A Conversation with Our Director

What does the future look like for the Cornell Lab? In this conversation, Lab director Ian Owens describes his vision to administrative board chair Linda Macaulay. As Ian sees it, we are in an urgent time for conservation, and the Lab has a key role to play as an accelerator. It’s the Lab’s role to step up, not step out, he says. It’s a time to be bold.

Linda Macaulay: What role do you see the Lab playing in 2025 and beyond?

Ian Owens: Think of a particle accelerator. The idea is to launch something into the world to have a major impact. But before you have that impact, you have to get it up to speed. We’re working with all kinds of people—students, partner organizations, local communities all over the world. They know what they want to do, but they need effective tools. We often have the right skills, and know how to get the right groups together, to create those tools. Whether that’s bioacoustics devices to survey wildlife in South America’s remote Pantanal region, or statistical models to determine how to restore North America’s grasslands. Ultimately, we want to accelerate our partners’ actions. That’s how the Lab can have maximum impact. 

Linda: Can you say more about the Lab’s role as an accelerator?

Ian: The Lab is in a fortunate position—thanks to our supporters and as part of a world-class university—to invest in both fundamental and applied science. This helps us build a strong pipeline of ideas, and a lot of long-term plays are coming to fruition just when they’re needed. Take eBird, which is now in its 23rd year and has just surpassed 2 billion observations contributed by birders from every country in the world. With eBird, this data can be used in really sophisticated and important ways. That’s how you get this year’s State of the Birds report, which shows trends for 246 bird species.

It’s one of the biggest uses of participatory science data ever, going from the average person on the street all the way to a continental scale. The fact that we can mobilize so many people in North America, get this data together, and inject it into decision-making processes is a complicated game, but it’s happening. 

And then there’s Merlin, which you’ll read about in these pages, and which now has more than 30 million downloads. This was a long-term investment for the Lab. Many people said it was impossible to develop an automated way to recognize bird calls. We’re now seeing the return on that by inspiring millions of people to think and care about birds on a daily basis and act on their behalf. 

Linda: eBird and Merlin are marvels. What’s an example of an earlier-stage initiative?

Ian: We’re integrating social science theory to advance bird-friendly actions. One is to make windows safer. As you know, the Lab has done a lot of work using radar to track birds flying across the U.S., showing just how many birds we lose each year to window collisions. This one feels very personal to me because we used to get a lot of bird strikes at the Lab. We had to solve this. 

The group that came together hung paracord outside all our windows, so now we have a safer building for birds. But we didn’t stop there. Our bird-friendly team is helping to lead a new national partnership called the Bird Collision Prevention Alliance. And in the past few months there’s been a mood change: A lot of people want to do something meaningful that they can do right now. Preventing window collisions is one thing that really rings true in people’s hearts. 

We’re still in the initial stages, but this program is connecting people with nature as well as activating them with respect to conservation. It gives them a tangible way to protect the birds they’ve come to love. 

The opportunity now is to do this at scale with partners around the world. 

Linda: How do you know that you’re on the right path?

Ian: In the past year, I had a near-death health experience. When you think you might die, it focuses your mind on what’s important.

I remember having great clarity, almost dream clarity. Everything got boiled down to what mattered: my family, and the things we’re doing at the Lab. The experience was very affirming. Mission-affirming. If anything, I have even more resolve now. We are going to achieve this. We are going to protect habitats and biodiversity. And we will help people across the world do this important work. 

It’s an urgent time. But urgent times are incredibly important. When a lot of change happens, people are prepared to think differently and new opportunities arise. 

I don’t think we should hide or freeze in the face of challenges. That’s not what the Lab was created to do. The Lab was created to excel, inspire people, and make a difference. Our role is to step up, not step out. And there’s an opportunity here to make a series of investments, to prepare for what comes next, to create firm foundations upon which people will build in the future. 

To do that, we will need to be bold. This is the time for us to invest.