B decay studies at CLEO

Weak decays of heavy flavored hadrons are sensitive probes of several facets of the Standard Model. In particular the experimental study of B-meson semileptonic decays is starting to pin down the quark mixing parameters in the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix. In addition, some features of the non-perturbative regime of the strong interaction are probed by these decays. New results from the CLEO experiment at the CESR e+e− collider, based on a data sample of up to 3.5 fb−1, provide crucial information on both of these aspects of heavy flavor phenomenology.