Carnegie Mellon Among “Most Connected Campuses”...Carnegie Mellon ranks among the 25 “Most Connected Campuses" according to the latest Princeton Review survey of colleges and universities offering the most cutting-edge technology. Criteria for choosing the schools included breadth of the computer science curriculum; sophistication of campus technology, including streaming media of classes and extracurricular offerings; availability of school-owned digital cameras and equipment for student use; wireless Internet access; and support for handheld computing. The Top 25 is available at https://www.forbes.com/connected.
Admission Launches New Web Site, Sets Record for Applications...The Office of Undergraduate Admission launched its new Web site at https://www.cmu.edu/admission. Interactive Flash movies throughout the site allow visitors to experience Carnegie Mellon or explore Pittsburgh. The new admission site was built within Carnegie Mellon's existing portal system, which permits the site to pull relevant content from elsewhere in the university's Web environment. The Office of Admission also set a record this year with more than 18,000 applications for 2006-07 admission. The old record of 16,696 applications was set in 2001 when Carnegie Mellon joined the Common Application, a non-profit organization that provides a single online or print application that students may submit to any of its nearly 300 member institutions.
CERT Partners With Qatar's Supreme Council to Battle Cyber Risks...The Software Engineering Institute’s (SEI) CERT® Coordination Center (CERT/CC) and the Qatar Supreme Council for Information and Communications Technology have partnered to establish Qatar CERT (Q-CERT). Funded by the Qatar Supreme Council, Q-CERT will serve as the national organization to conduct and coordinate the cybersecurity activities needed to protect Qatar's critical infrastructures. For more, visit https://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases05/051215_qcert.html.
Center for the Arts in Society Continues Lecture Series, Seminars...The
Center for the Arts in Society continues its art histories lecture series, "Aesthetics Out of Bounds," this spring. The series provides a framework for the new course "Aesthetics Out of Bounds: History and Art Outside the Frame." The program brings top scholars in the arts, humanities and sciences to campus to speak on their specialty and lead one seminar for faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students. In addition to attending each lecture, students participate in a group of seminars on the topic of "arts histories." The objective of the arts histories program is to connect the artistic, social, political and technological to broader historical frameworks. This spring’s speakers are listed at https://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases06/060109_cas.html.
Study Shows Teens Unaware of STDS Until They Catch One...Most sexually active teenage girls know relatively little about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) until it is too late, according to a paper by Carnegie Mellon researchers that was published in the January edition of the Journal of Adolescent Health. "For the most part kids learn about sexually transmitted diseases when they are getting diagnosed with them," said Julie Downs, lead author of the study and a member of the Department of Social and Decision Sciences. The study's findings are troubling because teenagers who know little about STDs are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior and to delay the treatment of STDs. This latest study was co-authored by Wandi Bruine de Bruin and Baruch Fischhoff of the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, and Pamela J. Murray, director of adolescent medicine at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. For more, visit https://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases05/051221_std.html.
PNC Bank Opens on Campus...PNC Bank opened a new Electronic Customer Service Center in the lower level of the University Center near Andy's on Jan. 23. All deposits and withdrawals will be processed at two ATM machines and a 24-hour Internet station will support Web-based banking. PNC staff will be present during regular business hours: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday; and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursday. Special features include free student savings and checking accounts and financial literacy seminars.
Heinz School Announces Suresh Konda Memorial Lecture...The Heinz School is establishing the Suresh Konda Memorial Lecture to foster dialogue about information security policy and management issues. The lecture will honor Konda, an alumnus and long-time Carnegie Mellon employee, who died in 2003. He was considered a pioneer in information security research and recognized widely for his work on the security of large networks. He received the SEI's first Angel Jordan Award for Innovation in 2002. The lecture is being established through contributions from classmates, friends and colleagues who want to honor him and the lasting contributions he made to the field of information security. For more, visit https://www.cmu.edu/cmnews/extra/060113_konda.html.
School of Drama Announces Dramaturgy, Sound Design Options...The School of Drama added programs in production dramaturgy and professional sound design to its bachelor of fine arts offerings in acting, music theatre, design and production this spring. Dramaturgy unites scholarship with hands-on production work to enhance the theatre-making experience for a theatre company. The dramaturgy option will involve academic and artistic training, emphasizing research methods, aesthetic and critical theories, historical knowledge and professional experience with productions. Students will complete 90–110 units of coursework related to dramaturgical study and production, mostly divided between English and History.
Students who take sound design will work in the 18 productions planned for the drama season. "Given the strong, established core design program in the School of Drama—not to mention resources in the schools of Music, Art, Design, the ETC and the School of Computer Science—Carnegie Mellon is positioned to train a unique and potent breed of sound designers capable of working and excelling in all areas of the entertainment industry," said program director Joe Pino. For more on dramaturgy, see https://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases06/060105_drama.html. For sound design, visit https://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases06/060110_sound.html.
PSC Celebrates 20th Birthday...Twenty years ago (Jan. 17, 1986) the National Science Board approved funding for the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. As the fifth supercomputing center to be approved through a National Science Foundation initiative, PSC came into the supercomputing world running to catch up. Twenty years later, the original five are three, and PSC is solidly established as one of the world's leading centers in implementing new high-performance computing technologies as productive tools for science and engineering research. The PSC is a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh together with Westinghouse Electric Company. The PSC is supported by several federal agencies, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and private industry, and is a leading partner in the TeraGrid, the National Science Foundation's cyberinfrastructure program.
Carnegie Mellon Showcases Security Research at Taiwanese Symposium...Carnegie Mellon researchers and members of Taiwan's government-affiliated Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) unveiled new security technology Dec. 6 in Hsinchu, a research-rich area south of Taipei. Among the innovations on display was ICTrack, a toolbox for tracking unauthorized cars or intruders in a company's parking lot. The second technology unveiled at the Taiwan symposium was a dime-size motion sensor designed to track lost or stolen laptops and cell phones. It could also be used to assist with personal navigation. In addition to showcasing new technologies, President Jared L. Cohon gave a keynote address about innovation in America, and Ed Schlesinger, head of electrical and computer engineering, spoke on Carnegie Mellon's research in devices and materials. For more, see https://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases05/051205_taiwan.html.
Data Storage Systems Center Adds Four Partners to Research Mix...Fujitsu and Alps Electric Co. Ltd. of Japan and U.S-based Western Digital and Quantum Corp. recently joined forces with the Data Storage Systems Center (DSSC) to tackle a variety of projects designed to help industry create nanometer-scale technology that will lead to fast, low-cost compact information storage devices. For the past decade, the DSSC has worked closely with more than 15 other industry affiliates to define projects to help the $60 billion information storage market continue to grow and expand. "The DSSC is an important multidisciplinary resource center for the region, and our new affiliates will help stimulate continued growth," said Jim Bain, associate director of the DSSC. For more, visit https://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases06/060125_dssc.html.
Carnegie Mellon-led Team Finds First Evidence of Living Memory Trace...An international team of scientists has detected a memory trace in a living animal after it has encountered a single, new stimulus. The research, done with honeybees sensing new odors, allows neuroscientists to peer within the living brain and explore short-term memory as never before, according to scientist Roberto Fernández Galán, a leading author on the report and postdoctoral research associate at Carnegie Mellon. Galán noted that capturing these memory traces could ultimately provide a new way to understand how short-term memory works. The findings are scheduled for January publication in the journal Neural Computation. For more, see https://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases05/051114_galan.html.
Carnegie Mellon, Pitt Receive $1 Million from Howard Hughes Medical Institute...Carnegie Mellon, in partnership with the University of Pittsburgh, has received a $1 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to support the development of an interdisciplinary joint doctoral program in computational biology. The grant, one of only 10 awarded from a competition of 132 applicants nationwide, will support the new Ph.D. program in Computational Biology that the two universities jointly established last year. The primary focus will be on curriculum development, emphasizing a new laboratory course for computational biologists and expanded course offerings in bioimage informatics and computational structural biology. For more, visit https://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases05/051122_grant.html
Research Team Uses Internet Ideas to Transform DNA Microarray Analysis...A standard Internet protocol that checks errors made during email transmissions has inspired a revolutionary method to transform DNA microarray analysis, a common technology used to understand gene activation. The new method, which blends experiment and computation, strengthens DNA microarray analysis, according to its Carnegie Mellon inventor, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Biological Sciences Ziv Bar-Joseph, who published his findings in the December issue of Nature Biotechnology with collaborators at The Hebrew University in Israel. For more, see https://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases05/051208_dna.html.
Fletcher Named President, CEO of Aspen Music Festival & School...Alan Fletcher, head of the School of Music since 2001, has been named president and CEO of The Aspen Music Festival and School in Aspen, Colo., effective March 1. The Aspen Music Festival and School is one of classical music's most distinguished and prolific institutions. It is a high-level training and performance ground for the world's next generation of professional musicians. It is also host to a premier classical music summer festival that presents more than 350 musical events in nine weeks and serves as a summer retreat for many of the world's great musical practitioners. Fletcher will be the seventh president and CEO of the AMFS in its 57-year history.
