A Carnegie Mellon University student team named "Dr. Fishbowl" won first place in the Game Design: Windows/Xbox category of Microsoft's U.S. Imagine Cup — the world's premier student technology competition.

The Dr. Fishbowl team members include senior computer science major Steven Blessing, junior electrical and computer engineering major Wilson Pei, senior decision science and human-computer interaction major Christopher Reid, and junior computer science major Yueran Yuan.

"We worked hard and met a lot of great people along the way," said Reid. "We got the opportunity to exchange ideas and we also got a lot of great tools. Winning Imagine Cup itself was just icing on the cake."

Blessing appreciates the recognition.

"I was actually a fan of the fundamental concept behind our game and I really appreciated seeing that idea validated," Blessing said.

More than 113,000 students registered for the U.S. Imagine Cup, and 22 teams qualified for the final competition held April 21–23 at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Wash.

Microsoft awarded Dr. Fishbowl a $6,000 prize and will split a $10,000 donation among the School of Computer Science, Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences and College of Engineering.

The theme for this year's competition is "Imagine a world where technology helps to solve the world's toughest problems."

"We chose to tackle sustainable development, and we wanted to introduce the idea of 'Cradle-to-Cradle' product development in a way that doesn't beat the player over the head. Instead, it's simply a part of the way the game is played," explained Reid.

Dr. Fishbowl created Redux, a game that responds to the U.N. Millennium Development Goal regarding environmental sustainability. Redux challenges players to turn waste into profitable, usable products.

"The catch is that there is only ever the same amount of material in the game world, and when you make something, you also have to store or use the byproducts that come out of the production process. Having to be responsible for your byproducts complicates things a bit," Reid explained.

The Imagine Cup also offers a People's Choice Award. Fans can vote now through May 19 for Dr. Fishbowl one time per day via each of the following three methods:

• Visit Facebook and click "vote" on Dr. Fishbowl's icon
• Text "Fishbowl" to 45444
• Tweet @mstechstudent I am voting for #Fishbowl in #ICPeoplesChoice

Pictured above, from left to right: Steven Blessing; Christopher Reid; Mark Hindsbo, vice president of the Microsoft Developer and Platform Evangelism Group; Yueran Yuan; and Wilson Pei. Image courtesy of Microsoft.

At this time last year, Justin Edmund was a Carnegie Mellon University communication design major getting fitted for his cap and gown. Now he's the product designer for Pinterest, one of today's hottest new websites.

Edmund (A'11) was recruited by the virtual-pinboard/social networking startup fresh out of school. In under a year, he's played a central role in helping Pinterest become TechCrunch's best new startup and one of Time magazine's 50 best websites of 2011.

Amazing, especially considering he'd attended a New York high school of the arts as a vocal student. The multi-talented youngster had noticed his artist friends couldn't create their own websites. Simple — he learned to do it for them.

Edmund made the switch to communication design when he entered CMU, but maintained his interest in web design, adding computer science classes to his curriculum. He was headed toward design studio client work until one fateful recruiting meeting.

Lee Byron (A'08, CS'08), a Facebook designer, spoke on campus and a light bulb went off. Edmund was struck by the possibility of working at a tech company, of contributing to "the direction of the entire product." He interned at Facebook that summer and "loved it."

He realized that he'd become part of an exploding demand for designers in Silicon Valley, long a bastion for engineers and programmers.

"This is just the beginning," said Edmund. "There are so many startups out here and there aren't enough designers that are qualified to fill the positions. It's pretty crazy."

He also happened to meet Evan Sharp, co-founder of Pinterest, and discovered that the concept behind the image bookmarking site was similar to a project he'd tackled on his own.

After graduation, Sharp wasted no time in snagging Edmund as his product designer and eighth member of the fledgling company. Pinterest now has 36 employees.

And Edmund credits much to his time at CMU.

"The interdisciplinary capabilities are tremendous," he said. "I know people from other schools that didn't even have the option to take non-design classes, while I was required. It's something I've always felt is one of the strongest things about the program at CMU."

"All of my professors and other faculty members were really, really encouraging," he added. "I just got it burned in my head that if I wanted to do something, there was someone on campus that could help me do it."

"'You're at CMU — you can do anything that you want,' they told me. In a lot of ways that turned out to be true."

Caroline Kessler (DC'11) was 8,000 miles from Pittsburgh when she stumbled across a familiar read for sale in an Indian bookstore. While this particular version had been translated into Malayalam, The Last Lecture was instantly recognizable to the Carnegie Mellon University student.

"I couldn't even explain to the people I was with how thrilled I was to see Pausch's book so far from home. In that moment, I became fully aware of the extent of the global reach that Carnegie Mellon University has," Kessler said.

It's a memory the graduating senior will never forget. She's also likely not to forget being the student speaker at the university's 115th Commencement.

"This is a really wonderful time to highlight the amazing things that students do here, and to celebrate our achievements," she said. "There is no typical Carnegie Mellon student, but there is this common thread running through us all in that each of us is passionate about something specific. Students from CMU are incredibly motivated, and you can see that drive in them no matter where you meet them in the world."

One of those motivated students,  Jin Seop Kim (CS'12), was in Rwanda recently as part of a CMU program called Technology Consulting in the Global Community.

"I went to Rwanda to help as an IT consultant and it was there that I braided my hair for the first time," said Kim, recalling one of his favorite memories from CMU. "I was the star of the community. Everyone wanted to see the Asian dude with braided hair."

Turi Alcoser (E'12) came to CMU from Texas and had never seen snow before.

"During the fall, I was walking to class and right there by the clock it started to snow. I literally just stopped. I stuck my head up and tried catching a snowflake on my tongue. I was so fascinated I decided to just play in the snow for a while."

Kathryn Thomas (A'12) recalls her sophomore year as one of her most memorable. "In my sophomore year, I did the big three. I joined a sorority, was an understudy booth chair, and I pushed buggy — all in the span of a month!"

Moments of rest are rare for the hard-working students at CMU. So it's no surprise that sharing a quiet early morning hour before dawn with a classmate sticks well in one's mind.

"One year my good friend and I were running for positions in student government," said Kelsey Briggs (CS'12). "We did a lot of advertising. We worked through the night and finished after 4 a.m. in the Gates Center. We just sat down in some of those crazy chairs and talked about life, philosophy … it was just incredibly personal and to share that moment with such a good friend was really special."

Nearby, the hallway between Wean and Newell-Simon holds a unique memory for Stephanie Sneider (TPR'12).

"One day I was walking down the hallway between Wean and Newell-Simon. Everyone was acting normal. Then I did a double-take as I realized a full-fledged human-sized robot was walking the other way. Is that normal? At Carnegie Mellon it is."

What's your favorite CMU memory? Share it on Facebook or use #CMUgrad on Twitter.

And stay 'plaid to the bone' by becoming a Loyal Scot — if you aren't already. Be recognized for your dedication, passion and continued commitment to Carnegie Mellon University as part of this exclusive program for students and alumni.

One of Carnegie Mellon University's campus icons is the Fence — found in the center of the "Cut" and used as a billboard for student groups. 

CMU now has another fence that's getting some attention. This one spans a stretch of real estate along Oakland's Forbes Avenue and has recently been transformed into a timeline going back hundreds of thousands of years into Earth's past.

Sculpted by chemistry graduate student Longzhu Shen (MCS'12), the latest installation at CMU's ArtPark Lab uses environmentally-friendly lighting to illustrate the fluctuation of carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere over the past 800,000 years.

Shen hopes that it draws attention to the unprecedented rise in carbon dioxide levels since the Industrial Revolution and stimulates public discussion about sustainability.

"If you look back over 800,000 years, the carbon dioxide level fluctuated between 172 and 292 parts per million (ppm). It never passed 300ppm," Shen said. "But the current level is about 393ppm. That is really, really striking evidence for people to consider how our behavior can impact nature and what changes need to be made toward a sustainable future."

The art installation — What's CO2 Got To Do With It? — comprises six 33-feet-long solar-powered LED ropes that glow a brilliant blue at nighttime. Shen and his artwork faculty sponsor, CMU Research Professor of Chemistry Mark Bier, came up with the idea.

Shen downloaded the CO2 data gathered from ice cores in Antarctica and used the computer program Mathematica to scale the data to fit the fence. Each dip and climb in carbon dioxide concentration is as scientifically accurate as he could meticulously fasten the LED rope using nearly 500 tie wraps.

"What makes this work special is the integration of art and science. The aesthetics of art makes the scientific information fun to look at," said Shen, who studies under the direction of Teresa Heinz Professor of Green Chemistry Terry Collins.

Shen's work is just one example of CMU's longstanding commitment to the environment and a sustainable energy future.

"We wanted to get people to think about this topic through art," Bier said. "Almost every night when I walk by I see people stopping and looking at it."

Natasha Kholgade (CS'12) did just that on a warm evening in late April.

"I saw the timeline and then I looked all the way to the right and saw this big jump," said Kholgade. "Every day people buy new cars and they don't think about how it is affecting the atmosphere. I think this [artwork] is a good statement to provoke emotions from people."

Inside Carnegie Mellon University's McConomy Auditorium, a crowd was buzzing.

Both campus and community members had gathered to see the Project Olympus Show and Tell 15, a showcase highlighting cutting-edge campus research and the latest Olympus start-ups.

Project Olympus was founded in 2007 by Lenore Blum, Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science. Her goal: to help hopeful campus entrepreneurs explore the commercial potential of their innovations — to 'bridge the gap' between research and start-up.

"We're a member of the innovation ecosystem at Carnegie Mellon that goes by the name Greenlighting Startups," explained Blum in her opening remarks of the consortium of campus incubators designed to accelerate the commercialization of groundbreaking ideas.

"There are a number of key members and we're a very porous, very collaborative group," she added. "We have innovation going on all across campus and we're a proud participant."

Blum went on to note that in its five years, Olympus has worked with over 100 'probe projects' — as they term their very early stage startups — and helped in the the formation of 60 companies, two-thirds of these student-run.

Key research speakers were William 'Red' Whittaker, CMU alumnus and University Professor in the Robotics Institute, and Justine Cassell, the Charles M. Geschke Director of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute.

"Robotics is one of those things that Carnegie Mellon does well anywhere in the universe," Whittaker began, before he spoke of the progression in the field and his current work toward winning the Google Lunar X Prize.

"All I'm asking for is the moon," he quipped.

Cassell spoke of work toward a new model for education — an active, collaborative approach between computer and student.

"This kind of learning is going to give us the citizen of the 21st century," she noted.

Kit Needham, Olympus's senior business advisor, introduced four of the student winners of their Spark Grant Fund $3,000 micro-grants.

"I have the best job in the world," said Needham. "I get to work every day with scary-smart students."

The students pitched their new technologies to the crowd, ranging from improving college admissions consulting to streamlining car buying to managing diabetes.

The audience also heard from Amy Quispe, ScottyLabs director and co-founder of TartanHacks — a new campus hackathon aimed at encouraging women and first-timers — as well as three winners from the competition.

The evening closed with remarks from CMU alumnus, Josh Baer (CS'99), managing director of Capital Factory, an Austin, Texas incubator. He laid out his top-ten tips for starting a company before the group retired to a reception for conversation and networking.

As Needham said, "We're like a little economic development engine."

Carnegie Mellon University 's annual Meeting of the Minds Symposium is an opportunity for undergraduate students of all disciplines to showcase their original research accomplishments.

"When we hold our annual Meeting of the Minds, we're inviting many people from outside our immediate community into our living room, so they can see at a unique individual level what goes on inside these walls every single day," said Stephanie Wallach, assistant vice provost for undergraduate education at CMU. "We're here to celebrate our students' intellectual accomplishments and creativity."

One of those students is Alex de Ronde (BHA'13), whose self-published book, Flora Feministica, combines science, art and photography. His project is a unique example of the interdisciplinary nature of the research presented.

Inspired by an exhibit he saw at CMU's Hunt Institute, de Ronde set out to modernize the Victorian-era book Language of Flowers, which was a small field guide that helped women determine appropriate flowers to gift to friends and family.
 
Guided by Patricia Maurides, a CMU alumna and School of Art adjunct associate professor, de Ronde was able to combine his passions for science, art and the female form to create a visual representation of flower culture and the Victorian-era female.

"I never experimented with combining science and art and photography before, but I took Professor Maurides' color photography class and she encouraged me to explore this connection," de Ronde said. "She gave me a couple of books to read, which really got me interested in the field, and I ended up producing a lot of photography work that dealt with biology."

For this project, de Ronde had to develop his own techniques of both handcrafting the dresses and taking images of the flowers using a microscope in CMU's Mellon Institute.

Each dress represents a different flower commonly gifted in a bouquet during the time period. In addition, these hand-made dresses resemble a paper doll, a common children's toy in the 1800s.

"I felt as though pairing the dress with the biological imagery, which resembles the intricate textiles seen in Victorian fashion, gave the impression of an up-close look of the fabric of the dress," he explained.

De Ronde, who will receive a bachelor's of humanities and arts (BHA) in Communication Design and Decision Sciences, is preparing for a career in advertising.

"I love CMU. When I was looking at colleges I felt I had to sacrifice either my artistic or academic endeavors. CMU is the only top ranked university in the world that can offer a degree in humanities and the arts. Having the ability to take studio classes and academic classes is really amazing. It stimulates my research," said de Ronde.

"I am continually impressed by the originality of Alex's ideas and sincere interest in exploring biological visualization," Maurides said. "Alex recognizes that the scanning electron microscope is not only a tool for scientists, but an inspiring research tool for artists and designers. Alex's Flora Feministica imagery is stunning."

Sponsored by the Office of Undergraduate Research (URO), today's Meeting of the Minds Symposium hosts more than 450 students who will present their research through posters, oral presentations, DVDs, live performances, demonstrations and art installations.

The Meeting of the Minds Symposium also includes a competition segment that awards cash prizes provided by university organizations, departments or schools, as well as individuals and corporations. An example includes the Toyota Ideas for Good Scholars award, which was created to encourage learning and investigation in green ideas and technology to improve the lives of people worldwide.

Laptop orchestra: a collection of performers who play laptop computers as instruments.

Six universities — including Carnegie Mellon University — represented the United States and the United Kingdom in a first-of-its-kind performance on April 16, 2012.

The performance by this Federation of Laptop Orchestras (FLO) premiered as part of the Symposium on Laptop Ensembles and Orchestras (SLEO) held at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

FLO included live performances by laptop orchestras in Baton Rouge and at CMU, Stanford University, Texas A&M University, the University of Colorado, and Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK.

Using high quality audio and video links over the Internet to connect the six orchestras, from Baton Rouge, Roger Dannenberg, CMU associate research professor of computer science, music and art, conducted what the FLO players were playing — in real time.

Seventeen students played in the CMU laptop orchestra. Orchestras in each location were able to hear and respond to their counterparts' performances occurring simultaneously across thousands of miles.

Acoustic soloists at each location provided contrast to the electronic sounds generated by the laptops, which were played through external speaker systems for the live audiences.

Laptop computers, smartphones and tablets provide computer music researchers an opportunity to explore new ways of generating and manipulating musical sounds. This makes possible the use of a variety of input devices — from the QWERTY keyboard to the accelerometer of a smartphone — that can respond to different types of finger, hand and body movements.

"We've found it's a great way for students to become involved in electronic music," Dannenberg said. A number of orchestras and ensembles of laptop players have been organized, primarily at universities. The SLEO international symposium reflects the growing interest.

"Individual laptop players previously have collaborated over the Internet and groups of two or three orchestras or ensembles have attempted similar performances, but linking as many orchestras simultaneously as FLO is unprecedented," Dannenberg said.

This six-orchestra performance was made possible by student-developed software as part of Dannenberg's Computer Music Systems and Information Processing course in CMU's School of Computer Science.

"Coordinating an orchestra of laptops and trying to perform music over the Internet is a huge challenge — and doing both is insane," said Dannenberg.

"But everything came together and the performance was a great success," he continued. "The music had depth beyond any expectation, and the software written by my students worked perfectly to make the whole thing possible."

A doorknob that knows to lock or unlock based on how it is grasped. A smartphone that silences itself if the user holds a finger to her lips. A chair that adjusts room lighting.

They are among the many possible applications of Touché, a new sensing technique developed by a team at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon University.

Touché is a form of capacitive touch sensing, the same principle underlying the types of touchscreens used in most smartphones.

But instead of sensing electrical signals at a single frequency, like the typical touchscreen, Touché monitors capacitive signals across a broad range of frequencies.

This Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing (SFCS) makes it possible to not only detect a "touch event," but to recognize complex configurations of the hand or body that is doing the touching. An object thus could sense how it is being touched, or might sense the body configuration of the person doing the touching.

SFCS is robust and can enhance everyday objects by using just a single sensing electrode. Sometimes, as in the case of a doorknob or other conductive objects, the object itself can serve as a sensor and no modifications are required.

Even the human body or a body of water can be a sensor.

"Signal frequency sweeps have been used for decades in wireless communication, but as far as we know, nobody previously has attempted to apply this technique to touch interaction," said Ivan Poupyrev, senior research scientist at Disney Research, Pittsburgh.

"Yet, in our laboratory experiments, we were able to enhance a broad variety of objects with high-fidelity touch sensitivity. When combined with gesture recognition techniques, Touché demonstrated recognition rates approaching 100 percent.

That suggests it could immediately be used to create new and exciting ways for people to interact with objects and the world at large."

In addition to Poupyrev, the research team included Chris Harrison, a Ph.D. student in Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute, and Munehiko Sato, a Disney intern and a Ph.D. student in engineering at the University of Tokyo.

The researchers will present their findings May 7 at CHI 2012, the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in Austin, Texas, where it has been recognized with a prestigious Best Paper Award.

Disney Research, Pittsburgh is located on CMU's campus in the Robert Mehrabian Collaborative Innovation Center. This building also houses technology research and development offices for Apple and Intel as well as CMU's CREATE Lab, Cylab and CERT^® Coordination Center.

What do Star Wars and Carnegie Mellon University have in common?

Anthony Daniels — the actor who played C-3PO — one-half of the best-known droid team in a galaxy far, far away.

Daniels has been advising projects at CMU's Entertainment Technology Center since 2004 when CMU faculty met him at a robotics event in Pittsburgh.

"What a privilege," he said. "Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center is a very unusual and special place, a bright star that casts its radiance on entertainment around the planet."

He added, "The program is a brilliant joining of the theatrical with the technical, pushing the students to widen their skills beyond the computer keyboard. I am enthralled by what the students can do with their brainpower."

At the moment, Daniels is getting ready to host Star Wars — In Concert in Japan, after having toured Europe and America twice.

"Each night thousands of people filled the arena to thrill to George's [Lucas] story and John's [Williams] music. The energy, enthusiasm and love simply poured out towards us on stage," Daniels said. "I realized that the Star Wars saga is hugely important in the timeline of families around the world; a story that is shared now by three generations. I'm rather proud."

Daniels knows his gold-plated, wire-jointed character has been the inspiration for many students to study robotics. But what is it that has made C-3PO so endearing to so many fans?

"Humans have a love/hate relationship with machines. More and more we are relying on them. C-3PO is a non-threatening, human-cyborg interface. He expresses human frailties and doubts that we all have inside but that most grown-ups try to hide."

"Also," he said, "humans look for the human in the non-human — a dog with big brown eyes, a machine that expresses feelings. And poor C-3PO has no sense of humor. He's vulnerable, so we want to make sure he's okay."

Being inside the suit was a very different experience, though, he said, referring to bruises, scratches, cuts, frustrations and isolation.

"The excitement on set can quickly turn to tedium but the huge success of the saga made it all worthwhile. With hindsight."

Mk Haley, associate executive producer of CMU's ETC says Daniels continues to be "an invaluable part of our program, both advising projects here when he visits, as well as our new global location in Salford, England."

Drew Davidson, acting director of the ETC, praised Daniels' project critiques.

"Anthony shares a wealth of experience and expertise with our students," said Davidson. "He is always reminding student teams that the most important thing is the experience you want your guests to have."

The millions of "check-ins" generated by foursquare, the location-based social networking site, can be used to create a dynamic view of a city's workings and character, Carnegie Mellon University researchers say.

In contrast to static neighborhood boundaries and dated census figures, these "Livehoods" reflect the ever-changing patterns of city life.

Researchers from CMU's School of Computer Science (SCS) have developed an algorithm that takes the check-ins generated when foursquare members visit participating businesses or venues, and clusters them based on a combination of the location of the venues and the groups of people who most often visit them.

This information is then mapped to reveal a city's Livehoods.

Wired's blog says, Livehoods is "taking a big swing" at mining insights into "cultural habits and how societies flow."

And the buzz among Twitterers includes, "Brilliant research project — Using Foursquare to understand the 'true spirit' of a city's neighborhoods."

Maps for New York, San Francisco and Pittsburgh are available on the project website. People can help choose the next city to map by voting on the Livehoods Facebook page.

"Our goal is to understand how cities work through the lens of social media," said Justin Cranshaw, a PhD student in CMU's Institute for Software Research.

Part of the emerging field of urban computing, the Livehoods project takes advantage of the proliferation of smartphones and the location-based services they make possible, providing a powerful new tool that could be used to address a wide variety of urban problems and opportunities — such as city planning, transportation and real estate development.

Livehoods also could be useful for businesses developing marketing campaigns or for public health officials tracking the spread of disease.

The Livehoods project is led by Norman Sadeh, CMU professor and co-director of the Institute for Software Research's PhD program in Computation, Organizations and Society, and Jason Hong, associate professor in CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute.

The team will present its findings June 5 at the International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM) in Dublin, Ireland.