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November 14, 2013

Personal Mention

University Professor of Architecture Vivian Loftness has earned three awards this month. She was voted one of 13 “Stars of Building Science” in the online journal Building4Change. Based on a poll of built environmental professionals around the world, Loftness was recognized for being a leading figure in green building research and for her work “in environmental design and sustainability, advanced building systems integration, climate and regionalism in architecture, and design for performance in the workplace of the future.” Read more about the Stars of Building Science.  She also was elected a senior fellow of the Design Futures Council for providing noteworthy leadership toward the advancement of design, design solutions and the design professions. The DFC’s senior fellows are recognized for significant contributions toward the understanding of changing trends, new research, or applied knowledge leading to innovative design models that improve the built environment and the human condition. And Loftness was named a LEED Fellow for advancing the green building field and representing the highest achievement in technical proficiency, education and mentoring, leadership, commitment and service, and advocacy for greening the built environment.

Materials Science and Engineering Professor Chris Pistorius has received the POSCO (Pohang Iron and Steel Company, Ltd.) Professorship in Iron and Steelmaking. Pistorius said the chair will help further his collaboration with POSCO and help him to explore new areas and try new ideas that may turn into research projects. "Research visits to CMU by engineers from industry benefit my research, and give the visitors an opportunity to interact closely with my research group, and with others in the Center for Iron and Steelmaking Research. Such visits add practical insights to our projects, and help to transfer research results to industry,” he said. Read more.

Physics Professor Robert Swendsen has been awarded the 2014 Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics from the American Physics Society. The annual award recognizes and encourages outstanding achievement in computational physics research. The prize consists of $5,000 and a certificate citing his contributions. Swendsen will receive the award and deliver the Rahman Lecture at the society’s annual meeting March 3-7 in Denver.  Read more.

Information Networking Institute student Pratibha Anjali Dohare has received a $40,000 cybersecurity scholarship from the prestigious International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC)² Foundation. The scholarship will help support her studies in the Masters of Science in Information Technology-Information Security Program. “I intend to utilize this scholarship in enhancing my knowledge in the field of cybersecurity and forensics during my studies at CMU's INI, with an aim to merge the processes of prevention and investigation through development of an intrusion prevention and detection system,” said Dohare of Bhopal, India. Read more.

Eric Werner, chief architect of the Software Engineering Institute’s Emerging Technology Center, recorded a podcast that described his team’s research to create a software library that can exploit the heterogeneous parallel computers of the future, and allow developers to create systems that are more efficient in terms of computation and power consumption. Listen to “Architecting Systems of the Future.”

Don Firesmith, a senior member of the technical staff at the Software Engineering Institute, wrote a blog post that introduces three variants on the V model of software development that makes it more useful to testers, quality engineers, and other stakeholders interested in the use of testing as a verification and validation method. This blog entry was adapted from the first chapter of his forthcoming book, "Common System and Software Testing Pitfalls," which will be published this December by Addison Wesley as part of the SEI Series in Software Engineering. Read “Using V Models for Testing.”  Read more about Firesmith's forthcoming book.