Tom Mitchell Named CMU University Professor

News

An announcement sent out earlier today by Randy Bryant, Dean of the CMU School of Computer Science:

I’m pleased to announce that Tom Mitchell, the Fredkin Professor of AI and Machine Learning, has been named a University Professor.  As stated by the Faculty Handbook: “The rank of University Professor is the highest one at Carnegie Mellon University, and it bestows both honor and obligation onto its recipient.”  The title is limited, by charter, to at most 10% of the full professors.

Tom has been a pioneer in AI and Machine Learning throughout his career, and he has contributed greatly to CMU, including his founding of the Center for Automated Learning and Discovery, which subsequently became the Machine Learning Department.

Congratulations Tom!

Tom is the Head of the Machine Learning Department and also holds a faculty appointment in the Computer Science Department. Recently, he has been working with Marcel Just on machine learning applications in computational neuroscience. A particularly amazing outcome of this research has been the ability to have a computer “read” brain scans (produced via functional magnetic resonance imaging) and determine, with extremely high accuracy, what word the test subject is thinking about. A demonstration of this amazing research was featured on the CBS program, “60 Minutes,” last January. You can watch that 60 Minutes segment here.

Research like this has firmly established the combination of the Machine Learning and Computer Science Departments as a major force in data mining, machine learning, and large-scale statistical analysis. This has enabled us to attract the very best graduate students year after year. For this and many other reasons, Tom Mitchell’s appointment as University Professor is richly deserved.

Way to go, Tom!

Peter Lee @ April 29, 2009