July 21, 2005

Vol. 16, No. 3

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)
  Bruce Gerson, 412-268-1613 (bg02@andrew.cmu.edu)
  Susan Cribbs, 412-268-7521 (cribbs@andrew.cmu.edu)

The newsletter is available on the official.cmu-news and cmu.misc.news bulletin boards.

2001 Editions are available online.

2002 Editions are available online.

2003 Editions are available online.

2004 Editions are available online.

Previous editions are available online.

The application process for 2005-06 parking permits began July 19 and continues through Monday, Aug. 8, at http://www.cmu.edu/ba/parking/. Due to anticipated demolition and construction related to the new Gates Center for Computer Science, parking allocations may be effective for only half the year. A second parking application process is planned for the spring semester.

—Parking Services is an auxiliary operation and must recover the majority of its costs through revenue from the sale of parking permits. As a result many campus lots have increased in price to cover expenses. For this year, 75 percent of campus lots have increased $5 or less per month, or $60 per year. Note that this year the Morewood parking lot will be treated as two separate parking areas. The "premier" Morewood lot ($80/month) includes the perimeter spaces that border Forbes Avenue and the Morewood Gardens building. All other spaces in the center of the lot will be $60 per month. This is an effort to continue to offer a low-priced parking option in Morewood.

—In an attempt to meet the increasing demand for on-campus parking, several new parking options are available and negotiations are under way to acquire additional parking in the near future within a mile or two of campus. Shuttles will be provided to and from campus to these parking locations.

—Further information: http://bizservweb.pc.cc.cmu.edu/parking/Default.aspx?tabid=52

NEW CENTER TO BUILD BETTER COMPUTER SECURITY DEFENSES

Carnegie Mellon researchers have received a four-year, $6.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create a new center to build better computer security defenses. The center, Security Through Interaction Modeling (STIM), will explore ways to improve computer defenses by incorporating such models into the defenses themselves. The STIM Center was one of two university research entities nationwide to be awarded funds from the NSF to focus on eliminating plagues of Internet viruses, and building better, more secure and accountable computer systems for the future.

—The research team includes Mike Reiter, professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science; Bruce Maggs, professor of computer science; Dena Haritos Tsamitis, director of the Information Networking Institute; Chenxi Wang, research scientist in electrical and computer engineering; and Jeannette Wing, head of the Computer Science Department.

PITTSBURGH SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER UNVEILS "BIG BEN"

The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) has unveiled its newest and most powerful system, the Cray XT3, the latest stage in the evolution of high-performance computing technology and a major boost for computational science in the United States.

—Acquired by a $9.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in September 2004, the new system, named "Big Ben" after Pittsburgh Steelers Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, comprises 2,090 processors with an overall peak performance of 10 trillion calculations per second. If every person on Earth, about 6.5 billion people, held a calculator and did one calculation per second, they would all together still be 1,500 times slower than Big Ben.

—Big Ben, whose name also refers to Ben Franklin, will serve as a leading-edge computing resource on the NSF TeraGrid. Built by NSF over the past four years, the TeraGrid is the world's largest, most comprehensive cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research. With the availability of Big Ben, the TeraGrid can conduct 50 trillion calculations per second.

—The PSC is a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh together with the Westinghouse Electric Company. It was established in 1986 and is supported by several Federal agencies, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and private industry.

PERSONAL MENTION

—Tim McNulty, special assistant to Provost Mark Kamlet since 2003 and director of economic development for Carnegie Mellon CyLab, has been named associate provost for strategic technology initiatives. Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, McNulty was executive deputy secretary and acting secretary of the Department of Community and Economic Development, and deputy chief of staff for technology initiatives for Pennsylvania governors Tom Ridge and Mark Schweiker.

—Dick Tucker, head of the Department of Modern Languages, and Rick Donato of the Department of Instruction and Learning at the University of Pittsburgh have received a two-year, $292,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to continue their research into how school-aged children learn cognate and non-cognate foreign languages, develop literacy skills, progress in proficiency across grade levels and make the transition from elementary school to middle school. Cognate languages are those, like Spanish and English, that share the same writing system, while non-cognate languages are those that have totally different writing systems, such as Japanese and English. Tucker is the Paul Mellon Professor of Applied Linguistics.

—Yunfeng Shi, a fourth-year doctoral student in economics and public policy at the Heinz School, has won a $3,000 summer research grant from the NET Institute (Networks, E-Commerce and Telecommunications). Shi is pursuing research on "Cell Phone Demand and Consumer Learning." Awardees will present their research at a conference at New York University in the fall. The NET Institute is a non-profit institution devoted to research on network industries, electronic commerce, telecommunications and the Internet.

—Economics and Psychology Professor George Loewenstein of the Department of Social and Decision Sciences has co-authored a study in which researchers found that people who have brain damage that impairs their emotional responses can, in certain situations, make better investment decisions than normal people. The paper was published in the June issue of Psychological Science and co-authored by faculty at Stanford University and the University of Iowa. This study is part of the emerging field of neuroeconomics, which investigates the mental and neural processes that drive economic decision-making. Based on previous studies, the researchers concluded that the emotionally impaired participants were less averse to risk and thus more willing to take gambles that had a high payoff.

—Stacey Lopez, senior planning analyst for University Planning, has been named director of the Department of Institutional Research and Analysis. Formerly a function of University Planning, the department will be a stand-alone entity under Lopez' leadership. The department develops, maintains and distributes information for use in academic and administrative decision-making; serves the university community as a depository and clearinghouse for institutional data; responds to internal and external requests for data and research; initiates and conducts studies; and provides consultation on institutional research-related activities within the university.

—Debbie Meyers, former director of Stewardship and Donor Relations at the University of Florida, will begin work Monday, July 25, as Carnegie Mellon's director of Donor Relations. She will oversee the donor relations and stewardship programs, as well as development events.

—Diana Marculescu, associate professor, electrical and computer engineering, has been elected chair of the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Design Automation. The society sponsors the design automation conference, the premier electronic design automation and silicon solution event.

—Ziv Bar-Joseph, an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department and the Center for Automated Learning and Discovery, has received a five-year, $840,000 National Science Foundation CAREER award for his proposal "Modelling Dynamic Systems in the Cell." Bar-Joseph will develop computational methods for the analysis of gene expression data and use a variety of computational techniques to combine different data sources. The educational component of his project will bolster the new joint Ph.D. program in computational biology between Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh.

CALENDAR HIGHLIGHTS

—Wednesday, July 27: Overview of Orientation 2005. If you want to learn more about the schedule of events for Orientation 2005 or have questions, please attend a meeting from 1 to 2 p.m. in the Peter Room, 2nd floor, University Center. For more information: http://www.studentaffairs.cmu.edu/first-year/orientation/2005.

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