Personal Mention

Sarah E. Mendelson has been appointed distinguished service professor of public policy and head of the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy in Washington, D.C. Mendelson joins the Carnegie Mellon community after serving as U.S. ambassador to the Economic and Social Council at the United Nations under President Barack Obama. Through the Master of Science in Public Policy and Management-D.C. program, Heinz College students spend their first year in Pittsburgh and their second year in the nation's capital, where they work for government, nonprofit and private sector organizations while attending school. In her new role, Mendelson will help these students build professional relationships as they prepare to enter the workforce as data-driven decision-makers. Through 2018, Mendelson also will serve as a distinguished fellow at the International Youth Foundation, where she will incubate an initiative called "Cohort 2030" that aims to grow the generation that knows about and demands the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more.

Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Aryn Gittis has received nearly $387,000 from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke through the federal BRAIN Initiative to study neuronal circuits involved in Parkinson’s disease. Earlier this year, Gittis’ research team was able to restore movement in a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease by using optogenetics to manipulate activity in two types of neurons found in the basal ganglia’s external globus pallidus. Their results showed an improvement in Parkinsonian symptoms that lasted far longer than current therapies, like deep brain stimulation and pharmaceuticals. The new grant will allow her to further this research by exploring the cellular and circuit mechanisms that are changed by this treatment. Find out more.

Jeff Galak, associate professor of marketing in the Tepper School of Business, has won the 2017 Association for Consumer Research Early Career Award and the 2018 Society for Consumer Psychology Early Career Award. He is one of only three professors to date to be selected for both honors. The ACR Early Career Award recognizes scholars who have earned their Ph.D. within the last eight years for their “scholarly contributions to the field of consumer research. Criteria used to determine contributions include innovation, methodological rigor and the potential to substantially advance our understanding of consumer behavior." The SCP Early Career Award recognizes distinguished scientific contribution to consumer psychology by a researcher who received a Ph.D. in the last 10 years. Galak will share the SCP award with Aison Xu of the Carlson Business School at the University of Minnesota.

Co-authors Jonathan Cagan (pictured) and Craig Vogel have made their textbook, “Creating Breakthrough Products,” free to download, sharing their innovation methodology with the world. Cagan and Vogel originally published the book in 2001 while serving as faculty for the Integrated Product Development capstone course. Both the IPD capstone and the book pioneered the concept of integrating teams and disciplines to create valuable and impactful products and services. After more than 17 years and two editions, the book's values and lessons have been widely adopted across industries in both public and private sectors. Companies including Procter & Gamble, Kraft and Boeing have effectively applied the concepts and approaches. It also has made a global impact, influencing innovators from countries like Belgium, Finland, England, China and Singapore. Cagan is the Ladd Professor of Mechanical Engineering and associate dean of the College of Engineering. Vogel is now director of the Center for Design Research and Innovation at the University of Cincinnati. Learn more.

Robert A. Miller, the Richard M. Cyert and Morris DeGroot Professor of Economics and Statistics at the Tepper School of Business, has been elected a fellow of the Econometric Society, which brings together international economic researchers to advance economic theory. The society publishes the research journals Econometrica, Quantitative Economics and Theoretical Economics, and meets throughout the year to present and discuss research on topics as diverse as family economics, voting, bank competition and social connections. Miller teaches courses in strategy and management at the Tepper School, where he has been a professor since 1982. He frequently presents at research seminars and conferences. His research has focused on compensation and labor, particularly managerial and executive compensation.

Thanks in part to expert testimony given by Associate Professor of Mathematical Sciences Wesley Pegden, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has declared the state's congressional map unconstitutional. Pegden has published a number of studies that use mathematics and computer science to address gerrymandering. His testimony focused on a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February 2017, in which Pegden, University Professor of Mathematical Sciences Alan Frieze and the University of Pittsburgh’s Maria Chikina used Markov Chains to show there was little chance that the state’s congressional districts could have been drawn at random, indicating it was highly likely the map was biased. The paper was named one of the top 100 science stories of 2017 by Discover Magazine. Pegden and Associate Professor of Computer Science Ariel Procaccia have come up with a solution for redrawing congressional districts. They have mathematically proven that the “I-Cut-You-Choose” method can create a fair districting map. Learn more.