NEW ACM HONORS...Takeo Kanade is joining the ranks of distinguished scientists elected to the position of "Fellow of the ACM." He will be formally inducted on Saturday, 15 May 1999, at a formal ceremony in New York City. The "Fellows" title "is bestowed upon those ACM members who have distinguished themselves through outstanding technical and professional achievements in the field of information technology." Other SCS fellows include: Dana Scott (1994), Daniel Siewiorek (1994), Herbert Simon (1994), Mary Shaw (1996), Edmund Clarke (1998), and Jeannette Wing (1998).

AND CRA AWARDS...Patrick Riley has been selected for Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association's (CRA) 1998-99 Outstanding Undergraduate Award competition. As noted in the chairman's acknowledgement, "this year's nominees were a very impressive group and it is truly an accomplishment to be included in the Honorable Mention list." This year's competition, sponsored by Microsoft and Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, will be followed by a formal awards ceremony in early May 99 at the Federated Computing Research Conference in Atlanta. Particulars can be found at: /www.cra.org/main/cra.awards.html. Pat has a note on his plan file which says, "Watch for the moments that define our lives. They can slip by without your notice." This could have been one of those moments...except all your SCS colleagues and friends do notice :-) Bravo!

FIRST MRCAS FELLOW AT UPMC...Anthony DiGioia, Director of the Center for Orthopaedic Research at UPMC Shadyside, and Co-Director of the Center for Medical Robotics and Computer-Assisted Surgery (MRCAS), has announced the selection of Devin Amin as the first recipient of the newly established Fellowship in Medical Robotics and Computer-Assisted Surgery. Amin recently completed his first two years of medical school at the Univ. of Pittsburgh and is now enrolled in the MD/PhD program in Electrical and Biomedical Engineering at CMU, where he will be working with Takeo Kanade. The MRCAS Fellowships were established "to expose clinicians and physicians in training to the new applications of medical robotics, image-guided, and surgical navigation technologies. The Fellow will be intimately involved in the research and development of computer-assisted surgical systems and tools for use in the operating room...[and will] also be involved in the HipNav preclinical trials that are currently underway." A couple (gentle) slaps on the back to Amin!

IN DEFENSE...
MICHAEL GARLAND explores "Quadric-Based Polygonal Surface Simplification" at his CS thesis defense on Monday, December 14 at 2:00 pm in Wean 4623. His committee consists of Paul Heckbert (Chair), Andrew Witkin, Martial Hebert, and Jarek Rossignac (Georgia Institute of Technology).
PETER STONE uncovers "Layered Learning in Multi-Agent Systems" at his CS thesis oral on Tuesday, December 15 at 10:00 am in Wean 5409. The committee "getting a kick" out of this includes: Manuela Veloso (Chair), Andrew Moore, Herbert Simon, and Victor Lesser (University of Massachusetts, Amherst).

PROPOSALS...
ISTVAN DERENYI tunes in to "Realistic Classical Trumpet Performance Synthesis Using a Combination of Instruments and Performance Models" during his CS thesis proposal on Wednesday, December 9 at 9:00 am in Wean 4615A. His committee includes: Roger Dannenberg (Chair), Scott Fahlman, Paul Heckbert, and Mark Dolson (E-mu/Creative Technology Center).
SCOTT DAVIES consolidates his ideas on "Machine Learning, Compression, and Condensed Representations" at his CS thesis proposal on Thursday, December 10 at 3:00 pm in Wean 5409. His committee includes: Andrew Moore (Chair), Christos Faloutsos, John Lafferty, Tom Mitchell and Nir Friedman (Hebrew University).
ROBERT OLSZEWSKI takes "Cue-Driven Knowledge Acquisition" at his CS thesis proposal on Friday, December 11 at 2:00 pm in Wean 4623. His committee includes: Roy Maxion (Co-Chair), Dan Siewiorek (Co-Chair), Christos Faloutsos, and David Banks (NIST).
LISA MARIE SAKSIDA thinks about "A Nonassociative Neural Network Model of Perceptual Learning: Psychological Theory and Neuropsychological Application" at her Robotics thesis proposal on Tuesday, December 15 at 3:00 pm in Mellon Institute 115. Her committee members include: Jay McClelland (Chair), Tom Mitchell, Tai Sing Lee, and John Pearce (University of Wales, Cardiff).

SCS CELEBRATES!...Welcome in the holidays at the SCS Holiday Brunch on FRIDAY, December 11 from 10:00-12:00 pm in the Connan Room, University Center. Copious food and beverage will be available and waists promise to expand! We look forward to seeing everyone.

CS UNDERGRAD RESEARCH...The SCS community is invited to this term's CS Undergraduate Research Poster Session on Wednesday, December 9, from 4:30 to 6:00 pm in Wean 5403. Among the research reports to be presented will be mid-year presentations of seniors working on Undergraduate Theses, including
*Jon Betz, An Investigation of Word Sense Disambiguation in the World Wide Web
*John Chang, Imagine: A Highly Flexible, Highly Usable Software Environment
*Andrew Faulring, Gold: Charting by Demonstration
*Doug Fearing, Substitution Tree Indexing and the Inversion Methods for a Typed Lambda Calculus
*Chris Hobbs, Numerical Simulation of Self-Assembly
*Wing Leung, Data Mining Large Data Sets
*Qiang Rao, An Application-Driven Evaluation of Network Service Quality
*Jason Rennie, Web Spidering Modeled as Reinforcement Learning
*Patrick Riley, Classifying Adversarial Behaviors in a Dynamic, Mulit-Agent Environment
*Charles Tennent, Reconfigurable Agents in Uncertain Environments
*Andrew Zimdars, Representation of Recursive Data Structures in Neural Networks
The final reports of all undergraduates engaged in independent study will also be presented.

FINAL BEAM IN PLACE...On Friday, December 4, another milestone (or milemetal?) in the Building D addition was met, with the placement and signing of the final beam. Onward to the walls :-)

SCS INVITED TALKS...
DAVID JOHNSON delivered the keynote talk at DIAL-M'98, the 2nd International Workshop on Discrete Algorithms and Methods for Mobile Computing and Communications, in Dallas, Texas. The workshop "aims, in particular, at fostering the cooperation among practitioners and theoreticians of the field." Dave notes, "the workshop name is a pun on "Dial M for Mobility!"
ANDREW MOORE has been spreading the word. He recently presented "Cached Sufficient Statistics" at the Bell Labs Statistics Seminar Series; "Efficient Data Mining for Massive Data" at the Brown Computer Science Seminar Series; and wrapped-up with "Automatic Abstract Actions for Multi-Goal Markov Decision Problems" at the AT&T Labs AI Seminar Series.
DAVID TOURETZKY will present, "Skinnerbots: Trainable Robots as Theories of Animal Cognition" at the 1998-99 Distinguished Speakers in Cognitive Science Lecture Series at Michigan State University on Monday, December 14.

FINAL(S) TALLY...The deafening stillness continues, as students across campus are immersed (we hope!) in their studies. Finals are scheduled from December 7-8 and 10-15, with a reading day on Wednesday, December 9. Winter recess (for students) officially begins on Wednesday, December 16. Fall grades are due by 4:00 pm on Friday, December 18.

BRAIN DRAIN...On Tuesday, December 15, the "Brain Drain" Town Meeting, part of DCED-on-the-Road, will be held from 7:00-8:30 pm in Rangos 1, University Center. "Designed to gain understanding of the strengths and challenges in each region and ensure that their programs are clearly focused on regional priorities", The Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) wants to hear your views on the economic and employment/careers opportunities in Southwestern Pennsylvania and the issues determining your decisions to stay or leave this area. Led by Secretary Sam McCullough and local entrepreneurs, the program welcomes discussion and will bring together community leaders, young professionals, unversity students and entrepreneurs.

WORDS FOR THOUGHT:
WEDNESDAY,, DECEMBER 9
**POP SEMINAR: Kathleen Fisher, AT&T Research, "Foundations for Moby Classes", 3:30 pm, Wean 8220.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10
**SPECIAL ROBOTICS SEMINAR: Jarmo Raittilia and Colleagues, Technology Development Center of Finland, and the Helsinki University of Technology, 3:30 pm, Wean 4601.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11
**CIRCLE SEMINAR: Michelene T.H. Chi, LRDC/University of Pittsburgy, "What Makes Human Tutoring Effective?", 2:45 pm, Wean 5409.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 14
**SCIENCE OF LEARNING RESEARCH SEMINAR: Barbara Foorman, University of Houston and Mark Seidenberg, USC, "The Science of Learning and the Pedagogy of Reading", 3:00 pm, Glaser Auditorium, 2nd Floor, LDRC, Pitt campus.

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