December 2012 [.Pdf]
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CMu’s NEWS SOURCE FOR FACULTY & STAFF 12/12 ISSUE 3 A SIAN T OUR : C OHON V ISITS A LUMNI ; C ELEBRATES N EW P ARTNERSHIP 4 S YMPOSIUM S HARES S ERVICE Magical Madrigal L EARNING B EST P RACTICES 5 S TANDUP A LUMNUS : Q ATARI COMEDIAN SHARES CULTURAL INSIGHTS 9 T EPPER S CHOOL I NTRODUCES N EW M ODEL FOR MBA Murder Mystery Solving Mock Crimes Allow Novel Interactions n Heidi Opdyke It’s not always the butler who did it. One year it was Amy Burkert. That year, Burkert, vice provost for education, pitched the idea of a Biology Murder Mystery Dinner to then-depart- ment head Bill Brown to foster student- faculty interaction and aid development of the departmental community. And it’s worked. For a number of years the Biological Sciences Student Advisory Council (Bio- SAC) has hosted death as a departmental initiative with its interactive Murder Mystery Dinners early in the spring PHOTO BY TIM KAULEN semester. A public show will take place K AREN S TUMP , DIRECTOR OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDIES AND DIRECTOR OF LABORATORIES FOR C HEMISTRY , WAS AMONG THE PERFORMERS AT THIS YEAR ’ S M ADRIGAL D INNER . M ORE THAN 3 0 0 GUESTS ATTENDED . C ONTINUED ON PAGE EIGHT Presidential Update Giving Back Cohon Speaks Candidly with Staff n Bruce Gerson expected to be named in the spring, Forbes Avenue and to the north of Forbes. a few months before President Cohon’s He said it would most likely be developed At Staff Council’s Open Forum with the term expires on June 30, 2013. into a “mixed-use” site with academic President in late November, President Cohon switched gears from the buildings, another business incubator like Jared L. Cohon covered a range of topics, presidential search to discuss the Pitts- the Robert Mehrabian Collaborative from the ongoing presidential search burgh campus and international university Innovation Center, a hotel and retail space to university growth in Pittsburgh and locales. He noted the Pittsburgh campus in the area. around the world. master plan was approved by City Council In the future, he said he expected the Cohon began the session by answer- earlier this year and said there were no ing a pre-submitted question about C ONTINUED ON PAGE FIVE defi nite plans yet for land acquired along the presidential search that began last February with the naming of the search committee. He said the search commit- tee, which consists of nine trustees and eight faculty, have “worked through PHOTO BY KEN ANDREYO several hundred names” and that the list T OYS FOR T OTS IS JUST ONE WAY is now down to “about a dozen or so.” THAT C M U GIVES BACK TO THE He said the committee will be conducting COMMUNITY THIS TIME OF YEAR . interviews in the coming weeks. Presi- L EARN MORE ABOUT THIS AND SOME dent Cohon said faculty, staff and student OF THE OTHER EFFORTS AT C M U representatives would be selected to meet ON PAGES 6 AND 7 . with fi nal candidates next semester. Carnegie Mellon’s ninth president is O NE INI Team’s iSports App Wins ESPN Hackathon for Women n Ann Lyon Ritchie in Silicon Valley on a real-world project. approach to watching sports videos. “It was such an amazing experience,” An image is worth a thousand words, “I’m delighted with the creative “There was constant tweeting about Gada said. “We got to meet and network but a new Android app created by and innovative app developed by the the app and our presentation in progress,” with so many people in Silicon Valley.” Carnegie Mellon graduate students can team, including how they were able to Das said. “The professional opportunities in the take a video and give you even more. take advantage of the image recognition The team’s prizes include a trip Silicon Valley region have been invalu- Ditaya Das, Pooja Gada and Divya techniques they had already explored for to ESPN’s campus in Bristol, Conn., able to our students,” said INI Director Natesan, students in the Information their practicum,” said Ole J. Mengshoel, two tickets for each student to any U.S. Dena Haritos Tsamitis, who credited the Networking Institute’s bicoastal associate research professor at CMU-SV sporting event and a Jawbone Big Jam- faculty and staff at the Silicon Valley cam- master’s degree program, won the who advised the team on their practicum. box wireless speaker. The team also is pus for working to connect the students espnW Hack Day for female developers The audience of more than 200 at featured in an article in Wired Magazine with competitions and other workshops. last month at Stanford, Calif., with their Hack Day was entertained and often (“Female Developers and Athletes Take The hackathon was held by ESPN iSports app. The Android app can be broke into spurts of laughter as the wom- the Leading Role at espnW Hack Day”). in partnership with Stanford University, used for watching sports highlights on en presented their idea for iSports with a Among other benefi ts, the students Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Twilio and YouTube or ESPN.com. healthy dose of humor. They recognized gained insight and new relationships with Mashery. It uses image recognition to identify the app as useful and an innovative the many professionals at the event. players in the video and show facts, such as biographical information and player-related statistics using the ESPN Competition & Learning API (application programming inter- face). It displays a player’s measured Students Win When Challenged Outside the Classroom infl uence over social media using the Mashery API and it mines for tweets by n Piper Staff more of the top high school mathema- “There’s a very nice feeling ticians interested in CMU. While they you get from turning your ideas into the player and provides other relevant Students are taking what they learn may not all be math majors, many of something concrete, and then seeing YouTube video recommendations. in the classroom and putting it to those students go on to study engi- it actually work,” he said. The trio won best in show and the test in national and international neering, computer science, physics or In addition to Sleator, the team placed fi rst in the category of best use competitions. And it’s paying off. more. coaches included Richard Peng and of the Mashery API. The three second- In the last year, CMU students Dong Zhou, both Ph.D. students in year information technology grad have been recognized for advances Premier Programmers Computer Science. IMC Financial students are at the Silicon Valley cam- in areas such as synthetic biology, Markets sponsors the CMU teams. pus (CMU-SV) this fall. architecture, math and security Members of CMU’s computer “These hackathons provide us an hacking, to name a few. programming teams, who compete avenue to implement novel ideas from in the Association for Computing “Capture the flag” the concepts we studied in our course- Mathletes Make Mark Machinery’s International Collegiate Two teams of undergraduates fi nished work,” Natesan said. She and her team Programming Contest (ACM-ICPC), fi rst and second in the fi nals of the In March 2012, a team made up of members are enrolled in a practicum, spend fi ve to 10 hours a week practic- Cybersecurity Awareness Week’s then fi rst-year Knaster-McWilliams which is a capstone project that allows ing prior to competitions, said Danny (CSAW) Capture the Flag (CTF) Scholars Michael Druggan (S’15), students to work for a corporate client Sleator, professor of computer science competition in November at the Albert Gu (S’15) and Archit Kulkarni and a team coach. Polytechnic Institute of New York found out that they placed second The practice time, as well as University, billed as the world’s in the Mathematical Association of the time spent on weekly online largest student hacking contest. America’s William Lowell Putnam CTF is a computer security Competition, the premier mathematics wargame in which teams try to break contest for undergraduate students. into opponents’ computer systems The competition took place once while defending their own. Each con- PIPER again on Dec. 1 of this year, when test can last 24-48 hours, continuously WINNER OF A 2012 GOLD during a six-hour math marathon 135 around the clock. The oft-victorious CUPPIE AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE CMU students attempted to solve Plaid Parliament of Pwning (PPP) 12/12 ISSUE 12-complex mathematical problems, teams, coached by David Brumley, P UBLISHER using a combination of concepts Teresa Thomas assistant professor of electrical and taught in college mathematics courses DITOR ANAGING DITOR computer engineering (ECE), partici- E M E paired with creative thinking. Results Bruce Gerson Heidi Opdyke competitions such as Top Coder and pate in six to 10 competitions each won’t be determined until March. W RITERS Codeforces, shows. semester and travel to fi ve distant Mark Burd Shilo Rea Po-Shen Loh, assistant profes- Bruce Gerson Abby Simmons Nathaniel Barshay (CS’13); competitions — two in South Korea sor of mathematical sciences and Sarah Nightingale Chriss Swaney Yan Gu, a Ph.D. student in CS; and and one each in Russia, New York Heidi Opdyke Pam Wigley the team’s coach, teaches a 3-credit Ann Lyon Ritchie Jonathan Paulson (CS/S’13), who City and Las Vegas — each year. course in the fall preparing students compete as the CMU1 team, took fi rst “If you’re interested in computer C ONTRIBUTORS for the experience. More than 120 Jessie Hao place Nov.