Carnegie Mellon University

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March 08, 2012

Personal Mention

Ignacio Grossmann, the Rudolph R. and Florence Dean University Professor of Chemical Engineering, gave the 2012 Walter J. Weber Jr. Distinguished Lecture in Environmental and Energy Sustainability in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan on Feb. 16. The title of his lecture, which was given at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, was "Optimal Synthesis and Planning of Sustainable Chemical Processes."

Eric Paulos, associate professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, and Richard Pell, assistant professor of art, are the first recipients of a pair of professorships for junior faculty that have been endowed by Eric Cooper, a former computer science professor, founder of FORE Systems Inc., and Carnegie Mellon trustee, and his wife, community volunteer Naomi Weisberg Siegel. Paulos will fill the first Cooper-Siegel Professorship of Computer Science, and Pell will hold the first Cooper-Siegel Professorship in Art. Read more.

Stephen Fienberg, the Maurice Falk University Professor of Statistics and Social Science, has received a research grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF)-Census Bureau Research Network for a project on "Data Integration, Online Data Collection and Privacy Protection for the 2020 Census." Fienberg and his team will conduct research on three basic issues of interest related to collecting census data: privacy, costs and response rates. They will address the practical problems of ensuring confidentiality and privacy while still producing useful statistics for public and private purposes. Read more.

Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign, Newt 2012, has named Kiron Skinner the new national co-chair for its Women with Newt Coalition. Skinner, associate professor of social and decision sciences and director of CMU's Center for International Relations and Politics, will provide Newt 2012 with expertise in the areas of international relations, security policy and political strategy. In November 2011, Skinner joined Gingrich's campaign as a foreign policy adviser. Read more.

James Wynn, associate professor of English and rhetoric, has authored "Evolution by the Numbers: The Origins of Mathematical Argument in Biology." The book explores how biology became infused with mathematics. Wynn takes readers back to when biologists did not believe math could contribute to solutions to biological problems, specifically questions dealing with heredity and variation. Drawing on the work of Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, Francis Galton, Karl Pearson and Ronald Fisher, Wynn shows the progression and regression of math’s acceptance. He also demonstrates how these individuals’ rhetorical savvy, or lack thereof, influenced its ascension or descent. Read more.

In her new book "Globalization and Global Justice: Shrinking Distance, Expanding Obligations," Carnegie Mellon's Nicole Hassoun examines how the world becoming more interconnected changes international institutions' duties to the world's poor. Hassoun, assistant professor of philosophy within the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, argues that there are significant obligations that must be met to aid the impoverished. "When you witness a woman in the Philippines picking up garbage from the garbage dump she lives in to sell to recyclers, it raises pressing questions about global justice," said Hassoun. "International institutions must help their subjects avoid the kind of poverty that undermines their ability to reason and plan. Otherwise, people cannot even object to their rules." Read more.

Entertainment Technology Center Executive Producer Don Marinelli was the keynote speaker at the CUTE (Connective Technology for Embodiments) Technical Forum in Singapore. The theme of the conference, sponsored by the National University of Singapore, was "Future Lifestyles Empowered by Media Technology."  Marinelli's keynote was titled "A Curriculum for the 21st Century: Storytelling, Architecture, Technology, and Experience."