Personal Mention

Ralph Vituccio, an assistant teaching professor at the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) and an award-winning filmmaker and documentarian, will be co-hosting and co-presenting an interactive video art installation at the 2015 Havana International Biennale, May 21-June 22. This year’s theme is “Between the Idea and the Experience.” Joining Vituccio as the only American exhibitors will be colleagues Andreas Tapia-Urzua, chair of the Digital Media Department at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, and ETC tech expert John Dessler. Called “The Seasnail Oracle,” the Spanish-speaking contemporary art project combines data creation, programming, film, video projection and touchscreen technology, and features Tapia-Urzua’s elderly rendition of the pop culture icon Che Guevara as an oracle. “We wanted to create an interactive experience and take it to a place where they are really hungry and open to learn about different artists and cultures,” Vituccio said. Find out more about the exhibit.

Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Fellow Nancy Mead has been named the winner of the 2015 IEEE Computer Society Technical Council on Software Engineering (TCSE) Distinguished Education Award. The award will be presented to Mead at the 37th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) May 16-24 in Florence, Italy. The award is presented annually for outstanding and sustained contributions to software engineering education. In selecting Mead the TCSE noted her many contributions to the field over the past 30 years. In particular, the committee cited Mead’s “energetic and enthusiastic involvement in founding the Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training and her leading role in the development of the IEEE-CS/ACM Master of Software Assurance Reference Curriculum.” Learn more.

Terrence Chiusano, a staff member at Hunt Library for the past 10 years, is the winner of the Fordham University Press 2013-14 Poetry Out Loud Editor’s Prize for his book “On Generation & Corruption.” “Composed of several distinct yet inter-woven long poems, ‘On Generation & Corruption’ is structured around the conceits of location and dislocation, as it deconstructs a picture-postcard American town,” says Fordham University Press. Chiusano earned his bachelor’s degree in poetry writing at the University of Pittsburgh and his master’s degree in literature from the University of Buffalo. “I was also concerned to include in the book not just poetry, but a great deal of prose,” Chiusano said. “Speaking generally, the book is interested in permanence and change, the use of procedural constraints, the exploration of realism and narrative, and the problem of how place is constructed on the page.” The book is available from Fordham University Press as well as Amazon and other retailers.

Jesse Schell, distinguished professor of the practice at the Entertainment Technology Center, will appear on “Through the Wormhole,” hosted by Morgan Freeman, at 10 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, May 20, on Discovery’s Science Channel. The episode, "Do We Live in a Matrix?" examines how scientists in a variety of fields are taking seriously the possibility that we live in a virtual reality. Find out more.