PITTSBURGH—Dealing with cyber threats has become the new norm. As cyber criminals increasingly launch crippling attacks that hamper business and threaten security, organizations struggle to find technology savvy executives to lead strategies that protect and defend information across the enterprise.

To support strategic leadership, Carnegie Mellon's Information Networking Institute (INI) will offer an Executive Master of Science in Information Assurance (ExecMSIA) Program beginning in fall 2012. Flexible to fit easily with frenetic career schedules, the ExecMSIA offers a concentration in cyber forensics and incident response (CyFIR) or resilience management. The two concentrations will be led by instructors in the CERT Program of the Software Engineering Institute. An option also is available for non-degree students to pursue certificates in these two areas.

The new program is designed to help a broad swath of business leaders and novel tech experts to see cybersecurity as a top priority, and to learn how to use tools like forensics to track adversaries.

"This is an interdisciplinary program designed to meet the needs of today's fast-paced global business environment combining online sessions with periodic, short sessions on the Carnegie Mellon campus," said Dena Haritos Tsamitis, INI director and director of education, training and outreach for Carnegie Mellon CyLab, one of the largest university-based cybersecurity education and research centers in the U.S.

"Students pursue the program with a cohort of about 20 peers, who add enrichment to each other's professional network and enhance learning by sharing their own knowledge that has come from experience," said Tsamitis, who is part of a presentation Feb. 27-March 2 on the Cyber Security School Challenge at the RSA Information Security Conference in San Francisco.

The INI program runs 20 months, is made up of five semesters, and students will spend a total of 24 days on campus over the course of the program. In each semester, students will complete six hours of coursework in online recitations during 1.5-hour sessions held on four Saturdays. During those virtual, interactive sessions, students will participate in activities such as laboratory exercises, mock hearings, group meetings, case study discussions, presentations and problem-driven scenarios.

The CyFIR concentration, for example, is designed to equip the next generation of executives with the knowledge, skill sets and experiences to successfully plan for and manage the inevitabilities of a cyber attack.

"The INI continues to pioneer change in cybersecurity with the release of their executive MSIA program, which has been specifically tailored to meet the nation's growing cyber threats head on. The ExecMSIA program enables senior managers to collaborate across public and private sectors to build a network of cyber professionals uniquely capable of addressing the nation's most pressing security challenges," said Nicholas Lamb, president and CEO of BCOS Inc., a computer hardware and software security company located in Columbia, Md.

The program application deadlines are April 30 (first round) and June 30 (second round). Details on how to apply appear at: http://www.ini.cmu.edu/degrees/msia/index.html.

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University's Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Race Team won a prestigious Communitas Award for collecting food and donating homemade recipes in brightly-designed cookbooks to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.

"This is a great honor for us as we strive to expand our educational experience to serve the community," said Mike Ornstein, an SAE team leader and a junior in mechanical engineering at CMU from Hopewell, N.J.

The SAE Race Team won the 2011 Communitas Award for "Racing Against Hunger," in the special event competition category.

Communitas Awards, supported by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals, recognize exceptional organizations, businesses and individuals that give unselfishly of themselves and their resources to benefit their communities. Award participants range from Fortune 500 companies to nonprofits and entrepreneurial startups.

"We are so very proud of our students and faculty who support this environment of creative achievement, which fosters partnerships with a variety of charities and community organizations," said Nadine Aubry, the Raymond J. Lane Distinguished Professor and head of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon. "Our students have very demanding schedules, but many take the time to share their leadership and creativity in community projects. We applaud them for this," she said.

The team also enlisted the help of the H.J. Heinz Company, which donated its Heinz 57 sauce to celebrate the racecar's number 57, and to help mark the brand's 100-year anniversary. Other food contributors included: Oakmont Bakery, The Frick Park Market in Point Breeze and Ruggeri's Food Deli in Squirrel Hill.

"We were so pleased that Heinz helped us because our team car this season drew the competitive racing number 57," said John Wiss, an adjunct professor of mechanical engineering at CMU. "This award shows that our students are extremely dedicated to helping the community in novel ways. We tied our efforts into the national USA Weekend's "Make a Difference Day" last October and we certainly made a difference," Wiss said.

The event also featured a racing demo and a bagpipe parade. For more information about the 2011 Communitas Award winners, go to: www.communitasawards.com.

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University's Nadine Aubry has been awarded the distinction of fellow of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) for her outstanding work in the field of aerospace through her pioneering contributions to fluid dynamics.

"I am deeply honored by this election, and extremely grateful to my peers for their recognition," said Aubry, the Raymond J. Lane Distinguished Professor and head of Carnegie Mellon's Mechanical Engineering Department. "At a time when aviation has become an inherent part of our life and our economy, it is crucial to continue making technological advances whether those address reduced fuel consumption or sustainable fuel alternatives." she said.

This year, Aubry joins the ranks of 28 selected among more than 36,000 AIAA members worldwide who will be inducted as AIAA fellows at the AIAA Aerospace Spotlight Awards Gala May 9, 2012 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C.

"Being named a fellow of AIAA is among the highest honors that can be bestowed upon an aerospace professional, and represents recognition from colleagues and peers for great contributions to our field and technical community," said AIAA President Brian D. Dailey.

"Nadine is undoubtedly a leader in her field and a wonderful role model. This latest honor is an indication of how widely recognized she is," said Pradeep K. Khosla, the Dowd University Professor and dean of Carnegie Mellon's top-ranked College of Engineering.

In addition to her work on turbulence and transitional flows with applications for improved and more efficient flights, Aubry proposed judicious microfluidic solutions which, because of their reduced weight, size and energy consumption, are appealing to the field of aerospace.

Aubry is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Physical Society (APS), and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. A leader in her field, she currently serves as vice chair (to become chair elect and chair) of the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics and a past chair of the U.S. National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, the National Research Council committee that represents the U.S. internationally in scientific matters related to the field of mechanics.

Aubry earned a bachelor's degree in 1984 from the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble, France, and a master's degree from the Scientific and Medical University, also in Grenoble. In 1987, she received her Ph.D. from Cornell University.

He's Honored For His Work To Improve Implanted Medical Devices

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University's Christopher Bettinger is the recipient of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Award for Initiatives in Research for his innovative work on advanced materials for next-generation implanted medical devices.

Supported by Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, the NAS Award for Initiatives in Research recognizes "innovative young scientists and encourages research likely to lead toward new capabilities for human benefit." Bettinger will receive the award, which comes with a $15,000 prize, April 30 at the NAS' 149^th annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Bettinger has worked at the interface of materials science and biomedical engineering for more than 10 years. He has conceived of and produced a number of innovations that aim to better integrate medical devices with the human body. These technologies include new synthetic materials that mimic the natural properties of soft tissue and biodegradable electronics that could usher in a new era of electronically active implants. His work is designed to lead to broader advances in the field of medical devices to reduce the burden of human disease and improve quality of life.

The NAS Award is just one of many accolades for Bettinger. Last year, he was selected a member of the TR Class of 2011 by a panel of expert judges and the editorial staff of Technology Review for his pioneering work in materials science and biomedical engineering.

Pradeep K. Khosla, the Dowd University Professor and dean of Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering, praised Bettinger for his innovative problem-solving research. 

The NAS is a private, nonprofit institution that was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievement in science by election to membership, and—with the National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine and National Research Council—provides science, technology, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.

More information about the NAS Award for Initiatives in Research, including a list of past recipients is located at http://www.nasonline.org/programs/awards/initiatives-in-research.html.

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University's Philip LeDuc has been named a fellow by the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) for outstanding contributions to the field of cell and molecular biomechanics and bioengineering. A formal recognition ceremony is scheduled for Feb. 20 at the AIMBE's 21^st annual meeting at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C. 

"This is a great honor for me to be recognized by my peers as I continue to try to improve lives worldwide through my work," said LeDuc, a professor of mechanical engineering with courtesy appointments in the Biomedical Engineering, Biological Sciences and Computational Biology departments.   

The AIMBE's College of Fellows comprise the top two percent of medical and biological engineers in the country, including engineering and medical school chairs, research directors, innovators and successful entrepreneurs.

Since 1991, the College of Fellows has led the way for technological growth and advancement in the fields of medical and biological engineering. LeDuc is one of the newest fellows who continue to help revolutionize medicine and related fields to enhance the lives of people worldwide.

At present, LeDuc is leading a CMU research team in the area of cell mechanics and merging mechanical engineering with biology. His work is titled "Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Cells. What do they have in common?" One specific project is using cell mechanics of certain leafy vegetables in Africa in an effort to make the vegetation more palatable for malnourished infants and children. 

"In this project, what we are doing is studying how to alter a plant's cellular and molecular structures to nutritional availability during digestion," LeDuc said. His team is tapping into the modern and cutting-edge methodology of "molecular gastronomy," the study of the physical and chemical processes that occur while cooking.

LeDuc also is studying how a protein's shape and form determine how it functions in the human body from a mechanics perspective. Misguided proteins, for example, have been linked to disease such as cancer and arthritis, and problems in wound healing.

"We applaud Phil for this honor in recognition of his numerous contributions in both the lab and the classroom. Phil's impact in the field of medical and biological engineering makes us all very proud," said Nadine Aubry, the Raymond J. Lane Distinguished Professor and head of CMU's Mechanical Engineering Department.

LeDuc is a recipient of many academic awards, including the National Science Foundation Career Award, the Grand Challenges Explorations Award from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Beckman Foundation Young Investigators Award. He is a faculty member of the prestigious Sloan Foundation Minority Ph.D. Program. 

PITTSBURGH—Succeeding in innovation and invention, of course, means identifying the customers' needs and satisfying them. Not everything works the first time.

But whether 120 Carnegie Mellon University engineering students are being playful with a new mind-controlled toy car or deadly earnest in promoting bicycle safety, their energy and ingenuity will be on display from 3 to 5 p.m., Jan. 20 in Hamerschlag Hall at the third annual Build18 Project Showcase.

"Build18 is a great and unique opportunity to complement our studies with the application of real-world engineering skills. That means using what we learn in electrical and computer engineering (ECE) to create a cool product in a short time. We work in teams to devise innovative technical solutions, on the fly, with the equipment available," said Erik Schmidt, an ECE senior and Build18 leader from Ellicott City, Md. 

This year, some of the projects being showcased include a sensor-sensitive vest to monitor safety features for the avid cycler and a specially designed digital clock that posts photos to Twitter to incentivize the sleeper to wake up.

"We wanted to get out of our comfort zone and apply the concepts we learn in the classroom in new ways," Schmidt said.

Schmidt reports that more than 40 teams, of two to five students each, elected to participate in the activity the first week of spring semester classes.

Susan Farrington, head of ECE student and alumni relations and a Build18 adviser, praised the students for their organizational skills and enthusiasm for technical innovation. "Our students have very demanding schedules and for them to take time to orchestrate and participate in this event is both amazing and a testament to the quality of our engineering programs and this university," she said.

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University's Chris T. Hendrickson has been appointed to the executive committee of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), which provides expert advice on national transportation policy and leadership in transportation innovation.

"This is an opportunity for me to serve as the nation continues to face serious challenges to its aging infrastructure," said Hendrickson, the Duquesne Light Company Professor of Engineering and Co-Director of the Green Design Institute at Carnegie Mellon. "Improved roads and bridges help boost economic viability and the TRB plays a big part in helping implement new research, technology and innovative policies to encourage needed change."

The TRB is one of six major divisions of the National Research Council (NRC), a non-profit institution that is the principal operating agency of the National Academies in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The NRC is jointly administered by National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine.

Hendrickson, whose three-year term begins January 26, 2012, is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a distinguished member of the American Society of Civil Engineering, and an emeritus member of the TRB standing committee on the application of Emerging Technologies to Design and Construction, as well as a fellow for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

His research, teaching and consulting are in the general areas of engineering planning and management, including design for the environment, project management, transportation systems, finance and computer applications. Some of his latest research endeavors involve life-cycle assessment methods, assessment of alternative construction materials, economic and environmental implications of e-commerce and infrastructure for alternative fuels. He has co-authored several textbooks, including Environmental Life-Cycle Assessment of Goods and Services, An Input-Output Approach (Resources for the Future, 2005), as well as two monographs.

TRB's many activities engage more than 7,000 engineers, scientists and other transportation researchers and practitioners from the public and private sectors and academia.

Hendrickson will be joined by three other recently appointed TRB executive committee members including: Gary P. LaGrange, president and chief operating officer of the Port of New Orleans; Adib K. Kanafani, professor of the Graduate School of Civil Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and Henry G. Schwartz, Jr., retired chairman of Jacobs/Sverdrup Civil Inc. of St. Louis, Mo.

PITTSBURGH—Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University say advanced computational tools will be the key to a new research project that, if successful, could enable doctors to routinely use information extracted from a patient's DNA to diagnose and guide treatment of diseases.

Ion Torrent, a unit of Life Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: LIFE), is sponsoring the project during its first year, and more funding is expected to come through federal grants and other sources. Robert F. Murphy, director of the Lane Center for Computational Biology in Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, will lead a multidisciplinary team of researchers that will collaborate with scientists at the Baylor College of Medicine and Yale University.

The ultimate dream, Murphy said, is to develop what Ion Torrent Founder and CEO Jonathan M. Rothberg dubbed "doctor in a box" software. Doctor-in-a-box would take a patient's DNA sequence and use it to diagnose disease, identify a patient's susceptibility to disease, and predict which therapies might be most effective or cause the fewest side effects. The size and complexity of the human genome, which was first sequenced in its entirety in 2003, has stymied efforts to date to create such software.

"There's just way too much information for doctors to make sense of it all," Murphy said. But new machine learning tools—statistically driven software that can detect associations within mountains of data—may soon be able to translate the genetic and other hereditary information encoded in the human genome in a way that is clinically relevant to doctors and patients, he added. His team isn't the first to use machine learning to analyze whole genomes; however, it will employ some unique software developed at Carnegie Mellon. 

The Lane Center includes a number of faculty who are leaders in aspects of the problem, including Eric Xing, Ziv Bar-Joseph, Kathryn Roeder, Russell Schwartz and Seyoung Kim.

The team's software will be trained specifically to analyze the type of whole-genome sequence data produced by Ion Torrent's unique sequencing technology, which is ideal for clinical applications because it is designed to sequence the entire human genome in a day for just $1,000. Up to now, routine clinical use of whole genome sequencing has been impractical because it's taken weeks to complete at a cost of about $10,000. Now that Ion Torrent can reduce the time and expense, the next step is creating a tool to enable doctors to easily integrate whole genome sequencing into medical practice, Rothberg said.

"The promise of 'doctor-in-a-box' is that by using artificial intelligence, like we've seen with IBM's 'Watson' computer, we will be able to associate the variations in the human genome with the vast amount of information we have about human health," said Rothberg (E'85). "The work the Carnegie Mellon team is undertaking opens up the possibility that practicing physicians will be able to diagnose disease, identify disease susceptibility and guide therapy selection as easily as they can now use Apple's Siri on the iPhone." 

"It's an enormous undertaking," Murphy agreed, "but we are creating a framework that will allow us to tackle this problem one piece at a time and to do so at a scale that makes sense when all of those pieces are put together."

The sheer size of the problem necessitates collaboration with other groups trying to understand the genome, so Murphy said the team intends to make its software available as open source.

During the first year, researchers will focus on identifying the genomic features associated with a single disease or patient population, which has yet to be selected. Researchers at Baylor's Human Genome Sequencing Center and Yale's Center for Genome Analysis will perform the whole genome sequencing of patients and provide longitudinal medical records, such as disease treatments and outcomes and results of clinical tests.

This information, scrubbed of patient identity information, will be analyzed by the Carnegie Mellon researchers, who include biologists, statisticians and computational biologists, as well as other computer scientists. Machine learning programs will tease out the relationships between the genomic data and the clinical outcomes for each of the anonymous patients, while incorporating information from biomedical literature regarding gene and protein expression and disease pathways.

This analysis will yield models based on personal genome sequences that can be used to predict disease susceptibility and treatment responsiveness, as well as choose preventive therapies.

To provide impetus to the research program, Rothberg will sponsor an "Analyzing the $1,000 Genome" Conference to be held at Carnegie Mellon sometime in the summer or fall of 2012. The scientific conference will highlight outstanding work on computational analysis of genome sequences and foster discussion of new directions and strategies for extending this research.

In addition to Murphy, the research program leadership includes Jaime Carbonell, director of CMU's Language Technologies Institute; Tom Mitchell, director of CMU's Machine Learning Department; Richard Gibbs, director of Baylor's sequencing center; and Shrikant Mane, director of Yale's genome center.

Rothberg also established the Rothberg Research Awards in Human Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon to support the university's faculty and students in creatively pushing research boundaries in how the brain thinks, learns and ages.

Ranika Kejriwal, a junior electrical and computing engineering major at Carnegie Mellon, was recognized at the White House Dec. 9 for earning one of six National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) awards for Aspirations in Computing while in high school.

Kejriwal was honored as part of the "Champions of Change" program, which is part of President Obama's "Winning the Future" initiative. The initiative highlights a different issue each week and recognizes people across the country working to make it better. Last week, the White House's focus was on the recruitment and retention of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields, which coincided with Computer Science Education Week (Dec. 4-11)—recently endorsed by Congress to recognize the importance of computing education.

The NCWIT is a coalition of more than 300 prominent corporations, academic institutions, government agencies, and nonprofits working to increase women's participation in information technology and computing.

PITTSBURGH—The Marcellus Shale stampede is creating an entrepreneurial rebirth and a Carnegie Mellon University graduate student is tapping the economic boom.

Dan Hussain, a graduate student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is launching a new company dedicated to improving the productivity of the shale gas industry while reducing its environmental impact.

His company, HydroConfidence—formed earlier this year with Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC)—developed its first product comprising sensors for monitoring groundwater systems and for monitoring and proactively alerting natural gas constituents of methane migrating from shale gas wells into water aquifers, homes and businesses. The shale gas producers can use this product to help reduce their risk of lawsuits, regulatory compliance issues, and business disruption if they are the cause of a leak, or to prove conclusively that they are not the cause of the leak.

"We're currently working with the Loyalhanna Watershed Association to develop and field test a prototype of the system for monitoring water aquifers in Ligonier Township. In the near future, our system will be able to determine the origin of methane contamination, and detect the loss of mechanical integrity of a borehole due to breaks or leaks in well casing," Hussain said. 

His fledgling company's work reflects concerns about the environmental and health effects of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," a method of obtaining previously hard-to-reach natural gas resources that has sparked a drilling boom in Pennsylvania. Regulators and citizens have expressed concerns about methane migrating into water aquifers, but the lack of real-time monitoring capability prevents gas operators from distinguishing the difference between natural methane migration and methane leaking from shale gas wells.

"A pilot version of the HydroConfidence monitoring system has been installed in a Ligonier farm well to test a portion of groundwater from the Loyalhanna Watershed," said Susan Huba, executive director of the 298-square-mile Loyalhanna Watershed Association, which sports 2,500 miles of streams throughout southwestern Pennsylvania.

"The project is still in its early stages, but we think it is important to begin some regular monitoring as natural gas drilling increases in the region," program manager Josh Penatzer said.

Jon Knutsen, CEO of Franatech Corporation, reports that this Loyalhanna project may be the first time U.S. groundwater has been monitored for methane associated with natural gas extraction.  Franatech, which specializes in underwater sensors, is working with HydroConfidence to develop new sensor technology for real-time monitoring of environmental contaminations.

"Improvements in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have permitted recovery from previously inaccessible deep shale deposits," said former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy and International Affairs Vincent DeVito, who currently serves as general counsel for HydroConfidence.

"With the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection calling for shale gas operations to improve protection of water quality and to adopt requirements for background water quality measurements, innovative and cost-effective environmental monitoring is likely to become a required part of the permitting process," said Frank Cooper, chief technology officer of CTC.

"I'm excited with this new company and my work as a grad student at CMU," Hussain said. "I've always wanted to run my own company, and my CMU education and the CMU culture of entrepreneurship is giving me that opportunity."

In addition to Hussain, other CMU faculty and students involved in HydroConfidence include Jim Miller, associate research professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and undergraduate computer science students Nolan Carroll, Seth Vargo and Patrick Hogan. The project was funded through a grant from the Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds, a grant-making foundation that invests in efforts to protect healthy, natural streams around the state of Pennsylvania.

Carnegie Mellon is one of the fastest growing entrepreneurial universities in the U.S.  Its students and faculty have created more than 300 companies and 9,000 jobs in the past 15 years. Earlier this year, the university launched its Greenlighting Startups initiative, a portfolio of CMU incubator groups designed to speed innovation from the research lab to the marketplace.

Event: Tardy holiday shoppers may get some helpful gift ideas when a handful of Carnegie Mellon mechanical engineering students unveil innovative product prototypes for their annual senior design  class. The class, "Design Conceptualization and Realization," challenges students to  create and design useful consumer products.

"This year, the class is showcasing some real functional products ranging from a portable coffee maker to a safer bench press to help consumers trim waistlines after the big holiday meals," said Levent B. Kara,  a professor in mechanical engineering at CMU. "This is an exciting class because students get to put theory into practice by designing, workable product prototypes."

Other class prototypes being featured include a machine to make frozen cubes of liquor so revelers do not have to dilute drinks with ice and a mechanical door charger and opener that automatically opens for the disabled.  

When: 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday, Dec. 12.

Where: Singleton Room, Roberts Engineering Hall, off Frew Street, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15213.

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University's Diana Marculescu has been named a distinguished scientist for her significant impact on the computing field by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

"This is a great honor for me from my peers as less than 10 percent of ACM members ever attain this accolade," said Marculescu, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Carnegie Mellon.

A pioneer in energy-aware computing, Marculescu is developing novel power management techniques to improve the performance delivered per unit of energy consumed for computer hardware and software. Because of continuous downsizing of hundreds of processing cores on computer silicon chips, increased power consumption by these tiny processors creates major bottlenecks for increased performance.

Consumers and industry want smaller, faster systems, but the tradeoff is increased heat and decreased reliability on silicon chips, the powerhouse of all computing systems. Faster systems require more energy but more energy boosts operating costs.

"Our proposed power management techniques include the use of Voltage Frequency Islands (VFI) where we are able to guarantee a certain performance level with minimum power, even under decreased reliability or increased variation. Our new VFI-based design style enables fine grain power management for many-core systems, including both the hardware and software in computer systems. The proposed power management mechanism also will ultimately help cut energy costs," Marculescu said.

Ed Schlesinger, head of ECE, praised Marculescu for her drive and problem-solving research goals. "This is wonderful recognition for significant work that represents important aspects of the many efforts underway at CMU in the area of energy efficiency, management and use," Schlesinger said.

Marculescu received a degree in computer science from Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania in 1991 and a Ph.D. in computer engineering from the University of Southern California in 1998. She was a recipient of the National Science Foundation Faculty Career Award in 2000 and Carnegie Institute of Technology George Tallman Ladd Research Award in 2004.

PITTSBURGH—Two Carnegie Mellon University faculty members, William L. Scherlis, a professor of computer science and director of the Institute for Software Research, and Ragunathan "Raj" Rajkumar, the George Westinghouse Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Robotics, have been named 2012 Fellows of the Institute for Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE), the world's largest technical professional association.

IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership conferred by the organization's board of directors and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement.

Rajkumar, co-director of the General Motors-CMU Collaborative Research Laboratories, was named a fellow in recognition of his contributions to predictable real-time systems and operating systems, while Scherlis was recognized for his contributions to software analysis and software engineering education.

Scherlis, who earned his Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford University, was the founding director of CMU's Ph.D. Program in Software Engineering. His research relates to software assurance, software analysis and assured safe concurrency, or "speed with safety." He has led several National Research Council study committees, most recently a three-year study on software producibility for the Department of Defense. He is the founder of two Carnegie Mellon spin-off companies, SureLogic and Panopto.

For more than a decade, Rajkumar has been working to help modernize the auto industry and make driving safe and more economical for the consumer. He is featured in a new book about the new economy released earlier this year and was selected as a distinguished engineer by the Association for Computing Machinery. He has authored more than 150 publications with six Best Paper awards in peer-reviewed forums and was the recipient of the prestigious Technical Achievement and Leadership Award by the IEEE Technical Committee on Real-Time Systems.  

PITTSBURGH—With the holidays upon us, Carnegie Mellon University offers several story ideas and experts to make your season brighter and hopefully your editorial load a little lighter:

• Protecting Cyber Shoppers: With Cyber Monday sales up 20 percent from last year, online shoppers are already busy making holiday purchases. But how can shoppers tell when an online deal may actually be a scam? Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Professor Lorrie Cranor offers a variety of tips to help consumers navigate successfully online during the season.
• Classic Christmas Poem Focus of CMU Collection: With more than 300 editions of "Twas the Night Before Christmas," Carnegie Mellon's collection of the famous poem is one of the largest known compilations and includes all publications of the poem in its first 50 years of existence. The published works provide for great visuals as many artists created various interpretations of St. Nick over the years.
• Buying Green During the Holidays: A green Christmas doesn't just refer to trees and wreaths. CMU Professor Scott Matthews can speak to why consumers should be thinking about sustainability and buying green during the holidays.
• And About Those Christmas Cookies: For those worried about holiday weight gain, CMU Professor Carey Morewedge has some advice: think about eating your favorite holiday cookie or treat and imagine devouring every last bite. A study by Morewedge found that when you imagine eating a certain food, it reduces your actual consumption of that food.
• Winter Break Doesn't Need to Slow Job Search: Students don't have to put their job or internship plans on hold because of the holidays, according to experts at CMU's Career and Professional Development Center. They offer tips on helping job seekers make the most of their time over winter break, including job shadowing and volunteering.

CMU TV Studio: We can connect these experts to your outlet through Carnegie Mellon's state-of-the-art TV studio. Working with Pittsburgh International Telecommunications (PIT), we offer domestic and international connectivity via satellite and fiber. PIT owns and operates one of the largest satellite facilities in the world. Please contact Ken Walters at walters1@andrew.cmu.edu or 412-268-1151 for more information and to make arrangements.

PITTSBURGH—For every Thomas Edison or Steve Jobs, a thousand innovators vanish into obscurity. Thanks to Carnegie Mellon University Mechanical Engineering Professor Jonathan Cagan, a handful of creative student innovators are getting their moment in the sun.

In a new course, "Grand Challenge: Technology Identification and Product Design," CMU mechanical engineering students are charged with identifying future technologies and resulting products that could help solve some of the world's most daunting problems, from engineering better telemedicines to providing novel access to clean water.

Cagan said the course is based on 14 Grand Challenges issued to engineers nationwide by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Those challenges span a variety of areas, including energy, medicine and the environment. The NAE challenge was designed to pique engineering expertise in both academia and industry to solve a myriad of problems, from restoring aging infrastructures to developing better tools for scientific discovery. 

"It would be hard to imagine where we would be today or how different our lives would be without the many recent innovations we often take for granted," said Cagan, co-author of Built to Love: Creating Products that Captivate Consumers. The book shows how product emotions correlate to market success.

Making technology accessible was a major driver for Steve Jobs. Take the iPod, for example. MP3 technology wasn't created just to deliver digital music to handheld players. Instead, Jobs and Apple innovated a way to deliver the technology through an easy to use, contemporary physical device and service that augmented customers' lifestyles and revolutionized the way people listen to music.

"This new course helps students understand what it takes to develop truly cutting-edge products that deliver emerging technologies in a new way. It also gives them a taste of creating a product before consumers knew they needed it," said Bob Wooldridge, director of CMU's Center for Technology Transfer and Enterprise Creation (CTTEC).

CTTEC is part of the university's Greenlighting Startups initiative, a portfolio of CMU incubator groups designed to speed innovation from the research lab to the marketplace. CMU is one of the fastest growing entrepreneurial universities in the U.S. Its students and faculty have created more than 300 companies and 9,000 jobs in the past 15 years.

Bryan Bleda, a mechanical engineering senior, said the new course will inspire him to be more discriminating in the design process. His team is researching better ways to package water filtration systems for drought-stricken sub-Saharan Africa. 

"I will be working in designing the interior of commercial airplanes when I graduate. As a result of this class experience, I will be better able to sort through potential technologies and eliminate things that may sound good, but don't meet design criteria," said Bleda of McLean, Va.

Ph.D. student Noah Tovares had similar praise for the course. His team is studying how to make solar power more economical.

"My team is studying how to develop a complete energy management system that would permit each home to generate its own solar energy, and then store any excess energy throughout the neighborhood," said Tovares of Belmont, Mass. "This new course really gave us fascinating insights into what is and what is not happening with solar cell research."

Cagan argues that the new course is essential to keep the U.S. from falling behind other nations in the strategic areas of science, engineering and math education. 

Already, the World Economic Forum rated the U.S. 48^th in the quality of its math and science prowess. And in 2009, 51 percent of the patents issued in the U.S. were to non-U.S. companies.