By Daniel Tkacik / 412-268-1187 / dtkacik@andrew.cmu.edu

In conjunction with the inaugural National Maker Faire and the White House Week of Making kicking off this week in Washington, D.C., Carnegie Mellon University experts have projected the top 10 things in 3-D metal printing.

“At Carnegie Mellon, we have many faculty working to improve 3-D printing of metals, from powder properties and manufacturing outcomes to cost and public policy issues,” said Jack Beuth, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the NextManufacturing Center at Carnegie Mellon. “Much of this learning is being applied to jet engine parts but the technology is already beginning to trickle down to a wide variety of custom metal components and replacement parts.”

Beuth’s research focuses on mapping outcomes of various 3-D printing processes, also known as additive manufacturing, to ultimately make the process faster and cheaper when applied to metals. This past semester, Beuth taught the course Additive Manufacturing for Engineers, integrating business, design andengineering aspects of product development while introducing undergraduate students to all types of 3-D printing.

Zachary Francis, the course’s teaching assistant, has been selected to showcase the products developed and printed during Beuth’s additive manufacturing course at the inaugural National Maker Faire in Washington.

“The course teaches students about a technology which is becoming increasingly more important in industry,” said Francis, a second-year Ph.D. student in the Mechanical Engineering Department. “It gives students experience in the new and evolving field of 3-D printing and allows them to create new designs with the needs and desires of customers in mind.”

A team of students from Carnegie Mellon’s Integrated Innovation Institute has also been selected to present at the inaugural National Maker Faire. These students will showcase their project on portable, heated homeless shelters that provides the homeless a new and easy way to stay warm during the cold winter season.

The inaugural National Maker Faire at the University of the District of Columbia June 12-13 will bring inventors, tinkerers, and makers of all ages and expertise to share their creations and ideas with other curious and inventive people from around the nation. Over 215,000 people were in attendance at the two flagship Maker Faires in San Francisco and New York City in 2014.

Catalysts created by Carnegie Mellon University chemist Terrence J. Collins effectively and safely remove a potent and dangerous endocrine disruptor from wastewater.

In a paper published in Scientific Reports, Collins’ research team and collaborators led by Brunel University London’s Susan Jobling and Rak Kanda demonstrate that the catalysts could be a viable option for large-scale water treatment.

As pharmaceutical use has skyrocketed, especially in first-world countries, the amount of drugs released into the water system through wastewater has dramatically increased. Medications designed to disrupt the endocrine system, such as birth control pills and some breast and prostate cancer drugs, can be found in close to 25 percent of the world’s streams, rivers and lakes. Studies have shown that these compounds have an adverse effect on the health of wildlife.

In many cases, researchers are finding that male fish in these polluted water sources undergo a process called feminization, which is an indicator that estrogenic contaminants are present in the water. Prolonged exposure to these female hormones can cause males to develop eggs in their testes and leads to the decline of fish populations.

“We need to get these micropollutants out of our water systems. Fish are indicators of what can happen when hormone control systems get hijacked by synthetic chemicals. We humans are also animals with endocrine systems, after all.” — Terrence Collins

“Unfortunately, some synthetic chemicals, including some everyday chemicals, are powerful endocrine disruptors and they often turn up as contaminants in water.  These chemicals, called micropollutants, can be bioactive at low environmentally relevant concentrations and are typically tough to break down,” said Collins, the Teresa Heinz Professor of Green Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon. “We need to get these micropollutants out of our water systems. Fish are indicators of what can happen when hormone control systems get hijacked by synthetic chemicals. We humans are also animals with endocrine systems, after all.”

When a person takes a drug, that drug travels through their body and what isn’t absorbed or broken down is excreted as waste. Conventional wastewater treatment systems are unable to fully remove many of the harmful chemicals found in today’s pharmaceuticals, pesticides and other products. Advanced processes installed at the end of wastewater treatment plants, especially those that use ozone or activated carbon, have been shown to be effective options for reducing micropollutants, but the high financial and energy costs of incorporating these have limited their adoption.

When combined with hydrogen peroxide, TAML activators very effectively break down harmful chemicals in water.

Collins has developed a group of catalysts called TAML activators that offer an alternative treatment option. TAMLs are small molecules that mimic oxidizing enzymes. When combined with hydrogen peroxide, TAML activators very effectively break down harmful chemicals in water. To test the effectiveness and safety of these catalysts, Collins teamed up with the Brunel research team, who are world-class experts in aquatic toxicity and wastewater treatment.

In the current paper, the group demonstrates the efficacy and safety of TAML activators via a series of experiments. First, they showed that TAMLs were able to degrade, in pure water, 17alpha-ethinylestradiol (EE2), a synthetic estrogen found in oral contraceptives and a major cause of fish feminization. They then isolated the early intermediate compounds created as TAMLs degrade EE2, and found that several of these were estrogenic and harmful, too. But, using chemical analysis, the researchers showed that the TAML process was able to effectively degrade these intermediate compounds.

The research group also applied TAML activators to samples of water processed by municipal wastewater plants from the U.K. They found that the TAMLs were able to break down EE2 and other estrogenic compounds and micropollutants in the water.

The researchers were then able to demonstrate in the lab that water treated with TAMLs was not harmful to fish. They exposed male fathead minnows, a common freshwater fish found in many inland waterways, to water containing EE2. The exposure to EE2 caused a well-known effect — the fish began to feminize. After they used TAMLs to remove EE2 from the water, the amount of vitellogenin, a female egg yolk protein, found in the minnows significantly decreased, signaling a dramatic reduction in feminization. Additionally, the fish did not have any detectable adverse effects from being exposed to the tiny traces of TAMLs in the water.

The researchers plan to test TAMLs against ozone and activated carbon treatment systems. They have shown that TAMLs will be at least as effective, and anticipate that the TAML process will come at a much lower cost. Collins estimates that a kilogram of catalyst could treat tens of thousands of tons of wastewater.

You see it in headlines with more and more frequency: "Local School Provides Tablets for All Students." But though screen technologies are ubiquitous and certainly appealing for children, it's worth asking whether kids still need real-world experimentation with physical objects to enhance their learning. A group of Carnegie Mellon University researchers recently demonstrated that the answer to that question is a resounding yes.

Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) Ph.D. student Nesra Yannier, working with HCII faculty member Ken Koedinger, who also has a join appointment in the Department of Psychology, and Scott Hudson, designed an experiment that investigated whether 92 children between the ages of 6 and 8 learned more from a mixed-reality (combining physical and virtual worlds) or screen-only educational game, and the effect that adding a physical component (like shaking the screen) had on the students' enjoyment of the activity.

The "EarthShake" game uses a friendly gorilla and towers made from blocks (below) to teach students principles like stability and balance.

Their findings, "Learning From Mixed-Reality Games: Is Shaking a Tablet as Effective as Physical Observation?" were presented at the recent Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI2015) and received an Honorable Mention award.

In the experiment, students played one of four versions of "EarthShake," a learning game that uses a friendly gorilla and towers made from blocks to teach students scientific thinking and basic physics principles like stability and balance. The original mixed-reality version of the game includes an earthquake table, the towers, and a projected video game synchronized with the real world via a Kinect depth camera sensing and a specialized algorithm.

Kids see the blocks tumble when an experimenter activates the earthquake table with a switch.

At the beginning of the game, the gorilla asks the students which of two towers on the earthquake table in front of them will fall first, and the students use a mouse to select the tower on the projected interface. After collaboratively discussing why they think the tower will fall, the students use a mouse to press the shake button on the projected screen, and an experimenter activates the earthquake table with a switch. Once the tower falls down, the game recognizes the results in the real world and gives interactive feedback accordingly.

If the students chose the correct tower, the gorilla congratulates them and asks them why they think it fell. If they're wrong, the gorilla nicely tells them so. Both groups then select the reason why they thought it fell from a list of possible explanations.

Watch a video of the research in action.

The experimenters developed three variations on the original game to explore how physical interaction affects learning, how enjoyment affects learning and if enjoying the exercise leads to enhanced learning. In the first modification, students played the mixed-reality game but could control the earthquake table themselves with a physical switch — with no experimenter intervention.

In the second modification, students played a screen-only version of the game on a laptop, but answered questions and pressed the shake button with a mouse. In the final variation, students played the screen-only version on a tablet, and could shake the tablet at earthquake time. Testing was done both before and after the game to measure learning.

In the final analysis, Yannier and her colleagues found that the mixed-reality game improved learning by almost five times more than the screen-only alternatives, both in the mouse-controlled and physically controlled conditions. Not only that, but students enjoyed the game more in the mixed-reality conditions. They also determined that simple physical controls like shaking the tablet or pushing the earthquake button did little to improve either learning or enjoyment of the game.

"Mixed-reality games that support physical observation in the real world have a great potential to enhance learning and enjoyment for young children," the researchers concluded. They aim to extend their mixed-reality game to different content areas to create a new educational system that bridges the advantages of physical and virtual worlds to improve children’s science learning, understanding and enjoyment in a collaborative way.

Watch a video of the research in action.

This research is an example of the work being done through CMU’s Simon Initiative. Named for the late CMU Nobel Laureate professor and co-founder of artificial intelligence, Herbert Simon, this initiative harnesses a cross-disciplinary ecosystem of learning science that has developed over several decades at CMU, with the goal of measurably improving student learning outcomes.

Responding to President Obama’s 2014 call to action to create a “Nation of Makers,” Carnegie Mellon University has put Maker education at the heart of its strategies to enhance student experiences in creativity, technology, culture and entrepreneurship.

As part of the White House’s first Week of Making, June 12–18, CMU is releasing a national trend report on Making in higher education, and students and faculty are showcasing their work at the National Maker Faire in Washington, D.C.

The university’s deep roots in the Maker culture stem from its founding as a technical trade school for the children of steelworkers, and work by Lee Weiss of CMU’s Robotics Institute in the 1990s laid the foundation for modern 3-D printing technology.

Making in Higher Education Report

CMU researchers, in partnership with the MakeSchools Alliance, developed the State of Making in Higher Education report to explore institutional perspectives on and support for the Maker culture on American campuses and in their surrounding communities. They also examined the new technical, instructional and organizational challenges institutions face in embracing Making on their campuses.

“Making has become synonymous with ‘tinkering,’ but it also can be considered a rigorous instructional or research approach. The MakeSchools Alliance is addressing this perceptual issue by articulating the role, scope and potential of Making in higher education,” said Daragh Byrne, report co-author and faculty member in CMU’s School of Architecture and IDeATe Network.

Founded in fall 2014, the MakeSchools Alliance represents 40 universities, community colleges, art and design schools dedicated to promoting Maker education and empowering a new generation of Makers.

The alliance will name the winners of the inaugural MakeSchools Student Competition, sponsored by Dremel, during the National Maker Faire on Saturday, June 13. Students from member institutions were invited to submit independent or collaborative projects completed within the last year that address the question, “How are you making impact on your campus, in your community or in the world with Making?” The top prize is a Maker package featuring a Dremel 3-D Idea Building printer.

National Maker Faire

CMU students and faculty have been invited to showcase their projects at the National Maker Faire, June 12–13, at the University of the District of Columbia. They join Makers from across the country and representatives from 10 federal agencies, including the Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the Small Business Administration and NASA, in celebrating the creativity and diversity of inventors, tinkerers, entrepreneurs and innovators.

Mechanical engineering doctoral student and teaching assistant Zachary Francis will discuss how students enrolled in CMU’s Additive Manufacturing for Engineers course learn about the process of additive manufacturing, also known as 3-D printing, and show examples of products students created and sold online. In addition, students from the Integrated Innovation Institute will demonstrate their portable, heated shelters that provide the homeless a new and easy way to stay warm in the winter.

Byrne will represent CMU at the MakeSchools Alliance booth, and faculty members Beatrice Dias and Illah Nourbakhsh will showcase projects representative of the CREATE Lab’s new “Make for Humanity” campaign at a booth sponsored by Infosys. Nourbakhsh will deliver a talk about the campaign at 3:30 p.m., Friday, June 12.

Continuing Commitments

Higher education institutions submitted one-year updates to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on their commitments to developing new educational opportunities, expanding infrastructure and participating in regional efforts to create a vibrant Maker ecosystem. CMU shared milestones from the 2014-2015 academic year and ongoing efforts, such as:

• The launch of the Integrative Design, Arts and Technology (IDeATe) Network, which now offers eight interdisciplinary minors and concentrations that focus on learning through collaborative Maker experiences in 30 studio-based courses at the new IDeATEe@Hunt facility.
• The construction of a 12,600 square-foot nanofabrication space in the new Sherman and Joyce Bowie Scott Hall.
• The creation of a Learning Media Design Center, which partners with Pittsburgh’s Remake Learning Council to integrate neighborhood, school, library, TechShop and museum initiatives with CMU's research and educational offerings.
• Continuing support for the New App for Making It In America’s apprenticeship program at TechShop. The U.S. Department of Labor-funded workforce development initiative is designed to retrain people in Western Pennsylvania who have recently lost a job for careers in digital making and manufacturing.

See the White House's update on commitments CMU and higher education institutions around the country have made to President Obama’s Nation of Makers initiative.

Newell Washburn and colleagues are using polymer chemistry techniques to transform one of nature's most abundant macromolecules into a material that could improve widely available commercial products, like concrete.

Lignin is a polymer that gives structure to trees and other plants; when purified it turns into a nanoparticle with unique properties. In his lab, Washburn uses a controlled radical polymerization method to graft water-soluble polymers onto lignin, further enhancing its structural and functional properties. The resulting product is like a "lignopolymer" that can be used to bolster other materials.

"Our lab focuses on merging chemistry and engineering techniques to develop new structural materials, which make lignin a prime candidate for our work," said Washburn, associate professor in the departments of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering.

After creating the "lignopolymers," Washburn and his colleagues demonstrated that it can be used as a plasticizer that keeps concrete from aggregating, which improves workability and reduces water requirements for the common building material. The plant-based polymer works just as well as currently used plasticizers, with the added advantage that it can be used at much lower concentrations.

Chetali Gupta, a doctoral student in Materials Science and Engineering and a member of the Washburn lab, will present this work and other studies on lignin at the 89th American Chemical Society Colloid and Surface Science Symposium that is being held on Carnegie Mellon's Pittsburgh campus from June 15–17. This is the third time that the university has hosted the conference, which brings together close to 600 scientists from 22 countries to present the latest nanotechnology research.

The symposium is organized and co-chaired by Stephen Garoff, professor and head of the Department of Physics, Jim Schneider, professor of Chemical Engineering and Bob Tilton, professor of Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering.

"Nanoscience brings together a number of different fields. Newell's research is a shining example of this, combining chemistry and engineering; nature and industry," Garoff said. "This interdisciplinary meeting is a perfect fit for Carnegie Mellon, where there are no borders to how we do our work."

Related:

• Conference website
• Read press release

Hilary Masters, an acclaimed writer and beloved professor at Carnegie Mellon University, died Sunday, June 14. He was 87.

Masters joined CMU’s Department of English in 1983 and spent the past 32 years inspiring students. A mainstay in the Creative Writing Program — one of the oldest undergraduate programs of its kind— Masters taught courses, such as Survey of Forms: Fiction and the Personal Essay Writing Workshop, most recently as last semester. Among his numerous awards and honors, he received the American Academy of Arts Award for Literature in 2003.

“Our undergraduate creative writing majors were fortunate to have the opportunity to learn from a consummate writer who was also an extraordinary teacher and mentor,” said Chris Neuwirth, head of the Department of English in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Hilary Masters earned numerous honors and awards, including the American Academy of Arts Award for Literature in 2003. (Photo courtesy Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Masters career as a writer and teacher followed his work as a journalist, Broadway press agent and photographer. He authored 10 novels, the first, “The Common Pasture,” was published in 1967. His last novel, “Post: A Fable” in 2011, is a mystery, environmental elegy and futuristic tale about ruining things that we love. He also wrote short stories and essays, and much of his work focused on themes of abandonment — physical, spiritual and moral — in contemporary America.

However, it was the personal essay genre that Masters was most known for — a form that he called his favorite. He published three collections in this style, including the book-length essay “Shadows on a Wall,” which portrayed a meeting between the Mexican muralist Juan O'Gorman and E. J. Kaufmann, the “merchant prince” who built Fallingwater.

His 1983 family memoir, “Last Stands: Notes from Memory,” has been republished many times and is considered to be the gold standard for the genre.

“As a colleague he will be incredibly missed. His wit and grace were evident in every aspect of his friendships and mentorships with all of us in creative writing,” said Sharon Dilworth, associate professor of English and Creative Writing Program director. “I loved returning in the fall to see Hilary wearing his yellow socks — he wore yellow socks every day after turning 50 [because] he said, ‘You have to do something with this aging thing.’ The first thing he would ask [each fall] was, ‘Type anything good this summer?’”

"Most of all he cared about students learning the craft. He wanted them to appreciate the world of fiction, the difficulty of the business but the joy of getting a piece exactly as they first envisioned it.” — Sharon Dilworth

Dilworth continued, “He cared about writing, he cared about stories. He would entertain us with anecdotes about his life, his years at Brown and his trips to France where he often rented a car and drove the blue roads, stopping at truck stops for incredible meals. Most of all he cared about students learning the craft. He wanted them to appreciate the world of fiction, the difficulty of the business but the joy of getting a piece exactly as they first envisioned it.”

Masters was a dedicated professor who often mentored his students well past their time at Carnegie Mellon. He used the essays of Montaigne to teach students that their own personal lens was the perfect trigger for any piece of writing. He gave them the confidence that their experiences, however unsophisticated, however limited, had incredible value.

“Since I first met him at CMU about 30 years ago, Hilary Masters was my friend. His office door was wide open for his students, with whom he was very patient, kind and generous, and I went there often,” said Jonathan Barnes, a 1993 CMU graduate, who majored in professional writing and creative writing and is now a journalist and freelance writer.

“I remained in touch with him after graduating because like many writers, I craved encouragement. For years I felt like I didn't measure up as a writer since I haven't published any books, but Hilary never made me feel that way. 'Don't be so hard on yourself,' he said to me the last time I saw him, months ago... Always encouraging, he believed in the craft of writing and he believed in his students, and he believed in me,” Barnes said.

“I have now published thousands of newspaper and magazine stories, but one of the biggest thrills for me always was having Hilary compliment me on a piece. Words cannot express how much it meant to me to have his faith in me,” Barnes added.

Masters is survived by his wife Kathleen George, a playwright and novelist, and three children: Katherine, John and Joellen.

The English Department is planning to hold a memorial for Masters later this fall. They also will dedicate the 2016 Adamson Student Writing Awards in his honor.

In taking this additional responsibility, Webster will facilitate the growth of the Integrative Design, Arts and Technology Network (IDeATe), the Emerging Media Master's Degree program, the Integrative Media Program in NYC and the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC).

Keith Webster

In only one year, IDeATe is already recognized as a national model, merging technology and arts in education, research and creative practice. More than 300 students and 70 faculty from 15 different departments and schools are participating in IDeATe.

Appointed dean in 2013, Webster was integral in establishing IDeATe’s intellectual commons in Hunt Library, where it is fostering interdisciplinary study and research. He will continue to serve as dean of University Libraries, and to hold the rank of principal librarian. He holds a courtesy academic appointment in the School of Public Policy and Management in the Heinz College.

Jahanian also has appointed a 10-person Steering Committee to help guide IDeATe. Members are: Peter Boatwright (Tepper School of Business); Drew Davidson (ETC); Susan Finger (College of Engineering); Jodi Forlizzi (School of Computer Science); Jessica Hodgins (School of Computer Science); Steve Lee (College of Fine Arts); Golan Levin (College of Fine Arts); Sarah Pickett (College of Fine Arts); Dan Sieworek (College of Engineering and School of Computer Science); and Tim Zak (Heinz College).

“I believe Keith’s leadership, with support from the Steering Committee, will allow IDeATe to pave the way for new creative and innovative collaborations across the university,” Jahanian said.

A new book by Carnegie Mellon University’s Christopher N. Warren discloses how a Bush Administration lawyer misinterpreted cultural history to justify War on Terror activities such as waterboarding and secret prisons. 

In researching “Literature and the Law of Nations, 1580-1680,” Warren discovered writings on sixteenth-century international law by the future Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel John Yoo, who is best known as an author of the so-called “torture memos.”  Yoo’s commentaries, published while Yoo was a law professor at University of California, Berkeley in 1997, argued that international law did not apply to non-state combatants.  The Bush Administration’s controversial “torture memos” of early 2002 would argue the same.

Warren, assistant professor of English in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, says that the subject of Yoo’s analysis, an Elizabethan jurist named Alberico Gentili who is sometimes called the “father of international law,” is just one of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century thinkers who still influence contemporary international affairs.  

Published by Oxford University Press, “Literature and the Law of Nations” shows that international law today owes many of its most basic ideas to early modern culture. However, habitually divorcing legal ideas from cultural history, Warren contends, has had negative consequences. Yoo’s study of early modern international law, for instance, should have led Yoo in very different directions. Using evidence from legal archives, literature, and drama, Warren shows that international law regularly applied to individuals operating outside official state roles.

"Today’s international law isn’t perfect, but we do it a profound disservice unless we acknowledge that it it has deep historical roots and that it’s shaped and been shaped by a rich cultural history." — Christopher N. Warren

Warren wrote “Literature and the Law of Nations” because writers like William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and John Milton had wrongly been excluded from the usual stories about international law.  He traces the origins of international law to early modern poets, dramatists and translators and shows how their works continue to influence modern understandings of international law. Literary and legal scholars, he proposes, should resist tendentious but politically consequential assumptions about whether international law is "real" law.

 “Broad and expansive in its thinking about the power of humanist learning, especially literary scholarship, while at the same time, thoroughly fluent in the historical details and cultural nuances of the early modern period, Warren’s book makes a dazzling case for reinvigorating historicist scholarship through the study of literary genre and form,” said Rachel Trubowitz, professor of English at the University of New Hampshire.

From questions of diplomatic immunity in Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” to international commercial law in Shakespeare’s comedies, Warren demonstrates in “Literature and the Law of Nations” that literary writers were giving as much to international law as they were taking from contemporary controversies. 

 “Many people suppose that international law is a new phenonomon, and scholars have been as guilty of this view as any. Today’s international law isn’t perfect, but we do it a profound disservice unless we acknowledge that it it has deep historical roots and that it’s shaped and been shaped by a rich cultural history,” said Warren, who is also co-founder of Six Degrees of Francis Bacon, a collaborative reconstruction of the early modern social network.   “An honest reckoning with the history of internatinal law needs to take into account its literary history.”

Read more about “Literature and the Law of Nations."

The role of history in negotiations is a double-edged sword.

Although different sides can develop trust over time, there are also countless instances of prolonged feuds that developed because of conflicting histories. A prime example is World War II, which was fought in part to rectify perceived wrongs from the past. The phenomenon also extends to day-to-day situations such as sharing utility costs with a roommate or jockeying for position at grocery store checkout lanes.

New research published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization examines how past histories are harmful in negotiations, particularly when an event in the past benefited one party at the other’s expense. In those situations, the party that got the short end of the stick tends to believe that they are owed retribution. The party that triumphed in the past, in contrast, tends to think that the past is irrelevant — bygones should be treated as bygones.

New research shows how past histories can be harmful in negotiations.

“If you look at the history of world conflict, as well as conflicts between individuals, a surprising fraction revolves around different interpretations, and invocations, of the past,” said George Loewenstein, the Herbert A. Simon University Professor of Economics and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University.

For the study, Loewenstein and the University of Vienna’s Linda Dezső, the Austrian Institute of Technology’s Jonathan Steinhart, Tilburg University’s Gábor Neszveda and Barnabás Szászi of the Eötvös Loránd University ran two, two-staged experiments in which 392 participants worked as pairs answering trivia questions. Their joint earnings were equal to the sum of the correct answers provided by both members of the pair.

In the first stage of the first experiment, the control group’s earnings were split equally, but for those in the asymmetric history group, the joint earnings were allocated entirely to the person who answered more questions correctly. In the second stage of the experiment, the two participants again worked on trivia questions, earned money for their joint score, and then negotiated over how to divide their earnings. Revealing the potentially pernicious effect of a shared history, those with asymmetric histories reached an impasse in the second negotiation approximately three times more often than those with symmetric histories.

“Having a shared history can sometimes promote harmony, but when the history was asymmetric it can often result in conflicting interpretations of what happened and views about what it should mean for the present.” — Linda Dezső

The second experiment was similar except that in the first stage the joint earnings of all pairs were allocated asymmetrically. In the second stage, each participant then played either with the same or different partner than they had played with in the first stage, ensuring in all cases that a first-stage loser was paired with a winner. Here, the researchers found those with shared asymmetric histories were much more likely to research impasse than those who had experienced similar past events, but not with the person they were negotiating with.

“History is a two-edged sword,” said Dezső, the study’s lead author and a Fulbright Fellow at Carnegie Mellon when the research was conducted. “Having a shared history can sometimes promote harmony, but when the history was asymmetric it can often result in conflicting interpretations of what happened and views about what it should mean for the present.”

In such situations, she continued, “a shared history can be a formula for conflict.”

This is a follow-up study to research previously conducted by Dezső and Loewenstein on personal loans — how they go awry and lead to misunderstandings between borrowers and lenders.

Read the study. 

Carnegie Mellon University will begin adding online instructional tools and targeted study groups to a popular introductory computer science course this fall in an effort to accommodate more students while maintaining instructional quality.

The idea behind the multi-year research project, sponsored by Google, is to find a way to leverage existing faculty to meet a growing demand for computer science courses, while also expanding the opportunities for underrepresented minorities, high school students and community college students, said Jacobo Carrasquel, associate teaching professor of computer science.

The approach is not to simply put lectures and course work online, as is typical of massive open online courses, or MOOCs. Rather, Carrasquel will use a blended learning approach that largely replaces formal lectures with videos and optional mini-lectures, and uses an online software application called Classroom Salon to identify concepts that need to be reinforced by instructors in small group meetings with students.

“As we teach a wider diversity of students, with different backgrounds, we can no longer teach to ‘the middle,’” Carrasquel said. “When you do that, you’re not aiming at the 20 percent of the top students or the 20 percent at the bottom.”

By devoting less time to lectures and by using Classroom Salon to identify groups of students with common instructional needs, it should be possible for existing instructors to target the needs of students across the entire spectrum of capabilities.

Carrasquel will begin this fall to add the new elements to his Data Structures and Algorithms course, which attracts non-computer science majors from across the CMU campus. The changes will be fully implemented in the course next spring.

“As we teach a wider diversity of students, with different backgrounds, we can no longer teach to ‘the middle.’” — Jacobo Carrasquel

He and his collaborators, including Marsha Lovett, director of CMU’s Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence, will be evaluating not only the instructional effectiveness of the changes, but whether these elements are scalable — whether they would make it possible to expand enrollment without increasing the instructional staff or adding classrooms.

The project is receiving $200,000 in its first year through Google’s Computer Science Capacity Awards program, which seeks to identify classroom innovations that help computer science programs manage the growing demands by students for computer science instruction.

With industry demand for computer scientists at an all-time high, it will be difficult to manage the demand for computer science instruction by simply hiring additional faculty, said Ananda Gunawardena, a Princeton University faculty member who is collaborating on the project. But simply videotaping lectures and pushing entire courses online isn’t an answer, either, he added.

“You’re looking for something in between,” said Gunawardena, who worked with English Professor David Kaufer to create Classroom Salon while he was a faculty member in CMU’s Computer Science Department. “You’re looking for that sweet spot.”

Classroom Salon can help by enabling students to share their thoughts and questions about course readings and materials; the app’s analytical tools can identify common issues or subgroups of students who need special help. Faculty members or student teaching assistants can arrange study groups as necessary based on this information.

High school students today rarely have opportunities to take more than one Advanced Placement course in computer science, so Carrasquel will work with a high school consortium to transfer the course materials to their schools in the fall of 2016. Plans call for also sharing the materials with community college instructors.

“We’re not just looking to build enrollment, but also to make computer science instruction accessible to underrepresented minorities and other students who might not have had an opportunity to develop a strong interest or background in computer science,” Carrasquel said.

This is an example of the work being done through CMU’s Simon Initiative. Named for the late Nobel and Turing Award laureate Herbert Simon, this initiative harnesses a cross-disciplinary ecosystem of learning science that has developed over several decades at CMU, with the goal of measurably improving student learning outcomes.

Ask a bunch of kindergarteners if they're artists, and all of them will boom "YES!" Ask adults, though, and the story changes dramatically. Maybe one or two people assert their creativity while everyone else looks awkwardly at the floor. Somehow between kindergarten and adulthood, we lose the confidence that made us all feel like artists.

Noah Bornstein (CS'13) and co-founder, Amanda Greenberg want to change all that through their startup, Baloonr.

Founded in 2013, Baloonr is on a mission to unleash the hidden potential of every team in the world by providing a highly efficient, streamlined, fun way to gather information and ideas. More than that, Bornstein and Greenberg want everyone to feel creative again.

"We want to drive people back to when they were five and six years old and at their most creatively empowered," said Bornstein, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University's Master's in Human-Computer Interaction program. "That's necessary to really get the most and best stuff out of a group."

Baloonr provides an app for teams, companies and organizations that follows well-studied best practices for successful ideation — resulting in a higher quality and quantity of information and ideas. It levels the playing field, ensuring all voices are heard.

"We want to drive people back to when they were five and six years old and at their most creatively empowered." — Noah Bornstein

Here's how it works:

A company or organization subscribes to Baloonr, then begins a stream — a topic, prompt or question. The stream creator invites team members to walk through the platform's four stages for idea creation and development: Launch, Evolve, Pump and Explore. In the first stage, the participants launch "baloons" — ideas, information or creative content. Users anonymously launch as many baloons as they want. "You don't get distracted like in an in-person brainstorm," Bornstein said. "This is a way for people to get the most and best ideas out there."

After all baloons are launched, the group moves into Evolve, where the still-anonymous baloons are combined and opened to also-anonymous peer comment. This continued anonymity allows people to be open and fearless as they refine baloons. Voting begins during the Pump stage, when users can either pump a baloon (i.e., vote for it) or not. To prevent bias, each baloon's creator is still a mystery and there's no way to see how many pumps a baloon has received. It's not until the big reveal in the Explore stage that users can see which baloons have received the most pumps and who created them (if the creator chooses to share his or her identity). Data can also be exported for use in company communications and presentations.

Baloonr grew out of Bornstein and Greenberg's frustrations with teamwork in their pre-Baloonr careers, when they noticed that too frequently the best ideas weren't heard, acted on or even shared. Its success as a tech startup has much to do with CMU's Project Olympus, part of CMU's Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

An initiative of the School of Computer Science, Project Olympus supports and accelerates the process of moving cutting-edge research and great ideas to the development and business stages. The program's centerpiece is its Problem-Oriented Business Explorations (PROBEs), which allow faculty and students to investigate the commercial potential of their ideas.

Bornstein and Greenberg had developed the Baloonr concept and were exploring its value when Bornstein heard about Olympus in an entrepreneurship course. After talking with Kit Needham, Olympus' associate director and entrepreneur-in-residence, he and Greenberg realized that it was the university's best resource for them, and they soon became a PROBE project.

"When we pitch the company, we still say that Baloonr started with Project Olympus," Bornstein said.  

"I started Project Olympus to provide resources and opportunities for our students to explore their startup ideas — and to make important connections with the wider business and entrepreneurial communities —while they were still in school," said Lenore Blum, founding director of Project Olympus and Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science. "It's tremendously exciting to see Olympus PROBEs like Baloonr hit the ground running when the founders graduate."

Baloonr continues to grow, with clients such as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Disney/ABC and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia already on board or set to join soon. The team graduated from Philadelphia's DreamIt Ventures Accelerator this past December, and Bornstein and Greenberg are raising their seed round funding. In the meantime, they're keeping their goals as lofty as "baloons."

"We are building a global raging empire of creative empowerment," Bornstein said. "We want to break down that wall to innovation by creating a true idea meritocracy — in teams, in companies and beyond."

Related:

• Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
• Project Olympus

Carnegie Mellon University Provost Farnam Jahanian, who has been instrumental in the creation of numerous federal computer science initiatives, was presented with the Computing Research Association’s 2015 Distinguished Service Award at the annual Association of Computing Machinery Awards Banquet, June 20, in San Francisco.

The CRA is an association of more than 200 North American academic departments of computer science, computer engineering and related fields; laboratories and centers in industry, government and academia engaging in basic computing research; and affiliated professional societies.

The Distinguished Service Award is presented to a person whose leadership and service in government affairs, professional societies, publications or conferences has had a major impact on computing research. The CRA selected Jahanian for his work as the National Science Foundation's assistant director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) from 2011 to 2014.

“Farnam is both a visionary and the pragmatist, and this combination of qualities has allowed him to be effective in whatever he undertakes,” said CMU President Subra Suresh.

Tom Kalil, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy deputy director for Technology and Innovation, noted Jahanian’s ability to develop strong partnerships as a key to success in attracting support for computer science research.

“Farnam is both a visionary and the pragmatist, and this combination of qualities has allowed him to be effective in whatever he undertakes.” — CMU President Subra Suresh

“During my more than 13 years of service at the White House for two presidents, I have had the opportunity to work with many individuals from the computer science research community who have been willing to serve in leadership positions at federal agencies such as NSF, DARPA and the Department of Energy. Farnam has been second to none as measured by the breadth and depth of his impact on the direction of the field, and his ability to partner effectively with the research community, and his peers at NSF and other agencies, and the White House. His leadership and hard work has resulted in increased federal investment in critical areas such as Big Data, robotics, cyberphysical systems, cybersecurity, cyber learning, next-generation networking and computer science education,” Kalil said.

The CRA cited Jahanian’s work in launching three presidential initiatives: the National Robotics Initiative, the Big Data Research and Development Initiative, and US Ignite. An advocate for how basic research can be uniquely central to an innovation ecosystem that drives global competitiveness and addresses national priorities, Jahanian has testified before Congress on a broad range of topics.

“Farnam has been second to none as measured by the breadth and depth of his impact on the direction of the field, and his ability to partner effectively with the research community.” — Tom Kalil

While at the NSF, he led 25 new solicitations, including several cross-directorate efforts focused on secure and trustworthy cyberspace, cyberlearning and future learning technologies, and big data. He also reintegrated the Office of Cyber Infrastructure with CISE and served as co-chair of the National Information Technology Research and Development subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council Committee on Technology, providing overall coordination for the research and development activities of 17 government agencies.

Jahanian assumed the role of provost at CMU in May 2015. As the university's chief academic officer, he has broad responsibility for leading the university’s schools, institutes and campuses and is instrumental in long-range institutional and academic planning and implementation. He joined the university as vice president for research in 2014, a position in which he was responsible for nurturing excellence in research, scholarship and creative activities.

Prior to his service at the NSF, Jahanian was the Edward S. Davidson Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan, where he served as chair for Computer Science and Engineering from 2007 to 2011 and director of the Software Systems Laboratory from 1997 to 2000.

Jahanian, who holds a doctorate in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin, serves as chair of the National Research Council’s Computer Science and Telecommunications Board. He is a member of the Computing Research Association and National Center for Women and Information Technology boards. Jahanian also is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) has named Ariel Procaccia, assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, as the recipient of its prestigious Computers and Thought Award for 2015.

The award, presented every other year since 1971, recognizes outstanding young scientists in artificial intelligence. The judges cited Procaccia for his contributions to the fields of computational social choice and computational economics, and for efforts to make advanced fair division techniques more widely accessible.

Procaccia's studies in artificial intelligence focus on the use of social choice and game theory for resource allocation and collective decision-making. Last year, he launched a website, Spliddit.org, which leverages 70 years of fair division research to provide people with provably fair methods to resolve everyday dilemmas, such as how to split rent, divide goods or apportion credit for a project.

The award will be presented at the IJCAI conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 25-31.

He launched Spliddit.org to provide people with provably fair methods to resolve everyday dilemmas, such as how to split rent, divide goods or apportion credit for a project.

Six of the last eight recipients of the Computers and Thought Award have Carnegie Mellon ties. In addition to Procaccia, they include Tuomas Sandholm, professor of computer science; former faculty member Carlos Guestrin, now of the University of Washington; and CMU alumni Peter Stone of the University of Texas, Andrew Ng of Stanford University and Vincent Conitzer of Duke University. Tom Mitchell, director of CMU’s Machine Learning Department, also was a recipient.

Earlier this year, the Sloan Foundation named Procaccia as a Sloan Research Fellow. He also is a recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2014), the inaugural Yahoo! Academic Career Enhancement Award (2011), the Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award (2009) and the Rothschild postdoctoral fellowship (2009). In 2013, IEEE Intelligent Systems magazine named him one of "AI's 10 to Watch."

Procaccia joined CMU’s Computer Science Department in 2011. He has a Ph.D. in computer science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and performed postdoctoral research at Microsoft Israel R&D Center and at Harvard University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar alumna Dana Haidan (TPR'09) is committed to making a difference.

"Companies can do a lot more than just make profits," said Haidan, the head of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability at Vodafone Qatar and a graduate of CMU-Q's business administration program. "They have the responsibility to behave ethically and responsibly and to give back to the communities in which they operate.

Dana Haidan

"As part of such a rewarding field, an individual like me has the opportunity to drive an entire organization to make a difference — which is powerful," she added.

Since 2011, Haidan has managed Vodafone Qatar's social investments and charitable initiatives in addition to monitoring sustainability performance. The organization is part of Vodafone, one of the world's largest multinational telecommunications companies.

Haidan's primary ongoing initiatives include programs for people with disabilities, a digital parenting initiative and funding for local charitable projects. Other programs include an app that blocks calls and texts to prevent distracted driving, work on education and youth development projects and support of employee volunteer activities.

For this and more, Haidan recently was named among the "100 Most Talented CSR Leaders" at the World CSR Congress held in Mumbai, India.

As a student, Haidan was involved in both local and international community service and sees her CMU experience as a turning point.

"My time at CMU-Q is what inspired me to get into this space," Haidan said. "Amazing mentors got us to think beyond profits to the real purpose businesses exist — to their value and contribution to helping people live better lives.

"Also, CMU-Q student life is truly empowering through a wide range of extracurricular activities that encourage students to be the drivers of change in their environment and to take on leadership roles with all the help they need from a great support system, be it the student affairs team, university administration or academia staff."   

George White, CMU-Q Distinguished Career Professor of Entrepreneurship, knew Haidan well as a standout student in his entrepreneurship classes.

"Dana resonated with the topic of social responsibility," White said. "She was an ideal student because of her attitude and the quality of her work. She was motivated to make a difference to society.

"I think the opportunity at Vodafone was a perfect fit for her. Dana stepped in, started the Vodafone Qatar CSR operation and became world-class at it. Vodafone is lucky to have her."

Haidan's colleagues at Vodafone Qatar agree.

"Dana is one of those rare people who truly believes wholeheartedly in CSR and helping communities and has dedicated her career to this cause," said Marc Norris, chief commercial officer at Vodafone Qatar. "She is a true leader of human development."

Related links

• Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar
• CMU-Q Degree in Business Administration
• Vodafone Qatar
• World CSR Congress

An interdisciplinary team of Carnegie Mellon University students has developed a way to make tractor trailers into hybrid vehicles. They say it could cut trucking fuel costs by 30 percent.

The company, Hyliion, is capturing attention with its SMART Suspension System, which adds an electric motor battery pack underneath the trailer, rather than trying to hybridize the motor itself. The hybrid system captures wasted energy while a truck decelerates, and reuses it to assist the vehicle while accelerating. It also adds stability control, automatically correcting trucks that go into a slide.

The system can be installed in an hour, the team said, because they can remove a truck's current suspension system with just eight bolts and replace the entire sliding suspension system, including the new hybrid pack.

Hyliion team members

The students have presented their business plan at numerous competitions. They received $80,000 from venture fund SURGE for "Most Innovative Energy Tech Startup," $50,000 from the Department of Energy's Clean Tech Prize, $15,000 for the "Clean Energy Innovation Prize" from Wells Fargo, and $10,000 for Shell's "Technology Ventures Energy Prize." They won third place in the overall Rice Business Plan Competition and $25,000 from the Columbia Venture Competition this spring.

After Thomas Healy (E'15) presented the business plan at Rice, he received encouraging feedback.

"I was told that if we could make this happen, we'd change the whole shipping industry," he said.

Healy thought of the idea while driving his first car, a Honda Civic Hybrid with gauges that showed the car's wasted energy. Coupled with a hobby of race car driving, in which cars are shipped across the country in tractor trailers, he started wondering if the hybrid system could apply to trucks.

He brought up this idea to his team of fellow students in a CMU course called Energy Systems. Teams were challenged by Jay Apt, a professor in the Tepper School of Business and in the Department of Engineering & Public Policy, to create a business plan for a product that could reduce energy consumption.

Apt liked the hybrid truck idea and urged the team to move forward.

"He told us that he thought we were onto something, and we asked him to be our lead adviser. He helped arrange meetings with other professors who had knowledge of electric vehicles," Healy said.

One such professor was Jeremy Michalek, a professor of Engineering and Public Policy and Mechanical Engineering, as well as director of CMU's Vehicle Electrification Group. He was impressed with the team's idea.

"A technology that saves fuel, reduces emissions, is easy to install and pays for itself in a short time could make a big impact. Overall, it has the potential to save a lot of fuel and reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions," Michalek said.

As Healy's team moved forward, they attracted majors outside of engineering, like MBA candidate Hayden Cardiff (TPR'16), psychology major Sean Barron (DC'15) and math student Taimoor Chatoor (S'16).

The Hyliion team recently shared their idea at the Mid-America Trucking Show.

By the end of the year Hyliion will launch their pilot program, putting 20 new hybrid trucks on the road. They're looking to collect data and validate their assertion that they can reduce fuel costs by 30 percent.

Apt is optimistic for its future.

"Competition is fierce in the transportation sector, and Hyliion can give a cost advantage to companies that use their solution. It seems to me that trucking firms that see higher diesel prices in the future and firms that want a competitive edge are their market, and it could be a good-sized one," Apt said.

Related links

• Hyliion
• Tepper School of Business
• Engineering & Public Policy
• Mechanical Engineering
• Vehicle Electrification Group

Scientific controversies, from problems replicating results — such as with the now debunked association between autism and MMR vaccines — to researcher misconduct and sensationalism, have led to speculation of “trouble at the lab” as the Economist put it.

To address the issue, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands recently convened top scientists from Carnegie Mellon University, the University of California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology and other leading institutions to examine ways to return to high scientific standards. In an opinion piece published in Science, the group outlines what can be done to better ensure research integrity.

Attempting to do so begins with acknowledging and addressing the problems that exist at every level, from the notion that science is self-correcting to academia’s incentive structures that encourage researchers to publish novel, positive results, to the greater opportunities open-access and other platforms provide to publish less-scrutinized studies. In addition, a lack of data sharing leads to the inability to replicate results, universities that want to make headlines exaggerate findings, and the media’s quest for ratings and readership often trumps quality reporting.

“Science is littered with irreproducible results, even from top places, and it’s a widespread problem that looks different in different domains, but there are shared commonalities,” said CMU’s Stephen E. Fienberg (pictured right), the Maurice Faulk University Professor of Statistics and Social Sciences. “As a statistician, I understand how the role of data is critical. But determining how to set a policy to support data access is very complicated — there is not a simple set of rules.”

The NAS and Annenberg group identified several ways to change incentives for quality and correction, including rewarding researchers for publishing high-quality work rather than publishing work more often; mentoring young peer-reviewers to increase clarity and quality of editorial responses during the journal publishing process; and using “voluntary withdrawal” and “withdrawal for cause” instead of the blanket “retraction” term, which has negative connotations that can prevent some researchers from taking action when a paper is wrong, but not as a result of fraud or misconduct.

“We all have a responsibility if we want science to work — academic institutions, scientific associations, journals, authors, university public relations officers and the press — people need to be trained all the way up the line."
Stephen Fienberg

Because ensuring scientific integrity is the responsibility of many stakeholders, the group recommends that the National Academy of Sciences’ call for an independent Scientific Integrity Advisory Board in 1992 should be revisited. The board’s goal would be to address ethical issues in research conduct.

Additionally, universities should insist that their faculty and students are educated in research ethics; that their publications do not feature honorary or ghost authors; that public information officers avoid hype in publicizing findings; and suspect research is promptly and thoroughly investigated.

“We all have a responsibility if we want science to work. Academic institutions, scientific associations, journals, authors, university public relations officers and the press — people need to be trained all the way up the line,” Fienberg said.

With her company Teknikio, Deren Guler (S'09, A'12) isn't just proving that girls are good at math and science - she's proving they can have fun doing it.

Teknikio features do-it-yourself project kits that teach about circuitry, switches, and sensors, and was born out of Guler's experience at Carnegie Mellon University.

Guler is a good example of CMU's maker-movement culture, which now regularly attracts a range of students into its Entertainment Technology Center and IDeATe program.

Guler took a nontraditional science path, following her undergraduate physics degree with a master's in tangible interaction design from the School of Architecture.

The idea for Teknikio first sparked while Guler was a graduate teaching assistant, watching architecture and design students struggling with microcontroller platforms like the popular Arduino toolkits.

"The electronics the students needed to build were quite simple, but due to how complicated these kits were, I could tell by the end they still weren't understanding fundamentally how a circuit works," she said.

Around that same time she was researching different low-tech sensors and learning about smart materials. She started to brainstorm projects where students could make headbands or shoes light up, projects that broke down the circuits in ways that were less abstract and more accessible. She began to wonder why there weren't simpler kits for everyone — particularly, young girls.

After some research, she found package after package designed for boys. One brand of chemistry sets featured all males on its boxes except for one, which was labeled for girls. It had the same contents as the others, but was explicitly renamed to be for a "lab technician," suggesting that this was the only career she could have in science.

"Instead of getting upset about it, I decided to figure out how to help solve it," Guler said.

Guler applied for a grant through Pittsburgh's Sprout Fund and received $6,000 to design simple, creative kits for children to explore crafts and scientific concepts. She also held an artist residency at Pittsburgh's Children's Museum and offered classes at Assemble before moving to New York City.

Through her Pittsburgh connections, she continued to receive orders from teachers for her kits, so she continued Teknikio (then called Invent-abling). The company recently expanded into retail. The New York Hall of Science named her its inaugural Design Fellow, and she is an adjunct faculty member at the Parsons School of Design and consults with media and toy companies.

Guler's kits include an origami kit where users can add circuits to animate their creations with lights and movement, a sewing kit with sewable LEDs, a kit that explores switches and sensors, and a wearable electronics kit.

Along the way she stayed in touch with her undergraduate research mentor, biological physics research professor Stephanie Tristram-Nagle. Tristram-Nagle encouraged her to enter the national SPARK (Science Play And Research Kit) competition to reimagine the chemistry set. Guler did and won third place, earning $10,000 toward her company.

"I think Deren is probably the most creative of all the students I've had," Tristram-Nagle said. "She doesn't go along with the crowd by any means. She wants to reach out to a lot of people."

Links:
Teknikio
Mellon College of Science
College of Fine Arts

Linda Babcock, whose research intersects economics and psychology, has been selected to head Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Social and Decision Sciences, effective July 1. Babcock succeeds Paul Fischbeck, who has been interim head for the past year.

Babcock, the James M. Walton Professor of Economics, focuses on negotiations and dispute resolution research with specific attention to gender differences in negotiation and how people react when women negotiate. She is the co-author of “Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide,” which was named one of Biz Journals’ 20 Most Important Business Books Ever Written. In it, she describes her research on initiating negotiations and explores the societal factors that hold women back from asking for what they want. She also holds an appointment in the H. John Heinz III College, where she served as acting dean from 2000-2001.

Linda Babcock

“Linda Babcock is a perfect person to lead the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at this time. Not only is she a world-famous scholar on negotiation, but she is also an excellent leader. Having worked in both Heinz and Dietrich, she has a broad perspective on CMU. She will strengthen an already excellent department, and I am excited to have the opportunity to work with her in the Dietrich College,” said Richard Scheines, dean of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

The Social and Decision Sciences (SDS) Department is a global leader in behavioral economics and decision sciences research and education. The behavioral decision field was in part founded in SDS thanks to the late Robyn Dawes, who built the department in the 1980s and 1990s to emphasize decision sciences and research that went beyond the social sciences by incorporating economics, political science and psychology.

This foundation combined with the department’s excellent faculty and educational programs are why Babcock believes it continues to impact policy and government in a variety of areas, including risk analysis and communication, consumer decision-making, conflicts of interest and risk perception in financial markets, poverty and inequality, climate change and health care.

"Linda Babcock is a perfect person to lead the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at this time. Not only is she a world-famous scholar on negotiation, but she is also an excellent leader." — Richard Scheines

“Our faculty are working on problems of great importance to society,” Babcock said. “They are also training undergraduate students to think and analyze across disciplines because problems do not come to you inside a discipline like economics or psychology. You need various perspectives to solve problems.”

She added that the department’s graduate students are “trained to have intellectual responsibility and bring new insights to problems.”

Babcock joined the CMU faculty in 1988. She is the founder and faculty director of the Program for Research and Outreach on Gender Equity in Society (PROGRESS), one of the founders of the Center for Behavioral Decision Research, and the founder of the Leadership and Negotiation Academy for Women. She is a member of the Russell Sage Foundation Behavioral Economics Roundtable and has served on the economics review panel for the National Science Foundation. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, the Harvard Business School and the California Institute of Technology.

Her research on women and negotiations has been discussed in hundreds of newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and abroad and she has appeared on numerous television and radio stations discussing her work. She has received numerous research grants from the National Science Foundation.

Learn more about Babcock. 

The Shurl & Kay Curci Foundation has given $200,000 to an interdisciplinary research team at Carnegie Mellon University to support fundamental research in neuroscience. The grant will allow biological sciences and engineering professors to teach mice to use brain-computer interfaces (BCI). The project could provide new information about the neural basis of learning, behavior and motor control, and could lead to the creation of a mouse model for BCI research.

Learning is the result of changes in the connections between individual neurons. To best study learning, researchers must study complex behaviors and the neuronal changes caused by those behaviors. Many tools exist to study neural activity in mice, but most tools for studying complex behavior are tailored for use in humans and other primates.

The researchers are part of the university’s BrainHub^SM initiative that focuses on how the structure and activity of the brain give rise to complex behaviors.

The Carnegie Mellon research team, led by assistant professors of Biological Sciences Sandra Kuhlman and Aryn Gittis, and Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering Steve Chase, plans to bridge this gap by training mice to use a BCI. While observing the subject’s behavior as it uses the BCI, the researchers will use real-time imaging to monitor neuronal activity.

“A major goal of neuroscience is to understand how the brain orchestrates adaptive changes in neuronal network function to learn a new skill. To accomplish this, we need to analyze data on many levels,” said Kuhlman. “With the support of the Curci Foundation, we’ll be able to bring together Carnegie Mellon’s expertise in biology and engineering to begin to find answers that will help us to learn more about learning, memory and disease.”

Ultimately, the researchers, who are all part of the university’s BrainHub^SM neuroscience initiative and the joint Carnegie Mellon/University of Pittsburgh Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, hope that their model will be used to study a number of different open questions in neuroscience, including: what neural circuits respond to practice; how memory is encoded in neural tissue; how feedback can be used to increase the brain’s capacity to store information; and how the brain can be retrained after injury.

As the birthplace of artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology, Carnegie Mellon has been a leader in the study of brain and behavior for more than 50 years. The university has created some of the first cognitive tutors, helped to develop the Jeopardy-winning Watson, founded a groundbreaking doctoral program in neural computation, and completed cutting-edge work in understanding the genetics of autism. Building on its strengths in biology, computer science, psychology, statistics and engineering, CMU recently launched BrainHub^SM, a global initiative that focuses on how the structure and activity of the brain give rise to complex behaviors.

Carnegie Mellon University chemists have developed two novel methods to characterize 3-dimensional macroporous hydrogels — materials that hold great promise for developing “smart” responsive materials that can be used for catalysts, chemical detectors, tissue engineering scaffolds and absorbents for carbon capture.

Researchers working in the lab of Carnegie Mellon Professor Krzysztof Matyjaszewski published their results in the May issue of Advanced Science, with the article featured on the journal’s back cover. Their findings are the latest in Matyjaszewski lab’s long history of breakthroughs in polymer science.

Carnegie Mellon chemists have developed two methods to characterize 3-dimensional macroporous hydrogels. Their work was featured on the back cover of the journal Advanced Science. Photo credit: He, et.al.: Colloidal Crystals: Multifunctional Hydrogels with Reversible 3D Ordered Macroporous Structures. Advanced Science. 2015. Vol. 2. Back Cover. Copyright Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA. Reproduced with permission.

The 3DOM hydrogels contain a network of interconnected pores with uniform size. The configuration of these pores allows the materials to hold a large amount of liquid, and influences the material’s properties.

However, while the materials are easily made using a process called colloidal crystal templating, their nature has made it difficult for scientists to characterize the exact internal structure of the 3DOM hydrogels. 

“The porous structure that makes these materials so useful is also what makes them so hard to characterize,” said Hongkun He, a doctoral student in Matyjaszewski’s lab. “The pores can hold large amounts of water, but if you remove this water to study them, the pores collapse and you can’t map them.”

He and his collaborators were able to characterize the 3DOM hydrogels using an indirect electron microscopy method. They soaked the hydrogels in a solution of a crosslinker, which created rigid inverse replicas of the initial 3DOM structures.  They then used scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to image the section surfaces of the inverse replicas.

The researchers also found they were able to rehydrate the hydrogels, demonstrating the material’s shape memory properties — properties that are key to creating smart materials.

He also was able to resolve the structure of hydrated 3DOM hydrogels using nanoscale resolution X-ray microscopy (ZEISS Xradia 800 Ultra). This technique, which is noninvasive and nondestructive, allowed the researchers to visualize the hydrogels in 3 dimensions under ambient conditions.

“This marks the first time that we have been able to visualize the reversible porous structure within this material,” said Matyjaszewski, the J.C. Warner University Professor of Natural Sciences. “Well-defined 3DOM hydrogels provide a versatile platform for a wide variety of functional materials.”

The researchers believe that the simple and effective structural characterization methods they developed for the 3DOM hydrogels will advance research into the materials. They have been able to make further chemical modifications to the pores of the 3DOM hydrogels by grafting with organic compounds and polymers. This process will allow them to use the hydrogels as “stem gels” that can evolve into materials with programmed properties and functions, such as responsive materials, organic–inorganic composites and bioactive hydrogels for digestion or separation of bio (macro) molecules.

Additional authors include Shawn Litster, Saadyah Averick, Pratiti Mandal, Hangjun Ding and Sipei Li of Carnegie Mellon, and Jeff Gelb, Naomi Kotwal and Arno Merkle of Carl Zeiss X-Ray Microscopy. Ding also has an appointment at the University of Science and Technology, Beijing.

This research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.