March 15,, 2007
Vol. 17, No. 33

In this issue:

• CyLab Japan Honors First Graduating Class
• Carnegie Mellon, Pitt Receive $7 Million Training Grants
• West Coast Campus Starts New Program in Software Management
• Recipients of Katayanagi Prizes To Lecture March 20 & 22
• Personal Mention
• Calendar Highlights

CyLab Japan Honors First Graduating Class

Carnegie Mellon Provost and Senior Vice President Mark Kamlet will preside over a March 20 ceremony in Kobe, Japan, honoring the first graduates of a program designed to make this Pacific Rim nation a research and education hub for information security. Carnegie Mellon CyLab Japan was established in 2005 as a collaboration between Carnegie Mellon and the Hyogo Institute of Information Foundation to offer a master of science in information technology-information security track, in Kobe. The 16-month graduate degree program, which prepares students to become leaders in information security, is an initiative of the College of Engineering's Information Networking Institute--the education partner of Carnegie Mellon CyLab--and the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management. The program blends information security technology with management and policy.

Further information: http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/March/march13_japan.shtml

Carnegie Mellon, Pitt Receive $7 Million Training Grants

Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh have received three grants totaling more than $7 million from the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the National Science Foundation to support programs that train students in basic neuroscience, computational neuroscience, multimodal neuroimaging and other interdisciplinary endeavors. The programs will be offered through the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, which is jointly run by the universities.

Further information: http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/March/march12_cnbc.shtml

West Coast Campus Starts New Program in Software Management

Carnegie Mellon's West Coast campus in Silicon Valley, Calif., has begun a new master's degree program in software management to supplement its graduate program in software engineering. Offered as a part-time program to working professionals, the interdisciplinary software management curriculum addresses globalization, outsourcing and the many advances in technology that are affecting the field. The program provides students with hands-on, team-oriented education and technical components that build upon Carnegie Mellon's software engineering courses. "The rise of the global economy has shifted the emphasis of software engineering," said James Morris, dean of Carnegie Mellon West. "Our students--and their employers--want a curriculum that more accurately and fully addresses the business issues of software."

Further information: http://west.cmu.edu/west_connect/events_news/news/5808146.html

Recipients of Katayanagi Prizes To Lecture March 20 & 22

The first recipients of Carnegie Mellon's newly established Katayanagi Prizes in Computer Science will deliver distinguished lectures to the campus community at 4 p.m., March 20 and 22 in Wean Hall 7500. David A. Patterson, the E.H. and M. E. Pardee Chair of Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley, earned the Katayanagi Prize for Research Excellence, which is awarded to an established researcher with a record of outstanding, sustained achievement. The title of his talk is "Computer Architecture is Back: The Berkeley View of the Parallel Computing Research Landscape." Takeo Igarashi, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science in the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo, received the Katayanagi Emerging Leadership Prize. He will discuss "Interactive Smart Computers."

Carnegie Mellon established the Katayanagi Prizes in cooperation with the Tokyo University of Technology (TUT), Tokyo, Japan, with a gift from Japanese entrepreneur and education advocate Koh Katayanagi, who founded TUT and several other technical institutions in Japan during the last 60 years. The prizes carry an honorarium of $20,000 for the senior researcher and $10,000 for the junior.

Further information: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Ekatayanagi/

Personal Mention

• Carnegie Mellon has filled two key leadership positions in its University Advancement Division. Bonita Cersosimo has joined the university as associate vice president for marketing and media relations and will lead the overall strategy development for the school's global marketing and media relations efforts. Before joining Carnegie Mellon, Cersosimo was director of corporate communications at Alcoa. David Bohan is the new associate vice president for university advancement and campaign executive director. He comes to Carnegie Mellon from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), where he was assistant vice president for advancement strategy, services and infrastructure. He was also responsible for strategy, communications, reporting and logistics for RPI's $1.4 billion capital campaign.
• Connie Eaton, cluster service consultant, has been named manager for cluster services in the Computing Services Division. She succeeds PomonaValero, who was promoted to manager of the Media Technologies Department within Computing Services. Eaton joined the cluster services team in 2004.
• Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, the J.C. Warner University Professor of Chemistry, has received the first Herman F. Mark Senior Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society in recognition of his excellence in basic and applied research and leadership in polymer science. In a list of the top 100 scientists compiled in 2006 by Essential Science Indicators, Matyjaszewski ranked in the top six among scientists in all fields of chemistry. His groundbreaking paper on atom transfer radical polymerization, first published in 1995, has been cited more than 1,450 times.
• English Ph.D. candidate Necia Werner is the 2007 winner of the H&SS Graduate Student Teaching Award. She is one of the department's few graduate students who independently teach key undergraduate courses in the technical and professional writing programs.

Calendar Highlights

• Monday, March 19:  Authors' Rights & Wrongs Series. "Managing YOUR Rights: Authors and Copyright." Julia Blixrud, assistant director for public programs for the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. 4:30 - 6 p.m., Adamson Wing, Baker Hall (BH). Live Web cast at www.library.cmu.edu.
• Monday, March 19:  School of Design Lecture Series. James Victore, communication designer known for "pushing ideas into the public arena by using any and all graphic means." Co-hosted by the Pittsburgh AIGA. 7 p.m., Breed Hall, Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall.
• Tuesday, March 20:  Bayer Lecture in Process Systems Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering. "Advances and Challenges in De Novo Protein Design." Princeton University Professor Chris Floudas. 10:45 a.m., Doherty Hall 1112.
• Wednesday, March 21:  "U.S.-Africa Policy: Instituting a New Paradigm." Jendayi E. Frazer, U.S. Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, will speak at 6 p.m. in the Erwin R. Steinberg Auditorium (BH A53). Frazer is the former U.S. ambassador to South Africa. Sponsored by the International Relations Program.
• Wednesday, March 21:  Center for the Arts in Society Lecture. "Poetry in Public: Consumerism and the Public Poetry Project in America," Visiting Fellow Susan-Somers Willett. 4:30 p.m., Giant Eagle Auditorium, BH A51. 
• Wednesday, March 21:  Center for the Arts in Society Bring Your Own Brain (BYOB) Series. "Oaxaca, Oaxaca," a talk by Clayton Merrell, associate professor of art. Noon - 1 p.m., CFA 310. Bring your own lunch; dessert and beverages provided. Further information: http://www.hss.cmu.edu/cas/content/Byob.htm
• Thursday, March 22:  Inaugural Suresh Konda Memorial Lecture in Information Security Policy and Management. Noon, Hamburg Hall 1000. Keynote Speaker: Steve Ryan, technical director of the National Security Agency's (NSA) Threat Operations Center. Konda (Heinz '75, '80) was a pioneering researcher in information security. In his memory, his classmates and friends established the Memorial Lecture to honor the lasting contributions he made to information security and foster new dialogue in the field.
• Thursday, March 22:  Science and technology scholar Sharon Ghamari Tabrizi will give the annual Giler Humanities Lecture, 4:30 p.m., Giant Eagle Auditorium (BH A51). Her talk, "What Is It Now? An Ethnographic Study of Defense Simulations-In-The-Making," is sponsored by the university's Humanities Scholars program. Free and open to the public.
• Friday, March 23:  Mechanical Engineering seminar. "Laser Peen Forming/Laser Shock Peening Research." Y. Lawrence Yao, chair, Mechanical Engineering Department, Columbia University. 10:30 a.m., Scaife Hall 125.
• Friday, March 23:  The Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE) Lecture Series.  "Fields, Gardens and Woods: An Environmental History of Rural African Americans in the Progressive Era South." Dianne Glave, the Aron Senior Research Fellow, Center for Environmental Research, Tulane University. 5 p.m., Erwin Steinberg Auditorium, BH A53.