Carnegie Mellon University
September 05, 2012

News Brief: CMU Provost To Participate in World Economic Forum Webcast

Kamlet To Discuss Future of Education at Summer Davos in China

Carnegie Mellon is a player on the world stage.

For the first time during a World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting, Carnegie Mellon will be represented at a session that will be webcast live offering a glimpse into the foremost global community of business, political and intellectual leaders. Most WEF sessions are closed to the public and the press.

CMU's representative will be Mark Kamlet, provost and executive vice president, who will serve on a panel about the future of education. The panel, which also includes Gordon Brown, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, will discuss mobilizing information technology, increasing interdisciplinary approaches and redefining the value of universities, all of which are priorities at Carnegie Mellon.

"The Future of Education" will be webcast live at 5:15-6:15 p.m. (China Standard Time (CST)), Wednesday, Sept. 12. CST is 12 hours ahead of Pittsburgh, so the webcast will be available at 5:15 a.m. (Eastern Standard Time) Wednesday. All plenary sessions of the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2012 will be webcast live on Livestream http://wef.ch/live. The session videos also will be available on demand on the Forum’s YouTube channel http:// wef.ch/youtube and in Chinese on http://wef.ch/youku.

The WEF's "Annual Meeting of New Champions" will take place Sept. 11-13 in Tianjin, China, with a theme of "Creating the Future Economy." Several CMU alumni from leading companies around the world also will attend the meeting to network and collaborate with the expected 1,500 attendees from more than 90 countries.

Building on Success

This is Carnegie Mellon's second appearance at what is known as "Summer Davos," in reference to the WEF's annual winter meeting in Davos, Switzerland. In 2011, faculty presented at the Dalian, China, meeting and in January presented in Davos.

Along with presentations, Carnegie Mellon is a member of the WEF's Global University Leaders Forum, a prestigious group of university heads who work on capacity building in universities in developing countries; environmental sustainability; online learning; and more. They also formally engage corporate WEF members on issues of critical importance to the global community.

New Presentations

This year, university faculty and administrators will present as part of no fewer than five sessions.

Carnegie Mellon's "IdeasLab" session is called "Computing and Technology: A Springboard for the Human Mind with Carnegie Mellon University."

The common thread among the presentations will be the groundbreaking research that takes place at the university through collaboration at the intersections of science, technology, art, humanities, business and policy. The presenters will explore embracing curiosity, advanced technology and new ways of thinking.

The full lineup of Carnegie Mellon's participation includes (times are CST):


Beta Zone: "Smart Art"
10:30-11:30 a.m., Tuesday, Sept. 11
  • Golan Levin, director of the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry and associate professor of electronic time-based art, is a panelist.

Beta Zone: "From Big Data to Big Decisions"

2:15-3:15 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 12
  • Jeannette Wing, the President's Professor of Computer Science and head of the Computer Science Department, is one of the panelists.

IdeasLab: "Computing and Technology: A Springboard for the Human Mind with Carnegie Mellon University"
3:45-5 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 12
  • Jesse Schell, assistant professor of entertainment technology, will discuss "The curiosity gap: how 21st century geniuses are made."
  • Emma Brunskill, assistant professor of computer science, will discuss "Optimizing online education."
  • Levin will discuss "Radically local: personal fabrication and future economies."
  • Wing will discuss "Computational thinking: it's for everyone."

"The Future of Education"

5:15-6:15 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 12.
  • Mark Kamlet, provost and executive vice president, is a panelist in this session, which is on the record and webcast live.

"Imagineering Our Future"
10:30-11:30 a.m., Thursday, Sept. 13
  • Brunskill is a presenter in this session.