MITCHELL APPOINTED FREDKIN PROFESSOR...It is our great pleasure to announce the appointment of Tom Mitchell as the Fredkin Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Learning in SCS. As well-noted by Raj Reddy, "Tom has distinguished himself as one of the world experts in the area of computer-based learning and discovery and AI." He adds, "He is also director of the Center for Automated Learning and Discovery (CALD), whose researchers are doing a great deal of innovative work." Ed Fredkin, who has provided the resources for this chair, is a world recognized pioneer in AI and robotics, and most recently established the Fredkin Research Chair in Robotics, a professorship now held by Red Whittaker. Let's clink a few glasses in toast to Tom's newest accomplishments!

PROPOSALS...
FAY CHANG was successful in "Using Speculative Execution to Automatically Hide I/O Latency" at his CS thesis proposal on March 22. Her committee included: Garth Gibson (Chair), Thomas Gross, Todd Mowry, and Jim Larus (Microsoft).
KEVIN LENZO spoke on "Characteristic Prosody: Towards a Computational Model of Speaker and Style Variation in Speech" at his robotics thesis proposal on March 29. His well-versed committee included: Raj Reddy (Co-Chair), Richard Stern (Co-Chair), Robert Thibadeau, Alan Black, Jan van Santen (Lucent/Bell Labs), and Kim Silverman (Apple Computer).

AN SCS CINDERFELLOWS STORY...At the Game Developers Conference's First Annual "Independent Games Festival", the grand prize went to the game, "Fire and Darkness". An extraordinary accomplishment, made even more significant in that three of the seven developers are Mark Feghali, Ari Heitner, and David Scherer, all CS freshmen! As noted by the organizers, "Fire and Darkness" is a kind of hybrid between Myth and Total Annihilation...the selection of this beautiful realtime strategy title for the grand prize of $10,000...was little surprise...with a lot of visual bang and very smooth-scrolling action, the game takes the premises of two excellent games and blends them together seamlessly...its fully 3D art, completely free-roving and rotating camera and excellent animations would make the game a legitimate competitor with Pandemic Studio's spectacular looking `Dark Reign 2'." The game was "banged out" over three summers. The designers, attending different schools, in different locales (CMU, MIT and Thomas Jefferson High School), and meeting as a group only rarely, worked with a $00 budget :-). The spoils of hard work! Visit www.singularity-software.com for more particulars.

MOBOT $99 MINI CHALLENGE/CLINIC!...The "Clinic" begins at noon on Wednesday, March 31 on the Mobot race course in front of Wean Hall. Members of the Mobot Committee will be on hand to answer questions and help potential and registered race participants with their mobots. The "Challenge" starts at 12:30 pm, and consists of two "partial course" competitions: 1) a slalom race on the flat part of the course (gates 2-8), and 2) a decision race, starting at the first fork in the line and continuing to the end of the course (gates 9-14). Participants finishing the reduced course in the fastest time, in each event, receive the $99 prize. So stop by and get a feel for the race. The Final Mobot Slalom Race is coming up soon -- spring carnival weekend, Friday, April 16.

CS FACULTY CANDIDATES...
April 1: Shaz Qadeer, UC Berkeley, "Algorithms and Methodology for Scalable Model Checking", 10:00 am, Wean 4623. His faculty host is Randy Bryant.
April 5: Kevin Sullivan, University of Virginia, "Component Integration Architectures", 10:00 am, Wean 4623. His faculty host is Mary Shaw.

UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM DEADLINE...Remember! The registration deadline for the 1999 Undergraduate Research Symposium, also known as "Meeting of the Minds", is Friday, April 2. The symposium will be held May 5 and provides an opportunity for undergraduates in all fields to share their work through oral, project, poster, and artistic presentations. Honors students in CIT, H&SS, and SCS are required to be present at the Meeting of the Minds, as are SCS Independent Study students and all Undergraduate Research Initiative award recipients (SURG grants/fellowships, presentation awards, etc.). Students can register, using an online form, at: www.cmu.edu/adm/uri.

CS DOCTORAL DISSERTATION AWARD...David Redish, Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Nerual Systems, Memory and Aging, University of Arizona, presents "What to Do When You're Lost: Self-localization and the Hippocampus" at the CS Doctoral Dissertation Award Lecture/SCS Distinguished Lecture on Thursday, April 8 at 4:00 pm in Wean 7500. Distinguished doctoral donuts at 3:45 pm. Dave completed his CS PhD at CMU in 1997, with his thesis, "Beyond the Cognitive Map: Contributions to a Computational Theory of Rodent Navigation", working under the guidance of his advisor, David Touretzky.

CS FACULTY MEETING...No joke, this one is scheduled for Thursday, April 1. Social at 4:00 pm, Meeting at 4:30 pm in Wean 4623.

SCS INVITED TALKS...Jim Tomayko presented a lecture on spacecraft computers at the Distinguished Mathematics/Computer Science Series at Kent State University on March 22. The following day, he gave colloquia on distance education and reducing the volume of software testing.

SCS FACILITIES UPDATE...The newest release of the Dr. Solomon Anti Virus is now available to the PC world. This handy "fix" can be found on Monolith (monolith.fac.cs.cmu.edu) or obtained via help+licenses@cs.cmu.edu. It light of current shannigans on the net, the timing is right :-)

GET A LIFE...The School of Drama's performance of the Tony-winning musical "The Mystery of Edwin Drood", is playing at the Kresge Theater/CFA Building. The show, focussing on "the lively performers of London's Music Hall Royale, leads the audience through a series of hand votes to determine the identity of Drood's murderer." The show has "music, spectacle, sentiment and a mystery to solve," notes director Geoffrey Hitch. Performances continue March 30-April 3 and April 8-10. Call 268-2407 for tickets/details.

HOP TO IT...Happy Easter and Happy Passover!

WORDS FOR THOUGHT...
TUESDAY, MARCH 30
**JOINT AI/BELL ATLANTIC DISTINGUISHED LECTURE: Bernardo Huberman, Research Fellow, Xerox PARC, "Laws of the Web", 3:30 pm, University Center, Rangos 3.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 31
**HCI SEMINAR: Matthew Turk, Microsoft Research, "From GUIs to PUIs", 3:30 pm, Wean 5409.

THURSDAY, APRIL 1
**SCIENCE OF LEARNING RESEARCH SEMINAR: Ron Sun, University of Alabama, Christian Lebiere, and David Noelle, "Hybrid Strategies for Learning: The Symbolic/Connectionist Gap", 3:00 pm, Wean 7500, refreshments at 2:30 pm.
**SDI SEMINAR: Sugih Jaim, University of Michigan, "Windowed Key Revocation in Public Key Infrastructures", noon, Wean 8220.

FRIDAY, APRIL 2
**ROBOTICS SEMINAR: Katia Sycara, "RETSINA: A Distributed Multi-Agent Infrastructure for Information Gathering and Decision Support", 3:30 pm, Adamson Wing.

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