Energetic Gift

Carnegie Mellon has received a $30 million gift from the Richard King Mellon Foundation to dramatically expand its strategic initiative to address energy research, education and innovation.

The gift - the largest private foundation grant in CMU's history - will propel the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation to coordinate university-wide activities with the overall goals of improving energy efficiency and developing new, clean, affordable and sustainable energy sources. Read more.

Related links: Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation | policymaker's guide

Oracle and Curriki Release Curriculum for Alice

The Oracle Academy, an educational initiative of Oracle, and Curriki, a nonprofit, global community for sharing educational resources, are working to make a curriculum for Carnegie Mellon University's Alice software widely available to secondary school teachers and students. Read more.

Related links: Oracle Academy | Curriki | Alice software

Phone Game

A silly telephone game that became a viral phenomenon in Pakistan has demonstrated some serious potential for teaching poorly educated people about automated voice services and provided a new tool for them to learn about jobs, say researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Pakistan's Lahore University of Management Sciences.

The game, called Polly, is simplicity itself: a caller records a message and Polly adds funny sound effects, such as changing a male's voice to a female voice (or vice versa), or making the caller sound like a drunk chipmunk. The caller can then forward the message to one or more friends, who in turn can forward it along or reply to it. Read more.

Related links: Polly | Language Technologies Institute | CHI 2013