August 1, 2002

Vol. 13, No. 4

The "8 1/2 x 11 News" is published each week by the Department of Public Relations. News of campus interest should be sent to
Ed Delaney, 412-268-1609 (ed47@andrew.cmu.edu) or Bruce Gerson, 412-268-1613 (bg02@andrew.cmu.edu). The newsletter is available on the official.cmu-news and cmu.misc.news bulletin boards.

Last year's editions are available online.

Previous editions are available online.

Mary Jo Dively, a partner at the law firm Reed Smith and a nationally recognized expert in information law, has been appointed vice president and general counsel at Carnegie Mellon, effective Sept. 1.

— "Mary Jo Dively is a great match for Carnegie Mellon University. As an acknowledged leader in the field of information law and its many aspects, her expertise will enable her to make significant contributions to the university," said President Jared Cohon.

— For the past nine years, the law firm of DeForest & Koscelnik (now DeForest Koscelnik & Yokitis) has provided the university's legal counsel. Dively's appointment as general counsel and vice president recognizes the complexity and growth of the university as a leader in education and research.

— "We also want to thank Walter Deforest and Jackie Koscelnik for their years of counsel and advice. They have been great advocates and advisors to us," Cohon said.

— While at Reed Smith, Dively led the establishment of the firm's new practice group in Technology, Media and Communications. She lectures frequently on legal issues affecting electronic commerce and information law and is an active member of the American Bar Association's committees addressing those issues.

— "I am honored to join an institution that has had a special importance for Western Pennsylvania since its founding, and has in recent years been acknowledged as one of the world's leading universities," Dively said.

— She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University School of Law. A Kansas native, Dively earned two undergraduate degrees in English and Journalism from the University of Kansas.

STUDENT TEAM BUILDING SOLAR-POWERED HOUSE FOR NATIONAL CONTEST

A team of Carnegie Mellon students has designed and is constructing a solar-powered house that they will demonstrate at the Solar Decathlon, Sept. 27 - Oct. 4, in Washington, D.C.

— The Solar Decathlon is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy to educate consumers about solar energy and energy-efficient products that are or will be available in the future. By involving student teams, the Department of Energy also hopes to "provide stimulus to the next generation of researchers, architects, engineers and builders as they prepare to begin their careers."

— Carnegie Mellon's team is one of 14 from universities around the nation. While in Washington, the Solar Decathlon participants will attempt to depend completely on the renewable energy collected from the sun.

— The house is being built on the Carnegie Mellon campus behind Donner Hall. After its trial run in Pittsburgh, the house will be disassembled and on Sept. 18 transported to Washington, where it will be rebuilt on the Mall.

— Carnegie Mellon's team consists of students from the School of Architecture, the School of Design and the Mechanical Engineering Department. Advisors include School of Architecture professors Thomas Spiegelhalter and Stephen Lee, and School of Design Professor Liza Wellman. About 20 students are participating in the actual construction of the project; more than 40 students have helped in the preparation.

— For more information, visit: www.arc.cmu.edu/carnegie_team/ and www.eren.doe.gov/solar_decathlon/home.html

"SUCCESSFUL PRACTICES IN INTERNATIONAL ENGINEERING EDUCATION"

Carnegie Mellon and nine other leading technical schools in Europe and the United States have released a survey that identifies key features of successful engineering education. Entitled "Successful Practices in International Engineering Education," the survey includes interviews with more than 1,000 professors, company managers and graduate engineers with five to 10 years of work experience.

— At Carnegie Mellon, the survey revealed that both female enrollment and retention of engineering students, in general, increased because of a more flexible engineering curriculum. The number of women enrolled at Carnegie Mellon for engineering rose to 22 percent in 2002. Because of Carnegie Mellonıs flexible engineering program, including a new introduction to engineering course, 90 percent of the students who entered engineering in 2001 remained in the program, compared with only 70 percent prior to 1990.

— The 296-page study showed that most European universities have stronger ties to industry sectors and promote a curriculum focused on an international educational experience. By contrast, U.S.-based universities place more emphasis on specialized courses, including cross-disciplinary and team-based projects.

— Further information: official.cmu-news, July 30 and www.cmu.edu/PR/press_releases/index.html

LITTLE BOY'S WISH FOR ROBOTIC PLAYMATE FULFILLED

When Colby Cole, a four-year-old boy with incurable cancer recently asked the Make a Wish Foundation for a robotic playmate, Dave Touretzky of the Computer Science Department and his students Ethan Tira-Thompson and Alok Ladsariya set to work to deliver a robotic dog called AIBO to him. They delivered it on July 19. Although AIBO doesn't pick up Colby's toys yet, he does have special programming to sing "Feel like a Woman" and "I'm in the Lord's Army." He dances, plays ball and does the Power Ranger theme song with all the moves.

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING & CHEMISTRY RECEIVE BAYER FOUNDATION GRANT

The Chemical Engineering and Chemistry departments have received a $583,000 grant from the Bayer Foundation for graduate fellowships over the next five years. These funds will be used to support two Ph.D. students doing interdisciplinary research in chemical engineering and chemistry, and one Ph.D. student doing research in process systems engineering. The fellowships also involve industrial internships.

RESEARCHERS INVITED TO PARTICIPATE IN PITT'S SCIENCE FESTIVAL

Online registration is now available for those interested in attending the University of Pittsburgh's upcoming research and science festival, "Science2002 - Synergy in Science," or participating in one of the poster sessions at the three-day event, Sept. 18 - 20 in Alumni Hall on the Pitt campus.

— Graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty from Pitt and Carnegie Mellon, as well as representatives from the event's industrial sponsors, are invited to share their research in poster sessions on these eight topics: working with large datasets; regenerative medicine; biodefense; biochemistry; genetics, genomics and proteomics; robots and cool gadgets; clinical and epidemiological research; and modeling. The deadline for submitting poster abstracts is Aug. 23. Notifications of acceptance will be issued by Aug. 30.

— The event is free and open to the public. The Science2002 Web site is www.science2002.pitt.edu

NEWS BRIEFS

— A new session of Weight Watchers at Work begins Aug. 13. The meetings will be at noon on Tuesdays and run for 12-14 weeks. For more information and to preregister, visit the Web at www.andrew.cmu.edu/~jm5h/ww-top.html If you have questions not answered there, contact Joyce Moore, 8-2838 or jm5h@andrew.

PERSONAL MENTION

— Granger Morgan, professor and head of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP), and Bill Strauss, Ph.D. candidate, EPP, have been awarded a $50,000 grant by the Federal Aviation Administration to characterize the in-flight radio frequency spectrum produced by passenger electronics on commercial aircraft.

— Sandra Slaughter, associate professor of information systems, Graduate School of Industrial Administration (GSIA), and Soon Ang of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, received the Best Conference Paper Award at the annual conference of the Association for Computing Machineryıs Special Interest Group on Computer Personnel for their paper " Internal Labor Market Strategies and Turnover of Information Technology Professionals." The conference took place in Kristiansand, Norway.

— GSIA finance professors Robert Dammon and Chester Spatt were honored as runners-up for the Barclays Global Investors/Michael Brennan Prize for their paper "Optimal Consumption and Investment with Capital Gains Taxes," published in 2001. The award, which recognizes important research in the field of finance, is given to the best paper published in the Review of Financial Studies.

— Laurie R. Weingart, associate professor of organizational behavior and theory at GSIA, Seungwoo Kwon (GSIA 2001) and Carsten K. W. DeDreu of the University of Amsterdam received the Outstanding Article Award at the 16th annual conference of the International Association for Conflict Management. Their paper, "Influence of Social Motives on Integrative Negotiations: A Meta-Analytic Review and Test of Two Theories," was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2000.

— Alan Fletcher's "An American Song," which was performed at the Bicentennial of the United States Military Academy at West Point last September in a competition to honor the Academy, has received the Paul Revere Award for Excellence in Musical Score Design from the American Music Center. It was featured at the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles in Lucerne, Switzerland. Fletcher is head of the School of Music.

-Back to the top-