Things to Do, March 24-31, 2017

Make an impact

The Cornell Business Impact Symposium will take place March 25 from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. in Klarman Hall and Goldwin Smith Hall, with student leaders and professionals from across the northeast. It is open to the public. Registration is $10/$20 for students, $30 for professionals.

Following registration in the Klarman atrium, Gina Tesla, MBA ’04, director of corporate citizenship for IBM, will give a keynote address at 9:15 a.m. in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium.

The regional event is focused on the positive impact of the private sector on social and environmental challenges. Panel sessions, workshops and guest speakers will explore how business can address some of the world’s most pressing problems to create a more sustainable economy, with compelling stories on trends and innovative solutions from organizations leveraging business to create a better world. Participants will be able to find inspiration, network and learn about career opportunities.

The symposium is hosted by the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise, in partnership with the SGE Club, Sustainable Enterprise Association, Social Business Consulting and Net Impact.

Music of the senses

New York City-based guest ensemble Innuan will visit campus for a performance residency March 25-26.

With a mission of bringing live music into galleries and museums for a fully immersive experience of the arts, the five-piece ensemble will perform sonatas and piano quintets March 25 at 3 p.m. at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. The program, “Imprinting Moments,” features works by Eugène Ysaÿe, Clara Iannotta, Stefano Gervasoni, Beat Furrer and Antonín Dvořák.

Innuan’s second concert is March 26 at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall Auditorium, joining the Festival Chamber Orchestra conducted by Chris Younghoon Kim, director of orchestras. The program of orchestral works by Cornell graduate composers Corey Keating and Barry Sharp will be performed by an ensemble of 14 professional players.

Both concerts are free and open to the public and co-presented by the Department of Music.

Comedy and rap

A pair of weekend shows on campus will feature “The Daily Show” Correspondents Tour with Roy Wood Jr. and Adam Lowitt, March 25 in Bailey Hall; and rappers Gucci Mane with BIA, March 26 in Barton Hall. Both shows begin at 7 p.m. and tickets are available at cornellconcerts.com.

Reserved seating tickets for Wood and Lowitt are $8 and $10 for Cornell students; $12 and $14 for faculty, staff, alumni and the general public. The event is presented by the Cornell University Program Board.

General admission tickets for Gucci Mane and BIA are $22 advance, $30 at the door for Cornell students; $27 advance, $35 at the door for all others. The concert is presented by Cornell Concert Commission, the Multicultural Concert Funding Advisory Board and Dan Smalls Presents.

Surveying the polls

David M. Rothschild of Microsoft Research will give a public lecture, “Polling the 2020 Election,” March 27 at noon in 423 ILR Conference Center. The event is free, lunch will be provided and RSVPs are appreciated at ksb5@cornell.edu.

Rothschild will discuss innovations in the multi-billion dollar survey research field, including cutting-edge data collection and analytics built around surveys of non-representative samples, which are also being used in gaming and social media applications. He will provide some concrete examples of what went wrong in the 2016 election cycle and what will go right in 2020.

The event is part of the Public Opinion Speaker Series sponsored by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell, the world’s largest public opinion data archive.

Man vs. machine

Driven by technological advances, automation has been increasing for several decades, spurring debate about its potential effect on jobs. Will new technology spawn mass unemployment, as robots take jobs away from humans? Or will it create demand for new human jobs?

Computer scientist Moshe Y. Vardi will address the issue in “Humans, Machines, and Work: The Future is Now,” March 27 at 7:30 p.m. in 55 Olin Hall. Part of the Monday night lecture series The Emergence of Intelligent Machines, his talk is free and open to the public.

Vardi will present data demonstrating that concerns about automation are valid; that, in fact, technology has been hurting working Americans for the past 40 years. ”We are approaching a time when machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task,” he says. 

A computational engineering professor and director of the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology at Rice University, Vardi has published two books and more than 500 papers.

Upcoming speakers in the Computing and Information Science seminar series are Cornell faculty members Karen Levy, April 17; Ross Knepper, April 24; and Joe Halpern, May 1.

An Art That Nature Makes
Provided
An image from "An Art That Nature Makes," a 2016 documentary about photographer Rosamond Purcell and her fascination with nature and decay, screening March 30 at Cornell Cinema.

Art of decay

Cornell Cinema screens the Ithaca premiere of “An Art That Nature Makes,” March 30 at 7 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre. Directed by Molly Bernstein, the 2016 documentary details acclaimed photographer Rosamond Purcell’s fascination with the natural world, finding unexpected beauty in the discarded and decayed. The film offers insight into her unique ability to render ordinary and strange objects into breathtaking imagery that is sometimes disturbing. Filmmaker Errol Morris says her work celebrates “the majesty of the weird, the majesty of the unheralded.”

Purcell is tentatively scheduled to appear at the screening, her schedule permitting.

Cornell Cinema also shows the Oscar winning 2016 musical “La La Land,” March 24-26.

‘Into the Woods’

The Vet Players theater group at the College of Veterinary Medicine will stage the Stephen Sondheim musical “Into the Woods,” March 31-April 1 at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall Auditorium. Tickets are $7.

The Vet Players are the only theater group at a vet school in the country. The performances are supported by the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly Finance Committee and the CUCVM Alumni Association.

Media Contact

Daryl Lovell