When Alyssa Reuter had to choose a college, she wanted one that offered programs in computer science and the arts. “The one school that was strong in both was Carnegie Mellon,” she says.

But how could she combine her two passions? Getting undergraduate degrees from both SCS and the College of Fine Arts—a double major—would have meant an extremely heavy workload, because the majors don’t have many overlapping courses.

As it turns out, Reuter wasn’t the only student asking to combine the disciplines into one undergraduate degree, says Franco Sciannameo, director of Carnegie Mellon’s Bachelor of Humanities and Arts (BHA) and Bachelor of Science and Arts (BSA) programs—joint efforts between CFA, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Mellon College of Science.

Students were literally “knocking on my door,” Sciannameo says. From game design and computer animation to computer music and robotic art, technology and the arts are no longer separable, he says. More >

Cars that drive themselves are certainly cool, but cars that could avoid potholes would be a godsend in a city like Pittsburgh.

With the latest Collaborative Research Lab (CRL) between General Motors and Carnegie Mellon, researchers aim to refine the autonomous driving technologies that were so spectacularly put to use in Boss, winner of the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. That competition between driverless vehicles took place over 55 miles of urban and suburban roads.

“The Urban Challenge was fantastic, but you couldn’t use Boss to get to work in the morning,” says Chris Urmson, a research scientist in the Robotics Institute. “This lab will deal more generally with pedestrians, traffic—the wide variety of situations you encounter in a normal day. It will produce a much more broadly capable vehicle.” More >

Maxine Eskenazi knows how much can depend on the meaning of a single word. While she was living in France, her French mother-in-law sent one of her American aunts a gift of delicate chiffon fabric. But the French have a different name for the sheer material—mousseline—while “chiffon” means “rag.” Eskenazi’s mother-in-law received, therefore, a well-intentioned note thanking her for the “nice rags.”
Such incidents, along with Eskenazi’s experiences teaching English in France, instilled in her a lifelong appreciation for the intricacies of language learning. More > (PDF p. 15)

Carnegie Mellon Provost Mark Kamlet likes to say that he would have more respect for physicists if they could find out where they misplaced 95 percent of the universe. Behind his joke is a serious question—maybe the most fundamental question facing science today. The vast majority of the universe is made up of dark matter and dark energy, about which very little is known. Future discoveries about the nature and origin of the universe hinge on learning more about these mysterious substances.  More >

Perry Jones, age 6, stands in a field on his grandfather’s Virginia farm. He hears a buzz and looks up to see a plane flying overhead. “Grandpa, that’s what I want to do when I grow up,” he says eagerly. “I want to drive that airplane.” “Perry, if you want to drive that airplane, you can do it,” his grandather tells him. Jones would go on to become the first Black airline pilot for Pan Am. More > (PDF p. 12)

Kent Harries is bouncing around in a Jeep in the remote Darjeeling region of India when suddenly his life flashes before his eyes. A large military truck is coming the other way down the one-lane road, and he knows it’s not getting out of the way. He and student Derek Mitch hang on as the Jeep driver veers out of the truck’s path, narrowly averting disaster. More > (PDF p. 7)

At a Sasol research facility in South Africa, Badie Morsi watches coal travel down a conveyor belt on its way to becoming diesel fuel and sees the future.

Morsi dreams of a day when the United States — and Western Pennsylvania — won’t have to import oil but can use reactors similar to the one at the Sasol facility to make it. More > (PDF p. 7)

Si Yang Ng was thrilled with the guest lecturer in his improv class—a well-known motion picture actor. Ng willingly participated at every opportunity, which didn’t go unnoticed. “You’re from Asia, but you speak up quite openly,” the movie star said to Ng. “Can you tell me why I’m having so much trouble getting Asians to speak up in my improv classes?” More >

Cynthia Sherry is having dinner with seven gentlemen at a Dallas restaurant. All of them are radiologists, and Sherry is about to become the first female partner of the practice. During the meal, one partner says to her, “I’ll bet you’ve never been to dinner with seven men before.” If the radiologists think Sherry is uncomfortable with the numbers, they’re wrong. More >

Oil erupts from the ground with a whoosh! Dirt-poor Jett Rink (James Dean, in Giant, his last film role) staggers backward, arms outstretched, letting the “black gold” rain down on him.

Watching this movie as a child in Cairo, Egypt, Mahmoud Dabbous was enamored not only with the excitement of striking oil but also with the American geography and way of life it depicted.

He went on to found the Improved Petroleum Recovery (IPR) Group of Companies, of which he is president and chief executive officer. More (Large PDF) >