Personal Mention

• In an op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Sunday, Aug. 28, Carnegie Mellon President Jared L. Cohon, a renowned water engineer, offers his thoughts on how to solve Pittsburgh's water management problem, which is under the spotlight since the recent flash flooding on Washington Boulevard that claimed four lives. The op-ed, co-authored by policy strategist and consultant Tyler Gourley is titled "Lessons of the Flood: Too much water, too many agencies." Read the op-ed at http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11240/1170116-109.stm
• The IEEE Computer Society's IEEE Intelligent Systems magazine has chosen Raj Reddy, the Mozah Bint Nasser Professor of Computer Science and Robotics, and Edward Feigenbaum, Stanford University professor emeritus and Ph.D. alum of Carnegie Mellon, and eight other trailblazers in artificial intelligence (AI) as inductees into the inaugural IEEE Intelligent Systems Hall of Fame. Reddy and Feigenbaum were joint recipients in 1994 of the A.M. Turing Award in recognition of their work designing and building large-scale AI systems and demonstrating the practical importance and potential commercial impact of AI technology. For more: http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2011/august/aug30_reddyhalloffame.html
• Carnegie Mellon English Professor Terrance Hayes will kick off the Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series with a reading at 8:30 p.m., Sept. 19 at the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium at the University of Pittsburgh. Hayes won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2010 for his collection "Lighthead." The event is free and open to the public. For the full writers series schedule visit http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/ae/books/s_752813.html.
• Former bagpipe program head Alasdair Gillies recently died following a long illness. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, the 47-year-old won numerous awards for solo bagpipe performances, including two gold medals from the Highland Society of London. He worked at Carnegie Mellon from the late '90s through 2009. For more: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2011/08/30/lament-for-late-alasdair-gillies-the-michael-jordan-of-piping-86908-23382581/
• A paper co-authored by Mechanical Engineering Professor Jonathan Cagan, Assistant Professor in Social and Decision Science Golnaz Tabibnia and Ph.D. student Brian Sylcott recently won the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) Design Theory and Methodology Conference Best Paper award for "Understanding of emotions and reasoning during consumer tradeoff between function and aesthetics in product design." The award was given on Tuesday, Aug. 30 in Washington, D.C.