The U.S. Department of Energy awarded a grant of $100,000 to a team of six students for their project “Pellets at Columbia” last month. Team members include Eray Baykal, SEAS ’25, Sebastian Gomez, SEAS ’24, Sophia Guizzo, SEAS ’24, Jacobo Guzowski, SEAS ’25, Hope Hersom, SEAS ’25, and Eliot James Felske, SEAS ’24.

The Breakthrough Prize Foundation announced on Sept. 14 that it selected two Columbia faculty members, Simon Brendle, a professor of mathematics, and Oliver Philcox, a junior fellow in the Simons Society of Fellows, as winners of the 2024 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics and the 2024 New Horizons in Physics Prize, respectively.

The Columbia Independent hosted its first debate of the semester on free speech at Roone Arledge Cinema on Wednesday in an event moderated by James Valentini, former Columbia College dean and the Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses professor of chemistry.

Columbia updated its regulations regarding the use of generative artificial intelligence in classrooms over the summer, calling the unauthorized use of AI tools “one of the most serious offenses a student can commit.”

Columbia College hosted its 2023 Class Day on Tuesday. The event was the last Columbia College Class Day for University President Lee Bollinger, and the first for Columbia College Dean Josef Sorett. Katori Hall, CC ’03, award-winning playwright and television producer, gave the keynote address.

When Vanessa Feng, CC ’23, traveled to Colombia in March 2020 to visit her friend’s family at the start of the pandemic, she did not expect the impact the trip would leave on her.

The University Senate approved the establishment of the Institute of Global Politics under the School of International and Public Affairs after a second vote during last Friday’s plenary meeting. The resolution was passed with 73 votes in favor, zero opposed, and two abstentions.

Columbia World Projects held an online panel open to the University community on Monday, called “Disaster Response and Recovery: Beirut, New York, and Beyond.” The event came after CWP released a report co-authored with the Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation, and Planning and the Beirut Urban Lab titled “Rebuilding Beirut: A Roadmap for an Equitable Post-disaster Response.” This report examined the global post-disaster response to the 2020 Port of Beirut explosion that killed more than 200 people.

The Knight First Amendment Institute hosted a panel of prominent media experts and journalists—including Pulitzer Prize-winner Ronan Farrow—on Wednesday, in a discussion on the threat of malicious surveillance technology on press freedom at the Journalism School.

The Historical Markers project, pioneered by the Columbia University and Slavery project, debuted its first public display last week at a Columbia University Irving Medical Center residence hall previously named after Samuel Bard—a physician who enslaved at least eight people.