Carnegie Mellon University

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June 22, 2017

Personal Mention

Irene FonsecaIrene Fonseca, one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of applied mathematics, has been appointed to the Abel Committee by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. She will serve a two-year term on the committee, which is responsible for selecting the winner of the prestigious Abel Prize. The Abel Prize is the most important prize recognizing contributions to mathematics over the course of a career and is considered by many to be the equivalent of a Nobel Prize. Carnegie Mellon alumnus and Nobel Laureate John Nash won the award in 2015. A member of the Carnegie Mellon faculty since 1987, Fonseca is the director of the university’s Center for Nonlinear Analysis. She also directs the Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE) project, a National Science Foundation-funded, multi-institution initiative that addresses issues in applied mathematics and mechanics arising from materials science. Find out more

Bin HeBin He, currently the Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Biomedical Engineering and the Medtronic-Bakken Endowed Chair for Engineering in Medicine at the University of Minnesota, has been named head of the Biomedical Engineering Department, effective Feb. 1, 2018. He succeeds Yu-li Wang, who has delayed his sabbatical and will continue as head of the department until February.  “He has made significant contributions to biomedical imaging . . . and to brain-computer interface technology. His pioneering work has transformed electroencephalography into an important dynamic, three-dimensional neuroimaging modality for noninvasive brain research and management of brain disorders,” said James Garrett Jr., dean of the College of Engineering.  He has earned many awards, including the IEEE Technical Field Award in Biomedical Engineering and the Academic Career Achievement Award and Distinguished Service Award from the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

Pulkit GroverPulkit Grover, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Professor Teemu Roos at the University of Helsinki in Finland have received a $600,000 National Science Foundation award to conduct research on reliable and efficient Internet of Things systems with applications in biomedical sensing and imaging. Their project is titled “WiFiUS: Efficient and robust cognitive IoT systems using unreliable sensors: fundamental limits and practical strategies.” The project aims to examine strategies to obtain high levels of reliability in sensors while operating at low energy levels.

Jesse DunietzJesse Dunietz, a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science Department, will spend 10 weeks this summer at the New York offices of Scientific American magazine as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Mass Media fellow. The highly competitive Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship program places science, engineering and mathematics students at leading media organizations nationwide. By reporting, writing and editing for publications and broadcasts, fellows sharpen their communication skills and learn how to make scientific and engineering issues easy for the public to understand. Dunietz, who earned a bachelor's degree in computer science at MIT, works with Jaime Carbonell and Lori Levin of the Language Technologies Institute to study the semantics of natural-language text. He also has a long-standing interest in communicating science to non-technical audiences. Since coming to Carnegie Mellon in 2011, he's helped found Public Communication for Researchers, a professional development program that helps graduate students improve their ability to explain science to non-experts.

Sam VenturaSam Ventura, who received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in statistics from CMU and has been a visiting assistant professor of statistics, has been hired by the Pittsburgh Penguins to be their full time director of hockey research. Ventura has been serving as an analytics consultant for the Penguins for the past two Stanley Cup-winning seasons. Learn more.