Star Trek Tech

How much of the technology in Star Trek could become real some day?
This was the question posed to a group of faculty members here at Carnegie Mellon Computer Science recently. Why? Because CMU Drama alumnus, Zach Quinto, starred as the character Spock in the recent Star Trek movie, and so naturally CMU’s media relations people […]

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Nico Habermann Wins ACM SIGSOFT Influential Educator Award

The newly established ACM SIGSOFT Influential Educator Award recognizes an educator who has “made significant contributions to, and impact on, the field of software engineering with his/her accomplishments as a teacher, mentor, researcher, author, and/or policy maker.” Well, last month, in an absolutely wonderful gesture by the software engineering community, Nico Habermann was named, posthumously, […]

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Chairing the CRA

Today I attended a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association, my first as its Chair. In case you don’t know, the CRA does a lot to promote the cause of computing research, including educating policymakers, building community, developing human resources, and providing information useful to computing research organizations all across […]

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CMU CS Department to Move to Gates and Hillman Centers on August 3

I’ve been feeling pretty guilty about being off the blog for the past month. I do have some excuses, though. Of course, there were the usual paper and proposal deadlines, two distinguished lectures, and a busy season for recruiting faculty and grad students. My PhD students also kept me busier than usual, with one going […]

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Autographs on the Kindle

Last Sunday’s NY Times had an amusing article about people going to book-signings and asking authors to autograph their Kindle ebook readers.
Well, gee, I guess I was a bit of a trend-setter! Over one year ago, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos visited CMU to attend our commencement ceremonies. I was lucky enough to be involved in […]

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CMU Commencement 2009 Caught on GigaPan

This past weekend was incredibly busy, not only with the launch of the CIFellows Project, but also with a full slate of CMU commencement activities. Jeffrey Baker did a nice job taking a GigaPan photo of the event. I made some attempts to get the faculty members sitting around me to ham it up when […]

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CIFellows Program for New Computing PhDs is Launched

An important opportunity for new computing-related PhDs has just been announced by the Computing Community Consortium (CCC). To apply, go to http://cifellows.org. Note that the application deadline is very soon — June 9, 2009.
The nation’s universities and industrial research labs are facing unprecedented budget pressure. The result: there are considerably fewer openings for computing research […]

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Claytronics, Cars, and Princess Leia?

Research, News Comments (0)

Like any research project at CMU Computer Science, the CMU-Intel Claytronics Project publishes lots of papers in research conferences and journals. The project has also gotten more than its fair share of attention in the popular press as well as various blogs and websites. (See the news links on the project’s web page for some examples.)

But nothing has tickled me more than seeing Frank Markus’ “technologue” editorial on Claytronics in the July 2009 issue of Motor Trend magazine. In what has to be one of the most unique explanations of the potential impact of a CMU research project, Markus gushes,

If Princess Leia had broadcast her plea for help in pario, Obi-Wan, C-3PO, and Luke could have stroked her cinnabons.

You can read the entire article on Motor Trend’s website here.

More modestly, but just as satisfying, is seeing one of the project’s graduate students, Michael Ashley-Rollman (who I co-advise with Seth Goldstein) have his research poster at the PLDI conference get picked to compete in the ACM student research competition. Way to go, Michael!

Peter Lee @ July 3, 2009

Luis von Ahn on PBS Nova scienceNow

Events, Research Comments (1)

The PBS show Nova scienceNow will have a feature on Luis von Ahn. The show will air for the first time tonight (9pm on WQED here in Pittsburgh). A preview of the show, along with links to audio Q&A with Luis can be accessed here.

Just in case you can’t wait until tonight episode airs, check out Luis’ great 10-minute lecture on Human Computation, which he gave at a CCC event at the Library of Congress last month. This lecture made it to #53 Top Favorited Science and Technology video on YouTube, helping lift the CRA/CCC YouTube channel to the #40 most viewed in the non-profit category.

Peter Lee @ June 30, 2009

CIFellows Application Stats Posted

News Comments (0)

I’ve been pretty busy for the past couple of months, in part because of my involvement as the PI for the CCC’s Computing Innovation Fellows Project. The response to this new program has been tremendous, with 526 applications and over 1,200 prospective mentors announcing their interest in hosting a CIFellow.

You can read more about the current status of the project on the CCC Blog by clicking here.

Peter Lee @ June 27, 2009