It should be no surprise that global, national and regional leaders have for decades relied on Carnegie Mellon’s foresight and expertise to guide policies and advance key initiatives. Recently, though, it feels as if the pace of our interactions is accelerating. Why is that? I hypothesize that during this critical juncture for our modern society, a time when the world is adapting to — and preparing itself for — a rapidly changing future, CMU and its faculty members are at the center of creating solutions to the most challenging issues of our time, from AI innovation and ethics to pandemic data science and modeling. As a result, our experts and their pioneering solutions to improve the world are in higher demand.

Case in point: U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg traveled to our Pittsburgh campus in January to take part in a town hall with CMU faculty and students about a range of topics. He told the audience he had been eager to visit us since his agency’s announcement last year that CMU would lead Safety21, a $20 million national University Transportation Center to ensure technologies are developed and deployed with safety, equity and sustainability in mind. CMU students engaged Secretary Buttigieg in a robust discussion, and in his conversation with Safety21 Director and Professor Raj Rajkumar, he was bullish about his expectations for this six-university collaboration: “We believe your insights will help us save lives.”

READ PRESIDENT JAHANIAN'S LETTER TO THE CMU AMBASSADORS AS WELL AS FEATURED ARTICLES