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Explore the projectsFeatured Speakers
Check out our extraordinary lineup of inspiring thought leaders.
Friday, February 6, 2026
Corey Ryan Earle ’07 specializes in the history of Cornell University and Tompkins County, serving as a resource for departments and organizations across campus while working in Alumni Affairs & Development. Since 2011, he has taught AMST 2001: The First American University on the history of Cornell. His research interests include the impact of history and traditions in building community and sense of belonging, as well as how higher education institutions communicate their story and engage with their past.
Symposium Opening Session: Celebrating the Legacy of Cornell Women in honor of the PCCW 35th Anniversary, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Tova Friedman GP ’27 is one of the youngest Holocaust survivors, a title she carries with both honor and sorrow. Born in Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Poland, Tova was one of only five children from her hometown to survive the atrocities of the Nazi regime, during which more than 1.5 million Jewish children were murdered.
At 83, Tova wrote her memoir, The Daughter of Auschwitz, which became a New York Times Best Seller and has been translated into more than 15 languages. Tova is dedicated to educating younger generations about the Holocaust, and alongside her grandson Aron Goodman, she co-founded TovaTok, a social media platform aimed at sharing Holocaust education and spreading her story to a global audience. With over half a million followers and more than 100 million views, TovaTok has become a vital resource for raising awareness of the Holocaust’s horrors and its lasting impact.
Tova’s just released a new book, The Girl Who Lived to Tell Her Story, targeted at young adults. The book features a 12-year-old Tova sharing her life story with a childhood friend, bringing her experiences to a new generation of readers.
Luncheon Session, 12:15 – 2:00 p.m.
Melissa Lewin ’00 is a former Managing Director and General Counsel at Paloma Partners Management Company. Prior to joining Paloma Partners, she spent over 13 years at Two Sigma serving as a Managing Director, Associate General Counsel and Managing Director in the Human Resources department. Preceding her time at Two Sigma, Melissa was a tax attorney at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP and at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. Melissa received a BA in Near Eastern Studies and Archaeology from Cornell University, a JD from Yale Law School, and an LLM in Taxation from NYU School of Law.
Melissa is a member of the Board of Directors for Read Ahead, a reading-based mentoring program for elementary students in New York City. Melissa serves on the Cornell A&S Advisory Council, is Chair of the President’s Council for Cornell Women, a current member of the Cornell University Council, as Team Lead of the Arts and Sciences Career Connections Committee, Law Team and a judge at Cornell Law School’s annual Transactional Lawyering Competition.
Symposium Opening Session: Celebrating the Legacy of Cornell Women in honor of the PCCW 35th Anniversary, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Lisa Munoz ’00 is a seasoned science writer, author of Women in Science Now: Stories and Strategies for Achieving Equity (Columbia University Press, 2023), and the founder and president of SciComm Services, a science communications consulting firm. Munoz develops, leads, and executes communication strategies for science groups, including sci-tech startups, scientific societies, academic research groups, international organizations, VC funds, and other institutions. She has more than 25 years of experience translating complex science into engaging and accessible stories for broad audiences.
Munoz started her career in radio and then print journalism, as a reporter and then managing editor of Geotimes, a geoscience magazine. She is a former Press Officer for the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, former Public Information Officer of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and former Chief of Staff and Communications Director for the OS Fund. She is Public Information Officer for the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. Munoz is working on her second book now, about modern-day scientific fieldwork.
Munoz has been hooked on science since she took a picture of a fly’s eye with a scanning electron microscope when she was 14 years old. She took that early passion for science to Cornell University, where she earned a B.S. in earth systems science engineering, with a specialty in science writing, class of 2000. Since then, she has interviewed and worked with hundreds of scientists, featuring their work in a variety of mediums across cognitive neuroscience and the behavioral sciences, biotechnology and the life sciences, climate and energy, and the geosciences.
Exploring Earth’s Ice and Ocean Worlds Beyond: Robotics at the Frontiers of Discovery, 2:15 – 3:15 p.m.
Dr. Britney Schmidt is a Professor of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences and Astronomy at Cornell University. Inspired by understanding our home planet and searching for life beyond Earth, she and her team develop robotic tools and instruments to study Earth’s poles and other planets. Exploring Earth’s ice shelves and glaciers and the oceans beneath them with their robot Icefin, Schmidt and her team help to capture the impacts of changing climate, while understanding analogs for Ocean Worlds like Jupiter’s moon Europa. Icefin is a robotic under ice vehicle built by a team of students and staff that can be deployed through narrow holes in the ice and swim out to map the ocean, ice and seafloor conditions below ice shelves and glaciers. The team has used Icefin to explore underneath the McMurdo, Ross, and Fimbul Ice Shelves and Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica and Wolstenholme Fjord, Greenland, working with NASA, NSF, Heising-Simons, Antarctica New Zealand, the British Antarctic Survey, and the Norwegian Polar Institute. Through the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC), Schmidt and colleagues from the US and UK deployed Icefin below Thwaites Glacier, showing for the first time how the grounding line of this rapidly changing system was melting.
In recognition of the work of the ITGC team, she and colleague Peter Davis were named to the 100 Most Influential People of 2023 by Time Magazine. She has also been recognized by the Explorer’s Club as an EC 50 member, highlighting innovative explorers, and was named the 2024 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists National Laureate in the physical sciences and engineering.
Schmidt received a B.S. in Physics from the University of Arizona, and PhD in Geophysics and Space Physics from UCLA. She has been involved with NASA spacecraft, including the Europa Clipper and Dawn missions and helped develop the Habitable Worlds Observatory, Europa Lander and Enceladus Orbilander concepts. Schmidt has conducted nine field seasons in Antarctica and four in the Arctic.
Exploring Earth’s Ice and Ocean Worlds Beyond: Robotics at the Frontiers of Discovery, 2:15 – 3:15 p.m.
Saturday, February 7, 2026
Christie Avgar is the Assistant Dean of Enrollment and Student Services at Cornell’s Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy. She is responsible for recruitment, admissions, enrollment, and student services.
Concurrent Session B – Synergies in Washington, DC: Cornell in Washington
Jennifer Nagashima ‘09, PhD ‘15 is a Research Biologist with Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) in the Center for Species Survival. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in animal science in 2009, and her doctorate in Zoology and Wildlife Conservation as the inaugural student of the Cornell-Smithsonian Joint Graduate Training Program in 2015. Her current research focuses on expanding understanding of basic reproductive biology to develop more biomimetic tools for assisted reproduction, including utilizing a microfluidic ‘artificial ovary’ to understand the impact of natural hormone stimulation on ovarian cell function and communication with developing eggs. In collaboration with Association of Zoos and Aquariums partners, Dr. Nagashima also aims to enhance gamete and gonadal tissue cryopreservation for the Red Wolf and other critically endangered species.
Concurrent Session 1 – Cornell Synergies in Washington: Conservation Research & Public Health
Dr. Sunita Sah’s research focuses on influence and advice. Specific topics include trust, advisor-advisee relationships, conflicts of interest, institutional corruption, transparency, disclosure, improving decisions, employee voice, burnout, influence, compliance, and defiance. In particular, Sah researches why we comply with bad advice and how disclosure policies can backfire. Using a multi-method approach of laboratory and field experiments as well as qualitative analysis and utilizing large real-world archival data sets, Sah incorporates organizational behavior, psychology, and behavioral economics theory to study different aspects of the advisor-advisee relationship and how difficult it is to speak up in professional and personal situations.
Sah’s work has been published in top academic journals in management, science, medicine, law, economics, and psychology, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA Internal Medicine, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Nature Communications, and Psychological Science. Her work has also been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Nature, BBC News, Financial Times, The Guardian, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Boston Globe, and National Public Radio, as well as BBC World Television, CNN, and national radio stations.
Breakfast Session: Fireside Chat, Featuring Professor Sunita Sah
David Silbey specializes in the industrialized total wars of the 20th century and the asymmetric responses (guerrilla warfare, insurgency, and terrorism) to those wars that evolved after 1945.
The Director of Teaching and Learning of the Cornell in Washington program, Professor Silbey has written multiple books, including The British Working Class and Enthusiasm for War, 1914-1916; A War of Empire and Frontier: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902; and The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China, 1900. His latest book, The Other Face of Battle: America’s Forgotten Wars and the Experience of Combat, looks at how America struggles in wars other than conventional. He is also the series editor for Cornell University Press’ Battlegrounds: Cornell Studies in Military History
Professor Silbey earned his undergraduate degree from Cornell and his Ph.D. from Duke University.
Concurrent Session B – Synergies in Washington, DC: Cornell in Washington
Dr. Alex Travis, PhD, VMD, professor; founding director, Cornell Public Health (CPH); and founding chair, Department of Public & Ecosystem Health (PEH). CPH is unique in being founded on pillars of sustainability, equity and engagement. PEH represents a novel approach in academia; its transdisciplinary faculty are organized around central challenges of Achieving Health Food Systems, Tackling Emerging Health Threats (e.g., climate change, emerging infectious diseases, rising inequity), and Conserving Biodiversity. Dr. Travis performs interdisciplinary research linking the health of people, animals, and the environment. His lab currently focuses on designing multipurpose prevention technologies that prevent both pregnancy and sexually-transmitted infections. His prior work led to both a diagnostic test used in human fertility and a nanobiotechnology platform for point-of-care diagnosis of brain injuries, cancer, and viral infections. His field work focuses on mitigating climate change and biodiversity loss while improving human health and wellbeing and helping communities become resilient to environmental shocks like climate change. He is Principal Investigator on Cornell’s NIH-funded national center to study the links between extreme weather and infectious disease. He also serves locally on Ithaca’s Sustainability and Climate Justice Commission. He did his undergraduate training at Princeton University, and his training as a veterinarian and research scientist at the University of Pennsylvania.
Concurrent Session 1 – Cornell Synergies in Washington: Conservation Research & Public Health
Michelle Vaeth ’98 Associate Vice President for Alumni Affairs, holds a B.S. in Biological Sciences with a concentration in Neurobiology & Animal Behavior. Upon graduating from Cornell, Michelle joined Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, OH, where she spent the next 18 years in roles of increasing responsibility across multiple P&G global business units, including leading brand communications, media relations, public relations, and crisis & issues management for multiple P&G $5+ billion global health care divisions. A winner of multiple professional awards, Michelle notably led P&G’s global effort Protecting Futures: Keeping Girls in School which received the first-ever Cannes PR Lion at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, and the United Nations Association of the USA’s Global Leadership Award..
Breakfast Session: Fireside Chat, Featuring Professor Sunita Sah
