An independent institute founded by Carnegie Mellon University will receive more than $250 million to launch an advanced robotics manufacturing institute in Pittsburgh, the U.S. Department of Defense announced Friday.

The Department of Defense awarded the public-private Manufacturing USA institute to American Robotics, a nonprofit venture led by Carnegie Mellon, with more than 220 partners in industry, academia, government, and the nonprofit sector nationwide. The institute will receive $80 million from the DOD, and an additional $173 million from the partner organizations.

The high-level award puts Pittsburgh and CMU at the center of a new wave of manufacturing, leveraging artificial intelligence, autonomy, 3-D printing and other emerging technologies to make industrial robotics more affordable for businesses of all sizes, adaptable for many uses, and able to achieve more.

Government, industry and academic leaders said this new generation of robotics has the potential to create large numbers of new jobs and fuel economic growth by putting the U.S. squarely in the lead on advanced manufacturing.

"This new institute will provide significant benefits to the region and the nation, while creating enormous opportunities for CMU scholars and researchers, and new momentum for the university," said Carnegie Mellon President Subra Suresh, who spoke at Friday's announcement at the Pentagon. "The institute, in return, will benefit from CMU's expertise in technology, as well as its strengths in policy, ethics, and human interfaces that will ensure that new technologies work to benefit humankind."

Gary Fedder, CMU's vice provost for research, was one of several university faculty and officials who led the development and preparation of the proposal for the institute, and who will play a pivotal role in its establishment.

"When the DOD announced its intention to create a new institute dedicated to robotics manufacturing, we knew that CMU's historic strength in the field, leading to cutting-edge research underway today, gave us a great opportunity," said Fedder, the Howard M. Wilkoff Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a professor at CMU's Robotics Institute. "We were fortunate to build a team that brought complementary strengths from across the nation."

Howie Choset, a professor in Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, worked closely with Fedder in conceiving of and establishing the institute. He said the four-pronged mission of the institute is to empower American workers to compete with low-wage workers abroad; create and sustain new jobs to secure U.S. national prosperity; lower the technical, operational, and economic barriers for small- and medium- sized enterprises as well as large companies to adopt robotics technologies; and assert U.S. leadership in advanced manufacturing.

"This work has the power to benefit society broadly, and to benefit many, many potential workers and their families," Choset said.

The use of robotics is widespread in manufacturing environments but today's robots are typically expensive, singularly purposed, challenging to reprogram, and require isolation from humans for safety. Robotics are increasingly necessary for defense and other industrial manufacturing needs, but capital cost and complexity of use limit the participation of mid-size and small manufacturers. ARM will integrate the diverse collection of industry practices and institutional knowledge across many disciplines.

"The institute will tap into CMU's research strengths in collaborative robotics, sensor technologies, materials science, and human-computer interaction, areas that are rapidly transforming many sectors of our economy," said CMU Provost Farnam Jahanian. "With this unique partnership between academia, government and industry, CMU is poised to bridge the gap between research, innovation and practice in the emerging field of advanced manufacturing."

ARM will achieve its mission through defense- and industry-driven, critical technology development and workforce training. ARM focuses on key industrial sectors — aerospace, automotive, electronics and textiles-defined by its partners.

President Subra Suresh and the School of Computer Science's Justine Cassell pose in front of SARA, the Socially-Aware Robot Assistant, at the World Economic Forum.

Carnegie Mellon University President Subra Suresh and five CMU faculty and researchers will be among global leaders at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, Jan. 17-20.

The theme of this year's meeting is "Responsive and Responsible Leadership." The Fourth Industrial Revolution, which has been the theme in the past, continues to drive convergence of technologies that blur the lines between physical, digital and biological systems.

SARA s a virtual personal assistant.

"Carnegie Mellon University plays a very important role in connecting technology with the human condition," Suresh said. "I'm delighted to participate with my CMU colleagues in this year's World Economic Forum. The wonderful work that takes place at CMU can thus be part and parcel of the conversation in Davos and help shape policies and practices that will emerge from these conversations."

Among this year's sessions is the "CMU Ideas Lab: Reimagining the Human Body with Carnegie Mellon University," which will take place on Tuesday, Jan. 17.

Suresh will introduce three CMU faculty members to discuss how new technologies will converge with everyday human existence. Panelists are:

• Adam Feinberg, associate professor of biomedical engineering and materials science and engineering;
• Steve Collins, associate professor of mechanical engineering and robotics; and
• Justine Cassell, professor and associate dean of Technology Strategy and Impact in the School of Computer Science.

Mariette DiChristina, editor-in-chief of Scientific American, will facilitate the session.

Suresh, who co-chairs the WEF's Future Council on Production, also will participate in a public session on the Future of Production.

Illah Nourbakhsh, professor of robotics and director of the CREATE Lab at the Robotics Institute, and Randy Sargent, senior systems scientist and commercialization specialist, will present a continuation of their Earth Time-Lapse research with new data images focusing on urban fragility, nutritional deficiency forecasts due to climate change, violence over time, displaced person movements, tropical diseases and other data sets.

Cassell's Socially-Aware Robot Assistant (SARA), will be the only interactive demonstration in the forum's main hall.

"SARA is a virtual personal assistant who is going to help attendees find sessions that match their interests and find people who will be interesting and helpful for them to meet," Cassell said.

"The importance of the research that I'm doing is to ensure that in this increasingly technological age we maintain a focus on those aspects of humanity that are most important to us. That we ensure that we don't lose the social bonds between people and the relationships that we build with one another, which after all are what make us human," she said.

World Economic Forum sessions can be streamed online throughout the annual meeting. Join the conversation on social media using #WEF, and follow CMU faculty's experience on Twitter.

Carnegie Mellon is one of only 25 universities in the world, 12 from the U.S., that have been invited to join the Global University Leaders Forum. CMU has been a member since 2011. Business members of the forum include the top 1,000 companies from around the world. CMU also played a central role at the 2016 WEF meeting, which featured Suresh and eight faculty members.

Lumi Barron likes to make art on the run.

The first-year College of Fine Arts student has been regularly painting and sketching the places she visits since she was in high school, and she continued the practice when she came to Carnegie Mellon University this fall.

Barron's drawings and watercolors take from five to 90 minutes to complete. When something catches her eye, she'll break out her sketchbook, pen and watercolors to create a new piece.

While waiting to meet with a professor one snowy morning, Barron painted the view of the campus lawn from the third floor of the CFA building. She has sketched Pittsburgh row homes in a handful of minutes while waiting for a bus. Hamerschlag Hall and a view of campus from Schenley Drive have made it into her portfolio.

Barron said the personal project is her way of recording where she has been and the experiences she has had.

"[They're] little snapshots of just that moment," she said.

Barron came to CMU's School of Art with an interest in studying animation. She was drawn in by the variety of artistic opportunities at the university, including its emphasis the intersection between art and technology.

"When visiting CMU and seeing the work students were creating, and speaking with various people about the art and technology integration opportunities, I felt that I could go into the program interested in animation and graduate with a good degree in exactly that, but could equally well end up focusing on something entirely different and unknown," Barron said. "It was that element of flexibility in combination with cross-disciplinary opportunity, that upon seeing, I realized was exactly what I was looking for."

By Margaret Cox and Pam Wigley

Skawennati, EPIPHANY, 2013

The Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University will present “Hacking / Modding / Remixing as Feminist Protest,” an exhibition featuring 22 artists, designers and developers working at the intersection of art and technology, Jan. 28 – Feb. 26. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

An opening reception with curator Angela Washko, a visiting professor of art at CMU, and other select artists will be held from 6 - 8 p.m., Friday, Jan. 27.

The exhibition features visiting artist lectures by Skawennati and Annina Rüst at Carnegie Mellon’s Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, as well as a screening program of artists intervening on television called “Talks Back” at the Andy Warhol Museum. A full schedule of events can be found on the Miller Gallery’s website.

Washko said the principals in the show are working at the intersection of art and technology “to intervene on dominant voices in tech and popular culture, producing critical works that bring visibility to women's perspectives and experiences that have been marginalized, ignored or dismissed.

“Women have been relegated largely to the consumer end of technology for a long time,” she said. “Even today the statistics are jarring — a 2013 study by the American Association of University Women showed that only 26 percent of the positions in computing jobs in the United States were held by women. Taking an intersectional approach to presenting feminist practices, the works presented in the exhibition span over 40 years of artistic production by artists from diverse experiences and backgrounds.”

Washko noted that women of color, especially, have been excluded from the development of technology and pop culture, largely because they experience racial and gender bias in these career fields.

Washko is an artist, game developer and organizer devoted to creating new forums for discussions of feminism in spaces frequently hostile toward it. Since 2012, Washko has operated The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft, an ongoing intervention inside the most popular online role-playing game of all time.

The artists in “Hacking / Modding / Remixing as Feminist Protest” look at television, film, computer software, the internet, pop music, the medical industry, robotics, video games, corporate branding, digital mapping, laser disks and advertising as sites of intervention, creating new ways of looking at systems of oppression embedded in everyday objects, contexts and platforms.

The exhibiting and presenting artists are: Addie Wagenknecht (STUDIO for Creative Inquiry Fellow); Anne-Marie Schleiner; Annina Rüst; Cat Mazza, a 1999 graduate of CMU’s School of Art; Channel Two; Dara Birnbaum, a 1969 graduate of CMU’s School of Architecture; Elisa Kreisinger; Kathy High; Lynn Hershman Leeson; Mary Flanagan; micha cárdenas; Morehshin Allahyari; Myfanwy Ashmore; Olia Lialina; Rachel Rampleman; Rachel Simone Weil; RAFiA Santana; Skawennati; Soda Jerk and VNS Matrix; Sondra Perry; and Suzie Silver, a CMU art professor.

By Byron Spice

Hans Berliner was at the center of computer chess research for two decades.

Former Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science faculty member Hans Berliner, a world champion correspondence chess player who built the first game-playing computer ever to defeat a human champion at any game, died Jan. 13 in Riviera Beach, Fla. He was 87.

Berliner, who earned his Ph.D. in computer science at Carnegie Mellon in 1975 and served as a senior research scientist until his retirement in 1998, was at the center of computer chess research for two decades. He led the development of Hitech, the first chess computer to achieve the rank of senior master and, in 1988, the first to beat a grandmaster.

"Hans really was the father of computer chess," said Scott Fahlman, an emeritus faculty member in CMU's Language Technologies Institute (LTI). "Hans not only made major early contributions himself, but his students and those clearly influenced by his insights went on to dominate the field and to finally realize the dream of creating a chess machine that could compete with human players at the world-champion level."

Berliner was born in Berlin in 1929 and emigrated with his family in 1937 to Washington, D.C. At age 13, he learned chess from a friend one rainy day at summer camp. By age 20, he had achieved master status. He eventually became a champion in correspondence chess, in which moves are exchanged via postcard and games could last months or even years.

He won the Fifth World Correspondence Chess Championship in a match that began in 1965 and ended three years later. It was an earlier game against Yakov Estrin of Russia, however, that grandmaster Andy Soltis would rank number one in his 2000 book, "The 100 Best Chess Games of the 20th Century."

Berliner was offered a CMU job soon afterward by Herb Simon and, at age 40, he began work on computer chess and his own Ph.D.

"He was into all kinds of mental games," recalled Michael Shamos, distinguished career professor in the Institute for Software Research and LTI. One day, about 40 years ago, Shamos was playing bridge with friends in the Computer Science Department lounge in Wean Hall, while Berliner was across the room, playing chess or some other game. Berliner was listening to the bids, however, and after the first trick said, "The trump king is offside." Shamos remains amazed at Berliner's ability to determine the location of the key card in the hand based only on the bidding.

In addition to computer chess, Berliner worked on a program for the simpler game of backgammon. In 1979, the program, called BFG, beat the reigning world backgammon champion, becoming the first computer program to beat a world champion in any game.

Chess remained his focus, however. The number of possible moves in chess is astronomical, but Berliner found a way to effectively narrow the choices and make the problem computationally feasible. Called B* (or B-star), the algorithm evaluated decision trees, assigning an "optimistic" or a "pessimistic" score to each node on the tree. The idea was to prune the tree, finding a path that was sufficient to solve the problem, but not necessarily the perfect path.

This and other innovations were implemented in 1984 in Hitech. This computer used 64 very-large-scale-integrated, or VLSI, circuits, one for each square on the chessboard, which operated in parallel to help determine strategy. It could consider 175,000 positions per second.

"There was such an enthusiasm for Hitech that I've never seen before," Berliner recalled to SCS's The Link magazine in 2012. "Everyone wanted to know what the latest developments were and if they could help."

By 1987, Hitech was ranked 190th in the United States and the only computer among the top 1,000 chess players.

Shamos said Berliner had no patience for nonsense and could be curmudgeonly, "but he was completely immersed in chess."

"You can't become a top-rated chess player like Hans without being competitive and self-confident, but I never saw him as being 'over the top,'" Carl Ebeling, one of his students and the designer of Hitech's VLSI circuits, told The Link. "He led by example more than anything else. There was a constant attention to detail and he was always thinking, looking out for the next idea that might work," added Ebeling, who retired in 2012 as a computer science professor at the University of Washington, and is currently working as a senior chip architect at Intel Corporation, in Santa Clara, California.

Ebeling's Ph.D. thesis, "All the Right Moves", won an ACM Doctoral Dissertation award, and describes HiTech’s innovative architecture in detail.

Berliner retired to Florida in 1998. He is survived by a brother, Ernest. Read his New York Times obituary.

Former Carnegie Mellon University professor Yuji Ijiri, founder of the transitional momentum accounting practice, also known as triple-entry accounting, died on Jan. 18. He was 81.

Born Feb. 24, 1935, educated and employed as an accountant in his native Japan, Ijiri later adopted the Graduate School of Industrial Administration (GSIA), now the Tepper School of Business, and Carnegie Mellon University as his workplace and home for the final half-century of his life. He earned a Ph.D. in industrial administration at Carnegie Mellon in 1963 and, after four years at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, joined the faculty of GSIA. He remained a central Carnegie Mellon figure from 1967 until his death.

Until his retirement in 2011, Ijiri was the R.M. Trueblood University Professor of Accounting and Economics, emeritus. During his time in this position he collaborated and taught alongside such notables as Nobel laureate Herb Simon, former university president Richard Cyert, global operations and accounting visionary Bill Cooper, Ijiri’s thesis adviser James March, political scientist and co-author of the Behavioral Theory of the Firm, and global economics expert and Federal Reserve historian Allan Meltzer.

“Yuji played an instrumental role in the history of the Tepper School and is considered one of the intellectual giants of his era,” said Robert Dammon, dean of the Tepper School and professor of financial economics, who remembers his own 1984 arrival at the school, meeting the luminaries such as Simon and Ijiri. “Throughout his career, Yuji was an intellectual leader who had tremendous impact on the field of accounting, his colleagues, and the legions of Ph.D. students he worked with over the years. His influence and contributions have left an enduring legacy of research productivity and impact that sets one of the highest standards for academic achievement.”

Ijiri was named to the Accounting Hall of Fame in 1989, an honor afforded just 94 people through its 67-year history at Ohio State University. He authored 200 published papers and 25 books, some translated into Spanish, French and Japanese, but none more important to him than his 1989 work about triple-entry accounting. He was among the founding members of the Journal of Accounting and Public Policy in the early 1980s, as well as the only four-time winner of the American Accounting Association (AAA) Notable Contributions to Accounting Lecturer Award: 1966, 1967, 1971 and 1976. Ijiri served the AAA as vice president in the mid-1970s and president in the 1980s.

Ijiri, by his own description a “constant gardener” in education, once said, “Carnegie Mellon has indeed been ‘small gardens’ of learning blessed with exceptional teachers and students. Yet there seems to be something more. The gardens seem to have a special way of letting people grow.”

Ijiri was 6 years old when he attended the Abacus Math School in Kobe, Japan, and by the 10th grade was doing the bookkeeping for his father’s bakery. In 1952, before even graduating from the Nara High School of Commerce, he passed a test that allowed him to take the CPA examination without a college degree. He passed the CPA exam in 1953, while attending Doshisha Junior College at night. He finished three years at Ritsumeikan University, also in Kyoto, with a bachelor’s of law degree. Thus, he had completed all requirements for a CPA certificate at age 21, the youngest on record in Japan.

He worked at a small accounting firm and then with Price Waterhouse & Co. before leaving in 1959 to attend graduate school at the University of Minnesota, where he received a master’s degree in 1960. From there, he attended Carnegie Mellon, where he remained except for four years at Stanford.

Ijiri also was recognized internationally in accounting for aggregation theory, firm size distributions, accounting measurement theory, computer languages, and quantitative models in business and economics. Fair value accounting in the early 2000s brought his concepts to the forefront again, and among his final papers were works exploring connections between triple-entry accounting and quantum physics and quantum computing. At Carnegie Mellon, his service included academic councils, dean policy advisory and more. He was awarded the Weil Prize for faculty research in 2009-10. Established in 1990, the Yuji Ijiri Award for Excellence in Accounting is awarded to an MBA student during the school’s diploma ceremony each year.

Surviving are his wife of 54 years, Tomoko, of Oberlin, Ohio; and two daughters, Yumi (Oberlin, Ohio) and Lisa (Boston, Massachusetts).

Senior basketball star Lisa Murphy continued her assault on the Carnegie Mellon University record book by notching her 2,000^th career point and 1,000^th career rebound in a 93-73 victory over Emory University last Sunday. She’s the only CMU player, the only player in the University Athletic Association and the 18^th player in NCAA Division III to reach those milestones.

Murphy, a 6’1” forward, scored a career-high and conference-record 44 points to go with 15 rebounds to lead the Tartans to their 15^th victory of the season against only one defeat. And her two blocked shots against Emory gave her 200 in her career, making her only the eighth player in Division III to reach 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds and 200 blocks.

“It’s a huge honor and has been such a journey these past four years,” Murphy said about reaching the milestones. “Honestly, I’m just glad we got the win. It’s really cool to see the program as it’s come so far the past four years and the fact that I’ve had points and rebounds come along with that is great, but the fact we’re winning games is what’s most important to me.”

An Academic All-American last year and early inductee to Phi Beta Kappa this fall, Murphy now has 2,039 points and 1,011 rebounds in her career with nine regular season games left on the schedule. The next record to top is the most points scored by a UAA player. Marsha Harris (1994-1998) of NYU holds that honor with 2,140 points in 114 career games.

Murphy, a career 71 percent shooter, is leading the nation by shooting 82.2 percent from the field this season. As a junior, she set the Division III record by shooting 75.2 percent. She also set the record for consecutive shots made in a game by going 16 for 16 against La Roche College.

"Lisa is a gifted scholar-athlete who has challenged herself to grow as a player and person each and every season at Carnegie Mellon University," Head Coach Jacquie Hullah said. "Her work ethic, competitiveness and leadership skills have taken our program to new heights."

The Tartans are hoping to return to the NCAA Tournament this year. Last season they won two games and finished among the top 16 teams in the country.

Morehouse College President John Silvanus Wilson, Jr. will give the keynote address for Carnegie Mellon University’s continuing celebration of the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 31, in the Cohon University’s Center’s McConomy Auditorium. A reception will be held prior to the lecture at 3:30 p.m. in Rangos 3 of the Cohon Center. The event is free and open to the public.

Wilson’s address, titled “Toward the Beloved Community,” will be based on a recent article he wrote for The Huffington Post. In the article, Wilson talked about how King changed from his famous 1963 “I have a dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pond, to a “grittier King” in his 1967 presentation at New York City’s Riverside Church.

Wilson wrote, “In 1967, that crowd at Riverside saw a changed man — a grittier King. In what has been called his most important speech, King spoke passionately against war and for social justice. Yet, he sounded less hopeful and more measured about the condition of America. Later that same year, King said his dream had turned into a nightmare.

John Silvanus Wilson, Jr.

“The visionary Poolside King of 1963 remains inspiring to people around the nation and world,” Wilson wrote. “That is as it should be. But especially in 2017, all Americans have a great deal more to learn from the wiser and tougher Riverside King, who said, ‘we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.’”

Wilson, a scholar, educator, consultant, strategist and fundraiser, became Morehouse’s 11th president in January 2013. Morehouse is the only private, liberal arts institution in the U.S. dedicated to the education of African-American males.

Prior to his appointment at Morehouse, Wilson was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, a position he has held since 2009.

Chelsea N. Jones, a master's degree student in public policy and management at the Heinz College, will be this year's student speaker. The title of her talk is "You do not have to be a radical, to make a radical difference." Jones said her remarks "outline the importance of using your sphere of influence to make a difference in the lives of others."

The speeches are among several upcoming events this semester in tribute to King’s legacy.

The Inclusive University: A Deliberative Forum will be held from noon – 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 26, in the Cohon Center’s Rangos Ballroom. The discussion will focus on “how we see ourselves and each other through multiple perspectives during the course of our daily lives on campus.”

On Monday, Feb. 27, the University Lecture Series presents Alexander Heffner, host of “Open Mind” on PBS. Heffner will give a talk titled “The Future of Civil Discourse.”

M. Shernell Smith is passionate about the many roles she plays to engage students and staff, and to help enhance the CMU Experience.

Smith is an assistant director for the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs. She helps to coordinate multi-cultural, diversity and inclusion programming for the campus community, such as CMU’s Martin Luther King Jr. celebration, and is an adviser to various student organizations, like the Asian Student Association. She’s a housefellow for students in the Margaret Morrison Apartments, Woodlawn Apartments, Roselawn Apartments and Spirit House, and a college liaison for the College of Engineering.

She also advises sustainability initiatives on campus, like Sustainable Earth and the upcoming Sustainability Weekend in April, and she has used her green thumb to help students grow CMU’s community garden on Winthrop Street. She even helps with CMU’s annual International Film Festival. Last year, she worked with Jolanta Lion to create a weekend course to introduce students to the socio-political significance and artistic merits of film.

Smith also is a change agent for staff. Since joining Staff Council four years ago, she has served as a member of the Relations and Grievance Committee, secretary, vice chair and now chair.

“I joined because I wanted to advocate for more experiences and initiatives that directly impact the daily lives of staff,” said Smith, who commended the administration for ensuring that staff were included in the planning process for Strategic Plan 2025, and for its sustaining commitment to attracting, retaining and developing world-class staff.

Smith wants all staff, like students, to feel empowered, included and valued.

“Inclusion and advocacy is not just an important part of my work in Student Affairs but it is an important part of my work in Staff Council as well,” she said.

In her spare time, Smith serves on the board of the Thomas Merton Center and works with the Urban League of Pittsburgh, the Greater Pittsburgh Higher Education Diversity Consortium and Pennsylvania Women Work, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering women.

“I’m able to bring the CMU experience into the Pittsburgh community and the Pittsburgh community into the CMU experience,” Smith said.

“In my work you can’t just talk about meaningful engagement and social action. I believe you must live a fully engaged life of activism.”

Have a suggestion for the Piper Spotlight? Send it to piperweekly@andrew.cmu.edu.

Alejandro Villanueva is a part-time MBA student at the Tepper School. Photo: Pittsburgh Steelers/Karl Roser

Although he’d rather be preparing to play in this Sunday’s Super Bowl, Alejandro Villanueva now has a chance to get back to his studies at Carnegie Mellon University.

Villanueva, a part-time MBA student at CMU’s Tepper School of Business, is not your average working professional seeking to advance his career with a master’s degree. At 6’9” and 320 pounds, he is the starting left tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who fell one game short of advancing to the National Football League’s premier event.

In his second season on the team, Villanueva has played a key role in the Steelers’ success as a cornerstone of the offensive line, protecting quarterback Ben Roethlisberger’s blind side. He ranked sixth in the NFL among offensive tackles by Pro Football Focus during the last seven weeks of the regular season.

Villanueva enrolled in the Tepper School’s Part-Time, On-Campus MBA program in fall 2015 after joining the Steelers as a free agent the previous year.

“I think grad school provides long-term stability, so my goal was to get to grad school and to get to a very good school. And so the opportunity to be here and play for the Steelers … has obviously been amazing,” Villanueva said during filming for a Tepper School video.

“I found a really good place where I can expand my knowledge and learn all the things that interest me and get ready for my life after football,” he said.

A popular 32-month option for working professionals, the Part-Time, On-Campus program was ranked second in the country by BusinessWeek. Classes are offered two evenings per week with a daytime option for electives.

“The part-time program is very flexible, and it allows you to work with your teachers and the students in your class to get all of your assignments done,” Villanueva said.

Courses emphasize analytics and leadership, areas that resonate well with the former U.S. Army captain.

The son of a lieutenant commander in the Spanish Navy, Villanueva was born in Meridian, Miss., and attended high school in Belgium before being recruited by the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.

After graduating, Villanueva was highly decorated for his three tours in Afghanistan as an Army Ranger from 2010-2013. He earned several military awards, including the Bronze Star Medal and the Bronze Star Medal of Valor for heroism in combat.

“He performed very well in Afghanistan. He was known as one of the best and most competent platoon leaders in the battalion,” said David Kitcho, a Tepper School MBA student who served with Villanueva.

Kitcho called Villanueva an extremely special person.

“You have to be [special] to play in the NFL … and at the same time go to a great business school like Tepper. You have to be gifted intellectually. And to do both is almost mind-boggling,” Kitcho said.

Villanueva and Kitcho are among several veterans at the Tepper School.

“There’s a solid veteran community here. I think the Tepper business school is organized in a very structured manner and that really helps the transition for a veteran,” Villanueva said.

“I think the Tepper School is a great choice for veterans. The city of Pittsburgh is very welcoming, very affordable and offers things that veterans are very fond of, such as sports and the outdoors. It’s a great match.

“The campus is beautiful. And the staff are giving the same effort you’d expect from high commanding officers in the military. It’s a neat opportunity and a very special place,” he said.

Villanueva met the school’s namesake, David Tepper, prior to his first game with the Steelers.

“Obviously, he’s a very impressive man. Attending his school is a privilege. I’d love to spend more time talking to him one day,” he said.

Villanueva is one of two finalists for the sixth annual Salute to Service Award presented by the USAA. He and Atlanta Falcons Head Coach Dan Quinn were selected for their efforts to honor and support members of the military community. Villanueva participates in community events to honor military veterans, including “Heroes at Heinz Field,” in which veterans participate in football drills. He also visits patients at the VA hospitals in Pittsburgh.

This year’s Salute to Service winner will be announced during the NFL Honors ceremony on Saturday, Feb. 4.

Carnegie Mellon was recognized as a Top 10 Military Friendly School for 2017 by Victory Media for its practices in recruiting and supporting post-military students.

His signature may be among the most recognized at Carnegie Mellon University.

As director of the University Contracts Office, Matt D’Emilio reviews all purchasing agreements related to services, software, equipment and more. The office’s inbox receives about 14,000 inquiries that generate roughly 7,000 agreements per year.

A lawyer by trade, D’Emilio earned his law degree at Duquesne University. As a six-year member of the CMU community, he said he enjoys meeting the people who benefit from the contracts he signs.

“The best part of what I do is the interaction I have with all members of the CMU community — faculty, staff and students,” said D’Emilio, who also is a past chair of Staff Council. “I really enjoy meeting and talking with folks about their issues related to the contracting process.”

D’Emilio said his legal experience has always benefited him in any setting he finds himself, whether it is co-chairing the Staff Experience working group in the University Strategic Planning process, serving on a review committee for the Middle States Accreditation process, or presenting to new employees and leading them on campus tours during their orientation program.

“I gave campus tours always with the general disclaimer, since my office is about one mile from campus, that I really don’t have the expertise of the students who give tours or the staff that work on campus,” he said. “As a result, my tours were filled with rumor and urban legend. The greatest part was when a new hire was also an alum. They would either confirm or add even more legend.”

When he is not at CMU, he spends time with his “bride of 32 years,” visits his two children in the Midwest and plays golf, but “not necessarily in that order,” he said.

Have a suggestion for the Piper Spotlight? Send it to piperweekly@andrew.cmu.edu.

Professor Aleksandar Kavčić and his wife, Dr. Sofija Kavčić, have donated $3 million to create a new, endowed fund to support inventors at Carnegie Mellon University.

Specifically, the Mary Jo Howard Dively Fund for Technology Transfer and Enterprise Creation will facilitate the smooth transfer of inventions and other intellectual property developed at Carnegie Mellon into the marketplace.

Aleksandar Kavčić, a signal-processing researcher and an adjunct professor in CMU's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, asked that the fund be named for Mary Jo Dively, CMU's vice president and general counsel, in recognition of her support for faculty and researchers across the university, as well as her protection of the groundbreaking discovery Kavčić and CMU Professor José Moura made in data storage technology, which had an impact across the computer industry in the early 2000s.

Proceeds from the new fund will be used to educate creators at CMU about relevant aspects of intellectual property law and practice, so they can make informed decisions; improve connections with industry in order to speed up the transfer of technology; and assist with the patenting and copyrighting process in cases where the inventors cannot afford to do so through their departments, research centers or grants.

"Alek's work with José showed the power of CMU research to make a significant impact on the world around us," said President Subra Suresh. "We are deeply grateful that he has also chosen to make a profound impact on future researchers with his philanthropy. It means a great deal to have this gift come from within the CMU community."

The fund also will enhance the capacity of CMU's Center for Technology Transfer and Enterprise Creation (CTTEC), which is responsible for facilitating and accelerating the movement of research and technology out of the university and into the marketplace, and its ability to evaluate whether a CMU invention is being used properly and potential resolutions if necessary.

Kavčić said that ensuring that support across the university would be invaluable to potential inventors at CMU, many of whom are focused on their research and not on the business implications of their work.

"Sooner or later someone at CMU is going to invent the next great technological breakthrough, and if they're like us, they won't know what to do," he said. "We don't want future inventors to go through the same. We should take care of our inventors, most of whom have two desires: To see their intellectual content used by society and to get proper credit. If we can aid them through these endeavors, that's as much as they are asking, and we are hoping that this fund will do just that."

Prior to joining the University of Hawaii in 2007, Aleksandar Kavčić was an assistant professor of electrical engineering in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, where he also served as the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Natural Sciences. While on leave from Harvard, he served as a visiting associate professor at the City University of Hong Kong and as a visiting scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Kavčić received a degree in electrical engineering from Ruhr-University in Bochum, Germany, and a doctoral degree in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Sofija Kavčić received a doctoral degree in architecture from University of Hawaii and recently worked at Architects Hawaii, an architectural firm in Honolulu.

Last week, the university announced that Moura, his wife and fellow CMU faculty member Professor Manuela Veloso, and the Kavčićs had jointly donated $16.5 million to the university to support education and research activities in data science and engineering.

The gift created the Kavčić-Moura Endowment Fund, which will support research and education activities in data science and engineering and aims to join technologists and quantitative scientists from the College of Engineering, School of Computer Science and Department of Statistics with domain specialists across the university. The fund will offer fellowships and scholarships to doctoral, graduate and undergraduate students, provide grants to support course development and research in data science and engineering across the university, and include chaired professorships in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. It will further support educational, academic and research work at the university's Data Storage Systems Center (DSSC), a collaborative effort between several departments.

For more than a decade, Dively led the university's efforts to protect a patent for Kavčić and Moura's discovery, working closely with the inventors.

"I'm truly humbled by this honor," Dively said of the fund named for her. "Our success was the result of a collective effort, which was fueled by the determination with which Alek and José put in countless hours in the process, so this is really an honor to all those who played a part. I'm privileged to work closely with so many wonderful people at Carnegie Mellon."

Dively, who joined CMU in 2002 as the university's first general counsel, established the university's first legal team and has managed CMU's legal affairs ever since in Pennsylvania, nationally and throughout the world. She received her J.D. from the Vanderbilt University School of Law and is a member of the American Law Institute, the National Association of College and University Attorneys, and the Association of American Universities' General Counsel Roundtable.

Within the Pittsburgh region, Dively is a current member and past chair of the board of trustees of Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and a member of the boards of trustees of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh Foundation, Shady Side Academy, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and Frick Art and Historical Center Inc. She is a past member of the board of trustees and current member of the board of visitors of UPMC Health System. She and her husband, Lane, have triplet sons who are juniors at CMU.

Monteze Freeland and Delana Flowers perform "JH: Mechanics of a Legend" at the New Hazlett Theater in 2015. Image credt: Renee Rosensteel and New Hazlett Theater CSA Series

The story of John Henry, the super-strong railroad man who died with a hammer in his hand, is being brought to life Feb. 9-18 at The August Wilson Center in downtown Pittsburgh. 

Anya Martin, an adjunct professor in Carnegie Mellon University's School of Drama, was inspired to create the play several years ago after reading "Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend" by Scott Reynolds Nelson. 

"John Henry is known in literary circles as symbolizing the conflict of Man vs. Machine," said Martin, founding artistic director of the Hiawatha Project, the production company that is staging the play. "I was thinking about machines we are racing against now and what are the modern day hammers that we'll die with in our hands. ... Nelson's book basically tracks back to the 'real' John Henry and after reading it, I thought, it was not technology that killed John Henry, it was societal machines."

These tragedies and current events have made us sit together as a group and pause for these moments and realize the many ghosts in the room with us. — Anya Martin

As Martin workshopped the piece, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot in Orlando by a neighborhood watch volunteer, which along with recent police shootings raised the level of racial tensions in the United States.

"Throughout the course of the past two-and-a-half years, these police shootings have happened, and that — and the Black Lives Matter movement — have greatly influenced the work," Martin said. "These tragedies and current events have made us sit together as a group and pause for these moments and realize the many ghosts in the room with us."

"JH: Mechanics of a Legend" is comprised of primary sources, many being memoirs of slaves from the 1870s and 1880s, so the company is mining history to turn the story of John Henry inside out.

"[Reconstruction is] a time in our history that we don't know and don't talk about," said Edda Fields-Black, associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon, and adviser to the show. "'JH' really sheds light on some periods in African-American history that were horrible. Just the kinds of everyday violence and sheer horror they faced were unthinkable. We don't want to go there, but one way to process it is through the arts. A lot of people don't want to read [about it], but they will go to a play."

Fields-Black is one of 15 artistic collaborators who have worked to bring "JH: Mechanics of a Legend" to life. The team's approach of using primary sources to create the play made having collaborators a critical aspect. 

"'JH: Mechanics of a Legend' is the kind of production you know will challenge, upset and impact you for the better all in one fell swoop," said Britton Mauk, a 2013 CMU graduate who is part of the show's design team. 

• Producing Awareness

By Andrea James


Ryan Maha is teaching high school students about customer acquisition, target markets, monetization methods and distribution models.

Junior sharp-shooting guard Ryan Maha is making his biggest impact off the court. The Tartans’ leading three-point shooter is helping underprivileged high school students to become entrepreneurs.

Maha, a native of West Mifflin, Pa., southeast of Pittsburgh, and former Carnegie Mellon University teammate Blake Chasen have developed a program, “Empowering Entrepreneurs,” to excite and inform students about the possibilities of starting their own businesses.

“At CMU, I’m attending classes with some of the most elite students in the world,” said Maha, a public policy and management major with a business minor. “I met Blake who is just as passionate about entrepreneurship and giving back to the community. I’m not sure I would have found that somewhere else, and I certainly wouldn’t have had the community connections I have here in Pittsburgh.”

Those connections are what helped Maha and Chasen take their idea into local Pittsburgh schools.

Maha and Chasen were granted permission to teach lessons in entrepreneurship to students at Maha’s alma mater, West Mifflin Area High School, once every few weeks. Other school districtsheard about the program and reached out to learn more.

A few Power Point presentations quickly morphed into a full curriculum with an event at the end of the semester similar to the ABC television show “Shark Tank.”

Chasen, who founded the startup flagtag, is familiar with pitching a new idea.

“Blake and his company went through an accelerator program at AlphaLab in Pittsburgh and were part of a demo day where they gave a five-minute pitch to a room of investors and thousands of budding entrepreneurs,” Maha said. “We felt that was a cool experience for Blake and his team and we wanted to do the same, on a smaller scale, for the students in our class.”

Maha is the Tartans' leading three-point shooter.

Maha said it has been rewarding to see the students learn about customer acquisition, target markets, monetization methods and distribution models.

Brian Aufman, a gifted education teacher at West Mifflin, said Empowering Entrepreneurs fills a gap for students and gives them an opportunity to learn about business concepts at a comfortable pace.

“I think the kids like that the class isn’t every single day. Ryan comes once every three weeks and meets with them. They then have the freedom to think about what they just learned before they meet with him again,” Aufman said.

“If you have a good idea, they see the possibilities,” Aufman added. “Coming up with the idea is the number one thing. And showing them how to make the contacts and what you have to do with a business plan, that’s something any kid can do. How to make the contacts and what you have to be prepared to do has been enlightening to them.”

Chasen graduated in 2016 from the Tepper School and took a job in New York City, so Maha enlisted the help of teammate Chris Shkil and other friends to continue the program this year. They have continued to teach at West Mifflin and now offer the program to students at Steel Valley High School and Kiski Prep School.

"We just want to make sure we give the largest number of kids the most opportunity to grow into entrepreneurs.” — Blake Chasen

“We want this to become a national program and believe we can do it in a few different ways,” Chasen said. “We can continue to expand in the way we are now by getting college students on other campuses excited about providing this program at schools in their community, or we could even develop an online program to license to schools that will allow them to create their own ‘Shark Tank’ programs. We just want to make sure we give the largest number of kids the most opportunity to grow into entrepreneurs.”

Maha and Chasen plan to offer summer entrepreneurship camps in June and they have received inquiries from the Allegheny County Jail.

Maha said he is looking forward to helping young people with their rehabilitation.

“It’s sad because a mistake shouldn’t define you,” he said. “If we can help in their rehab process, get them back home in their communities that’d be great. There are currently 22 students [in the Allegheny County Jail] that fit the high school age range.”

Maha credits his teaching success to his ability to connect with students.

“We’re very interactive and try to create an environment where it’s comfortable to speak out and throw ideas against the wall. We try to relate it back to their lives and their community and they are more actively engaged because of it,” Maha said.

Aufman said his students look up to Maha.

“They see him as someone who is doing very well for himself and someone they might like to emulate some day,” Aufman said.

Pattye Stragar wants you to “get moving.”

“Exercise is good for you physically and mentally. It reduces stress, improves your memory and makes you sleep better,” said Stragar, Carnegie Mellon University’s fitness operations manager. “I don’t care if it’s just standing up and sitting down at your desk. I just want you to do something.”

Stragar manages CMU’s Group X-ercise program, which offers 75 classes per week, from ballroom dancing, kickboxing and Pilates to indoor cycling, yoga and Zumba. She oversees a staff of 38 instructors and seven personal trainers.

She also plans, develops and implements special programs, like Walking Wednesdays and this month’s Come Out & Play, in which members of the community are invited each Wednesday from noon – 1 p.m. to play games, such as badminton, volleyball and corn hole, in Wiegand Gym. The program concludes Feb. 22 with a pool party.

A 15-year member of the CMU community, Stragar credits the university’s leadership, including Mary Suresh, for a greater emphasis on health and wellness over the last several years.

“Mrs. Suresh was very instrumental in kicking off the health and wellness initiative when she came to campus. She tries to participate whenever she’s in town,” Stragar said.

Stragar added that the recent Cohon University Center fitness addition, the expanded group exercise classes, which are free for students, and technology are catalysts for the increased enthusiasm for fitness.

“We’re so technology-driven, and fitness and technology have really merged,” she said. “We now use online scheduling, we check people into class on an iPad, and the indoor virtual cycling has been game-changing. You get an email after class with your stats,” she said.

Stragar practices what she preaches. An avid runner who ran the Pittsburgh Marathon in 2009, she teaches swimming at the Jewish Community Center in Squirrel Hill and free fitness classes for faculty and staff Wednesday and Thursday evenings. She often runs the Schenley Park trails and in the summer she manages the pool at the Edgewood Country Club.

Her two sons, J.R. and David, say she is the fittest mom they know.

On Sundays, Stragar serves as a Eucharistic minister at Assumption Church in Bellevue, Pa. 

Stragar came to Pittsburgh from Northwestern University, where she was the Wildcats’ gymnastics coach. She was a national-qualifying gymnast at Kent State University. There, a broken foot led to a meeting with the student athletic trainer, Gary, who is now her husband.

“We met in the whirlpool,” she said.

Takeo Kanade, Carnegie Mellon University's U.A. and Helen Whitaker Professor of Robotics and Computer Science, has been named the 2017 recipient of the IEEE Founder's Medal, one of IEEE's highest honors.

The medal, which will be presented at the annual IEEE Honors Ceremony on Thursday, May 25, in San Francisco, recognizes Kanade "for pioneering and seminal contributions to computer vision and robotics for automotive safety, facial recognition, virtual reality and medical robotics."

The Founder's Medal, established in 1952, is presented for outstanding contributions in the leadership, planning and administration of the electrical and electronics engineering profession. Previous winners include Google's Eric Schmidt, Intel's Gordon E. Moore and MIT's Jerome Wiesner. Kanade is the first winner from Carnegie Mellon.

Kanade's pioneering work in computer vision since the mid-1980s paved the way for today's driverless cars. He incorporated computer vision systems and other sensors to detect lane lines and other cars, and to control both steering and speed automatically. This culminated in 1995 with the NavLab 5 vehicle, which drove 3,000 miles across the United States under autonomous control.

Kanade likewise has made an impact on medicine through his early image overlay system that gave surgeons X-ray-like vision in visualizing anatomic structures inside a patient. It was one of the first systems to demonstrate what is now referred to as medical augmented reality, and this work was closely related to his development of the HipNav surgical navigation system for orthopedics research.

Kanade developed the EyeVision camera system, in which multiple cameras enable three-dimensional freeze-frame views of an activity. Its subsequent debut at Super Bowl XXXV in 2001 brought enormous attention to computer vision and spurred research in the field.

Kanade also led the creation of the Quality of Life Technology Center to help develop intelligent systems to transform the lives of people with disabilities or reduced capabilities due to aging.

An IEEE Fellow and member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, Kanade joined the Robotics Institute and the Computer Science Department in 1980, and was director of the Robotics Institute from 1992 to 2001. He has received numerous awards, including the 2016 Kyoto Prize for Advanced Technology, the Franklin Institute's 2008 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science, and the first Tateisi Grand Award and Prize in 2010.

By Adam Dove

Carnegie Mellon University Civil and Environmental Engineering Assistant Professor Hae Young Noh can tell a lot about a person by their walk.

"When people walk around we can find out who you are, where you are and what you are doing," Noh said. "Just like a fingerprint, everyone's footprint has a different signature."

Noh is developing ways to record and track people's footsteps. For example, high heels produce higher frequency vibration waves than tennis shoes. When a person is turning, they place more weight on one foot, producing a footstep wave that is noticeably higher than the others.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Noh a $500,000 Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) grant to study how sensor technology can be used to enable "smart buildings" to locate and identify people and what they are doing through the vibrations of their movements.

The project, titled "Structures as sensors: elder activity level monitoring through structural vibrations," aims to use buildings as sensors to pick up vibration waves that pass through the floor when someone takes a step. By examining these waves, Noh said she can figure out how fast someone is moving, how much they weigh and their shoe type. The project focuses primarily on the application of this technology in elder care.

"Existing solutions to monitor occupants, such as vision, acoustic, motion and force sensors and mobile devices, have strict installation requirements," Noh wrote in the award's abstract. "These requirements lead to intrusive and dense deployment or require active user involvements."

Noh will install vibration sensors in three facilities. Through big data analysis, she is aiming to identify individuals by the footsteps in a way that will allow facilities to monitor patients' health and activity through simple sensors, as well as identify portions of a building that may provide unsafe footing for occupants.

The system also has other potential applications, such as helping dispatchers track first responders and people in distress during emergencies.

Carnegie Mellon University's Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, along with corporate and government partners, will hold a panel discussion, "Building a Resilient, Smart and Sustainable City: The Energy-Water Nexus," from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will be in McConomy Auditorium on the first floor of CMU's Jared L. Cohon University Center. Online registration is required.

This program is the first in a series of Resilient Pittsburgh events that will bring together sometimes disparate entities to work on systemic issues — water quality, education, energy, and public health as examples — to establish leadership and coordination in solving some of the city's most pressing challenges.

"This gathering of national and local thought-leaders will explore energy and water — two of the world's most critical, interconnected resources. Smart, resilient cities recognize that vulnerabilities with one can have a tremendous effect on the other," said Anna J. Siefken, associate director for innovation and strategic partnerships at the Scott Institute.

Michael Webber, an expert on energy technology and policy from the University of Texas at Austin, will set the stage with a keynote address based on his book "Thirst for Power: Energy, Water and Human Survival." Webber's remarks will tie together research on population, economic growth, climate change, policy and the need for integrated planning with a focus on long-term sustainability.

Immediately after Webber's talk, government, corporate and academic leaders will discuss issues the nation and Pittsburgh face as they manage energy and water resources. Siefken will co-moderate the panel with Scott Institute Director and CMU President Emeritus Jared Cohon.

The panelists are:

• Rich Fitzgerald, county executive;
• William Peduto, mayor of the City of Pittsburgh;
• Philip Mezey, president and CEO of Itron Inc.;
• Morgan O'Brien, CEO of Peoples Natural Gas;
• Richard Riazzi, CEO of Duquesne Light Co.; and
• Rick Stafford, distinguished service professor at CMU's Heinz College, and founder of Metro21/MetroLab.

Event sponsors include the City of Pittsburgh, Duquesne Light Co., Itron, Peoples Natural Gas and the Scott Institute.

CMU is at the forefront of smart communities research, development and deployment, often with the City of Pittsburgh as its testing grounds. In addition to water and energy management, university experts are addressing challenges facing global communities in areas such as mobility, autonomy, air quality and public safety.

By Pam Wigley

Jon Rubin has been named the first master's degree program director for Carnegie Mellon University's School of Art. Image credit: Jim Judkis

Artist, educator and activist Jon Rubin has been named the first master's degree program director for Carnegie Mellon University's School of Art.

Rubin, an associate professor of art, is recognized as a leading artist in the field of social and contextual practice. Known as an artist, educator and activist, Rubin is among the first artists selected by the Guggenheim Museum to take part in a new Social Practice Art Initiative this spring.

The appointment is the first step in the School of Art's graduate initiative, which aims to establish a core faculty, increased funding and a new studio facility.

"Jon Rubin is one of the most respected artists in his field. His projects have stirred national dialogue, and his efforts have helped shape the contours of social practice in contemporary art," said Charlie White, head of the School of Art. "Having Jon enter as the director of the MFA program will be the first in a series of steps to increase faculty, facilities and funding that will further advance our intentions of providing one of the most progressive graduate programs in the country."

Rubin's major projects include "Conflict Kitchen" (2010- ), which serves food from countries in conflict with the United States, encouraging public engagement with the culture, politics and issues at stake within the highlighted regions; "The Last Billboard" (2010- ), a 36-foot-long rooftop billboard located in Pittsburgh that presents text-based statements each month by invited participants; and "The Royal Danish Protesters" (2011), a three-week performance in which actors impersonating the Danish Queen and Prince Consort walked through Copenhagen carrying signs broadcasting the opinions of any Danish citizen who approached them.

In addition to his public projects, Rubin has exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Shanghai Biennial; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College; Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; Rooseum, Malmö, Sweden; Sazmanab Center for Contemporary Art, Tehran; as well as in backyards, living rooms and on street corners.

CMU's School of Art, housed within one of the most respected research universities in the United States, offers an unparalleled convergence of contemporary art, technology and critical discourse. Currently ranked as the No. 6 art school in the country and No. 1 in the area of new media and time-based art by U.S. News and World Report, the school's noted alumni include Andy Warhol, Philip Pearlstein, Joyce Kozloff, Mel Bochner, Deborah Kass and John Currin.

Sridhar R. Tayur, the Ford Distinguished Research Chair and professor of operations management at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), one of the highest professional distinctions an engineer can receive.

Tayur has been recognized by the NAE "for developing and commercializing innovative methods to optimize supply chain systems." His academic research spans topics such as supply chain management, enterprise analytics and software, private equity and lean operations, entrepreneurship and social enterprises, and health care operations.

"We are very pleased by Sridhar's election to the National Academy of Engineering," said CMU President Subra Suresh, who was elected to NAE in 2002. "This is yet another honor in recognition of the excellence of our faculty, whose work not only has an impact far beyond Carnegie Mellon but also provides our students with educational opportunities that are second to none."

Tayur is also the founder (and served as CEO) of SmartOps, an inventory and service-level optimization software company (acquired by SAP in 2013) that created the market for Enterprise Inventory Optimization (EIO) software, commercializing his supply chain research. Beyond SmartOps, he is also a highly sought-after supply chain and optimization consultant for leading companies including GE, Deere, Microsoft and Caterpillar, and he serves on the advisory boards of several startups.

"I am excited to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering," Tayur said. "Operations management is central to engineering and business practices, and this recognition by the NAE for both my supply chain research and its commercialization is particularly satisfying to me. To be a scientist-entrepreneur, or more broadly to be an Academic Capitalist, is very important to me professionally."

Tayur joined the Tepper School faculty in 1991 and has been recognized with the Gerald L. Thompson Teaching Award in the Undergraduate Business Administration Program, as well as the George Leland Bach Excellence in Teaching Award given by the MBA program. He has also won the INFORMS Teaching Case Award, and his Ph.D. students have gone on to have wonderful careers in academia and industry.

Beyond supply chain, in the area of health care operations he won the Healthcare Best Paper Award from the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) in 2012 and the Pierskalla Award from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) in 2015 for his research on OrganJet, a social-enterprise he founded to help provide smart and affordable  multiple listing for kidney transplant patients. Both SmartOps and OrganJet are subjects of MBA cases distributed by Harvard Business School. He was also elected a Fellow of INFORMS in 2012 and made a Distinguished Fellow of Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM) Society in 2017.

"This honor is well deserved and illustrates both the practical and powerful impact of Sridhar's work and research," said Tepper School Dean Robert Dammon. "This prestigious recognition highlights the lasting legacy of his work to the field of operations management."

Tayur earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras, and holds both a master's degree and a Ph.D. from Cornell University.

NAE membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to "engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature," and to "the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education."

Tayur will officially be inducted into the NAE in October at an event in Washington, D.C. He will join two other NAE elected fellows from the Tepper School of Business: Gérard Cornuéjols, the IBM University Professor of Operations Research, who joined the fellows group in 2016, and Egon Balas, the Thomas Lord Professor of Operations Research and University Professor of Industrial Administration and Applied Mathematics, who was elected in 2006. With Tayur's election, Carnegie Mellon has been home to 55 NAE members.