Environmental photographer James Balog will open Cornell University's fall A.D. White Professors-at-Large series with a Sept. 17 lecture about his work documenting retreating glaciers.
"Chasing Ice on a Changing Planet" begins at 4:30 p.m. in the Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium in Goldwin Smith Hall and will also be livestreamed.
Balog started the Extreme Ice Survey in 2007, deploying time-lapse cameras to document changes to glaciers around the world. Cornell described the project as the largest survey of its kind.
The lecture also marks the opening of "Rivers of Ice: Three Centuries of Glacial Science," a Cornell University Library exhibition featuring Balog's images along with books, maps and other materials about glaciers and climate. The items come from the library's rare and manuscript collections.
Balog's earlier term as an A.D. White Professor-at-Large ended in spring 2026. His Sept. 16-17 campus visit begins a new part of the program that invites former professors-at-large back to Cornell.
Music and public programs
Soprano Dawn Upshaw will visit Oct. 19-23 and speak at a free public program, "An Evening with Dawn Upshaw," at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 22 in Barnes Hall. Cornell students will perform.
Upshaw has won five Grammy Awards and received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. She performs opera, art song and contemporary music and is a professor in the practice of music at Yale University.
November visitors
Investigative journalist and photographer Palagummi Sainath will visit Nov. 2-6. He founded the People's Archive of Rural India, a multimedia project focused on rural communities through journalism, oral history, photography, translation and archival work.
Molecular immunologist Ellen Rothenberg will visit Nov. 16-20. Her research examines how blood stem cells develop into T-cells and how genes, regulatory proteins and cellular signals guide immune development.
Landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom will visit Nov. 23-24. Her work uses parks, wetlands, rain gardens and water-retention systems to address flooding and improve public space in cities.
The A.D. White program appoints scholars and public figures across the sciences, humanities, social sciences and arts. Professors-at-large generally visit campus twice during six-year terms to work with students and faculty.
Cornell also named six professors-at-large for terms running from 2026 to 2032, including journalist Jeff Chang, musician and evolutionary biologist Greg Graffin, agricultural ecologist David Lobell, climate correspondent Somini Sengupta and environmental justice scholar Dorceta Taylor, along with Voraakhom.
Chang writes about the cultural and political development of hip-hop and previously spoke at the opening of Cornell's Hip Hop Collection. Graffin, a Cornell doctoral alumnus and co-founder of the band Bad Religion, works at the intersection of evolutionary biology, religion, identity and music.
Lobell studies the effects of climate change on agriculture and food security at Stanford University. Sengupta reports on climate, migration and political conflict for The New York Times, while Taylor's scholarship examines how race, class, gender and power shape environmental movements and environmental justice.
The visiting program is named for Cornell's first president. Past participants have included Toni Morrison, Barbara McClintock, Jane Goodall, John Cleese and Wynton Marsalis.
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