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September 9, 2004 Vol. 15, No. 10
The "8 1/2 x 11 News" is published each week by the University Advancement Division. News of campus interest should be sent to one of the following editors:
Ed Delaney, 412-268-1609
(ed47@andrew.cmu.edu) 2001 Editions are available online. 2002 Editions are available online. 2003 Editions are available online. Previous editions are available online.
TWO PROFESSORS HONORED TODAY AT THE WHITE HOUSE Two outstanding young Carnegie Mellon faculty members are at the White House today, Sept. 9, to receive the National Science Foundation's prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Receiving the awards from President George W. Bush are Yoky Matsuoka, the Anna McCandless Assistant Professor of Robotics and Mechanical Engineering, and Jennifer Lerner, the Estella Loomis McCandless Associate Professor of Psychology. —The PECASE program recognizes outstanding scientists and engineers who, early in their careers, show exceptional potential for leadership at the frontiers of knowledge. It is the highest national honor for researchers at the beginning of their careers. —Matsuoka is head of the Neurobotics Laboratory in the Robotics Institute. Her research is expected to help individuals with strokes, spinal cord injuries and traumatic brain injuries move naturally using their own neural signals again. —Lerner is a member of the Department of Social and Decision Sciences and head of the Emotion and Decision Laboratory, which examines the influence of emotion on human thought and action. —Further information: http://www.cmu.edu TEPPER SCHOOL SEEKS TO INCREASE NUMBER OF WOMEN IN BUSINESS WORLD The Tepper School of Business has joined forces with the Forté Foundation, an international consortium of top business schools, major corporations and nonprofit organizations dedicated to increasing the number of women leaders in the business world. This partnership will result in scholarships, networking and mentoring opportunities for women at the Tepper School, and increased efforts to recruit women to pursue an MBA . —The Forté Foundation seeks to decrease the gender imbalance in the corporate world where, according to the 2002 report "Catalyst Census of Women in Corporate Offices and Top Earners," women account for only 15.7 percent of officers in America's largest 500 companies. Most women, researchers say, perceive business careers as inflexible and unrewarding and the education too expensive. —Further information: http://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases04/040907_tepper.html RED TEAM WILL DEPLOY NEW AND OLD HUMMERS IN 2005 GRAND CHALLENGE The Red Team is developing two robots to compete in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge (Oct. 8, 2005), in which the first autonomous vehicle to cross the Mojave Desert without human assistance will win a prize of $2 million. AM General, producer of world-renowned HUMMERs, has donated two H1s to Carnegie Mellon as the foundation for the Red Team's new robot team. The first of these, "H1ghlander," arrived on campus Wednesday, Sept. 8. —The HUMMER H1 is a civilian version of AM General's original military vehicle, the HMMWV (pronounced Humvee). The H1 contains features like traction control, automated braking and electronic engine control that weren't available on Sandstorm, the Red Team's 1986 HMMWV that led the field for 7.4 miles in the 2004 race, setting records for speed and distance before becoming disabled on a rocky berm in the mountains. Drive-by-wire technology will be embedded in H1ghlander and the team will outfit the vehicle with breakthrough technology to push the limits of machine autonomy and driverless racing performance. —The Red Team and Sandstorm, one of 13 robotic vehicles that attempted to complete the 142-mile course from Barstow, Calif., to Primm, Nev., will be featured in a documentary about the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge at 10 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 14, on the History Channel. —Further information: http://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases04/040908_hummer.html and http://redteamracing.org NEWS BRIEFS —President Cohon will host an open student office hour at 5 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 14. Students interested in meeting with Dr. Cohon should contact Dean of Student Affairs Michael Murphy via email at mm1v@andrew.cmu.edu —Buggy practices begin Sept. 25 in preparation for the Spring Carnival Sweepstakes Races. Practices are from 6 to 9 a.m. on weekends throughout the fall semester. Tech Street, Frew Street and Schenley Drive will close at 6 a.m. each weekend morning and reopen at 9 a.m. Further information: official.cmu-news, Sept. 7. PERSONAL MENTION —Alex Hills, Distinguished Service Professor of Engineering and Public Policy and Electrical and Computer Engineering, will spend six months in Valdivia, Chile, as visiting professor at La Universidad Austral de Chile. He will assist the university's Insituto de Informatica with curriculum development and the improvement of the campus computing facilities. He and his wife, Meg, will leave for Chile in early October and return to the U.S. in early April . —Judith Schachter, director of the Center for the Arts in Society and professor of anthropology, history and art, has been named to the advisory panel for the Humanities-and-the-Arts Initiative Project Grant Review, a grant-making partnership between the Pennsylvania Humanities Council and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. The initiative supports public programs combining the arts and humanities sponsored by arts groups and other non-profit organizations. —The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has added Denise Troll Covey, Carnegie Mellon's principal librarian for special projects, to its Standards Development Committee (SDC). The SDC has overall responsibility for identifying new topics for standardization, evaluating proposals for new standards and guidelines, and monitoring the need to revise approved NISO standards and guidelines. Covey manages the libraries' performance measures and keeps abreast of technological developments, their social implications, and the laws, policies, practices, and standards relevant to digital libraries. —A paper, entitled "System-Oriented Dispersion Models of General-Shaped Electrophoresis Microchannels," by mechanical engineering doctoral student Yi Wang and assistant professor Qiao Lin, in collaboration with Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Associate Research Professor Tamal Mukherjee, was recently featured as a "hot article" in "Lab on a Chip," a journal published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. The journal's hot articles have been rated as "very significant" to the field of integrated biological and chemical microsystems. An abstract and full text are at http://www.rsc.org/is/journals/current/loc/loc_hot.htm —Sonya Johnson, a second-year graduate student in ECE, has won a competitive 2004 U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Fellowship that covers her tuition and her stipend. Johnson's work focuses on security-related research that centers around the objectives of the DHS, including topics such as benchmarking the survivability of various secure systems, and using the information gained in order to develop a new breed of proactively survivable distributed infrastructures. Her advisor is Priya Narasimhan, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science. Narasimhan has been invited to serve a five-year term on the Association of Computing Machinery's (ACM) Doctoral Dissertation Subcommittee. The Doctoral Dissertation Award is presented annually by the ACM to the authors of the best doctoral dissertations in the fields of computer science and engineering. CALENDAR HIGHLIGHTS —Sunday, Sept. 12: The Andres Cardenes and Ian Hobson duo (violin and piano) present the opening program in the Music in a Great Space series at 4 p.m. at the Shadyside Presbyterian Church. Tickets can be purchased at the door; students attend free of charge. —Monday, Sept. 13: Graduate Support Programs invite all graduate students and faculty to "Professional Development Seminar #1," 1 p.m., Rangos 3. The subject is "The Professional Communication Styles, Personality Inventories, Keeping 'Who You Are' in the Equation." Speakers: Kevin Collins, career consultant, and Lola Komisin, organizational effectiveness consultant, Learning and Development. Lunch will be served. Register at http://gposerver.as.cmu.edu/registration/multiregis.html
—Monday, Sept. 13: University Lecture Series. "Becoming a Star at Work," David O. Binder, principal consultant, Avid Learner, Inc. 4:30 p.m., Adamson Wing, Baker Hall 126A. This session will explore the groundbreaking research by Robert Kelley on what separates star performers from average performers. Learn the nine breakthrough strategies that stars use to enhance their personal productivity.
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