Carnegie Mellon University

The Piper

CMU Community News

Piper Logo
November 20, 2014

Personal Mention

Two Tepper School of Business professors were recognized for their research by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

  • Fatma Kilinc-Karzan, assistant professor of operations research, won this year's INFORMS JFIG (Junior Faculty Interest Group) Paper Competition for her study, "Two-Term Disjunctions on the Second-Order Cone." The INFORMS JFIG Paper Competition promotes research among junior faculty related to operations research and management science. Kilinc-Karzan competed against more than 50 other submissions.
  • Soo-Haeng Cho, assistant professor of operations management, also won top honors from INFORMS for a paper that he co-authored, "Simultaneous Location of Trauma Centers and Helicopters for Emergency Medical Service Planning." Cho received the William Pierskalla Best Paper Award from the INFORMS Health Applications Society. The Pierskalla Award recognizes research excellence in the field of health care management science.

Learn more.

DesignIntelligence has named Steve Lee, head of the School of Architecture, and John Folan, the T. David Fitz-Gibbon Associate Professor of Architecture, among its "30 Most Admired Educators" for 2015.

  • DesignIntelligence describes Lee as "a progressive, flexible thinker with a passion for education and a vision for Carnegie Mellon's architecture program. He has already initiated significant change for the school and is building a curriculum that is innovative yet practical. He views architecture as problem-solving, and is focused on connecting student education with the future needs of the profession." Head of School since 2009, Lee began teaching in the School of Architecture in 1981. His practice and teaching focus on issues of systems integration, material innovation, renewable energy and the integrated design process for high-performance commercial and residential architecture.
  • DesignIntelligence said, "John Folan is praised for his no-nonsense method of teaching. A rigorous instructor, he teaches the profession rather than a focus on architecture. He brings real-world experience and real aspects of the industry into his studio, which his students appreciate. Inspiring and hard-working, he motivates his students to go after their future and beat the odds." Folan joined CMU’s faculty in 2009 and is director of the Urban Design Build Studio (UDBS), where he draws on his wealth of industry experience to help his students develop regionally specific, appropriate and affordable urban architectural interventions for traditionally under-served communities in Allegheny County.

Sophomore Megan Bartoshuk of the women's soccer team was named Offensive Athlete of the Week by the University Athletic Association (UAA) for her performance in leading the Tartans to the round of 16 in the NCAA Championship for the second time in school history. Bartoshuk registered both game winners in the Tartans first two games of the NCAA tournament, including Sunday evening's overtime shot that gave the Tartans a 2-1 win against Catholic. She scored the first goal of the tournament for the Tartans on Saturday in the 57th minute, leading the team to a 3-0 victory against Penn State Berks. The sophomore now has five goals on the season. The Tartans host Johns Hopkins at 11 a.m., Saturday, Nov. 22.  If the Tartans win, they will face the winner of the Trinity (Texas)-Thomas More contest, which will be played at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday. The winners will play at 1 p.m. Sunday for the right to advance to the NCAA Final Four.

Pavithra Tantrigoda, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English’s Literary & Cultural Studies Program, has received a competitive external grant to attend Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law and Policy’s 2015 workshop in Doha, Qatar. Tantrigoda is also one of this year’s winners of the Carnegie Mellon University Asian Students Association Graduate Fellowship. The award encourages work in Asian languages and on Asia. With this funding, Tantrigoda will travel to archives abroad to examine legal texts and newspaper/magazine articles in Sinhala on ecological disasters that impacted Sri Lanka, such as the South Asian Tsunami in 2004. Tantrigoda’s dissertation is a literary and cultural study of the relationship between global human rights and ecological discourse in the South Asian context and offers possible solutions to human and environmental exploitation in the form of alternate understandings.