The Earth Institute’s new director will be Oxford geochemistry professor Alexander N. Halliday, University President Lee Bollinger announced in an email Thursday.

Dr. Roy and Diana Vagelos, P&S ’54 and BC ’55, have donated $250 million to the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons to establish a fund that will eliminate student loans for all medical students, University President Lee Bollinger announced in an email Tuesday.

Mailman School of Public Health professor and School of General Studies alumna Lisa Rosen-Metsch, GS ’90, will serve as the new dean of General Studies, according to an email sent by University President Lee Bollinger on Tuesday.

Ronald Breslow, the Samuel Latham Mitchell Professor of Chemistry and award-winning scientist, died Wednesday. He was 86.

When music department assistant professor Zosha Di Castri was considering whether to have a second child, she didn’t make her decision based on whether her family wanted another one—she based it on whether she could afford it on her salary.

In the English department in 2016, 18 professors—representing over a third of the tenured professors in the department—went on leave at once, leaving the department to offer almost a dozen fewer classes taught by senior faculty.

Three panelists discussed the effect that polarization has on the U.S. Constitution, the separation of powers, and American society at a presentation titled “Coming to Terms with a Polarized Society” Wednesday evening.

Columbia’s Data Science Institute has recently introduced a new director, Jeanette Wing, to lead the new Seed Funds Program and Faculty Recruitment Program, and to expand undergraduate research opportunities.

University President Lee Bollinger unveiled plans to spend $100 million over the next five years on recruiting and retaining a diverse faculty in an email sent to the community today.

Columbia professor Joachim Frank, along with two other academics, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing new methods that allow researchers to view the three-dimensional structure of biological molecules.