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Tuomas Sandholm and Noam Brown

November 07, 2018

Personal Mention

Computer Science Professor Tuomas Sandholm and Noam Brown, a Ph.D. student in the Computer Science Department, are the latest recipients of the prestigious Marvin Minsky Medal, presented by the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ICJAI) in recognition of their outstanding achievements in AI. Sandholm and Brown created Libratus, an AI that became the first computer program to beat top professional poker players at the Heads-up, No-Limit Texas Hold’em event in January 2017. During the 20-day “Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence” competition, Libratus played 120,000 hands against four poker pros, beating each player individually and collectively amassing more than $1.8 million in chips. "Poker is an important challenge for AI because any poker player has to deal with incomplete information," said Michael Wooldridge, a professor of computer science at the University of Oxford and chair of the IJCAI Awards Committee. "Incomplete information makes the computational challenge orders of magnitude harder. Libratus used fundamentally new techniques for dealing with incomplete information, which have exciting potential applications far beyond games." Find out more.

Peggy HeidishPeggy Allen Heidish, director of the Intercultural Communication Center (ICC) for more than three decades, has announced her retirement effective today, Nov. 8. Under her pioneering leadership, the ICC has kept pace with CMU’s growing enrollment and changing demographics. Among her innovations was a novel learning program using short, skill-focused seminars to better accommodate students’ busy schedules, which became a model for similar programs around the country. The ICC has a national reputation as a leader in language instruction and cultural development for international students, and in testing and training for international teaching assistants. Heidish and the ICC have provided critical support to many CMU academic departments on language acquisition, language assessment and cross-cultural training. She has been a dedicated and valued colleague, friend and mentor to countless students and staff.

Norman SadehCyLab's Norman Sadeh, a professor in the Institute for Software Research and co-director of the Privacy Engineering program, spoke about privacy, artificial intelligence (AI) and the challenges at the intersection of the two at the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners (ICDPPC) in Brussels last week. Sadeh participated on a plenary panel on privacy and ethics, titled "Right vs. Wrong." "This panel was aimed at broadening the scope of privacy discussions beyond just regulation and addressing deeper, more complex ethical issues related to the use and collection of data," Sadeh said. "I discussed how our research has shown that getting the full benefits of existing regulations, whether GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) or the recently passed California Consumer Protection Act, is hampered by complex cognitive and behavioral limitations we people have. I talked about the technologies our group has been developing to assist users make better informed privacy decisions and overcome these limitations." Find out more.