Personal Mention

Neuroscientist Aryn Gittis, an associate professor of biological sciences in the Mellon College of Science and member of the Carnegie Mellon Neuroscience Institute, has been awarded a grant from The Michael J. Fox Foundation to advance her research on new treatment methods for Parkinson’s disease. Under the grant, Gittis will collaborate with the University of Minnesota’s Jing Wang. They will test electrical stimulation protocols Gittis developed at Carnegie Mellon for therapeutic effects in Parkinson’s models. A current treatment for some patients with Parkinson’s disease is deep brain stimulation, where the patient undergoes surgery to implant electrodes in their brain. When the electrodes stimulate neurons in the basal ganglia, the patient gets relief from their symptoms. But, as soon as the stimulation stops, the symptoms come back. “The fact that the symptoms come back when you turn the electrodes off means we are not fixing the problem, just masking it,” Gittis said. “We’d like to figure out a way to fix the brain so it doesn’t always need the stimulation.” Find out more.

Marc DeGraef, professor of materials science and engineering, has been elected a fellow of the Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society (TMS) for his outstanding contributions to the practice of metallurgy, materials science and technology. The award includes a life membership to TMS and is considered its most prestigious award. DeGraef’s research interests lie in the area of microstructural characterization of structural intermetallics and magnetic materials. His current focus is on the development of experimental and modeling techniques for the quantitative study of magnetic domain configurations in a variety of materials, including ferromagnetic shape memory alloys, magnetic thin films and patterned structures. DeGraef is co-director of the J. Earle and Mary Roberts Materials Characterization Laboratory.

Thomas Cortina, assistant dean for undergraduate education in the School of Computer Science, has been named a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He is one of 62 computer scientists worldwide to be recognized this year for their outstanding contributions. Cortina is one of nine members selected for their educational contributions to computing. A faculty member since 2004, Cortina became assistant dean in 2012, overseeing a rapid expansion of the undergraduate program. He helped launch the popular CS4HS workshop for computer science high school teachers, and ACTIVATE workshops for science, technology, engineering and math teachers in the Pittsburgh region. He has been active in ACM’s Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) and currently serves on the ACM’s Education Advisory Committee. Find out more.