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The SIPA/UN Habitat Project was founded in the spring of 1997 with the goal of establishing Columbia as an international clearinghouse on innovative approaches to urban issues. Representatives of the United Nations, Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, and the Barnard-Columbia Center for Urban Policy are making progress on a variety of fronts, including the creation of a training program for local officials from around the world and the development of an international database on issues related to urbanization. The Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC) was founded in 1994 with the goal of becoming the world's most comprehensive academic center devoted to the applied science of species conservation. In addition to maintaining partnerships with outside institutions—the Wildlife Conservation Society, the New York Botanical Garden, Wildlife Preservation Trust International, and the American Museum of Natural History—CERC coordinates research and teaching among the School of International and Public Affairs, the Business School, the Law School, the Health Sciences, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Barnard College, and the departments of anthropology, biology, mathematics, and earth and environmental sciences. The Columbia Genome Center brings together talented researchers from a range of departments, including computer science, genetics, biology, pathology, biochemistry, medicine, anthropology, engineering, and microbiology. Using such techniques as integrated genomic mapping and sequencing, they seek to achieve the rapid clinical application of new developments that result from gene discovery and gene therapy strategies. The Center for Biomedical Engineering is a joint undertaking between the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science and the College of Physicians and Surgeons. It was officially launched in 1995 to pursue advanced research and undergraduate and graduate instruction in four areas: biomechanics, including orthopaedic and cardiac biomechanics; quantitative physiology and tissue and cellular engineering; biomedical imaging; and genomic biotechnology. The Media Center for Art History was launched with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities to explore the application of imaging and information technologies for research, teaching, and publishing in art history. In one initiative now underway, faculty from the Department of Art History and Archaeology are working with teams of graduate students and specialists in the Center's state-of-the-art Digital Media Studio to explore innovative approaches to questions of interpretation, method, and theory that are poorly addressed by traditional print and transparency media. In addition, the Center maintains a broad network of contacts with other programs within the University as well as with outside organizations and institutions. The Building Technologies Group in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation is working to introduce the approaches of new media technology into architectural studies, civil engineering, and design. In addition to creating on-line studies of such buildings as the Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe, the Building Technologies Group is involved in developing augmented reality systems to improve methods for construction, inspection, and renovation. Participants in this initiative include the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science and Academic Computing and Information Systems. |
The Center for New Media was founded in 1994 at the Graduate School of Journalism to develop a digitally based research, teaching, and learning environment, in the process helping to define content, ethics, and professional standards for the "new media." It collaborates with a variety of partners in industry, as well as with the participants in Columbia's own New Media Technology Center—the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Business School, and Teachers College.