Center for Natural Sciences

The Center for Natural Sciences offers 125,000 square feet of office, classroom, and laboratory space supporting biology, chemistry, environmental studies and sciences, and physics. The Center for Natural Sciences (CNS) was designed from the ground up with input from the science faculty. Their suggestions helped create a facility that sets the standard for science education and promotes cutting-edge scientific research. The four departments based in CNS are often awarded major private and government research grants. The building features over 60 labs and a greenhouse filled with plants indigenous to upstate New York, as well as tropical species. All students work in labs equipped with instruments normally found only at large research institutions. Physics students enjoy an interactive classroom filled with technology-rich workstations that allow lecture, laboratory, and discussion activities to happen simultaneously. Faculty-student collaboration is an Ithaca hallmark. Professors and their students often conduct field research together, even publishing papers jointly. For example, students have conducted field work on water balance in trees in the dry forest of Brazil and an ecotoxicological data survey in the Arctic.