Cmu’S NEWS SOURCE FOR FACULTY & STAFF 6/13 ISSUE 2 S IX D EGREES OF F RANCIS B ACON 4 “T HE R OAD G OES E VER O N AND O N ” Like Father, Like Son FOR S T . C LAIR 5 D ENNIS S CHEBETTA W INS C OMPETITION L EONARDI N AMED T OP NROTC I NSTRUCTOR 1 3 U NIVERSITY N AMES N EW CFO SMART Switch New ID To Track PAT Ridership More Effi ciently n Heidi Opdyke Now even ID cards at Carnegie Mellon will be smart. Starting in July, the university will be issuing new identifi cation cards to faculty and staff as part of the Port Authority’s (PAT) conversion to elec- tronic fare collection, a more effi cient way to measure ridership and track its most popular routes among institutional customers. Students will receive their new SMART ID cards in September. Instead of showing a CMU ID card PHOTO BY TIM KAULEN to the bus driver, users will be able to A NDRES R ODRIGUEZ , WHO EARNED HIS P H . D . IN M ECHANICAL E NGINEERING IN D ECEMBER , BROUGHT HIS 3 - YEAR - OLD SON , tap IDs on the farebox, which will D AVID , TO C OMMENCEMENT . “ H E WAS AN INSPIRATION TO ME TO WORK HARD AND MAXIMIZE MY PRODUCTIVITY WHEN I WAS detect the chip ID number located IN SCHOOL SO THAT AT HOME I COULD PLAY WITH HIM , ” R ODRIGUEZ SAID . “ I AM HOPING THAT IN 2 0 YEARS , WE CAN RETURN inside of the cards. TO C M U FOR HIS GRADUATION WITH HIM WEARING A BIGGER GOWN . ” S EE MORE C OMMENCEMENT COVERAGE ON PAGE SIX . C ONTINUED ON PAGE THREE Persistence Pays Off Fulbright Awards Staff Member Earns Degree After Decade of Study n Heidi Opdyke Spanish because he needed some help with Lundeen earned an associate’s degree in international education projects. applied science in 1989. She spent time It took classmates a while to realize that So, she started taking one or two a working for different universities includ- Marilú Lundeen wasn’t the teacher but semester, and then kept going. ing the University of Pittsburgh and the rather a fellow student. She joined the INI in 2008. Her University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “The students received me well current supervisor, Dena Haritos Tsamitis, Universities run in her family. Her after their initial surprise,” she said. also encouraged her to continue her studies. two daughters, who came to see their “And then they treated me like any of “Both of my bosses were wonderful,” mother receive her diploma, work at their other classmates.” she said. the University of Pennsylvania and the Lundeen, an administrative coor- Prior to earning her CMU degree, C ONTINUED ON PAGE SEVEN dinator at the Information Networking Institute (INI), is not only a May gradu- ate with a bachelor’s degree in Hispanic Studies and an additional major in Euro- PHOTO BY KEN ANDREYO pean studies, she’s also a grandmother. S IX RECENT C M U GRADUATES She started taking classes in 2003 AND A RISING SOPHOMORE WILL while working as the coordinator of PARTICIPATE IN RESEARCH , Latin American Activities for the late STUDY AND TEACHING ON THREE Paul Goodman at the Tepper School of CONTINENTS THROUGH F ULBRIGHT Business. P ROGRAMS THIS YEAR . R EAD MORE He encouraged Lundeen, a native ON PAGE EIGHT . Portuguese speaker, to take classes in O NE Six Degrees of Francis Bacon Researchers Work To Trace How Early Modern Figures Interacted n Shilo Rea people to click on this historical network Imagine if Sir Francis Bacon had been to see who’s connected, re-creating The social network: Then and now this whole world and then raising even able to “friend” William Shakespeare We’ve lived networked lives more questions about how an idea, say, on Facebook. The famous scientist for hundreds of years. New religious toleration, or the circulation of CMU research mines the and researcher’s interactions with the TWITTER playwright would have created a digital blood, got from person A to person B, original “social media.” EMAIL imprint for all to see, giving their other why it took this route and not that route, SKYPE and so on.” INSTAGRAM networked friends and peers insights into CELL PHONE TODAY’S NETWORK their relationship. Warren added, “Francis Bacon FACEBOOK It also may have left behind may not have ‘liked’ or commented on a Facebook post by Shakespeare, but evidence of one of the largest questions YOUTUBE in all of English literature: Did Bacon re-assembling the early modern social TEXT MESSAGE network gets us a long way toward un- BOOK or someone else write some of MANUSCRIPT derstanding what he or anyone else could EARLY MODERN Shakespeare’s plays? CONVERSATION have known, jokes and references they ERA NETWORK To precisely trace the infl uence SERMON THEATRE and ideas of Bacon, Shakespeare, Isaac would have understood, sensitive infor- Newton and more than 6,000 others mation they might have encountered.” LETTER from the early modern period, 16th – The project, which has support from 19th centuries, researchers at Carnegie a Google Faculty Research Award, uses Mellon have created the Six Degrees of data mining to develop the visual social CONVERSATION LETTER Francis Bacon project. The living project network. Crawling through sources to will allow scholars and students from create an initial list of 6,000 people from around the world to reassemble the era’s the period, the project already has inves- networked culture. It pulls together cen- tigated more than 19 million potential turies of books, articles, documents and connections. Bacon” will allow students interested manuscripts that have been scattered and To make the massive re-creation to the people who appear most in the in cultural studies, history, philosophy, divided in order to understand the role work, Warren is tapping into CMU’s De- network,” Warren said. design, network analysis and computer of linked connections in spreading ideas partment of Statistics expertise. Cosma To get the project to its current point science to collaboratively solve problems and knowledge. Shalizi, associate professor of statistics, of visualizing this 6,000-person world, tied to the early modern period’s social “Dense accounts exist of small Mike Finegold, visiting assistant profes- the CMU team worked with Georgetown network. groups and communities, giving us par- sor of statistics, and Ph.D. student Law- University’s Daniel Shore, a Milton “Students who use Facebook, tial views of the early modern network, rence Wang are developing algorithms to expert whose current research focuses Twitter and Instagram understand social but this is the fi rst attempt to bring it networks, but this is a kind of problem together in one place, in a visual way,” F OR MORE INFORMATION ON S IX D EGREES OF F RANCIS that needs to be addressed historically said Christopher Warren, assistant pro- B ACON , VISIT HTTP :// SIXDEGREESOFFRANCISBACON . COM /. precisely because it’s so ubiquitous,” fessor of English. “Six Degrees of Fran- Warren said. “For example, what counts cis Bacon is many things, but above all as evidence of a relationship? If some- it’s a tool for asking questions. It allows predict who is part of any social network on tracing syntax, and they are devel- and probably sub networks. They’ve also oping a partnership with London- and one writes in a book about a visit with a built the database to allow scholars who Cambridge-based scholars Ruth and famous scholar, but the famous scholar have studied these networks to add their Sebastian Ahnert, who study the shape doesn’t write about it, it’s one-sided input to increase accuracy and help them of 16th-century letter-writing networks. evidence. People lie, and encounters refi ne the algorithms. Warren will use a Wimmer Fellow- that are important to one person are not “With such big numbers, it wasn’t ship to further the project with student necessarily important to the other. We PIPER feasible to begin with everyone who was input next fall. “Digital Literary and need to dig into culture and motivations 6/13 Issue alive during this time, so we limited it Cultural Studies: Six Degrees of Francis to understand what’s going on.” P UBLISHER Ken Walters E DITOR M ANAGING E DITOR Bruce Gerson Heidi Opdyke Inaugural Mind, Brain Prize Awarded W RITERS Mark Burd Abby Simmons Kelly Solman Cindy Carroll C ARNEGIE M ELLON AWARDED Bruce Gerson Byron Spice Heidi Opdyke Chriss Swaney THE FIRST A NDREW C ARNEGIE Shilo Rea Pam Wigley P RIZE IN M IND AND B RAIN D ESIGNER S CIENCES TO L ESLIE G . Melissa Stoebe U NGERLEIDER ( LEFT ) , A Communications Design and Photography Group TOP NEUROSCIENTIST AT THE N ATIONAL I NSTITUTE P HOTOGRAPHY Ken Andreyo OF M ENTAL H EALTH . C M U Tim Kaulen Communications Design and Photography P ROFESSOR M ICHAEL J . Group T ARR ( RIGHT ) PRESENTED To contact The Piper staff, call 412-268- U NGERLEIDER WITH A CUSTOM 2900 or email [email protected]. PAINTING AS PART OF THE Carnegie Mellon University does not discriminate in admission, employment, or administration of its programs or activities PRIZE , WHICH , FUNDED BY on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, handicap or disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, creed, ancestry, belief, veteran status, or genetic information. THE C ARNEGIE C ORPORATION Furthermore, Carnegie Mellon University does not discriminate and is required not to discriminate in violation of federal, state, OF N EW Y ORK , RECOGNIZES or local laws or executive orders. 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