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Carnegie Mellon To Lead $250 Million Advanced Robotics Venture
Ken Walters Friday January 13, 2017
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... Poker Play Begins in "Brains Vs. AI: Upping the Ante"
Byron Spice Wednesday January 11, 2017
Game play began on schedule on Wednesday, Jan. 11, for "Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence: Upping the Ante," a competition at Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh that pits a Carnegie Mellon University artificial intelligence called Libratus against four of the world's best professional poker players.During the 20-day event, Libratus and the pros — Jason Les, Dong Kim, Daniel McAulay and Jimmy Chou — will play a total of 120,000 hands of Heads-Up No-Limit Texas Hold'em. The pros will split a prize purse of $200,000, while the AI and its creators — Professor Tuomas Sandholm and Ph.D. student Noam... Upping the Ante: Top Poker Pros Face Off vs. Artificial Intelligence
Byron Spice Wednesday January 04, 2017
Four of the world’s best professional poker players will compete against artificial intelligence developed by Carnegie Mellon University in an epic rematch to determine whether a computer can beat humans playing one of the world’s toughest poker games.In "Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence: Upping the Ante," beginning Jan. 11 at Rivers Casino, poker pros will play a collective 120,000 hands of Heads-Up No-Limit Texas Hold’em over 20 days against a CMU computer program called Libratus. The pros — Jason... CMU Team Takes First Place in 2016 Facebook Global Hackathon
Aisha Rashid and Susie Cribbs Thursday December 15, 2016
When Facebook launched its Live video service last year, the social media giant's 1.5 billion global users began living their lives as if they had TV cameras in their back pockets. A team of Carnegie Mellon University students and alumni recently harnessed the power of the Live system to take first place in the 2016 Facebook Global Hackathon.Over the course of 24 hours in November, Abdelwahab Bourai, who earned his bachelor's degree in computer science this past May and is now a master's student in computational data science, worked with teammates Jean Haddad, a junior in chemical engineering... Obituary: Internationally Acclaimed Statistician Stephen E. Fienberg Helped Make CMU a Leader in Machine Learning
Shilo Rea Wednesday December 14, 2016
Stephen E. Fienberg, University Professor of Statistics and Social Science at Carnegie Mellon University, died Wednesday, Dec. 14, in Pittsburgh. He was 74.An internationally acclaimed statistician, Fienberg was best known for developing and using statistical applications to influence science and public policy in many areas, including aspects of human rights, privacy and confidentiality, forensics, survey and census taking.Fienberg played a key role in making Carnegie Mellon a center for research in machine learning, which draws on both computer science and statistics to enable computer... Carnegie Mellon Launches Flu Forecasting for 2016-2017 Season
Byron Spice Friday December 09, 2016
Computer scientists and statisticians at Carnegie Mellon University are using both artificial intelligence and the wisdom of crowds to guide their efforts in forecasting 2016-2017 flu activity. Past experience suggests it remains an open question as to which is better at predicting the disease's spread week by week.The Delphi research group, uniting faculty and students from CMU's machine learning, statistics, computer science and computational biology departments, is part of a research initiative with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop methods of accurately... Three SCS Faculty Members Named ACM Fellows
Byron Spice Thursday December 08, 2016
Three School of Computer Science faculty members — Justine Cassell, Manuela Veloso and Todd Mowry — have been named Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) fellows for 2016 in recognition of their contributions to human-computer interaction, computer architecture and artificial intelligence, respectively. They are among 53 members of the ACM, the world's leading computing society, elevated to fellow status this year."As nearly 100,000 computing professionals are members of our association, to be selected to join the top one percent is truly an honor," said Vicki L. Hanson, ACM... Bhiksha Raj Named IEEE Fellow
Susie Cribbs Friday December 02, 2016
Bhiksha Raj, an associate professor in the School of Computer Science's Language Technologies Institute, has been named to the 2017 class of IEEE fellows for his "contributions to speech recognition," according to IEEE.Established more than a hundred years ago, the IEEE fellow grade is a distinction reserved for select IEEE members whose extraordinary accomplishments in any of the organization's fields of interest are deemed fitting of this grade elevation. The total number of fellows selected in any one year cannot exceed one-tenth of one percent of the total voting IEEE membership.Raj, who...