers of AI Summit, hosted by Cornell Tech and the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, to discuss the foundational advances shaping the future of artificial intelligence.

By Sarah Magnus-Sharpe At this year’s Cornell Commencement, three Cornell MBA students will be carrying more than their diplomas. They will also carry a transformative experience shaped by two distinct campuses, two cities and a shared commitment to innovation where business and technology intersect.