Cornell University has announced a $24 million gift from alumna K. Lisa Yang ('74) in support of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Center for Conservation Bioacoustics.

The largest gift in the history of the lab will endow the center's John W. Fitzpatrick Directorship, named in honor of the lab's longtime leader, who is stepping down this summer after twenty-six years. Beginning in the 1980s, the center's researchers built recorders that could capture whale and elephant communications and developed software that could analyze and visualize the captured data, expanding their work over the years to include birds, marine and terrestrial mammals, fish, frogs and toads, and insects. In addition to providing the center with much-needed funding flexibility, the gift also will support training in the tools and technology of acoustics, helping Cornell researchers develop partnerships with local scientists and communities and build a global network of people who can share acoustic analysis approaches and conservation strategies. In recognition of the gift, the center will be renamed the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics.

"Many people are realizing the value of acoustics in conservation, but it is often the first time that they have worked with the technology, and there isn't a local community that they can turn to for guidance," said Holger Klinck, who has directed the center since 2016. "In addition to sharing our own experience through workshops and seminars, we can help to connect people who are studying, say, rainforest conservation in central Africa with people who are working on similar challenges in Southeast Asia. This will be key to scaling up the use of acoustics in conservation."

Yang's previous gifts to Cornell include a $10 million commitment in 2015 to name the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Institute on Employment and Disability in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Yang, who serves on the lab's advisory board, said technological advances should be viewed as a framework that makes it possible for much larger ambitions to be achieved.

"I can't save the world alone," said Yang, "but I can focus the center's strategy on translational science. So this gift is about technology as a means to conserve biodiversity and to invest in and empower people living in areas of immense biodiversity, essentially the lungs of the earth."