Second Age of Carnegie Mellon in Silicon Valley

The history of Silicon Valley is one of daring, luck, and ceaseless endeavor.

It is a narrative rife with the thrills and chills of boom and bust. For every icon that has emerged to illuminate the digital sky, there are countless wrecks that did not make it, as well as other story lines that end abruptly when some entity or another is devoured by some larger, hungrier entity. There are also many fascinating sub-plots interwoven throughout the timeline, and one of them just took a fascinating twist.

Under an azure blue sky, in an open air tent, speaking to an audience of hundreds of Bay Area alumni, trustees, donors, parents and students, Dr. Jared L. Cohon, President of Carnegie Mellon, declared, that having “soldiered on” through challenging economic conditions in the Valley since its founding in 2002, “in a way we are looking at the second age of Carnegie Mellon in Silicon Valley.”

Held at the Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley campus, on the grounds of NASA Ames Research Center (a.k.a. Moffett Field) in Mountain View, California, the event was part of “Inspire Innovation – The Campaign for Carnegie Mellon University.”

Following Dr. Cohon to the podium, Pradeep Khosla, Dean of the College of Engineering and founder of Carnegie Mellon CyLab, elaborated on the “re-visioning” of the Silicon Valley Campus, as “the crown jewel for the College of Engineering.”

Emphasizing the work of recently established CyLab Mobility Research Center (MRC), Dean Khosla extolled the virtues of the bi-coastal program which calls for students to spend two semesters in Pittsburgh and two semesters in Silicon Valley.

“Don’t get me wrong. Pittsburgh also has a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, but there is something about this air out here, once you start breathing it you don’t want a real job anymore, you want to be an entrepreneur,” Khosla remarked wryly, “You want to use somebody else’s money to create something, and maybe it becomes something big, or maybe you lose it. But as we know, more often than not it has become something big.”

Khosla also cited the significant investment made in the building of a state of the art distance education class room. “And we are building two more,” he added.

After the opening remarks of Cohon, Khosla and Martin Griss, Director of the CyLab Mobility Research Center, Associate Dean in the College of Engineering and recently named Director of Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley, the crowds of hundreds broke up into smaller groups to rotate through four brief presentations meant to convey the scope and spirit of the work being undertaken at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley:

• Jason Lohn, a Senior Research Scientist at the Silicon Valley campus, spoke on “Space and Beyond: Creating the Next Generation Antenna through Evolutionary Computing.”
• Khalid Al-Ali, Director of Research and the Carnegie Mellon Innovation Lab, spoke on “Carnegie Mellon Innovation Lab: An Overview of Cutting-Edge Research in Ground, Air and Space Technologies.”
• Ray Bareiss, Director of Educational Programs and Professor of Practice of Software Engineering and Software Management, spoke on “Transformative Professional Education for Silicon Valley.”
• Griss, along with two more faculty members, spoke on “Mobility: Enhancing Our Lives through Mobile Technology.”

Afterwards, attendees were shuttled to the Computer History Museum for “An Evening of Impact and Imagination.”

• To read more about the Innovation Showcase and the faculty presentations, visit the full article on Carnegie Mellon CyLab's website.
• To read more about the panel of experts at the evening event, visit the full article on Carnegie Mellon's home page.
• To watch a video on Silicon Valley leadership announcements or the panel of experts, visit our multimedia section.

(Pictured in banner above: Martin Griss, Joy Zhang, Ray Bareiss and Khalid Al-Ali.)