Press Release: Three Professors Earn Highest Faculty Distinction at Carnegie Mellon

Contacts: Chriss Swaney / 412-268-5776 / swaney@andrew.cmu.edu
Byron Spice / 412-268-9068 / bspice@cs.cmu.edu

PITTSBURGH—Three Carnegie Mellon University professors, Nadine Aubry, Jaime Carbonell and Chris Hendrickson, have received the elite distinction of University Professor, the highest academic accolade a faculty member can achieve at Carnegie Mellon.

“Professors Aubry, Carbonell and Hendrickson represent the intellectual foundation on which this university is built. They are esteemed, award-winning scholars who are committed to advancing their fields through education, groundbreaking research and their impact on the world. They have earned this most distinguished honor through their academic pursuits and service to the university, and we are most fortunate and proud to have them as part of our community,” said Provost and Executive Vice President Mark Kamlet.

Aubry and Hendrickson are faculty members in the College of Engineering. Aubry is the Raymond J. Lane Distinguished Professor and head of the Mechanical Engineering Department. Hendrickson is the Duquesne Light Company Professor of Engineering in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. He also is co-director of the Green Design Institute.

“These accolades are well deserved for two outstanding academic leaders and innovative researchers dedicated to pushing the boundaries of knowledge both here at CMU and globally,” said College of Engineering Dean Pradeep K. Khosla, the Philip and Marsha Dowd University Professor.  Khosla was recently named chancellor at University of California, San Diego, effective Aug. 1.

Carbonell is the Allen Newell Professor of Computer Science and director of the Language Technologies Institute in the School of Computer Science.

“Jaime Carbonell thoroughly embodies our claim that ‘big bets lead to big breakthroughs,’ reflecting a tradition for computer science at CMU to pursue research ideas that carry a high risk, but with the potential of creating transformational technology,” said Randal E Bryant, dean of the School of Computer Science. “Jaime’s biggest bet has been in automated language translation, a topic once thought impossible but now is available in usable, if not perfect form, from Microsoft and Google, thanks to a large extent on work by Jaime and his colleagues.”

Nadine Aubry

A member of the National Academy of Engineering, Aubry is internationally known for her pioneering work in the field of fluid dynamics, specifically on reduced models of turbulence and for her contributions to the field of microfluids, which plays a crucial role in the advancement of both large and miniature aerospace vehicles.

Aubry was recently selected as a fellow in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), joining the ranks of 186 associate fellows among more than 35,000 AIAA members worldwide.

Aubry's interdisciplinary research and close ties to industry have helped her garner other important awards, including the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award and the Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award from the Society of Automotive Engineers. She was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

She earned her bachelor's degree from the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble, France, and a master's degree from the Scientific and Medical University, also in Grenoble. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Jaime G. Carbonell

Carbonell is a widely recognized authority in the fields of machine translation, natural language processing and machine learning. He has invented a number of well-known algorithms and methods, including Proactive Machine Learning and Maximal Marginal Relevance for information retrieval.  His work has spawned or contributed to a number of commercial enterprises, including Carnegie Speech, Carnegie Group and Dynamix Technologies.

His research also includes Computational Proteomics and Biolinguistics, which adapts the computational tools developed for analyzing language to understand the biological information encoded in protein structures and leads to understanding protein-protein interactions and molecular signaling processes.

Carbonell created the university’s Ph.D. program in language technologies, and is co-creator of the Universal Library and its Million Book Project. He founded CMU’s Center for Machine Translation in 1986 and led its transformation in 1996 into the Language Technologies Institute, one of seven departments within the School of Computer Science.

He earned bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his master’s degree and Ph.D. in computer science at Yale University. He has authored more than 300 research papers.

Chris Hendrickson

A member of the National Academy of Engineering, Hendrickson’s research, teaching and consulting are in the areas of engineering planning and management, including design for the environment, project management, transportation systems, finance and computer applications. Some of his latest research endeavors involve life-cycle assessment methods, assessment of alternative construction materials, economic and environmental implications of e-commerce and infrastructure for alternative fuels.  He was recently appointed to the executive committee of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), which provides expert advice on national transportation policy and leadership in transportation innovation.

Hendrickson, former head of CMU’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, is a distinguished member of the American Society of Civil Engineering, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an emeritus member of the TRB standing committee on the application of emerging technologies to design and construction.

He has co-authored several textbooks, two monographs and numerous articles.  He is editor-in-chief of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Journal of Transportation Engineering.

Hendrickson earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stanford University, a master’s degree from Oxford University and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

###