Personal Mention

President Subra Suresh and two alumni — Francisco D'Souza (TPR '92), CEO of Cognizant Technologies, and Romesh Wadhwani (E '70, '72), CEO of Symphony Technology Group — were among top Indian-American CEOs, venture capitalists and higher education leaders who attended a personal briefing with India's new Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday, Sept. 27, prior to a large-scale gathering of Indians and Indian-Americans at Madison Square Garden in New York. D'Souza earned an MBA from the Tepper School of Business and serves as a member of the university's board of trustees. Wadhwani earned his master's degree and doctorate in electrical engineering from CMU. The meetings preceded a Sept. 28 Community Reception at Madison Square Garden, where Modi addressed a crowd of almost 20,000 attendees. The event, one of the largest gatherings ever for a speech by a foreign leader, was organized by the Indian American Community Foundation, a nonprofit organization promoting cooperation between the United States and India and advancing the shared values of democracy, inclusive economic development and mutual respect.

Peter Menniti, CFO for the Software Engineering Institute, has been named a 2014 Western Pennsylvania CFO of the Year finalist by the Pittsburgh Business Times. The CFO of the Year awards program honors regional financial professionals for outstanding performance as corporate financial stewards.  Menniti was selected, in part, for his career-long endeavors to maintain the SEI’s fiscally sound posture, streamline business processes while assuring compliance with government contracting regulation, and enhancing the organization’s financial and business systems. Menniti is noted for leadership in providing the reliable long-term financial forecasts necessary to achieving the SEI’s full funding potential under Carnegie Mellon’s contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to operate the SEI. The Pittsburgh Business Times will announce the winners in six categories at a reception and dinner Nov. 13 at the Omni William Penn. Menniti is nominated in the Non-Profit/Large Organization category. See the complete list of finalists.

Sheldon Cohen has been named "one of the 100 Extremely Eminent Psychologists of the Modern Era” in a new paper that was published in the American Psychological Association’s Archives of Scientific Psychology. Cohen, the Robert E. Doherty University Professor of Psychology, investigates the effects of behavioral factors in immunity and physical disease. His work includes pioneering research on the impact of psychological stress, social networks and socio-economic status on infections, cardiovascular disease and asthma. Read more at http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/arc/2/1/20/.