Jacobs Center dedication honors alumna’s commitment to health

The dedication on Oct. 29 of the Cornell Joan Klein Jacobs Center for Precision Nutrition and Health represented decades of support for research into health and well-being by the Jacobs family.

Joined by family members of the late Joan Klein Jacobs '54 - including her husband, Irwin Jacobs '54, BEE '56, and some of their sons, grandchildren and their partners - President Michael I. Kotlikoff spoke about the family's impact on the university and the College of Human Ecology.

"Here at Human Ecology, the Jacobs impact is everywhere, through undergraduate scholarships, graduate fellowships and endowed professorships that have brought the college greater strength and excellence with each passing year," Kotlikoff said. "And what better way to remember someone who cared so deeply about others than through finding new ways to help people live better and healthier lives, for many years to come."

Since its founding in 2023, the Jacobs Center has been home to major advances in precision nutrition and health impacting all of Cornell's campuses - Ithaca, Cornell Tech and Weill Cornell Medicine - as well as other U.S. and global partners. The center is home to the Artificial Intelligence and Precision Nutrition Training Program, funded by the National Institutes of Health, which combines precision nutrition with advanced data science and analytical methods, and offers both predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships. This training has led to important discoveries, such as robot-assisted feeding and the use of machine learning to understand host-bacteria interactions.

The Jacobs Center has also developed cutting-edge technologies, such as AI-based chatbots and interactive dashboards to synthesize and share critical health information.For instance, the team has developed AI-based chatbots and interactive dashboards to synthesize and share critical health information. Technology for AnemiaPhone, a point-of-care diagnostics system, is being scaled up and transferred to the Indian government to quickly assess iron deficiency in public health programs to improve health of women and children.

The Jacobs Center honors the legacy of Joan Klein Jacobs, a College of Human Ecology alumna who died in 2024 at the age of 91, as a dietitian, an educator and a philanthropist. She studied nutrition at Cornell and went on to work at the nearby Groton Central Schools while her husband continued his studies. Later, when Irwin attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his doctoral degree and joined the faculty there, Joan worked at Boston Lying-In Hospital (now Brigham and Women's Hospital).

"It is indeed a very special occasion to hear about the accomplishments already," Irwin said at the dedication. "For a very young center to have so much happening is very impressive. Joan would have loved being here and hearing about it."

The Jacobs family has supported Cornell Engineering through the Jacobs Scholars and Fellows Programs, and they helped the university create the foundation for its partnership with the Technion at Cornell Tech in New York City through their gift in 2013 establishing the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute. More than a decade ago, they endowed a professorship and graduate fellowship in Human Ecology and established a challenge fund, which led to several professorships, including the Janet and Gordon Lankton Professorship currently held by Jacobs Center founding director Saurabh Mehta.

"Today we not only dedicate the Cornell Joan Klein Jacobs Center for Precision Nutrition and Health, we also honor a woman whose life and legacy incorporate so much of what this college is about - making the world a better place, where all can thrive, with trailblazing women leading the way," said Rachel Dunifon, the Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Dean of the College of Human Ecology.

Robin Roger is assistant dean for communications in the College of Human Ecology.