Personal Mention

Shirley Saldamarco, a faculty member in the Entertainment Technology Center, was recently elected to the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) International Board of Directors.  Saldamarco said the appointment will benefit CMU and the ETC, as her involvement will provide students and alumni access to a global community of some of the most talented, knowledgeable and professional creators of themed experiences. In addition to the TEA, Saldamarco is co-chairing the TEA’s Storytelling, Architecture, Technology, Experience’s Next Gen "Café Experience" Committee.  The design conference committee’s goal is to make students more aware of the variety of jobs available to them in the themed entertainment industry and to provide them with access to professionals in the industry. She said through this role she hopes to help expand the employment opportunities network for ETC students. 

Rema Padman, a professor of management science and health care informatics at the Heinz College, was recently presented with a 2012 IBM Faculty Award for leading efforts to develop, deploy and evaluate a health care delivery solution that is targeted at underserved, low literacy and disadvantaged populations. Padman is using a technology called “Spoken Web,” which is similar to the standard World Wide Web, but it exists only on a telecom network, so there is no need for a computer, only a phone. “With this technology, we have developed a prototype health care application that users can call to listen to their medical record, be reminded about their medications, leave questions for their clinician, listen to educational podcasts, participate in discussion forums, all in voice format. As you can imagine, this could make it easy for elderly, illiterate, and disadvantaged populations to access health care information and tools that they never could before,” she said.  Read the full story.

Joseph B. (Jay) Kadane, the Leonard J. Savage University Professor of Statistics and Social Sciences in the Dietrich College, will brief D.C. lawmakers on Capitol Hill today, Thursday, Dec. 6, on how Argentina’s government is suppressing statisticians and the accurate reporting of the country’s inflation numbers. Kadane, who in January 2013 will become chair of the American Statistical Association’s Committee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights, will urge them to implement policies that will protect statisticians from persecution and protect the international economy. Read the full story.

Justine Cassell and Chien Ho have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for their distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. Cassell, the Charles M. Geschke Director of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute in the School of Computer Science, is being honored “for her distinguished contributions to the field of computer science, particularly for new computational models of human behavior and resulting technologies, including the Embodied Conversational Agent.” Ho, the Alumni Professor of Biological Sciences and director of the Pittsburgh NMR Center for Biomedical Research in the Mellon College of Science, is being recognized “for pioneering the use of magnetic resonance to unravel allosteric mechanisms of hemoglobin, and to develop a non-invasive method to monitor immune responses in vivo.”

Karen Faulk, visiting assitant professor of history, has written a new book on social activism in Argentina. “In the Wake of Neoliberalism: Citizenship and Human Rights in Argentina” was published as part of Stanford University Press’ Series on Human Rights. Read more about the book.

Kerrin Sheldon (DC’10) is looking to change how travel content is both created and viewed. Sheldon, who received his master's degree in art and professional writing, created Humanity.TV as an interactive short-documentary series that tells the authentic stories of locals across the world. Read more about the project.