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September 24, 2015

Personal Mention

Lenore BlumLenore Blum will be a plenary speaker at the 3rd International Conference on the History and Philosophy of Computing, Oct. 8-11 in Pisa, Italy. In her talk, titled “Alan Turing and the Other Theory of Computation,” Blum will recognize Alan Turing’s work in the foundations of numerical computation (in particular, his 1948 paper “Rounding-Off Errors in Matrix Processes”), its influence in complexity theory today, and how it provides a unifying concept for the two major traditions of the Theory of Computation. Blum is a distinguished career professor of computer science, founding director of Project Olympus and founding co-director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Find out more.

Linda AndersonAfter serving 29 years as the university’s director of Student Financial Aid, Linda Anderson is stepping down from her position, effective Oct. 2. Anderson has benefited thousands of students and families as she oversaw the management of hundreds of millions of dollars of financial aid resources across the institution. As a member of the Enrollment Services leadership team, she has helped set new standards for the delivery of financial aid, with a focus on improved communication, responsiveness and process. Anderson has served on the executive boards and in leadership roles of NEASEA and NASEA (the Northeast and National Associations of Student Employment Administrators), PASFAA and EASFAA (the Pennsylvania and Eastern Associations of Student Financial Aid Administrators), and several Higher Education Financing Advisory Boards. For the past four years, she has served as PASFAA’s vice president and chair of the Government Relations Committee and co-chair of EASFAA’s Government Relations Committee. In these roles, she made regular visits to Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., advocating for undergraduate and graduate student aid programs. Staff members are invited to join the Division of Enrollment Services for a farewell gathering honoring Anderson from 3 to 4:30 p.m., Monday, Oct. 5 in the Cohon University Center’s Danforth Lounge. RSVPs are requested by Friday, Sept. 25, to Louise Krowitz at lt04@andrew.cmu.edu.

Jill MillerJill Chisnell Miller has been appointed Integrated Media and Design Librarian, a new faculty position in University Libraries. Miller has held roles within CMU Libraries since 2002, most recently filling the interim computer science librarian position. She holds a bachelor's degree in film and television from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a master's degree in library and information science from the University of Pittsburgh.

Carmel MajidiYong-Lae ParkAssistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Carmel Majidi (far left) and Assistant Professor of Robotics Yong-Lae Park have received a $100,000 Samsung Global Research Outreach Program grant to develop soft artificial muscles for robotics. The research team seeks to create programmable pneumatic artificial muscle (pPAM) to power soft, bio-inspired robots. Made of compact, lightweight and versatile material, it will eliminate the need for heavy, clunky hardware. “Our goal is to reduce the size and weight of inflatable soft robots so that they can be more mobile, power efficient, and — in the case of wearable and medical robotics — compatible with the human body,” Park said. The project, a collaboration between the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Robotics Institute, will use newly renovated, shared laboratory space. The facility includes equipment for rapid prototyping and material fabrication.

Kevin JarboKevin Jarbo, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology, has been named the 2015 winner of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC) Outstanding Paper Award. Jarbo’s paper, "Converging Structural and Functional Connectivity of Orbitofrontal, Dorsolateral Prefrontal, and Posterior Parietal Cortex in the Human Striatum,” was chosen from a pool of manuscripts submitted by students at the University of Pittsburgh and CMU. The study identified new ways that several brain areas communicate. Learn more about it.

The Siebel Scholars Foundation has named six CMU graduate students to its 2016 Class of Siebel Scholars. Five were honored as exceptional students in computer science and one was recognized in the field of energy science, which was newly added to the program this year. The scholars are:

  • Matt Wytock, a Ph.D. candidate in the Machine Learning Department (energy science);
  • John Dickerson, a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science Department;
  • Rohit Girdhar, a master’s degree student in the Robotics Institute;
  • Po-Yao Huang, a master’s degree student in the Language Technologies Institute;
  • Jeffrey Rzeszotarski, a Ph.D. student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute; and
  • Xun Zheng, a master’s degree student in the Machine Learning Department.

The Siebel Scholars program recognizes the most talented students at the world’s leading graduate schools of business, bioengineering, computer science, and, now, energy science. Find out more about the scholars.