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Kanat Tangwongsan
Wins Allen Newell Award for Excellence in
Undergraduate Research
May 16, 2006:
Kanat received this year's undergraduate research
award for his work on active data structures and
applications to dynamic and kinetic algorithms.
Advised by professor and ALADDIN Center co-director
Guy Blelloch, Kanat is a graduating senior and
an alumni of the ALADDIN Center
REU program
('04
and '05)
who will pursue his graduate studies at Carnegie
Mellon this fall.
Kanat was also named a male runner-up for the
2006 Computing Research Associate Outstanding
Undergraduate Award earlier this year.
 read Kanat's paper
Gamers help the blind get the picture
May 16, 2006:
"Visually impaired people often use text-to-speech
converters called screen readers to listen to the
content of web pages spoken by a synthesised
voice. However, the pictures on most websites
remain inaccessible because very few have
detailed captions to accurately describe them.
The online game 'Phetch'...is designed to
encourage other web users to generate these
missing captions. 'We hope to collect captions for
every image on the web,' says Shiry Ginosar,
a member of the Phetch team."
By Paul Marks, New Scientist
read the article
Two ALADDIN Center Undergrads
Present Award-Nominated Papers at
CHI 2006
April 24, 2006:
Graduating senior Shiry Ginosar and rising senior
Mihir Kedia presented papers describing their
undergraduate research at CHI 2006, the premier
international conference for human-computer
interaction. Both papers were nominated for the
Best Paper award by SIGCHI. A third paper about
Masters student Roy Liu's work on
Peekaboom was also published at the conference.
Advised by professor Manuel Blum and postdoc
Luis von Ahn, Shiry, Mihir, and Roy are all
alumni of the ALADDIN Center REU program.
read the paper about Phetch (pdf)
[Best paper nominee]
read the paper about Verbosity (pdf)
[Best paper nominee]
read the paper about Peekaboom (pdf)
Manuel Blum
Appointed as University Professor
April 28, 2006:
Manuel has been appointed as University
Professor. This is the highest rank any Carnegie
Mellon faculty member can attain throughout the
entire university. According to Deparment Head
of Computer Science, Jeannette M. Wing, "Manuel
is a deep and inspiring thinker, a gentle and
generous mentor, and a warm and wonderful
colleague to us all. Please join me in
congratulating Manuel!"
Luis von Ahn
Wins 2006
Alan J. Perlis SCS Student Teaching Award
April 26, 2006:
Named for Alan
J. Perlis, a founder of Carnegie Mellon's Computer
Science Department and its first department head,
this award honors the student who has shown the
highest degree of excellence and dedication as a
teaching assistant. "The student support for
Luis von Ahn's nomination was simply exceptional,"
explains professor and award committee chair Peter
Lee. "Luis has developed an amazing reputation as
a great teacher, among both students and faculty.
It is clear that students look up to him as a
mentor and that faculty rely on him as a colleague
and source of teaching advice." The award will be
officially conferred during the SCS commencement
ceremony.
Manuel Blum
Elected into
National Academy of Engineering
February 10, 2006:
Manuel was elected to the Academy for his
contributions to abstract complexity theory,
inductive inference, cryptographic protocols, and
the theory and applications of program checkers.
NAE membership is one of the highest professional
distinctions an engineer can achieve. Manuel is a
leader in the field of theoretical computing and
one of the founders of computational complexity
theory. His momentous achievements were recognized
in 1995 with the highest honor in computing, the
A. M. Turing Award.
read more
read the press release
US Secretary of Commerce Tests Peekaboom
February 3, 2006:
Professor Manuel Blum and graduate student Roy Liu
demonstrate to Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez
how Peekaboom identifies objects in images.
Gutierrez was on campus to speak on the Role of
Innovation and Education in National
Competitiveness. As part of his visit, Gutierrez
received special presentations of some of the most
promising and exciting technologies at Carnegie
Mellon. Peekaboom is one of many
"human computation"
games designed by postdoc
Luis von Ahn
and his collaborators. These games use people's
computational abilities to solve problems that are
relatively easy for most people, but that still
baffle the most sophisticated computers.
play peekaboom now
Welcome to new PostDoc Mohammad Taghi Hajiaghayi
January 16, 2006:
Mohammad joins the ALADDIN Center as a postdoc
from MIT, where he completed his Ph.D. in the
Theory of Computation Group at the Computer
Science and Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory (CSAIL) under the supervision of
Erik D. Demaine and Tom Leighton. Mohammad will be
in residence at Carnegie Mellon through December.
visit Mohammad's home page
 Welcome to Visiting Faculty Guido Schäfer from Technische Universität Berlin
October 26, 2005:
Assistant Professor Guido Schäfer has joined
the ALADDIN Center as a Visiting Faculty from
Institut für Mathematik at Technische
Universität Berlin. Guido will be in residence
at Carnegie Mellon through early December.
visit Guido's home page
 A shindig for math people
October 17, 2005:
"Scientists from around the world will gather in Pittsburgh this weekend to celebrate the career -- and 60th birthday -- of Dr. [Alan] Frieze. A math professor at Carnegie Mellon, he has been a leading force in the area of discrete mathematics known as probabilistic combinatorics, which can be used to optimize business operations and improve information networking."
Byron Spice, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
read the article
read the press release
 Former ALADDIN Visiting Faculty
Jon Kleinberg Named MacArthur Foundation Fellow
September 20, 2005:
A professor of computer science at Cornell
University, Kleinberg is a computer scientist
whose research topics have tackled a wide variety
of practical problems.
read the press release
 Welcome to Visiting Faculty Stefano Leonardi from Università di Roma "La Sapienza"
August 8, 2005:
Professor Stefano Leonardi has joined
the ALADDIN Center as a Visiting Faculty from
the School of Engineering at Università
di Roma "La Sapienza". Stefano will be
in residence at Carnegie Mellon for the entire
fall semester.
visit Stefano's home page
Peekaboom Game in the News play peekaboom now
CMU online game will be used to
help teach computers to see
August 1, 2005:
"There aren't many humans who are willing to
sit down and teach a computer to see... but there
are plenty of people who will do so if they think
it's fun."
Byron Spice, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
read the article
Peekaboom draws plenty of
participants
August 8, 2005: "In
the three days following Monday's article about
Peekaboom, 6,700 people registered on the
Peekaboom site and, by midnight Wednesday,
more than 250,000 annotations had been generated."
Science News Briefs, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
read the article
Russell
Schwartz Receives Presidential
Award
June 13, 2005: Assistant Professor
of Biological Sciences Russell Schwartz was honored in Washington,
D.C., as a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Awards
for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). This program recognizes
outstanding scientists and engineers who, early in their
careers, show exceptional potential for leadership at the
frontiers of knowledge. This Presidential Award is the highest
honor bestowed by the United States Government on scientists
and engineers beginning their independent careers. read the press release
"Notung" Helps Biologists Determine
a Gene's Family Tree
May 17, 2005: Associate Professor
of Biological Sciences Dannie
Durand and her research team have developed a new software
tool called "Notung" that sifts through thousands
of potential evolutionary scenarios to obtain the best guess
about when a given gene arose. MSNBC Cosmic Log, May 14-20,
2005.
read the article
read the press release
ALADDIN Center Co-Director Lenore Blum Receives Presidential Award
May 16, 2005:
Lenore Blum was honored in Washington, D.C., as a recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM). PAESMEM seeks to identify outstanding mentoring
efforts that enhance the participation of groups, including
women, minorities and persons with disabilities that are
underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and
mathematics.
read the press release
CAPTCHA the Puzzle
April 18, 2005:
"In the last
few years, computer scientists have worked out an ingenious
security scheme ... [that's] an intriguing way of distinguishing
between the actions of a computer program and those of a
person." Ivars Peterson's MathTrek
read the article
 Gwendolyn Stockman Named Scholarship Finalist
April 8, 2005:
CS Junior and ALADDIN Center REU alumna Gwendolyn Stockman
is honored as a Google
Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship Finalist.
 Anupam
Gupta Wins Sloan
Research Fellowship
The Sloan Foundation has awarded Anupam Gupta,
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, a Sloan Research
Fellowship. This prestigious award is intended to
enhance the careers of the very best young faculty
members. A total of 116 fellowships are awarded annually
in seven fields: chemistry, computational and evolutionary
molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics,
neuroscience, and physics. read
more
 Congratulations!!
to our CS undergraduates recognized for their outstanding
research by the Computing
Research Association: Suporn
Pongnumkul (advisor: Guy Blelloch), Jared
Go (advisor: James Kuffner), Shilpa Desai (advisor:
Lenore Blum), and Brendan Juba
(advisor: Manuel Blum). read
more
Gary Miller, Professor CSD,
is a co-winner of the 2003 ACM
Kanellakis Award which honors specific
theoretical accomplishments that have had a significant
and demonstrable effect on the practice of computing.
Previous SCS award winners, 1998 and 1999
Teaching computers to think.
Researchers hope game will improve Web searches. CNN.com,
October 17, 2003
read the article
Baffling the Bots. Anti-spammers
take on automatons posing as humans. By
Lee Bruno, Scientific American, October 20, 2003
read the article
CMU student taps brain's game
skills
Luis
von Ahn's ESP Game "steals cycles from humans"
to label images on the Internet.
By Byron Spice, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 5,
2003
read the article
play the
game
Strength in Numbers
A summer program gives a boost to women going for
Ph.D.'s in mathematics. By Robin
Wilson, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 18, 2003
read the article
Captchas: Computer Tests Can Defeat Spam. Ingenious
computer tests may also advance machine vision and
AI. By Jaikumar Vijayan, Computerworld,
June 16, 2003
read the article
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