Personal Mention
José M. F. Moura, the Philip L. and Marsha Dowd University Professor and IEEE Life Fellow, has been elected to serve as the 2018 IEEE President-Elect. Moura will begin serving as IEEE president on Jan. 1, 2019. Moura ran as a candidate with two main goals for the position. First, he is focused on creating value for members and technical communities by rebuilding IEEE membership, making IEEE significant to young professionals, industry and academic professionals, and tailoring IEEE's products and services to the different regions and countries of the world. His second commitment is to run an efficient organization. By ridding IEEE of its persistent multimillion dollar operation deficit, the institute's resources can be fully devoted to creating membership value. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. Considered the trusted voice for engineering, computing, and technology information around the globe, IEEE is made up of more than 423,000 members in over 160 countries. Find out more.
Kiron Skinner, the Taube Professor of International Relations and Political Science, is joining FOX News Channel (FNC) as a contributor. In this role, Skinner will offer foreign policy and political analysis across FNC and FOX Business Network’s daytime and primetime programming. Skinner is director of Center for International Relations and Politics, the Institute for Politics and Strategy, the Institute for Strategic Analysis, and the Washington Semester Program at CMU. She also is the W. Glenn Campbell Research Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Find out more.
Jay Whitacre, director of the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, has been installed as the College of Engineering’s Trustee Professor in Energy. The professorship is designated by CMU's Board of Trustees to honor leadership and academic excellence in the College of Engineering. Since arriving at CMU in 2007, Whitacre has focused on the synergistic fields of energy storage and energy system modeling. He developed the first mass-produced, low-cost, eco-friendly battery and in May 2017, he became director of the Scott Institute. Whitacre is the recipient of the 2015 $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize and has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He has authored or co-authored over 75 peer review papers and is an inventor on over 20 patents. Learn more.
Carol Frieze and Marie Claire Murekatete were honored for their contributions to increasing diversity in the fields of computer science and technology during the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Oct. 4–6 in Orlando.
Frieze, director of Women@SCS and SCS4All, received the Computing Research Association's A. Nico Habermann Award. The Habermann Award is given to a person who has made outstanding contributions aimed at increasing the numbers and/or successes of underrepresented members in the computing research community. The award is named for the late Nico Habermann, a longtime head of CMU's Computer Science Department and the first dean of its School of Computer Science.
Murekatete, a CMU-Africa alumna, received the AnitaB.org’s Change Agent ABIE Award. The award honors an outstanding international woman who has created or expanded opportunities for girls and women in technology. Murekatete, who earned her master's degree in information technology from CMU-Africa in 2014, is a software development division manager at Rwanda Information Society Authority. Murekatete founded Refugee Girls Need You, an organization that teaches information and communication technology (ICT) skills to teenage refugees in Rwanda. Each year the organization teaches at least 400 young women each year to learn basic computer programming, web design, ICT support and graphic design.