Carnegie Mellon University

The Piper

CMU Community News

Piper Logo

Laurence Ales

November 14, 2018

Personal Mention

The Tepper School of Business has named Laurence Ales director of undergraduate research in economics. This newly established position was created to help students in the undergraduate economics program to pursue research opportunities inside and outside the classroom. Ales will work directly with economics students to help them develop research skills and find data resources to support their projects. In addition, he will match students with faculty members who have similar interests to support independent work or to create positions as research assistants. Ales, an associate professor of economics at the Tepper School, focuses on the study of inequality and the design of tax policy. His recent work studies the impact that future disruptive technologies will have on labor markets and determines the best response of policymakers. Ales teaches the Emerging Markets elective in the undergraduate program and the Global Economics course in the MBA program. He received the 2018 George Leland Bach Excellence in Teaching Award, the 2017 William H. and Frances S. Ryan Award for Meritorious Teaching, and the 2012 Richard M. Cyert Award for Excellence in Teaching. Find out more.

Aryn GittisAryn Gittis has been named a recipient of the Janett Rosenberg Trubatch Career Development Award from the Society for Neuroscience. She accepted the award last week at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting in San Diego. The award recognizes originality and creativity in research and promotes success for early career scientists. Gittis’ work focuses on teasing apart the complex neural circuitry of the basal ganglia, an area of the brain that plays a role in movement, learning, motivation and reward. Her work uses new technologies, including optogenetics, to determine how changes and breakdowns in these circuits result in movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease. In her recent research, Gittis discovered a class of neurons that, when targeted and stimulated using optogenetics, restored movement in a mouse model for Parkinson’s disease. The findings could lead to novel therapeutic targets for Parkinson’s, including deep brain stimulation. Gittis is an associate professor of biological sciences in CMU’s Mellon College of Science and a member of the joint CMU/University of Pittsburgh Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition. Find out more.

Edda Fields BlackEdda Fields-Black recently spoke with Alan Yu of WHYY’s health and science show, The Pulse, about the rice industry in South Carolina and Georgia, and how it wouldn’t have been possible without West African techniques of irrigation. These techniques ensure the rice fields have good balance of salt water and fresh water to stop weeds from growing and to keep the rice alive. Fields-Black is an associate professor of history, and is a specialist on West African rice farmers, peasant farmers in the pre-colonial Upper Guinea Coast and enslaved laborers on rice plantations in the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry during the Antebellum period. Fields-Black is currently collaborating with composer Travor Weston, filmmaker Julie Dash and cinematographer David Claessen to produce “Casop: A Requiem for Rice,” a lamentation for the repose of the souls of the dead who were enslaved, exploited and brutalized on rice plantations in Lowcountry South Carolina and Georgia. Find out more.

Susie LeeAlumna Susie Lee has been elected to Congress and will represent Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. A Democrat, Lee defeated Republican candidate Danny Tarkanian for Nevada’s Southernmost seat in the U.S. House. Known for its history as a swing district, it includes the area south of Las Vegas. “My career has been about taking on tough problems, rolling up my sleeves, and bringing people together to find solutions that improve people's lives," she said. Lee graduated from the Dietrich College in 1989 with a major in policy and management, a field of study offered by the Department of Social and Decision Sciences. She also earned a master’s degree in public policy and management from the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy in 1990 before launching a career as an advocate for education and the homeless.  Find out more.