Hillary Rodham Clinton talks with members of the Girls of Steel robotics team during a presidential campaign stop.

Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Carnegie Mellon University's Pittsburgh campus on Wednesday, April 6 as her presidential campaign made its way through Pennsylvania. Speaking to a rally of some 2,000 supporters at the university's Skibo Gymnasium, Clinton had high praise for CMU's expertise in robotics.

"I was just at the Robotics Institute, and I saw the extraordinary work they're doing in medicine, in manufacturing, in the kind of home care delivery that will become a part of our future because of this great university," Clinton said at the rally.

Clinton is no stranger to CMU, having visited the university's Qatar campus in 2010 while she was U.S secretary of state. Her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, also visited the Pittsburgh campus as part of her 2008 primary campaign.

Clinton's visit to CMU comes during National Robotics Week, and the presidential candidate toured Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute prior to the rally. She met with CMU faculty and researchers, who demonstrated technologies that offer benefits in a range of fields, including manufacturing and health care.

Carnegie Mellon has been host to a variety of presidential candidates over the past few elections, including President Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain. First Lady Michelle Obama also visited the Pittsburgh campus on a 2008 campaign stop.

As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, Carnegie Mellon University does not support or oppose any particular candidate and maintains an open door policy to all candidates.

Related:

• Hillary Rodham Clinton Visits Carnegie Mellon's Campus in Qatar
• Obama's 2012 Campaign Stop
• Obama/McCain Talk Economics
• Girls of Steel

Images for the media. Please credit "Carnegie Mellon University."

Contact: Ken Walters / 412-268-1151 / walters1@andrew.cmu.edu

Joshua Brakensiek, a sophomore in mathematical sciences, has been named a 2016 Goldwater Scholar.

Sophomore mathematical sciences major Joshua Brakensiek has received a Barry Goldwater Scholarship to support his pursuit of a research career in mathematics and theoretical computer science. Brakensiek is one of 252 college sophomores and juniors nationwide chosen from 1,150 nominations for the 2015-2016 academic year.

Brakensiek came to Carnegie Mellon University's Mellon College of Science from Phoenix, as a Knaster-McWilliams Scholar. The Knaster-McWilliams Scholars program, which brings some of the nation's best math students to Carnegie Mellon's Mellon College of Science, is one of only a few scholarship-supported programs in the country that pairs an honors program with increased access to faculty and early research opportunities.

During his first two years at Carnegie Mellon, Brakensiek has taken full advantage of the program's research opportunities and the university's interdisciplinary environment, conducting research with faculty working in computer science, statistics and cosmology. His work with Computer Science Professor Venkatesan Guruswami on computational complexity theory and coding theory has resulted in a number of manuscripts that have been submitted for presentation at computer science and mathematics conferences and symposia, including one manuscript that was co-written with junior mathematical sciences major Sam Zbarsky. Brakensiek's astrostatistical research, done under the guidance of Chad Schafer and Peter Freeman, faculty in the Statistics Department and the McWilliams Center for Cosmology, will help researchers to analyze the enormous amounts of data that will be collected by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

After earning his bachelor's degree, Brakensiek hopes to pursue a doctoral degree in either mathematics or computer science. His goal is to teach at the university level and conduct research in theoretical computer science.

"The Goldwater Scholarship recognizes students who have strong research profiles. Each university can only submit four candidates. At Carnegie Mellon, we always have a talented pool of sophomores and juniors in the STEM fields to choose from, which often makes it difficult to decide whom to put forward. But with Josh it wasn't a difficult decision, he had the unanimous approval of the entire internal selection committee," said Stephanie Wallach, assistant vice provost for undergraduate education and director of the Fellowships and Scholarships Office. "He is recognized by his teachers as a world-class problem-solver, and he is a delightful young man."

Goldwater Scholars receive one- and two-year scholarships up to a maximum of $7,500 per year for tuition, fees, books, room and board.

The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation was established by the U.S. Congress in 1986 to honor Sen. Barry M. Goldwater. The scholarship program is designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering.

According to the foundation, Goldwater Scholars have garnered prestigious post-graduate awards, including Rhodes, Marshall and Churchill scholarships, as well as National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships.

The National Science Foundation recently awarded Wolfgang Gatterbauer a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award for his research proposal to develop novel methods to draw conclusions from uncertain and inconsistent data.

Wolfgang Gatterbauer

Gatterbauer, an assistant professor of business technologies at the Tepper School of Business and by courtesy the School of Computer Science, received a five-year, $550,000 award for the cross-campus project titled "Scaling approximate inference and approximation-aware learning."

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research. Such activities should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research.

"A CAREER award is a tribute to the quality of Wolfgang's research, and signifies the overall potential of his future research agenda," said Robert Dammon, dean of the Tepper School. "Our school and Carnegie Mellon on the whole remain a nurturing environment for emerging leaders in their fields."

"It is a great honor to receive this award from the NSF, and I am looking forward to working on this project with the excellent students and faculty from the Tepper School, Computer Science and other areas of campus," said Gatterbauer, who joined the faculty in 2011.

Recent years have witnessed tremendous progress in areas such as information extraction, knowledge aggregation, question-answering systems, computer vision and machine intelligence; however, probabilistic inference remains a key bottleneck and is often performed today with sampling methods. The intent of this project is to develop methods that enable existing relational databases to perform approximate probabilistic inference without any need for sampling.

The ultimate goal is for practitioners to be able to use and re-purpose today's widely existing relational database infrastructure instead of needing dedicated systems to deal with uncertain data. Gatterbauer and his collaborators have already demonstrated the feasibility of this approach in a recent series of papers.

Combining theory from linear and relational algebra, those papers proposed methods that allow existing relational databases to perform approximate probabilistic inference for special cases with considerable speed-up over prior methods. This project aims to generalize these methods and complement them with similarly scalable methods for parameter learning that are "approximation-aware." Thus, instead of treating the learning and the inference steps separately, the goal is to use the approximation methods developed for inference also for model learning, all within the same framework.

Due to its interdisciplinary nature, this project will draw upon the Tepper School, Computer Science and many areas of campus, helping to not only connect and grow the university community but also perhaps result in conclusions with global ramifications.

"Wolfgang comes from the world of computer science," Dammon said. "When we brought him to the Tepper School, we wanted to strengthen our research and our students' understanding of the role business technology plays in modern organizations. We've seen how Wolfgang provides deep, modern insights into that role."

"Wolfgang's work is an excellent bridge between theory and practice: he devises elegant, theoretical solutions, to real, practical problems," said Christos Faloutsos, professor of computer science. "His past and proposed work on linearized 'belief propagation' makes a big difference with respect to execution speed and convergence properties, and it is easily applicable to practical problems such as fraud detection in social networks."

This marks the third such NSF award to Carnegie Mellon faculty regarding data and inference since mid-February. Six weeks ago, the NSF bestowed CAREER awards to two assistant professors in the Department of Statistics of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Jing Lei and Ryan Tibshirani.

Other current Tepper School faculty members who have won NSF CAREER Awards include Fatma Kılınç-Karzan (2015), assistant professor of operations research, Mustafa Akan (2014), associate professor of operations management, Javier Peña (2005), Bajaj Family Chair in Operations Research, and R. Ravi (1996), Andris A. Zoltners Professor of Business, Rohet Tolani Distinguished Professor and professor of operations research and computer science.

Carnegie Mellon University has placed second in the Mathematical Association of America's 76^th William Lowell Putnam Competition, the definitive mathematics competition for undergraduate students in North America. Additionally, Carnegie Mellon had 41 students who scored among the top 470, the second most of any university.

This marks the fifth consecutive year the Carnegie Mellon team has placed among the top five teams, and the third consecutive year in which they had the second most top-ranking students, proving the university is home to many of the nation’s best "mathletes."

"It has been an enormous pleasure to work with such a huge group of talented students," said Po-Shen Loh, associate professor of mathematical sciences and the team's coach. "Teaching our students problem-solving skills that will help them to succeed in all of their future endeavors is at the heart of our math curriculum. Our sustained success in the Putnam shows that some of the best math students are gathering here at Carnegie Mellon and thriving."

On Dec. 5, 2015, 4,275 American and Canadian undergraduates from 554 institutions participated in the competition. The students were given six hours to solve 12 complex mathematical problems using a combination of creative thinking and concepts taught in college mathematics courses. Results were sent to participating universities this week.

The second-place ranking reflects the scores of the three students selected to be on the Carnegie Mellon team: senior science and humanities scholar Linus Hamilton, junior mathematical sciences major Thomas Swayze and sophomore mathematical sciences major Joshua Brakensiek.

Students not on the official university team are able to participate and compete for individual rankings. In total, 206 Carnegie Mellon students took part in this year’s competition. Brakensiek placed among the top 16 and Hamilton among the top 26. Swayze, junior mathematical sciences major Brian Riedel and first-year mathematical sciences and computer science major Victor Xu ranked in the top 88, and junior mathematical sciences major Ray Li and sophomore mathematical sciences major Gidon Orelowitz placed in the top 97. A full list of Carnegie Mellon students who ranked in the top 470 can be found here: http://www.math.cmu.edu/~ploh/putnam-2015-top500.pdf

The students on the team are all part of Carnegie Mellon's Knaster-McWilliams Scholars program, which has been funded through the generosity of a physics alumnus and a mathematics and electrical engineering alumnus. It is one of only a few scholarship-supported programs in the country that also is paired with an honors program that features increased access to faculty and early research opportunities.

The Carnegie Mellon team placed fifth in 2014, second in 2013, fifth in 2012 and second in 2011, and had top five finishes in 1987, 1949 and 1946. In the history of the competition, only 13 other universities have placed in the top five more than five times.

Carnegie Mellon University Ph.D. student Ania Jaroszewicz has received one of 30 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans this year. Chosen out of 1,443 applicants, Jaroszewicz was selected for her potential to make significant contributions to U.S. society, culture and academics. She is pursuing a doctoral degree in behavioral decision research in CMU’s Department of Social and Decision Sciences.

The Soros Fellowships for New Americans, considered a premier graduate school fellowship for immigrants and children of immigrants, provides fellows with up to $90,000 for graduate education. Past recipients include U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, leading Ebola researcher Pardis Sabeti and Aspiration CEO Andrei Cherny. The 2016 fellows are all 30 years old or younger.

“The fellows are from all different countries and socio-economic and religious backgrounds, and they have come to the United States in a myriad of ways — some were born here, while others are asylum seekers, refugees and green card holders — but they all bring excellence to the table,” said Craig Harwood, director of the fellowship program. “They demonstrate that immigrants, regardless of their background, continue to be a critical part of our nation.”

Jaroszewicz was born in California and is the daughter of Polish immigrants. After seeing her parents struggle financially, she became interested in the psychology of poverty and double-majored in economics and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. After graduation, she spent several years working with the federal government, first at the White House Council on Environmental Quality and then at the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Economics. She also volunteered with a microfinance organization in Kenya and a transitional housing center in Washington, D.C.

In 2014, Jaroszewicz came to CMU, where she hopes to combine behavioral decision research with her experiences to help combat poverty. In particular, Jaroszewicz’s goal is to use behavioral economics to design psychologically informed poverty-alleviation and consumer protection policies.

“Ania entered the Ph.D. program with unusual clarity of purpose — she wanted to research how insights from psychology and economics could be used to alleviate the circumstances of the poor. Given the applied and interdisciplinary nature of our department, the fit was ideal. It’s no surprise that she’s emerged as a real academic star,” said Saurabh Bhargava, assistant professor of economics in the Social and Decision Sciences Department and Jaroszewicz’s adviser.

The Soros Fellowship Program was founded in 1997 and has awarded more than 550 fellowships. Paul and Daisy Soros, both Hungarian immigrants, have contributed $75 million to the organization’s charitable trust.

“I have, for some time, been drawn to the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans because of its mission to highlight the contributions immigrants have made to American life,” Jaroszewicz said. “As the daughter of immigrants, I have seen firsthand the importance of these contributions in shaping and improving our country’s path. I’m so proud to be associated with an organization that devotes itself to disseminating this important message and that emphasizes making the world a better place.”

Jaroszewicz is the second CMU student to receive this prestigious award in recent years. Wennie Tabib, a Ph.D. student in robotics, received a Soros Fellowship in 2013.

The human brain was initially used for basic survival tasks, such as staying safe and hunting and gathering. Yet, 200,000 years later the same human brain is able to learn abstract concepts, like momentum, energy and gravity, which have only been formally defined in the last few centuries.

New research from Carnegie Mellon University has now uncovered how the brain is able to acquire brand new types of ideas. Published in Psychological Science, scientists Robert Mason and Marcel Just used neural-decoding techniques developed at CMU to identify specific physics concepts that advanced students recalled when prompted. The brain activation patterns while thinking about the physics concepts indicated that all of the students’ brains used the ancient brain systems the same way, and the patterns revealed how the new knowledge was formed — by repurposing existing neural systems.

The findings could be used to improve science instruction.

“If science teachers know how the brain is going to encode a new science concept, then they can define and elaborate that concept in ways that match the encoding. They can teach to the brain by using the brain’s language,” said Mason, a senior research associate in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences’ Department of Psychology.

Mason and Just, the D. O. Hebb University Professor of Psychology, recruited nine advanced physics and engineering students to participate in the study. Each student’s brain was scanned at CMU’s Scientific Imaging and Brain Research (SIBR) Center while they were shown a set of 30 familiar concepts, such as gravity, entropy, inertia, refraction and velocity.

Using a machine learning program, Mason and Just were able to identify which of the 30 concepts a student was thinking about because the thought of each concept created its own brain activation pattern. They also could break down the patterns into the different neural pieces used to build the full concepts.

The research showed for the first time how learning physics concepts is accomplished by repurposing neural structures that were originally used for general everyday purposes. More specifically, the brain is able to learn physics concepts because of its ability to understand the four fundamental concepts of causal motion, periodicity, energy flow and algebraic (sentence-like) representations.

Brain systems that process rhythmic periodicity when hearing a horse gallop also support the understanding of wave concepts in physics. Similarly, understanding gravity involves visualizing causal motion, like an apple falling from a tree; energy flow uses the same system as sensing warmth from a fire or the sun; and understanding how one concept relates to others in an equation uses the same brain systems that are used to comprehend sentences describing quantities.

 “This is why humans have been able to move ahead and innovate — because we can use our brain for new purposes,” Just said. “Human brains haven’t changed much over a few thousand years, but new fields like aeronautics, genetics, medicine and computer science have been developed and continuously change. Our findings explain how the brain is able to learn and discover new types of concepts.”

 These findings are examples of the many brain research breakthroughs at Carnegie Mellon. CMU has created some of the first cognitive tutors, helped to develop the Jeopardy-winning Watson, founded a groundbreaking doctoral program in neural computation, and is the birthplace of artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology. Building on its strengths in biology, computer science, psychology, statistics and engineering, CMU launched BrainHub, an initiative that focuses on how the structure and activity of the brain give rise to complex behaviors.

The Office of Naval Research funded this study. Read the full study.

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The new recommendations, announced at the GLC Symposium at the National University of Singapore (NUS) on April 12, indicate a cross-section of consensus of the council’s 13 members, which consist of global leaders in education, industry, government and non-profit sectors. CMU researchers led the development of the first report, and the university has taken a major role in bringing together top global educators as part of the GLC.

“This report is a first step, not the end point, in the GLC's objective of utilizing technology to improve education outcomes,” Suresh said. “We hope it generates new cross-sector consensus and becomes a go-to online resource for practitioners in higher education.”

The report embodies many of the principles and practices of CMU’s Simon Initiative, which is dedicated to developing the next generation of learning-science informed technologies and tools to improve student outcomes. Carnegie Mellon has been a leader in using technology to improve student outcomes for more than 60 years.

The report’s recommendations are based on achieving three main objectives:

• Fostering a culture that allows technology-enhanced learning to thrive;
• Facilitating continuous improvement of instruction and instructional tools;
• Building a global community for data sharing.

Representatives from dozens of Asian institutes attended the two-day symposium at NUS. The event included a combination of keynote speakers, technology demonstrations and panel discussions that tackled topics such as best practices in technology-enhanced learning, the consideration of cultural context and cross-cultural learning when designing and deploying technology-enhanced learning approaches, and trends and examples of the latest in education technologies.

“It is a great honor for NUS to host the 2nd Global Learning Council Symposium. We benefited from the participation of a very diverse audience which included academic leaders from several Asian universities,” NUS President Professor Tan Chorh Chuan said. “As a result, we had excellent discussions on key global trends that substantially impact higher education, as well as gained useful insights on issues that are of interest and relevance to Asia.”

Noting the report is a working document, the GLC encourages educators to offer feedback and case studies of best practices, with the goal of having the report serve as a repository of ideas to improve technology-enhanced learning.

Media Contact:
Ken Walters / 412-268-1151 / walters1@andrew.cmu.edu

Earl Lewis

Earl Lewis, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and one of America’s leading advocates for supporting the humanities and the arts in higher education, will be the keynote speaker at Carnegie Mellon’s Commencement at 11 a.m., Sunday, May 15 in Gesling Stadium on the Pittsburgh campus.

Lewis also will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.

Lewis is a renowned social historian and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He visited Carnegie Mellon this past October, when he delivered the opening address for the Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy’s 20th Anniversary Conference. He presented the keynote address for the center’s opening in 1995.

“Dr. Lewis’ dedication to diversity, the humanities, the arts, and the use of digital learning tools to improve education resonates deeply with our core values here at Carnegie Mellon University,” said President Subra Suresh. “We are honored and very fortunate to have Dr. Lewis as our keynote speaker.”

A longtime supporter and friend of the university, Lewis said he was looking forward to returning to Carnegie Mellon.

“As someone who has had a relationship with Carnegie Mellon University for the last two decades, I am thrilled to receive this honor,” he said.

Prior to joining the foundation as its sixth president in 2013, Lewis was provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs and the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of History and African-American Studies at Emory University. He previously held faculty appointments at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Michigan.

Lewis is the author and co-editor of seven books, including “The African American Urban Experience: Perspectives from the Colonial Period to the Present”; “Defending Diversity: Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan”; the award-winning “To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans”; and the heralded book series “American Crossroads.”

Honorary Degree Recipients:

It is a Carnegie Mellon tradition to award honorary degrees at commencement to exemplary leaders, whose life and work serve as an inspiration for Carnegie Mellon students, faculty and staff.

In addition to Lewis, this year’s honorary degree recipients are:

Holly Hunter (A’80), an Academy Award winner who is among the elite actors in the entertainment industry, will receive a Doctor of Fine Arts degree. Hunter won an Oscar and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her 1993 performance in “The Piano” as Ada, a mute Scottish woman. She also has starred on the stage and in television, winning two Emmy Awards for Best Actress.

Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT and the most cited engineer in history, will receive a Doctor of Science and Technology degree. He has written over 1,330 articles and has nearly 1,100 patents worldwide. His patents have been licensed or sublicensed to more than 300 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies.

Sonia Manzano (A’72), a first-generation Puerto Rican who changed the face of American television on the iconic children’s television series “Sesame Street,” will be presented with a Doctor of Fine Arts degree. After joining the cast as Maria, she began writing scripts and eventually earned 15 Emmy Awards as a member of the show’s writing staff. She garnered two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series.

James Swartz (TPR’66), one of the most successful venture capitalists in the world, will be awarded a Doctor of Business Practice degree. Swartz is the leading partner and founder of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Accel Partners, a prominent global technology venture capital firm. Carnegie Mellon’s new Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, which will serve as a hub for university-wide entrepreneurial activities, is being named in his honor.

“This year’s honorary degree recipients have had exceptional careers and have greatly impacted the arts, technology and business. They are outstanding role models for the Class of 2016,” President Suresh said.

Student Speaker: Sophie Rose Zucker

This year’s student speaker is Sophie Rose Zucker, a member of the Science and Humanities Scholars Program who will be receiving a bachelor’s degree in chemistry with University Honors and a bachelor’s degree in creative writing with College Honors.

In addition to her academic pursuits, Zucker has been an active member of the Carnegie Mellon community. She has been a four-year member of Alpha Chi Omega Sorority, serving on its executive board as vice president for recruitment.

Zucker was president of MORF, CMU’s feminist club, and has been involved in the annual MOSAIC Conference, which focuses on gender issues. She also was editor-in-chief of The Oakland Review, CMU’s literary magazine, and wrote and directed the Chemistry Department’s Murder Mystery Dinner Theater production this year.

Zucker has accepted a job with Epic Systems, in Madison, Wis., a software company for health care organizations.

More than 5,000 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees will be conferred at Carnegie Mellon’s main commencement ceremony.

The ceremony will be webcast at http://www.cmu.edu/commencement.

Learn more about the speakers and honorary degree recipients. 

At the end of the summer, Eric Parigoris will board a plane to Switzerland to spend a year focusing on early detection of cancer.

The senior mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering major who will earn his degree this May has won a Whitaker Fellowship, awarded by the program to send emerging leaders in U.S. biomedical engineering abroad. The program aims to help exceptional students become top-quality scientists who will advance the profession through a global perspective.

Parigoris will spend his year abroad in the lab of Professor Jess Snedeker, who works on cancer biomechanics at ETH Zurich.

“Professor Snedeker’s work focuses on both orthopedic biomechanics and cancer cell mechanics, the two fields I am most interested in,” Parigoris said. “His research focuses on engineering-based solutions that have direct clinical applications.”

Parigoris will be working with Snedeker on a project designed to characterize complex cell mixtures to identify cancerous cells. Early detection remains the most effective strategy for reducing cancer-related deaths, but until now, only a few methods have been effective enough for clinical use. This novel mechanical characterization method shows great potential for early cancer detection.

Throughout his undergraduate career at Carnegie Mellon, Parigoris has developed a passion for using mechanical engineering principles to help solve critical medical problems with widespread social impact. He has worked alongside Mechanical Engineering Professor Phil LeDuc for the past three years on two projects in the field of cellular biomechanics.

The first project looks to model a malnourished intestine, then build that model into existing “gut-on-chip” device designs to develop a more physiologically relevant microsystem. The second looks to engineer magnetically activated artificial cells that can be used in localized drug delivery.

Parigoris plans to take a few years to gain experience abroad after graduation before pursuing a Doctorate of Medicine and of Philosophy (M.D.–Ph.D.) in biomedical engineering.

“While most mechanical engineers are interested in the mechanics of vehicles or manufacturing, my research interests lie in applying these same principles to biological systems,” he said.

The Whitaker Fellowship is a prime opportunity for Parigoris to build international connections in the rapidly expanding biomedical engineering community.

CMU’s Fellowships and Scholarships Office helped Parigoris with his fellowship application. The Fellowships and Scholarships Office is under the direction of Stephanie Wallach, assistant vice provost for undergraduate education.

However, a new study published in PLOS ONE supports the general idea behind the original claim. Carnegie Mellon University and University of California, Berkeley researchers found that languages that use the same word for snow and ice tend to be spoken in warmer climates, reflecting a lower communicative need to talk about snow and ice.

“We wanted to broaden the investigation past Eskimo languages and look at how different languages carve up the world into words and meanings,” said Charles Kemp, associate professor of psychology in CMU’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

For the study, Kemp and UC Berkeley’s Terry Regier and Alexandra Carstensen analyzed the connection between local climates, patterns of language use and word(s) for snow and ice across nearly 300 languages. They drew on multiple sources of data including library reference works, Twitter and large digital collections of linguistic and meteorological data.

The results revealed a connection between temperature and snow and ice terminology, suggesting that local environmental needs leave an imprint on languages. For example, English originated in a relatively cool climate and has distinct words for snow and ice. In contrast, the Hawaiian language is spoken in a warmer climate and uses the same word for snow and ice.

These cases support the claim that languages are adapted to the local communicative needs of their speakers — the same idea that lies behind the overstated claim about Eskimo words for snow. The study finds support for this idea across language families and geographic areas.

“These findings don’t resolve the debate about Eskimo words for snow, but we think our question reflects the spirit of the initial snow claims — that languages reflect the needs of their speakers,” said Carstensen, a psychology graduate student at UC Berkeley.

The researchers suggest that in the past, excessive focus on the specific example of Eskimo words for snow may have obscured the more general principle behind it.

Carstensen added, “Here, we deliberately asked a somewhat different question about a broader set of languages.”

The study also connects with previous work that explores how the sounds and structures of language are shaped in part by a need for efficiency in communication.

“We think our study reveals the same basic principle at work, modulated by local communicative need,” said Regier, professor of linguistics and cognitive science at UC Berkeley.

Read the full study. 

Alex John London, an acclaimed bioethicist at Carnegie Mellon University, has been appointed to the Committee on Clinical Trials During the 2014-15 Ebola Outbreak by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The committee will explore and analyze the scientific and ethical issues related to vaccine and therapeutic drug design, conduct and reporting in response to the West African epidemic.

London, professor of philosophy in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences and director of CMU’s Center for Ethics and Policy, researches foundational ethical issues in human-subjects research, issues of social justice in international contexts, and methodology issues in theoretical and applied ethics.

Alex London

“Alex London is not only a leading researcher on bioethics and research design, but has also made significant contributions to public debates and policy,” says David Danks, head of the Department of Philosophy. “This committee will be answering key questions of pressing international and scientific importance, and Alex is an ideal choice for it.”

Particular emphasis for the committee’s work will be given to drug and vaccine trials conducted by the international community in areas where there is limited health care and research infrastructure. They will make recommendations for how clinical trials should be prioritized and conducted to ensure safety and speed in data collection during an international infectious disease outbreak. The committee also will address whether adjustments to scientific or ethical standards are appropriate when conducting research in outbreak settings, and identify collaborative opportunities to achieve long-term ethical and scientific advances from these types of clinical trials.

“When we think about outbreaks of infections disease — Ebola, SARS, MERS, H1N1 and now Zika — we tend to focus on the pathogen,” London said. “But the scope and toll of such outbreaks depends heavily on how our individual and public health systems respond to their emergence. Part of this involves our ability to carry out ethically and scientifically sound research.”

He continued, “Research is like the eyes and ears of a health system; without it is difficult to mount an effective and efficient response to a novel pathogen. I’m honored to be part of the process of looking at the research conducted during the most recent Ebola outbreak and trying to improve our ability to respond to such outbreaks in the future.”

London is an elected fellow of the Hastings Center and recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities. In 2012, he joined the Working Group on the Revision of the CIOMS 2002 International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects. He was appointed to the Steering Committee on Forensic Science Programs for the International Commission on Missing Persons in 2011. Since 2007, he has served as a member of the Ethics Working Group of the HIV Prevention Trials Network.

London has testified before the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues and has been commissioned to write papers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM). He has served as an ethics expert in consultations with numerous national and international organizations, including the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization, the World Medical Association and the World Bank.

Learn more about London.

Manojkumar Puthenveedu is an associate professor of biological sciences at CMU.

Carnegie Mellon University Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Manojkumar Puthenveedu has received a $200,000 grant from the Shurl & Kay Curci Foundation to support his research into the cellular mechanisms that underlie pain and addiction to painkillers. The project could be a critical step toward a new, non-addictive way to treat pain.

Chronic pain affects hundreds of millions of people in the United States and over a billion people around the world. Pain management drugs represent a large portion of the market, and the costs exceed that of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes combined. Opioids like morphine, which target the mu opioid receptor on the surface of neurons, are the main drugs prescribed to treat pain. These drugs, however, have severe limitations. They are not very effective in treating chronic pain, and their use often leads to tolerance and addiction — a serious and rapidly growing problem in the current world. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), prescriptions and sales of opioids have quadrupled since 1999 and more than 40 Americans die each day from prescription opioid overdoses — a 100 percent increase in the last 10 years. This epidemic in opioid abuse led the CDC to issue new, stricter opioid prescribing guidelines for primary care providers when treating patients for chronic pain.

Transport of a modified DOR sensor to the cell surface.

Under the new grant, Puthenveedu will investigate an alternate drug target to the mu opioid receptor. His target is the delta opioid receptor (DOR), which also can inhibit pain pathways when on the surface of neurons. DOR is a highly attractive target because the drugs that activate DOR are not addictive. However, many drugs that have been developed to target DOR proved to be ineffective for managing pain in a clinical setting. Puthenveedu noted that the bulk of DOR appears to collect in storage pools inside neurons, keeping it from moving to the surface. If DOR is not on the surface, a DOR-targeting drug can't bind to it, and therefore will not be effective.

To counter this problem, the Puthenveedu lab has begun to identify the mechanisms that retain DOR inside the cell. In their proof-of-concept experiments, they found a way to mobilize the storage pool and drive DOR to the cell surface. This approach significantly improves the effectiveness and utility of DOR-targeting molecules, and could prove to be transformative in treating pain.

"To develop this novel approach of engineered relocation followed by activation, it is imperative that we fully understand the mechanisms mediating DOR storage and delivery in neurons. With the support of the Curci Foundation, we can begin to do that," said Puthenveedu, who is a member of the joint Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition and Carnegie Mellon's BrainHub neuroscience initiative. 

Puthenveedu anticipates that his research on DOR will be relevant to other clinically important receptors. DOR belongs to the G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) family. GPCRs are the targets for the majority of drugs available to treat a variety of ailments, especially neuropsychiatric disorders. Puthenveedu plans to use his research on DOR as a jumping off point to investigate the cellular storage and delivery mechanisms of other GPCRs — a largely unexplored area.

The Curci Foundation also will continue to fund Carnegie Mellon research that is teaching mice to use two-dimensional brain-computer interfaces. Led by Aryn Gittis and Sandra Kuhlman, assistant professors of biological sciences, and Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering Steven Chase, the project could provide a way for scientists to link neural plasticity and behavioral improvement, and will provide a model for research into the neural basis of memory, learning, behavior and motor control. The model also could be used to develop new methods of rehabilitation for brains injured by stroke, traumatic brain injury or diseases like Parkinson's disease.

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 launched BrainHub, a global initiative that focuses on how the structure and activity of the brain give rise to complex behaviors.

The 21^st century’s ambiguous and changing global political structure is creating a demand for skilled experts who can examine and understand domestic and foreign government institutions and processes. To train the next generation of political scientists, Carnegie Mellon University has launched a new International Relations and Politics Accelerated Masters Program.

Open to CMU undergraduates and offered through the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences’ Institute for Politics and Strategy (IPS), the program will prepare students for competitive doctoral programs and careers in international relations, government service, American politics and related fields. Students accepted into the program will complete four courses during their senior year, a summer internship following their senior year, plus an additional year of eight classes focused on international relations, international security, political institutions and politics.

“War has been a constant in our current students’ lives, and that unfortunately does not look like it will change soon. But what is changing is the political landscape of war — from wars between nations to non-state actors like ISIS and al-Qaeda becoming aggressors. Coupled with an increasingly globalized world, international relations and politics is extremely important, and students need to be prepared and trained to analyze and deal with uncertainty and transformation in many different cultures and areas of the world,” said Kiron K. Skinner, IPS director and a leading expert in political strategy, international relations and U.S. foreign policy.

The accelerated Master of Science in international relations and politics has admitted its first class for the fall of 2016. CMU students interested in political science with a major or minor in international relations and politics and who participate in CMU’s Washington Semester Program or receive special permission are encouraged to apply for admission during their junior year.

IPS was established in July 2015 and serves as a center for research, undergraduate and graduate education and university-wide initiatives in the fields of political science, international relations and national security.

Learn more about the International Relations and Politics Accelerated Masters Program.

Related Article:

Think about your life's work. Now, pitch it to a complete stranger in a matter of seconds. One hundred and eighty seconds to be exact. That's the Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) in a nutshell.

On April 5, 10 doctoral candidates at Carnegie Mellon University talked about their meaningful, even life-changing, research. They were not defending their research but rather showcasing their communication skills in a 3MT competition that rewards researchers who can give the clearest, most compelling explanations of their work.

The University Libraries hosts the annual competition, which begins among dozens of doctoral candidates and culminates in a championship in CMU's McConomy Auditorium.

Dean of Libraries Keith Webster brought the exercise from his former employer The University of Queensland in Australia, where the exercise was first developed. The idea has spread to universities worldwide.

Open to all disciplines, about 300 doctoral candidates have risen to the challenge during its three years at CMU.

"I do find the cross-disciplinary approach to be strong: we're not judging the quality of research, but rather a student's ability to communicate their work clearly and compellingly irrespective of field," Webster said.

A couple of rules apply: namely the strict three-minute time limit and that participants may use a single, static slide as a visual aid. Judges evaluate the contestants on communication style, comprehension and engagement.

"This year's finalists were all excellent," Webster said. "3MT has become part of the annual cycle at CMU, so students look ahead to the event, and take advantage of training opportunities organized by our colleagues in the CMU Global Communications Center, housed in the Hunt Library, and the student organization Public Communication for Researchers."

Pratiti Mandal, from the College of Engineering, won the championship for her mechanical engineering solution to prevent the failure of fuel cells for alternative energy vehicles. Her pitch hushed the audience when describing the problem of a car going powerless suddenly in the middle of traffic. Mandal gleaned the $3,000 first-place award and earned the $500 people's choice award, based on ballots submitted by the audience.

Mandal prepared in the Global Communication Center, using videos of past 3MT speakers, and received moral support from other CMU students and alumni, including friends from the IGSA-Indian Graduate Students Association.

Mandal said it was difficult to learn to talk about her research outside of her field, but she was gratified for the experience.

"Science is not just for scientists to relish but for paying back to the society. It is of utmost importance to justify your research and contribution," she said.

A second place tie went to Shinjini Kundu in biomedical engineering, who spoke about training computers to detect osteoarthritis three years earlier than humans can, and Juliann Reineke in the Dietrich College's Department of English, who proposed a solution drawn from 18th-century literature for modern-day veterans reintegrating as civilians.

Third place went to Amit Datta in electrical and computer engineering for his work on the use of personal data on the Web. Conference and travel grants of $2,000 and $1,000 went to the second and third-place finishers, respectively.

Webster said competition was steep this year. He's seen an increase in the quality of presentations over the years and credits CMU faculty for encouraging more students to participate, as well as the availability online of recordings of past participants.

Participation has its benefits. The Department of Statistics' Giuseppe Vinci, who admits to spending a great deal of time at the whiteboard in his office, was able to practice talking about the application of his statistical methods of network analysis in brain research. Jonathan Kush, from the Tepper School of Business, saw it as a chance to polish his elevator speech to future employers.

The championship panel of judges was made up of CMU President Subra Suresh, Vice Provost for Education Amy Burkert, College of Fine Arts Dean Dan Martin, CMU Trustee and Executive Director of the Posner Fine Arts Foundation Anne Molloy, and Annie Arnold, chemistry graduate student and winner of the 2015 3MT title.

"The Three-Minute Thesis has been an excellent addition to our campus programming," Burkert said. "I enjoy participating each year because the competition offers a glimpse into the amazing work our graduate students are doing to make a positive impact in the world.

"I also appreciate the fact that 3MT provides the opportunity for more of our doctoral students to enhance their ability to communicate their thesis work in an effective manner to a broad audience. Such a communication skillset is becoming even more important," Burkert said.

Related Links:

• CMU Libraries
• Three-Minute Thesis at CMU
• Public Communication for Researchers
• Indian Graduate Student Association

Miller Gallery and the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University will present “CMU School of Architecture Exhibition 2016” in the gallery from Thursday, April 21, through Saturday, April 23.

The exhibit features student presentations from 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., April 21-22. A special reception is scheduled from 6 - 8 p.m., Friday, April 22. The exhibit, presentations and reception are free and open to the public.

“We’re proud of the work our students have accomplished, and we invite the campus community, our neighbors and the public to learn more about the immense undertaking and brilliant results these talented individuals have achieved,” said Professor Steve Lee, head of the School of Architecture.

The students presenting their work will be Christopher Ball, Avanti Dabholkar, Gloriana Gonzalez, Laura Gonzalez, Tom Sterling, Andrew Viny and Leah Wulfman. Independent projects will be shown by Shanna Chan, Colleen Clifford, Liz Madigan and Nikhil Sambamurthy.

The thesis presents an opportunity to undertake and develop a project that demonstrates each student’s capacity to make a significant and original contribution to the field of architecture — or a closely related discipline — and allows them to synthesize their critical approach, experience and expertise in a relevant format. Architecture’s future is changing with each new generation of students, according to Mary-Lou Arscott, School of Architecture studio professor and associate head.

“We are delighted to be ushering these students into the profession and await the impact of their work as it sends ripples through the establishment,” she said.

Learn more about the exhibition and reception.

An artist's impression of gravitational waves. Credits: R. Hurt/Caltech-JPL

Barry Barish, the Linde Professor of Physics, emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology, will present Carnegie Mellon University’s annual Buhl Lecture at 1:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 26 in the Mellon Institute Auditorium, 4400 Fifth Ave. in Oakland. His lecture, “Encore: Einstein’s Unfinished Symphony: ‘Listening’ for Gravitational Waves,” is free and open to the public.

The Buhl Lecture is funded under the auspices of the Buhl Professorship in Theoretical Physics and sponsored by the Department of Physics. The Buhl Foundation established the professorship in 1961 to support an outstanding theoretical scientist who would both impact theoretical research and help establish directions for experimental investigations. Fred Gilman, dean of the Mellon College of Science, has held this chair since 1995. He revived the Buhl Lecture in 1996, bringing a series of internationally recognized scientists to Carnegie Mellon for public lectures.

Barish gave his first Buhl Lecture in 2000. Then the director of Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), Barish discussed gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space and time whose existence was predicted by Einstein in 1916. At the time, LIGO recently had been constructed under Barish’s leadership and had begun to collect data. On Feb. 11, 2016, it was announced that LIGO’s upgraded detectors had made the first-ever observation of gravitational waves from a pair of merging black holes. This year, as an encore to his 2000 lecture, Barish will discuss the physics of gravitational waves, the techniques used to detect gravitational waves and the implications of the new observations.

Barish led the LIGO project as the principal investigator and director from the beginning of construction in 1994 until 2005. During that period, LIGO detectors reached design sensitivity and set many significant limits on astrophysical sources. The more sensitive Advanced LIGO proposal was developed and approved while Barish was director, and he continues to play an active leading role in LIGO. His other noteworthy experiments include an experiment at Fermilab using high-energy neutrino collisions to reveal the quark substructure of the nucleon. These experiments were among the first to observe the weak neutral current, a linchpin of electroweak unification theories. Barish also is the former director of the Global Design Effort for the International Linear Collider, the highest priority future project for particle physics worldwide.

Tom Mitchell, the Fredkin University Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at Carnegie Mellon University, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), joining the world’s most accomplished scholars, scientists, writers, artists and civic leaders.

Mitchell founded the world’s first Machine Learning Department at CMU’s School of Computer Science in 2006 and led the department until earlier this year. His research focuses on statistical learning algorithms for understanding natural language text and on understanding how the human brain represents information. His work has been featured in The New York Times and on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

A former president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Mitchell is a fellow of both the AAAI and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Other members of this year’s class include neuroscientist John Rubenstein, cognitive learning scientist Michelene Chi, professor and autism spokesperson Temple Grandin, jazz composer and musician Wayne Shorter and former Time managing editor Walter Isaacson. The full list of the 213 new members is online at www.amacad.org/members. They will be inducted Oct. 8 in Cambridge, Mass.

Founded in 1780, the AAAS is one of the country’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers, convening leaders from the academic, business and government sectors to respond to the challenges facing — and opportunities available to — the nation and the world.

“It is an honor to welcome this new class of exceptional women and men as part of our distinguished membership,” said Don Randel, chair of the academy’s board of directors. “Their election affords us an invaluable opportunity to bring their expertise and knowledge to bear on some of the most significant challenges of our day. We look forward to engaging these new members in the work of the academy.”

Mitchell joins nine current and past School of Computer Science faculty members as AAAS members, including Randy Bryant, Raj Reddy, Ed Clarke, Manuel Blum and Takeo Kanade.

By Jessica Corry / 412-268-4829 / jcorry@andrew.cmu.edu

Carnegie Mellon University has renewed an agreement with the University of Hyogo (UH) to continue an information security dual-degree program in Kobe, Japan.

In 2005, Carnegie Mellon partnered with the Hyogo Prefectural government to create the Kobe Master of Science in Information Technology – Information Security (MSIT-IS). The educational collaboration reached its 10-year mark in 2015, making it the Information Networking Institute's (INI) longest operating international program and one of CMU’s earliest ventures into global cybersecurity education.

"The continuation of this partnership is vital to meeting the demands of our global society and addressing the critical issue of information security,” said INI Director Dena Haritos Tsamitis. "Through exposure to the diverse information security cultures of Asia and the United States, our international students are equipped to tackle the industry and societal challenges of today's world."

The program blends information security technology with management and policy, and features core courses ranging from "Networking Security" to "Information Security Risk Analysis." Since 2005, the program has graduated 67 students from countries around the globe.

With its recent renewal, the program will continue for five years with three cohorts of students. Building upon the initial focus in 2005, that of education and research closely intertwined, the renewed partnership will feature a research collaboration between UH and Carnegie Mellon CyLab.

"Cybersecurity is an international issue," said CyLab Director David Brumley. "We absolutely need international partnerships to address this global issue."

Kobe: A Beacon of Information Security

Indeed, the creation of this partnership in 2005 had a historical imperative. After the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995 killed more than 6,500 people and caused over $100 billion in damage, Hyogo Prefecture Governor Toshizo Ido was determined to better secure the region’s information infrastructure.

By creating a unique educational collaboration with Carnegie Mellon that engages students across the globe, Ido sought to build an educated workforce with specialized training and transform Kobe into a beacon of information security.

In recent years, Japan has made improving cybersecurity practices a top national priority.

"Recently in Japan, there have been large waves of financial frauds and advanced persistent threats (APT), and thus, there is a growing demand for security specialists," said Kenta Okumoto, a current student from Japan. His company, the Japan Post Bank Co., Ltd., is sponsoring his enrollment in the program, so that he may gain advanced skills in information security that will enhance his role as a software engineer.

"Alumni are active in Japan, U.S., Europe and other Asian countries. Because of their remarkable performance, the program is attracting attention from enterprises and governmental organizations in Japan that need to hire information security experts," said UH President Masayoshi Kiyohara.

"Because the current threat of cyber crimes is significantly more serious than the past, the demand for information security experts will drastically increase in the very near future. In this regard, we believe that the continuation of the program will be a great contribution to our society," Kiyohara said.

Value of Cross-Cultural Connection

Although thousands of miles and a time difference of 13 hours separate students learning in Kobe and Pittsburgh, state-of-the-art videoconferencing technology shrinks the distance. Students also spend time in Japan and the United States. They begin their studies in April at UH, coinciding with the start of the Japanese academic year, and transfer to Pittsburgh the following January to complete the program.

Exposure to the diverse security cultures of Japan and the United States is a primary reason current student Min Sok Hwang chose the program.

"This program offers a superb chance to meet with top professors, alumni and students from all over the world at the two locations," Hwang said. "Pittsburgh and Kobe are both excellent places to study and live in."

This cross-cultural connection has redefined the CMU experience, highlighting the truly global nature of the challenges INI students will face as information security professionals.

Program adviser Nicolas Christin agreed, stating that the program affords its students and faculty opportunities to engage in interdisciplinary and intercultural work.

"In a field like information security, where human factors play a crucial role, such opportunities greatly help us enhance our research and teaching," he said.

Diverse Career Opportunities

Abhishek Garai, originally from Mumbai, India, believes the dual-degree program has added notable value to his career.

"During all my job interviews, my dual-degree experience in Japan was of foremost importance for the interviewers and always provided me an edge compared to the other candidates," Garai said.

Garai took advantage of networking opportunities during his time in Japan and obtained an internship with Rakuten Security in Tokyo through alumni connections.

"This program opens up another region of the globe for you to work in the future, which I feel is a great opportunity to grow," Garai said. "It not only improves you from the professional perspective but also adds value to your personal development, which can only be achieved through varied experiences."

Carnegie Mellon University will award the fourth annual Andrew Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Sciences to Alexandre Pouget, professor of basic neuroscience at the University of Geneva. Pouget, a renowned expert in neural coding and spatial representations, has revolutionized using uncertainty to explain how the brain functions based on statistical principles.

The Carnegie Prize, given by the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC) and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, recognizes trailblazers in the mind and brain sciences whose research has helped advance the field and its applications. The CNBC will present the award to Pouget at 4 p.m., Wednesday, May 11, in the Rashid Auditorium in CMU’s Hillman Center for Future-Generation Technologies.

Alexandre Pouget

“Every time we try to explain what is going on, we are offering a theory, and when we label a scientific effort ‘theoretical,’ we mean that mathematics has been used somehow to make the theory precise. Alex Pouget is an international leader in theoretical neuroscience, consistently providing elegant and illuminating explanations of brain activity and its relation to animal or human behavior,” said Robert E. Kass, interim CNBC co-director and CMU professor of statistics and machine learning. “He was an obvious choice for the Carnegie Prize, and we are very pleased he agreed to give this lecture.”

At the University of Geneva, Pouget leads the computational cognitive neuroscience laboratory. His research focuses on general theories of representation and computation in neural circuits, with a strong emphasis on neural theories of probabilistic inference.

His work is built on the idea that knowledge in the brain takes the form of probability distributions and that new knowledge is acquired by probabilistic inference. He is applying this framework, which allows for robust computations in the presence of uncertainty — something that is found in almost all real-world computations — to a wide range of topics, such as simple arithmetic, decision-making, causal reasoning, perceptual learning, sensory motor transformations and others.

As part of the award ceremony, Pouget will present a talk on “The Probabilistic Brain” and will discuss how the brain learns and implements inference with a particular kind of neural code known as probabilistic population codes.

“I’m incredibly honored to be receiving the Carnegie Prize and also particularly excited to see this prize awarded to a theoretician. Theory is the next frontier in neuroscience and one we have to conquer if we are to bridge the gap between the brain and the mind. I thank the selection committee for sharing this vision,” Pouget said.

Previous recipients of the Carnegie Prize are MIT’s Ed Boyden, Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research’s Ricardo Dolmetsch and the National Institute of Health’s Leslie Ungerleider.

The CNBC, a collaborative research center between CMU and the University of Pittsburgh focused on neuroscience, has helped establish Carnegie Mellon and the Pittsburgh scientific community as a world leader in brain and behavioral sciences. At CMU, the CNBC is administered by the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

By Lauren Goshinski / 412-268-1533 / laurengo@andrew.cmu.edu
and Pam Wigley / 412-268-1047 / pwigley@andrew.cmu.edu

Carnegie Mellon University students graduating from the Bachelor of Fine Arts and BXA Interdisciplinary Art Degree programs will exhibit their culminating work in “Free Germs,” the School of Art’s 2016 Senior Exhibition, opening from 6-8 p.m., Friday, April 29, in CMU’s Miller Gallery. Events are free and open to the public. Gallery hours are 12 - 6 p.m., Tuesday - Sunday. 12-6 p.m.

“One definition of the word germ is ‘an initial stage from which something may develop,’ for example ‘the germ of a brilliant idea.’ This exhibition is full of brilliant ideas, given form in a variety of materials and subject matter: from painting to animation, materiality to virtual reality,” said John Carson, head of the School of Art. "From playful to challenging, these emerging artists’ inquiries, experiments and expressions across media reflect a variety of aesthetic sensibilities and ideas, exploring how art might function in and shape the world."

Exhibiting artists are Zoe Ambinder, Audrey Banks, Jacqueline C.J. Barnes, Christin Bongiorni, Raquel Caticha, Lindsay Cavallo, Heather Cowie, Jamie Earnest, Darrius Fletcher, Hannah Gaskill, Max Emilio Gonzales, Madalyn Gryger, Claire Hentschker, Jennifer Huang, Nivetha Kannan, Swetha Kannan, Daniel Kim, Ralph Kim, Melanie Kim, Steven Kosovac, Maryyann Landlord, Tate Leone, Emily Drew Miller, Christian Murphy, Angelina Namkung, Maggy Navin, Rachel June Park, Paul Peng, Nicholas Sardo, Ticha Sethapakdi, Maddy Varner, Carolina Vogt, Paul Alex Walker.

Download the 2016 Senior Art Exhibition Catalog to learn more about the artists.