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June 15, 2006 Vol. 16, No. 47
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. 2004 Editions are available online. 2005 Editions are available online. Previous editions are available online.
SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER CELEBRATES ITS 20TH ANNIVERSARY The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) will celebrate its 20th anniversary at 2 p.m., Friday, June 16 at the Mellon Institute Auditorium. Leaders from industry, universities and government will observe and celebrate the PSC's anniversary and its move to new office space at 300 South Craig Street. Established in 1986, the PSC is supported by several federal agencies, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and private industry, and is a leading partner in the TeraGrid, the National Science Foundation's cyberinfrastructure program. —The program will include brief remarks from Edward Rendell, governor, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; Kathie Olsen, deputy director, chief operating officer, National Science Foundation; Aris Candris, senior vice-president, Nuclear Services, Westinghouse Electric Company; Jared L. Cohon, president, Carnegie Mellon University; and Mark A. Nordenberg, chancellor, University of Pittsburgh. —An open house and reception will follow at the PSC's new office at 300 South Craig Street, where PSC staff will demonstrate their research, including work on the PSC's newest system, Big Ben. HUMANOIDS PROVIDE COLOR COMMENTARY AT ROBOCUP Carnegie Mellon has taken two small bipedal robots named Ami and Sango to the RoboCup 2006 World Championship June 14 - 18 in Bremen, Germany, to provide color commentary for robot soccer matches--a first for humanoid robots. The walking robots are perfectly capable of kicking a ball, but in this new application they will instead be moving their heads and bodies to track the soccer ball with their electronic eyes. During the championships, they will provide commentary for matches between teams of four-legged robots that were developed by Sony Corporation. —The robot commentator team, CMCast, is one of three Carnegie Mellon teams at RoboCup this year. CMDragons'06, which took first place at this spring's RoboCup U.S. Open in Atlanta, will compete in the small robot league. CMAssist will participate in RoboCup@Home, a new league that involves robots working with humans to perform household chores. —Further information: http://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases06/060608_robocup.html COLLABORATIVE INNOVATION CENTER EARNS GOLD FOR BEING "GREEN" The Collaborative Innovation Center (CIC) has received a Gold Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certificate from the United States Green Building Council for its high-level of sustainability and efficiency. A formal presentation will be made at 3:30 p.m., Friday, June 16 at the CIC featuring Rebecca Flora of the Green Building Council and dggp Architecture, the Pittsburgh firm that designed the building using green design principles. Gary Gardner, the project's lead architect, is a Carnegie Mellon alumnus and Kevin Gannon of the firm is an adjunct professor in the School of Architecture. Some of the building's features include an energy-efficient, modular raised-floor system that allows twice as much fresh air to enter the building; removable floor panels that allow air diffusers, power, communications and other utility lines to be easily reconfigured to meet workspace needs; large exterior windows to maximize daylight; a storm water collection system to help control storm water runoff and recycle water for use within the building; and a recharging station for electric vehicles in the underground garage. —The CIC, completed in early 2005, was built to promote collaboration between education and the technology industries. Tenants include Intel Research Pittsburgh, Apple Computer, Carnegie Mellon CyLab and the CERT Coordination Center, part of the Software Engineering Institute. COMPUTERS TAUGHT TO PERCEIVE THREE DIMENSIONS IN 2-D IMAGES Researchers in the School of Computer Science have found a way to help computers understand the geometric context of outdoor scenes and thus better comprehend what they see. The discovery promises to revive an area of computer vision research all but abandoned two decades ago because it seemed insoluble. It may ultimately find application in vision systems used to guide robotic vehicles, monitor security cameras and archive photos. —Using machine learning techniques, Robotics Institute researchers Alexei Efros and Martial Hebert, along with graduate student Derek Hoiem, have taught computers how to spot the visual cues that differentiate between vertical surfaces and horizontal surfaces in photographs of outdoor scenes. They've even developed a program that allows the computer to automatically generate 3-D reconstructions of scenes based on a single image. In their latest work, to be presented at the IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, June 17-22 in New York City, the Carnegie Mellon researchers will show that having a sense of 3-D geometry helps computers identify objects, such as cars and pedestrians, in street scenes. Further information: http://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases06/060613_3d.html. NEW INDUCTEES TO ENTER ROBOT HALL OF FAME A robotic pet, an industrial robot and three robot stars of classic movies will be inducted into Carnegie Mellon's Robot Hall of Fame® in a June 21 ceremony at the Sheraton Station Square in Pittsburgh. The new inductees are: Maria, the art deco star of the 1927 silent film classic "Metropolis"; Gort, the metallic giant sent to Earth to establish peace in the 1951 sci-fi thriller "The Day the Earth Stood Still"; David, the boy-like android who bonded with his adoptive mother in Steven Spielberg's "Artificial Intelligence: AI"; Sony's AIBO, a dog-like entertainment robot that became a research and education workhorse; and the Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA), an industrial robot that helped make inexpensive consumer electronic devices commonplace. —Actor Anthony Daniels, who played the robot C-3PO in all six "Star Wars" films, returns as master of ceremonies and Daniel H. Wilson, author of "How to Survive a Robot Uprising," published in 2005, will be the keynote speaker. —This is the third induction for the hall of fame, founded in 2003 by James H. Morris, dean of Carnegie Mellon West, the university's four-year-old campus in Silicon Valley. It highlights the contributions of robots to society by honoring robots that are technological landmarks, as well as fictional robots that captured the public imagination and inspired roboticists to make dreams reality. Inductees are chosen by an international panel of researchers, educators and enthusiasts. Further information: www.robothalloffame.org. NEWS BRIEFS —The University Center swimming pool re-opened on June 12. Hours of operation are: Monday through Friday: 7 - 8:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. and 4:30 - 6:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday: 1 - 5 p.m. —The Staff and Faculty Fitness Program offers three summer sessions: June 12 - 29, July 10 - 27 and Aug. 7 - 31. The 45-minute classes meet four times a week in Whitfield Hall. Further information is available at http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/org/StaffFacultyFitness/ PERSONAL MENTION —Ira Rothstein, Carnegie Mellon professor of physics, and Walter Goldberger, assistant professor of physics at Yale University, recently received a second place award from the Gravity Research Foundation for their essay "Towers of Gravitational Theory." The foundation awards acknowledge exceptional research on gravity-related topics. Awards are given for places one through five and several honorable mention citations are given as well. In their essay, Rothstein and Goldberger describe a "tower of theories" of gravity to explain all the complicated interactions between two black holes spinning towards one another. Rothstein, together with graduate student Rafael Porto, has already used the theories described in the essay to generate the most accurate calculation to date for the theoretical interaction between spinning black holes. —Statistics Professor Larry Wasserman has won the 2006 DeGroot Prize for his textbook "All of Statistics." The prize is awarded every two years by the International Society for Bayesian Analysis for "textbooks or monographs concerned with fundamental issues of statistical inference, decision theory and/or statistical applications." Recipients are chosen "based on their novelty, thoroughness, timeliness and importance of their intellectual scope." CALENDAR HIGHLIGHTS
—Tuesday, June 20: The Robotics Institute invites you to the unveiling of a bronze statue in honor ot Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), the "Forgotten Scientist" whose discoveries include alternating current, radio and fluorescent lighting. 11:30 a.m, Newell-Simon Hall, 4th floor. Tesla expert Jeffrey Sellon, division manager for the Western Engineering & Research Corporation, will give a special presentation at noon in Newell-Simon 3305. Further information: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/copetas/www/public/nae/teslaPOSTER.pdf
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