November 15, 2007
Vol. 18, No. 19
In this issue:
What a Video Game Tells Us About Making Peace
Carnegie Mellon professor Cleotilde Gonzalez is using the PeaceMaker video game — which calls on players to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — to study how a person's background and knowledge of the conflict influences how they negotiate a solution. Gonzalez, director of the university's Dynamic Decision Making Laboratory, wants to know how students sympathetic to one side or another play the game differently, and how students' strategies change as they learn more about the conflict. Gonzalez is conducting her research at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and in Qatar and through the Peres Center for Peace in Israel, where as many as 10,000 Israeli and Palestinian youth will participate in the study.
In PeaceMaker, which was developed by Carnegie Mellon spin-off Impact Games, each player assumes the role of the Israeli or Palestinian leader and is presented with a scenario in which multiple and interrelated choices are made in a constantly changing environment. Gonzalez said that while many people have studied sequential decision making, research has rarely focused on this kind of realistic, dynamic decision making.
Further information: http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/November/nov12_peacemaker.shtml
Tartans Pavilion Opens This Week
The Tartans Pavilion, Carnegie Mellon's newest eatery overlooking the Gesling Stadium playing field, will open this week. The new 4,100-square-foot facility, which includes a brick grill and oven for pizza and hoagies, is on the plaza adjacent to the West Wing and Resnik Hall dormitories. The new venue is enclosed by glass with seven glass garage doors facing the athletic field. The doors will be raised in nice weather and a canopy will extend outward, creating an outdoor sidewalk café.
Bob Reppe, director of design for Campus Design and Facility Development, said the $1 million project is the second phase of the effort to "reinvent" the old Highlander Dining Hall. Phase one resulted in the Carnegie Café, which opened last year.
The London Times Ranks Carnegie Mellon Among Top Universities
Carnegie Mellon was recently ranked 20th among the World's Top 200 Universities by The London Times' 2007 Higher Education Supplement. Last year, the university was ranked 35th. Carnegie Mellon also ranked 7th in the Top 50 Universities for Technology category, 28th in the Top 50 Universities for Social Sciences category and 50th in the Top 50 Universities for Natural Sciences category.
In other recent rankings, Carnegie Mellon ranked first in the Information Technology /Information Systems category and second in the Cognitive Science, Business, Operations Research and Public Administration categories in The Chronicle of Higher Education and Academic Analytics Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index. The Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index is based on the number of times faculty papers have been cited, how many books and journal articles have been published, federal grant dollars awarded and honors and awards.
For more on rankings, visit
http://www.cmu.edu/news/rankings/index.shtml
Scientists First To Use New Yahoo! Supercomputing Cluster
Yahoo! has launched a new program that will give university scientists an opportunity to advance systems software for distributed computing while using a 4,000-processor supercomputer cluster that the company calls M45. Carnegie Mellon scientists will be the first to take advantage of the M45, which is capable of more than 27 trillion calculations per second and boasts 3 trillion bytes of memory. Carnegie Mellon researchers
Garth Gibson and
Greg Ganger will instrument the system and evaluate its performance; computer science professors
Jamie Callan and
Christos Faloutsos will use M45 to solve information retrieval and large-scale graph problems; and faculty members
Alexei Efros,
Noah Smith and
Stephan Vogel will tackle large-scale computer graphics, natural language processing and machine translation problems. "We are excited about collaborating with Yahoo! on system software research, helping to advance the state of the art and creating new research possibilities in a critical area," said
Randal E. Bryant, dean of the School of Computer Science.
Tartans To Host Gettysburg in ECAC Bowl Game Saturday
After finishing the regular season with a 6-4 record, Carnegie Mellon's football team has been selected to host Gettysburg College in the 2007 Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Southwest Bowl Game at noon, Saturday, Nov. 17 at Gesling Stadium. This marks the second straight season the Tartans will appear in a postseason contest. Last year, Carnegie Mellon posted a 10-0 regular season mark and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Division III Championships before falling to Wesley College.
Carnegie Mellon Hosts Madrigal Dinner, Dec. 1
Members of the community are invited to attend Carnegie Mellon's Madrigal Dinner at 7:30 p.m., Dec. 1, in Rangos Ballroom, University Center. The event is sponsored by Carnegie Mellon's School of Music, Student Affairs, Student Senate, and Activities Board Special Events. The Carnegie Mellon Madrigal Singers will perform under the direction of
Robert Page, the Paul Mellon University Professor of Music and director of choral studies. Other entertainment will include a professional juggler, stilt-walker, mime and harpsichord player. A Carnegie Mellon faculty member also will perform a magic act.
Tickets are on sale at the University Center Information Desk. They are $12 for students, $10 for children age 10 and under, and $20 for adults. Students may use Meal Blocks and Dine-Xtra to purchase tickets. Dinner guests are invited to dress in traditional Renaissance costumes, although they are not required.
Personal Mention
- School of Music senior Simon Cummings and alumni Tate Olsen and Nicole Myers are members of Cellofourte, a cello rock band that won this past weekend's Battle of the Bands sponsored by WQED and John Lennon Educational Tour Bus. As winner Cellofourte gets to record a CD on board the John Lennon bus and will receive 1,000 copies of the CD, color jacket and all. Further information: http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/November/nov8_cellofourte.shtml
- Associate Professor of Psychology Lori Holt has been named a "Rising Star" by Observer, the magazine of the Association for Psychological Science. See: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=2252.
- A paper written by Associate Professor of ECE Radu Marculescu and his former graduate student Jingcao Hu (Ph.D. 2005) will be included in a book featuring the most influential work during the 10 years of the Design Automation and Test in Europe conference. The research is entitled "Exploiting the Routing Flexibility for Energy-Performance Aware Mapping of Regular NoC Architectures."
- Linda Gentile, foreign student and scholar adviser in the Office of International Education, was recognized at the regional conference of NAFSA: Association of International Educators on Nov. 9. She received the Outstanding Contribution to International Education Award.
Calendar Highlights
- Tuesday, Nov. 27: Open Forum with President Cohon. Noon - 1 p.m., Rangos 3, University Center, 2nd floor. President Cohon will be fielding questions from the campus community. Students, faculty and staff are welcome to attend. Light refreshments will be provided. Sponsored by Staff Council.
- Tuesday, Nov. 27: Carnegie Mellon's Institute for Social Innovation presents author Nicholas P. Sullivan, who will discuss his most recent book, "You Can Hear Me Now: How Microloans and Cell Phones are Connecting the World's Poor to the Global Economy." 4:30 - 6 p.m., Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall, Room A14. Sullivan has written widely about technology and entrepreneurship, the impact of communications technology, and global development and investment.
- Friday, Nov. 30: Mechanical Engineering seminar. "Bio-inspired Fibrillar Interfaces for Contact and Adhesion: Theory and Experiments," presented by Chung-Yuen(Herbert) Hui, professor of theoretical and applied mechanics, Cornell University. 10:30 a.m., Scaife Hall 125.
- Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, the next issue of the 8 1/2 x 11 News will be published on Thursday, Nov. 29.
