October 29, 2009
Vol. 20, No. 17

In this issue:

• Calendar Highlights
• Pausch Footbridge To Be Dedicated During Homecoming Weekend
• Staff Council's Annual Food Drive Begins Next Week
• $1.6M Department of Energy Grant Supports Astrophysical Initiative
• Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic Concert Featured in City-Wide Holocaust Project
• News Briefs
• Personal Mention

Calendar Highlights

Picks of the Week

• Oct. 30-Nov. 1: Homecoming and Reunion Weekend 2009. A full schedule of events is available at http://www.cmu.edu/homecoming. For more on Homecoming, see the featured events and news item below.
• Wednesday, Nov. 4: Benefits Fair. 11 a.m.–4 p.m., Rangos Ballroom, UC. Open Enrollment for 2010 benefits runs Nov. 2-16, so stop by to speak with representatives from Human Resources, payroll and all of Carnegie Mellon's benefits carriers. The fair also features wellness screenings and several raffle drawings and giveaways. Visit http://www.cmu.edu/hr/benefits/OE for benefit workbooks, plan information, carrier links and to get started making your selections for 2010 in HR Connection.

Featured Events

• Thursday, Oct. 29: 2009 Alumni Distinguished Achievement Award Lecture. 4:30 p.m., Rashid Auditorium, Gates Center. Honoree and University Professor of Robotics William "Red" Whittaker will discuss "Robots at Work." Read more at http://www.cmu.edu/uls/october/whittaker.html.
• Thursday, Oct. 29: TechBridgeWorld Interactive 2009. 5-7 p.m., Newell-Simon Hall Perlis Atrium. The event will focus on the student experience and highlight recent work done by TechBridgeWorld, which celebrates its fifth anniversary. For more: http://www.techbridgeworld.org/index.html
• Friday, Oct. 30: Language Technologies Institute Seminar. 2 p.m., Newell-Simon Hall 1305. C. Lee Giles of Penn State University will discuss "SeerSuite: Enterprise Search and Cyberinfrastructure for Science and Academia." For more: http://www.lti.cs.cmu.edu/
• Friday, Oct. 30: SCS Alumni Lecture. 2:15 p.m., Rashid Auditorium, Gates Center. Shree K. Nayar (SCS '90) of Columbia University will discuss "A Digital Camera for Education." For more: http://calendar.cs.cmu.edu/scsEvents/demo/5540.html
• Friday, Oct. 30: "Le Corbusier: An Architect of Books" open house and exhibit of scale models of Le Corbusier's villas, built by first-year students in the School of Architecture. 3-5 p.m., Fine & Rare Book Room, 4th Floor, Hunt Library.
• Friday, Oct. 30: "Halloween on the Quad." 3-6 p.m., Greek Quadrangle. Carnegie Mellon's Greek community is hosting the event for more than 100 children from local YMCAs and Pittsburgh Public Schools.
• Friday, Oct. 30: 2009 Alumni Awards. 5:30 p.m., Rangos Ballroom, University Center (UC). Carnegie Mellon will honor 15 alumni, students and faculty for their achievements and service to the university as part of Homecoming Weekend. To read about the distinguished recipients, visit http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2009/October/oct26_alumniawards.shtml.
• Saturday, Oct. 31: Industrial Design celebrates its 75th anniversary with an exhibition of student work, tours of the School of Design, video story booths for alumni to share memories, faculty and student presentations, alumni panel discussions, and a reception and expo. For more information, visit http://www.design.cmu.edu/id75.
• Saturday, Oct. 31: President's Address and Student Life Panel, 10–11:30 a.m., McConomy Auditorium. President Jared L. Cohon will address alumni, faculty, staff, students and friends on the current state of the university and what lies ahead. Students will share their perspectives on Carnegie Mellon life today.
• Sunday, Nov. 1: Carnegie Mellon Jazz Vocal Ensemble. 8 p.m., Alumni Concert Hall. Thomas W. Douglas will direct the free concert. For more: http://music.cmu.edu/
• Monday, Nov. 2: University Lecture Series. 4:30 p.m., Porter 100 (Gregg Hall). Deborah Moon, vice president and chief financial officer, will discuss how financing the university works. Read more about Moon, who joined Carnegie Mellon in 2001, at http://www.cmu.edu/uls/november/moon.html.
• Wednesday, Nov. 4: Executives from the Sesame Workshop will discuss the re-launch of "The Electric Company," hosted by Matthew Kam, assistant professor of human-computer interaction. 9:30 a.m., Rashid Auditorium, Gates Center. For more details, visit http://www.cmu.edu/news/blog/2009/Fall/sunny-days.shtml.
• Wednesday, Nov. 4: Modern Languages Department Lecture. 3:30 p.m., Margaret Morrison A14. Timothy McNamara, professor of applied linguistics at the University of Melbourne, will talk about "Challenges in the Performance Assessment of Speaking at Advanced Levels." For more: http://www.hss.cmu.edu/pressreleases/mllecture.html
• Thursday, Nov. 5: Information session for part-time master's degree in Professional Writing. Noon-1 p.m., Baker Hall 154R. Staff members are invited to learn about the program and meet the director and part-time students. Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP by Nov. 3 to Karen Schnakenberg at krs@cmu.edu. For more about the program, visit http://english.cmu.edu/degrees/ma_pw/ma_pw.html.
• Thursday, Nov. 5: University Lecture Series. 4:30 p.m., Porter 100 (Gregg Hall). Lance Jones, event manager and marketing consulting, will give a journeys series lecture on "Passages: A Life in Tune; Moving With the Music." Read more about the lecture, which will be followed by a brief screening of concert videos, at http://www.cmu.edu/uls/november/jones.html.
• November 7-8: The fifth International Conference on a Universal Digital Library. Registration opens at 8 a.m., Saturday, Nov. 7 in Newell-Simon Hall. Librarians and computer scientists who are building the universal digital library will discuss "Global Collaboration for a Global Digital Library." Invited speakers and panelists from Carnegie Mellon include Jaime Carbonell, Carolyn Rose, Steven Rosenberg, Michael Shamos and Gloriana St. Clair. The conference is free and open to the public. For more, download the schedule at https://libwebspace.library.cmu.edu:4430/events/ICUDL_2009.pdf.

Pausch Footbridge To Be Dedicated During Homecoming Weekend

Join the university community at 7:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 30, at the main entrance of the Purnell Center for the Arts to celebrate the dedication and lighting of the newly completed Randy Pausch Memorial Bridge. The pedestrian bridge provides a connection between the Gates Center and the Purnell Center that symbolizes Pausch's interdisciplinary work that combined computer science and the arts.

The bridge's aluminum panels have cutouts in abstract shapes based on leaping penguins, commemorating Pausch's "First Penguin Award" given to honor the students whose projects took big conceptual or technological gambles, even though they weren't successful. It was based on the notion that when a group of penguins jumps into perilous waters, someone has to be first. At night, the sidewall will be backlit by programmable light-emitting diode (LED) technology from Philips Color Kinetics, a unit of Philips Electronics that originally was a spin-off of Carnegie Mellon. The principal lighting designers Christopher Popowich and Cindy Limauro, professor of lighting design, chose LED lighting because of its green design and flexibility. For more bridge details, visit http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2009/October/oct27_dedicatepauschbridge.shtml.

The dedication is scheduled during Homecoming and Reunion Weekend, which includes activities for the entire campus community Oct. 30-31. The all campus tailgate from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Wiegand Gymnasium precedes the 1 p.m. football game as the Tartans kickoff against the Washington University Bears in Gesling Stadium. Other events include the Alumni Awards ceremony, Scotch 'n' Soda's production of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," a KidZone Haunted Activity Fair and college-specific receptions. For a full schedule, and to register for events, visit http://www.cmu.edu/homecoming.

Staff Council's Annual Food Drive Begins Next Week

Carnegie Mellon's 16th Annual Food Drive, sponsored by Staff Council, will take place Monday, Nov. 2 through Friday, Nov. 13. The drive benefits the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, a non-profit organization that collects, stores and distributes food and household products to nearly 350 charitable agencies in southwestern Pennsylvania. Drop boxes and barrels will be located throughout campus buildings for your donations. All non-perishable items are appreciated, and there is high-demand for toilet paper and protein items such as peanut butter, tuna and soup with meat.

Special upcoming events in which you can participate in the Food Drive are "Tartan Spirit Days," Oct. 31 and Nov. 7; "One Day, One Can," during the Health & Benefits Fair, Nov. 4; and "Cans Across the Cut," Nov. 11. For more information on the drive, visit http://www.cmu.edu/news/blog/2009/Fall/feeding-the-hungry.shtml.

$1.6M Department of Energy Grant Supports Astrophysical Initiative

Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Washington are using a three-year, $1.6 million grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) to develop automated methods for discovering astrophysical phenomena. Jeff Schneider, an associate research professor in the School of Computer Science, will lead the new initiative that will create tools to spot strange new objects that merit in-depth study, and identify larger patterns in observational data that could provide insights into the evolution of the universe.

"The amount of data will be overwhelming," said Schneider, a faculty member of the Bruce and Astrid McWilliams Center for Cosmology. "The datasets, measured in quadrillions of bytes, will be so large that no astronomer or group of astronomers could fully explore them, much less comprehend them. Computers have long helped scientists make discoveries by processing and analyzing observational data, but now we will need computer programs that also can make discoveries on their own."

Working with cosmologists Alexander Szalay of Johns Hopkins and Andrew Connolly of the University of Washington, Schneider will develop computational methods capable of learning and using models with thousands or even millions of variables. For more details on the research, which will have applications in biological and other physical sciences, visit http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2009/October/oct26_astrophysicalresearch.shtml.

Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic Concert Featured in City-Wide Holocaust Project

Maestro Ronald Zollman leads the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic in a performance of works by prominent European-Jewish composers whose music was banned during the Nazi regime at 8 p.m., Monday, Nov. 9 in the Carnegie Music Hall of Oakland. The performance is part of the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre's Light/The Holocaust & Humanity Project, a month-long collaborative effort with a variety of Pittsburgh organizations that creates educational programming to inspire dialogue about the Holocaust.

Noel Zahler, head of the School of Music, believes that the concert emphasizes the role of musical compositions as historical legacies. "Bringing the music together for this concert is just one more way to reaffirm the important role music plays in the lives of individuals, regions and the global community," Zahler said. "Many people who had been victims of genocide still performed and composed music, and those who witnessed the atrocities from afar also reacted musically. Bringing these works to life for a new generation is our obligation."

Tickets are $5 for general admission, $4 for senior citizens, and free to all college students with valid ID. For more details, visit http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2009/October/oct21_philharmonichumanity.shtml.

News Briefs

• Carnegie Mellon's annual United Way Campaign has begun and will run through November. Learn more about the campaign, and donate online at http://www.cmu.edu/hr/united-way.html. Please contact Courtney Bryant at cbryant@andrew.cmu.edu with any questions about the campaign.
• The CIT Staff Awards Committee is accepting nominations through Nov. 13 for the 15th annual CIT Staff Awards. The nomination deadline is Nov. 13. For details on the awards, visit http://www.cit.cmu.edu/faculty_staff/staff_awards/index.html.
• "Mobile Art && Code," a symposium on mobile media and interactive arts sponsored by Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon's Center for Computational Thinking and the Studio for Creative Inquiry, will take place Nov. 6-8 on campus. Events on Friday and Sunday include hands-on workshops in arts-oriented mobile phone programming and require registration. Saturday's lecture marathon, featuring a dozen presentations by leading international artists, designers, historians, hackers, entrepreneurs and researchers, is free and open to the public. For more: http://artandcode.ning.com/
• Production crews for "As The World Turns" will be filming from 7 to 9 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 2 in the College of Fine Arts' Great Hall. Christopher Goutman (A '76), executive producer of the show, is a graduate of the School of Drama's directing program.

Personal Mention

• Holger Seig has been named the new recipient of The Friends of Allan H. Meltzer Professorship in Economics. Seig received his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon in 1996 and joined the faculty at the Tepper School in 2001. The chair was established in 1997 to acknowledge and honor the contributions of Allan Meltzer.
• Baohong Sun has been named the new recipient of The Carnegie Bosch Professorship in Marketing. Sun joined the faculty of the Tepper School in 1997. The chair is sponsored by the Carnegie Bosch Institute, which was established in 1990 through a unique alliance between the Tepper School and the Robert Bosch Group.
• Alex Waibel, professor of computer science and language technologies, is selling an iPhone application that converts English speech into Spanish (or vice versa) through his startup company, Jibbigo LLC. In addition to Waibel, the Jibbigo LLC team that developed the speech-to-speech translation app includes 10 former students and graduates of Carnegie Mellon's Pittsburgh and Silicon Valley campuses and of the University of Karlsruhe. Read more at http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2009/October/oct27_iphoneapptranslator.shtml.
• Susan Bassett, director of athletics, physical education and recreation, has been selected as president-elect of the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators (NACWAA). Bassett was named to the post at the organization's annual convention and will serve as president during the 2010-11 year. Read more about Bassett and the NACWAA at http://www.cmu.edu/athletics/news/bassettNACWAA.html.
• Kristen Severson, a junior in chemical engineering, won the American Institute of Chemical Engineers' (AIChE) 2009 Donald F. Othmer Sophomore Academic Excellence Award for maintaining the highest scholastic standing of any member of Carnegie Mellon's student chapter during her freshman and sophomore years. Severson will be recognized at the AIChE National Student Conference next month in Nashville.
• Ray Bareiss, director of educational programs at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley, was the keynote speaker for the first International Symposium on Tangible Software Engineering Education in Tokyo. Bareiss, along with Software Engineering Director Todd Sedano, co-wrote the invited paper for the symposium, "Developing Software Engineering Leaders at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley," which focused on Carnegie Mellon's innovative master's degree in software engineering. Read more at http://www.cmu.edu/silicon-valley/news-events/2009/bareiss-keynote.html.
• Stage 62's production of the musical "Titanic," Nov. 6-21 at the Andrew Carnegie Free Library Music Hall, features Robotics Professor Jack Mostow as Isidore Straus and the Robotics Institute's Lynnetta Miller as assistant director. Ticket information and performance details are available at http://www.stage62.org/titanic.
• Richard Schaeffer will retire from the Tepper School's business office on Nov. 6 after 31 years of service to the university. A reception will be held in his honor at 3:30 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 4, in the Tepper School's faculty conference center. To RSVP, visit http://www.tepper.cmu.edu/RichSchaefferRetirement.

For more events, visit http://my.cmu.edu/site/events.

For daily news updates, visit http://www.cmu.edu/news/news-notes/index.shtml.

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The "8 1/2 x 11 News" is published weekly by the Internal Communications Team. To submit news of campus interest, email Abby Ross at abbyross@andrew.cmu.edu.

For current issues of the 8 1/2 x 11, visit http://www.cmu.edu/news/news-notes/weekly/2009/index.shtml. For past years' issues of the 8 1/2 x 11, visit http://www.cmu.edu/news/weekly/index.shtml.