Personal Mention

Chemical Engineering senior Nancy Ko has been selected to participate in the 30th annual Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals (CBYX), a yearlong, federally funded fellowship for study and work in Germany. Ko was selected as one of 75 U.S. participants from more than 600 applications for the fellowship program. While in Germany, she will attend a two-month intensive German language course, study at a German university or professional school for four months and complete a five-month internship with a German company in her career field. Participants are placed throughout Germany and have an opportunity to learn about everyday German life from a variety of perspectives.

Philosophy Professor Alex John London, an internationally renowned expert on research ethics, will speak at the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues meeting on April 30 in Washington, D.C. The commission is holding the meeting to inform the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics how the research community can use data to improve health care. The focus will be on ethical issues raised by incidental findings — or discoveries made that are secondary to the reason a particular test, procedure or examination was conducted. London, director of the Center for Ethics and Policy, will address the obligations that researchers owe to study participants and the obligations clinicians owe to their patients. Read more.

Illah Nourbakhsh, professor of robotics and a developer of GigaPan — huge panoramas of digital images in vivid detail — is one of five individuals chosen to explore the rapidly changing field of photography in the Carnegie Museum of Arts’ new Hillman Photography Initiative, which aims to to be a living laboratory for exploring the rapidly changing field of photography and its impact on the world. The initiative will explore the intersections among artistic practices and technological research and support the development of projects that break down barriers to participation and encourage the general public to see the museum and photography in a new light. Read more about the initiative. Read more about GigaPan.

To honor the memory of Jeffrey L. Zaslow (DC'80) – a best-selling author and longtime Wall Street Journal columnist, Carnegie Mellon unveiled a new plaque and announced a scholarship program in his name. Zaslow, who majored in creative writing within the Dietrich College's Department of English, may be best remembered at Carnegie Mellon for co-authoring "The Last Lecture" with the late CMU Computer Science Professor Randy Pausch. The plaque, revealed at a private ceremony during Spring Carnival, fittingly faces a plaque for Pausch on "The Pausch Bridge." The "Jeffrey L. Zaslow Scholarship for Writing Students," made possible by gifts from several of Zaslow's friends and admirers, was also announced. Read more at http://www.hss.cmu.edu/pressreleases/pressreleases/zaslowplaque.html.

Obituary:

Elaine Konigsburg (MM'52), a children's author and illustrator who won the American Library Association's John Newbery Medal for distinguished children's literature twice, died on Friday in Falls Church, Va.  She was 83. She received the 1968 medal for "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler," and in 1997 for "The View From Saturday." Read her full obituary in The New York Times.