Three Professors Earn Highest Faculty Distinction

Three Carnegie Mellon University faculty members, Alan Frieze, Martin Gaynor and Susan Tsu, have been named University Professors, the highest designation a faculty member can achieve. The faculty members were nominated and recommended for the title of University Professor by academic leaders and the community of CMU University Professors.

"University Professors are distinguished by international recognition and for their contributions to education, artistic creativity and/or research. Alan, Martin, and Susan each exemplify this high level of achievement and commitment to both the university and the broader academic communities," said CMU Provost Farnam Jahanian.

Alan Frieze, professor of mathematics in the Mellon College of Science, is one of the founders of the field of random discrete structures and has remained at the forefront of that field for 35 years. In 1991, he received the prestigious Fulkerson Prize for his work on computing the volume of a convex body. His contributions to graph theory led to a plenary address at the quadrennial International Congress of Mathematicians in 2014, a degree of recognition accorded to only a handful of mathematicians. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Frieze is a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. He has developed innovative new curriculum at CMU, cofounding the interdisciplinary Algorithms, Combinatotics and Optimization Ph.D. program, which currently has 21 Ph.D. students across three schools and colleges

Martin Gaynor is the E.J. Barone Professor of Economics and Health Policy in the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. Gaynor has devoted his research to the economics of health care, a field in which he is considered one of the preeminent scholars. One of his most important findings — that competition among hospitals lowers prices and produces better health outcomes even when consumers are heavily insured — fundamentally changed accepted wisdom about health care markets and the nature of competition. He served as the Director of the Bureau of Economics at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in 2013-2014, where he was responsible for all economic matters and advised the Commission on antitrust and consumer protection issues. Elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2016, he is the recipient of a number of awards for his research, including the Best Paper Award in Economic Policy from the American Economic Association, the Victor R. Fuchs Research Award and the Kenneth J. Arrow Award.

Susan Tsu holds the Bessie F. Anathan Professorship in the College of Fine Arts (CFA) in recognition of her outstanding career in the School of Drama. She is a leader in the field of costume design, achieving early success as the original designer for the Broadway musical "Godspell." She has designed over 100 productions, including benchmark international productions of "The Joy Luck Club" in China and "The Balcony" at the Bolshoi Theatre in Russia. A double alumna of CFA, Tsu's designs have been represented in more than a dozen books. She has served on National Endowment for the Arts granting panels, the Theatre Communications Group board of directors, and has been a curator for the Prague Quadrennial and Bakhrushin Museum in Moscow. Her awards include the NY Drama Desk, NY Drama Critics and a Kennedy Center Medal of Achievement. In 2016, she was accorded the Theatre Development Fund Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award, the highest recognition bestowed by the national professional community of costume designers.