Personal Mention

Jelena Kovačević, the Hamerschlag University Professor and head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, has been awarded the IEEE Signal Processing Society’s 2016 Technical Achievement Award for her contributions to the theory and practice of signal representations. Kovačević’s research during the past few years has focused on providing signal representation tools to be used primarily in communication and biomedical systems.  The society will formally honor Kovačevic at the 42nd IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing in New Orleans on March 5. Find out more

Dena Haritos Tsamitis, director of the Information Networking Institute (INI), has been appointed to the advisory board of the Executive Women’s Forum (EWF) on Information Security, Risk Management and Privacy. Founded in 2002, the EWF is the largest member organization serving emerging leaders and influential female executives in the security, risk management and privacy field. Its core mission is to attract, develop and advance women within its field through education, leadership, development and the creation of trusted relationships. Formed in 2013, the advisory board is a network of highly influential female thought leaders in the field. “Dena’s commitment and passion for increasing diversity and developing women thought leaders in our field, adds tremendous value to our growing member community,” said Joyce Brocaglia, EWF Founder and CEO Alta Associates. Find out more

David Danks recently contributed an opinion piece to the Conversation. In “Finding trust and understanding in autonomous technologies,” Danks explored the ethical and psychological implications of our trust in autonomous technologies like self-driving cars. “These are devices, so predictability might seem like the key. Because of their autonomy, however, we need to consider the importance and value — and the challenge — of learning to trust them in the way we trust other human beings,” he wrote. “And ironically, the very feature that makes self-driving cars valuable — their flexible, autonomous decision-making across diverse situations — is exactly what makes it hard to trust them.” Danks is the head of the Department of Philosophy and the L.L. Thurstone Professor of Philosophy and Psychology in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Read the full piece

Maggie Sikora has joined the Enrollment Services Division as associate director and director of the HUB. Sikora comes to CMU from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Education, where she was director of Admission and Enrollment Services. In her new role, she will be responsible for oversight and implementation of student services, as well as staffing, operations, training, outreach and assessment in the HUB. As a member of the Enrollment Services leadership team, she will help to establish and implement the strategic direction of the division.