Carnegie Mellon University

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April 05, 2012

Personal Mention

The U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has named Carnegie Mellon's Raj Rajkumar to the Intelligent Systems Program Advisory Committee (ITSPAC). Rajkumar, the George Westinghouse Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and his research team work to develop and implement technologies for improving the safety and efficiency of transportation. Rajkumar also is director of the University Transportation Center (UTC), a new innovative transportation research initiative with the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science that is funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Read the full story.

Jonathan A. Malen was awarded a National Science Foundation Early Career Development Award of $400,000 over the next five years for novel research into organic-inorganic hybrid materials that bridge the properties of semiconductors with the scalability of plastics. The award will help continue his studies of how energy in the form of heat is transferred through organic-inorganic hybrid materials. Read the full story.

Greg Shannon, chief scientist for the CERT Program at the Software Engineering Institute, recently testified before a U.S. House of Representatives committee about improvements the government can make in cybersecurity practices. "As we have come to understand the threats, gain experience with pragmatic solutions, and consider the role for the public and private sector, we see two opportunities for significantly improving cybersecurity,” Shannon said. “The first opportunity is to broadly promote the identification of and use of scientifically and operationally validated policies, best practices, technologies, standards, products, etc. The second is to actively enable the controlled collection of and access to high-fidelity operational (real) data for research."

Kathy Lachenauer, associate vice president of Strategic Initiatives and former associate vice president of Corporate and Foundation Relations in University Advancement, will be leaving Carnegie Mellon to become executive director of development for the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State University.  Lachenauer has been an instrumental member of CMU’s University Advancement Division for more than 13 years. She recently led the successful launch of the Strategic Initiatives group.  Her last day at CMU will be May 1.

Peter Kinnaird, a Ph.D. student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, is co-editor-in-chief of XRDS, the Association for Computing Machinery’s magazine for students.

Cyrus Forough, professor of violin, performed three recent recitals in the Washington, D.C., area including a recital at the National Gallery on March 18. Additionally, Forough gave a recital, accompanied by Sung Im Kim, and led at master class at Oberlin College on March 21.

Kathy M. Newman, associate professor of English, wrote an essay titled "You Are Not Alone" for the "Observer" section of the Chronicle of Higher Education on strategies for finding time to write. Read the piece at http://chronicle.com/article/You-Are-Not-Alone/131323/#disqus_thread.

James Garrett, the Thomas Lord Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and head of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, has written a blog for IBM titled "A Future Challenge for Infrastructure Informatics." His blog comments on the connections between information technology, data analytics and buildng a better transportation infrastructure. Read his blog.