Personal Mention

CMU faculty members Alessandro Acquisti, Lujo Bauer, Nicolas Christin and Lorrie Cranor were presented with IEEE Cybersecurity awards at the IEEE Cybersecurity Development Conference, Oct. 2 in Boston.

Acquisti, professor of information technology and public policy at Heinz College, earned the IEEE Cybersecurity Award for Innovation for his groundbreaking work on the economics and behavioral economics of privacy and personal information security. His work has advanced the application of rigorous economic methodologies to the study of privacy risks and trade-offs, and has pioneered the application of behavioral economics to understand the hurdles individuals face in making privacy decisions. This work has been vastly influential among researchers, policymakers and industry.

Bauer, Christin and Cranor (l-r) received the IEEE Cybersecurity Award for Practice for their body of work on passwords over the past nine years. They looked at the question of how to make passwords easier for users, yet harder for attackers to guess. Their work sheds light on this by developing a robust methodology for studying password strength and usability, and then using that methodology to show how better password policies and helpful feedback to users (powered by deep learning) can make passwords both more convenient and more secure. Bauer is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. Christin is an associate research professor in the Institute for Software Research. Cranor is the Fore Systems Professor of Computer Science and of Engineering and Public Policy, director of the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory, associate department head of the Engineering and Public Policy Department and co-director of the master's degree program in privacy engineering. Also earning awards as members of the CMU team were Ph.D. students, alumni and research staff Saranga Komanduri, Michelle Mazurek, William Melicher, Sean Segreti, Rich Shay and Blase Ur.

M. Shernell Smith has been named a recipient of a 2018 Women of Excellence Award by the New Pittsburgh Courier. Shernell, associate director for community engagement in the Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion and a housefellow at CMU, is being recognized alongside 49 other African-American women from the Pittsburgh region who have made significant contributions to the community and business world. As a member of the inaugural leadership team for CMU’s Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion, Shernell works to expand campus initiatives through collaborations with academic departments, administration, faculty, students and the broader community. In 2014, she was a founding convener of the Greater Pittsburgh Higher Education Diversity Consortium, which works to resolve the critical issues impacting diversity and inclusion in higher education throughout the Pittsburgh region. "Service to others is at the heart of Shernell’s work,” said Vice President for Student Affairs Gina Casalegno. Find out more.

Eric Anderson has been named a Distinguished Alumnus by the Department of Design at The Ohio State University. Anderson, associate professor of design and senior associate dean of the College of Fine Arts, was honored for his 20+ years of teaching and applying design thinking and strategy, user centered design methods, and product design and innovation in academia and professional service organizations. He is a co-founder of the Integrated Innovation Institute, where until recently he was an instructor and co-director of its Master of Integrated Innovation for Products and Services program. He has now returned to his teaching and research in the School of Design. Anderson earned his master’s degree in design education in 1997, and a master’s degree in industrial design in 2002 at Ohio State.

Emma Slayton and Eric Kaltman, postdoctoral fellows at University Libraries, have received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Council on Library and Information Resources to fund “Immersive Pedagogy: A Symposium on Teaching and Learning with 3D, Augmented and Virtual Reality.” This symposium will bring together a select group of specialists from across the country to design pedagogical material that addresses critical and practical needs in higher education. The project team will prioritize incubating projects focused on Latinx, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, but will broadly consider how 3D/XR technologies and data curation can intersect with methodologies deriving from studies of cultural heritage, minority archives, race and ethnicity, women of color and feminist theory, community outreach, public humanities and accessibility. After the symposium, all pedagogical materials will be made freely available to the public. “Immersive Pedagogy” is scheduled to take place at Carnegie Mellon in spring 2019.