Carnegie Mellon University

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October 06, 2011

Personal Mention

Vote for Zach Negin.  Negin, a 2001 mechanical engineering graduate and co-founder of SoNo Trading Company — purveyor of all-natural mustard products — is a finalist in Dell's America's Favorite Small Business Contest. Dell — in partnership with Microsoft and MasterCard — is giving small  businesses the opportunity to win $25,000 in Dell products, a $50,000 prepaid card from MasterCard, and their own online reality show. Vote for Negin and hear him tell his company's story at CMU's Greenlighting Startups website: http://www.cmu.edu/startups/showcase/sono-trading.html


Eric Anderson
, associate professor of design, has been inducted as a fellow in the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). A long-time active member and leader in the industrial design community, Anderson holds the office of Chairman Emeritus of IDSA and has served in several other elected roles and on committees to advance the society in practice and in education. He served as IDSA president from 2009-2010.

Daniel Teadt, artist lecturer in voice, will be making his New York City Opera debut in May 2012. Teadt will be singing the title role in Georg Phillipp Telemann's "Orpheus." It is also a premiere at NYCO and an opera sung in three languages. 

M. Granger Morgan, professor and head of the Engineering and Public Policy Department, is part of a blue-ribbon task force that reports it is time for the U.S. to undertake a climate remediation research program to understand the risks, costs, feasibility and potential effectiveness and consequences of climate remediation technologies. Morgan and 17 other members of the Washington, D.C.-based Bipartisan Policy Center's Task Force on Climate Remediation Research recommend that the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy coordinate the research program.

Reza Vali, associate professor of composition, will lecture at the International Discantus Festival, Oct. 18-25 in Puebla, Mexico. Vali will speak about his work, "Toward That Endless Plain," a concerto for Persian Ney and Orchestra, on Oct. 20. His composition, "Folk Songs," will be performed by Cuarteto Latinoamericano as part of the festival.

Heinz College student Aditya Rao is the featured vocalist in a new recently published ShrutiBox music video on YouTube. ShrutiBox is the title of an ongoing series of Internet music videos composed, recorded, performed and directed by clarinetist and composer Shankar Tucker, who blends classical Indian music, jazz and popular music to create a unique and original sound. Watch and hear Rao at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RBdF1ZZZ_I&feature=channel_video_title

Si Young Oh, a senior majoring in computer science and mathematical sciences, and Tom Conerly, a 2011 computer science graduate, were among the 24 semi-finalists in the algorithm competition at the TopCoder Open in Hollywood, Fla., last week. Neither one made the final round of eight, but they bested thousands of competitors worldwide to earn their way to the competition. TopCoder is the world's largest competitive software development community, with more than 295,000 developers representing more than 200 countries.

Leo Guo, a full-time software management student at the Silicon Valley campus, has been selected as the first recipient of the Conrad Graduate Education Fellowship. The fellowship, named in memory of Silicon Valley Director Martin Griss' nephew who was tragically killed during a home invasion in 2010, recognizes a student for his "proven creativity, artistic flair, or innovation in technology." Guo has developed a Web application to provide online business planning and financial modeling service to start-ups, and has worked on development projects in South Africa to improve schools, power plants and road infrastructures. Read more: http://bit.ly/r7qaU9