Personal Mention

• University Professor William “Red” Whittaker and his team’s quest to win the $20 million Google Lunar X Prize by being the first to land a robot on the moon, have it travel 500 meters and send data back to earth was featured in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, July 2. Read the story, “A Roboticists Trip From Mines to the Moon,” at http://ht.ly/5wRSz
• English Professor Hilary Masters will launch his new novel, “Post,” at 2 p.m., Sunday, July 31 at the Monterey Pub, 1227 Monterey St. on the North Side of Pittsburgh. Masters will be reading a section of the book that serves as a metaphor for the novel. The section is the recreation of a passenger pigeon hunt and netting in about the 1890s. The bird became extinct in 1914.
• Entertainment Technology Center Executive Producer Don Marinelli will be a guest speaker at the Beyond Digital Conference, Wednesday, July 13 in Manchester, England. The conference will address the increasing spill over of innovation from digital and creative industries to other industrial, commercial and service sectors.
• David Hamilton, a master’s degree student in computational biology, received a one-year American Society of Engineering Education Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship. Hamilton is currently interning at Microsoft with the Windows group and will return in the fall to complete his degree. The SMART scholarship is a Department of Defense (DoD) effort to recruit talented science, technology, engineering and mathematics students to work at DoD facilities and to financially help the students earn their degrees. More: http://www.cmu.edu/bio/news/2011/SMART_award.html
• Kendra L. Gaither, executive director of CMU’s Center for International Policy and Innovation, was recently elected to a five-year term on the Council on Foreign Relations. The council’s Stephen M. Kellen Term Member Program encourages promising young professionals from a variety of disciplines to engage in a sustained conversation on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. Gaither’s expertise is in international economics and trade, with a focus on Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.
• With the major motion picture “Horrible Bosses” opening Friday, July 8, mass and pop culture expert Kathy M. Newman, an associate professor of English, explored what bosses mean to society, how that meaning has changed over time and how different classes of workers relate to bosses in a blog post for “Working-Class Perspectives.” Read her post, “Jerk in Charge,” at http://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/jerk-in-charge/.  
• In June, English Professor Terrance Hayes participated in a new annual writer exchange program between literary organizations in Pittsburgh and Belgium. City of Asylum/Pittsburgh and Passa Porta established a month-long writers swap to build a familiarity between the two regions.
• Kiron K. Skinner, associate professor of social and decision sciences and director of CMU’s Center for International Relations and Politics, wrote an opinion piece for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review titled “American Exceptionalism.” Skinner is a world-renowned international relations, foreign policy and political strategy expert.  To read the op-ed, go to http://bit.ly/iDoitU.
• Sreevardhan "Sree" Mekala, the longtime Indian food vendor at CMU, died Tuesday, June 28 from complications battling Lou Gehrig's disease. A tribute on Mekala's website read, "Sree will be forever remembered for his kind heart, gentle spirit and dedication to his wife, Vydehi, daughter, Sreethanaya, and to the community that he served."