H&SS eNews, December 2007

Greetings from H&SS.

The eNews is compiled and edited by Kelli McElhinny, director of media relations for H&SS. She can be reached at 412-268-6094 or kellim@andrew.cmu.edu. Contact Kelli to submit news about yourself and your fellow alumni, and to sign up for our newsletters. We always appreciate news from our alumni.

For past eNews publications, please visit the H&SS eNews archive.

For other Carnegie Mellon news, be sure to check out http://www.cmu.edu and http://www.cmu.edu/news/blog/index.shtml.

EDITOR'S NOTE-This is my final eNews as the H&SS director of media relations. For the time being, please send all news items to Joanne Ursenbach at joanneu@andrew.cmu.edu. Thank you so much for making this newsletter a success.

Alumni News

--Gautam Gandhi (B.S. Information and Decision Systems; Industrial Management, 1996) has received a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to travel to India and study the rapid industrialization of that nation's economy and the effects on Indian society. While he was an MBA student in the Tepper School of Business, Gandhi co-authored a business plan for a medical device startup and received the Hewlett-Packard Grand Prize at Rice University's annual business plan competition. Gandhi's graduate school project led him to co-found ClearCount Medical Solutions, a medical device company focused on improving patient safety by preventing medical tools and supplies from being left in the body after surgery through the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. Gandhi earned his MBA from Tepper in 2004.

--Dan Holland (B.A. Applied History, 1991; Master of Public Management, 2002) has been named to Pittsburgh Magazine's annual list of "Top 40 Under 40", which honors young professionals who are making a significant impact on the Pittsburgh region. Holland is founder and chairman of the Young Preservationists Association of Pittsburgh. He has previously worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland's Pittsburgh branch, the Mon Valley Initiative, the National Community Capital Association and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

--Angela Molloy (B.A. Professional Writing and French, 1997) has been named a director of programming at the TLC cable network in Los Angeles. Molloy previously worked at TLC as the manager of program development before leaving in 2005 for 3Ball Productions, where she was vice president of international development.

--Brenadine C. Murphy (B.A. Creative Writing, 1998) is currently working at the George C. Marshall European Center for International Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. She has accepted a new position with the center in which she will be working with the center's College of International Security Studies to develop international copyright standards and policies to govern the bi-lateral U.S. and German organization. Murphy also works with the center's Outreach Program Directorate to coordinate use of intellectual property in conferences, workshops and regional training seminars sponsored by the center in Eastern Europe, Africa and central Asia. In November, Murphy celebrated her first wedding anniversary with her husband, Joseph V. Liston. She would love to hear from any alumni or current students interested in federal government service or careers in publishing/intellectual property rights management. Her email is brenadine_h@yahoo.com.

--Catie Scudera (B.A. Psychology and Creative Writing, 2007) is a tutor at the MATCH Charter Public High School in Boston. The school currently employs 42 recent college graduates to work every day - and sometimes on the weekends - with five students in one-on-one or one-on-two tutorial sessions. The school's enrollment is almost entirely African American and Latino, and its mission is to erase the racial achievement gap that plagues urban high schools nationwide. The school's 10th graders recently ranked #1 on the state's MCAS math proficiency test, and each of its seniors thus far have been accepted into college. For more information go to http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Spotlight/story?id=3699902&page=1

College/Faculty News

--The London Times' 2007 Higher Education Supplement ranked Carnegie Mellon 20th among the world's top 200 universities, up from 35th the year before. Carnegie Mellon also ranked 7th in the Top 50 universities for technology category, 28th in the top 50 universities for social sciences category and 50th in the Top 50 universities for natural sciences category. In other recent rankings, Carnegie Mellon ranked first in the information technology/information systems category and second in the cognitive science, business, operations research and public administration categories in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Academic Analytics Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index. Also noteworthy for H&SS: Carnegie Mellon ranked 3rd in languages; 4th in communication and communication studies; 4th in history; 5th in philosophy; and 6th in statistics. The Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index is based on the number of times faculty papers have been cited, how many books and journal articles have been published, federal grant dollars awarded and honors and awards.

--The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has named Baruch Fischhoff the chairman of its Risk Communication Advisory Committee, which is charged with advising the FDA on how to best communicate to the public the risks and benefits of FDA-regulated products. Fischhoff, an expert in risk perception and communication, is the Howard Heinz University Professor of Social and Decision Sciences and Engineering and Public Policy. For more information go to http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01739.html

-- Economists at Carnegie Mellon and the Free University of Berlin have developed a mathematical model to measure the value that people place on distributive justice -- whether goods are distributed fairly among all members of society. Applying their model to pre-existing survey data, the authors found that, on average, people are willing to sacrifice about 20 percent of their disposable income to live in an equitable society. The paper was written by Christina Fong, research scientist in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, and Giacomo Corneo at the Free University of Berlin, and it was published in the Journal of Public Economics. For more information go to http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/November/nov14_fongpaper.shtml

--Lori Holt, an associate professor of psychology, was named a "Rising Star" by Observer, the magazine of the Association for Psychological Science. For more information go to http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=2252#lori

--Psychology Professor Marcel Just, along with Stanford University postdoctoral fellow Sashank Varma (B.S. Math and Cognitive Science, 1990) have put forward a new computational theory of brain function that provides answers to one of the central questions of modern science: How does the human brain organize itself to give rise to complex cognitive tasks such as reading, problem solving and spatial reasoning? Just and Varma's theory, called 4CAPS, is described in the fall issue of the journal Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience. Just is the D.O. Hebb Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon. For more information go to http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/November/nov15_4CAPS.shtml

--Alex London, associate professor of philosophy, is the new director of the Center for the Advancement of Applied Ethics and Political Philosophy. The center has grown to include 13 faculty members from several departments across campus. For more information go to http://www.phil.cmu.edu/caae/index.html

--Policy makers, employers and others can use the science of behavioral economics to steer people toward wiser choices -- and dramatically improve their health -- without limiting their freedom to do as they please, according to an article published in the Nov. 28 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The paper was co-authored by George Loewenstein, the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Economics and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon. Unlike conventional economics, which assumes that when presented with adequate information people will make decisions that are in their own best interests, behavioral economics recognizes that individuals are prone to biases that impede their ability to make good choices. The authors advocate exploiting these decision-making biases to help people make better decisions without taking away their freedom of choice. For more information go to http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/November/nov27_loewensteinjama.shtml

In Memory

--We are saddened to report the death of April DuPont (B.S. Ethics, History and Public Policy, 2000), who died Oct. 17 as a result of injuries from an auto accident in Bethel, Conn. A native of Detroit, DuPont, 29, lived in Boston and worked for Bank of America. For more information go to: http://www.meaningfulfunerals.net

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