WELCOME NEW STUDENTS...We are bursting at the seams! A wonderful new class of over 275 students have "physically" joined SCS this term. They are everywhere and settling in for a great year. Welcome to SCS!

SCS DISTINGUISHED LECTURE SERIES...Daniel Dennett, Distinguished Arts and Sciences Professor, Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University, will explore "Modeling Creativity: Some Speculations about the Speed of Thought" at the SCS Distinguished Lecture on Thursday, September 17 at 4:00 pm in Wean 7500. Distinguished donuts will be served at 3:45 outside the auditorium. For a complete abstract and bio, visit /www.cs.cmu.edu/~calendar/dennett.html.

AND WHILE WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT...This year's SCS Distinguished Lecture Series will also include: David Parnas (October 15), Robert Constable (October 22), David Clark (January 21), Charles Simonyi (February 18), Stuart Card (March 18). Mark your calendars.

IN DEFENSE...
**YE-YI WANG charts "Grammar Inference and Statistical Machine Translation" at his LTI thesis defense on Tuesday, September 15 at 3:30 pm in Wean 4615A. His committee includes: Alex Waibel (Chair), Jaime Carbonell, John Lafferty, Wayne Ward, and Allen Gorin (AT&T Research Labs).

**GEORGE NECULA will be "Compiling with Proofs" at his CS thesis oral on Friday, September 18 at 2:00 pm in Wean 4623. His comittee includes: Peter Lee (Chair), Robert Harper, Frank Pfenning, and Greg Nelson (DEC SRC).

**TODD WILLIAMSON encounters "A High-Performance Vision System for Obstacle Detection" at his robotics defense on Friday, September 25 at 11:00 am in the Smith Hall 2nd floor Common Area. His committee includes: Chuck Thorpe (Chair), Takeo Kanade, Martial Hebert, and Robert Bolles (SRI International).

DANS AT THE HELM OF HCII...Dan Olsen recently announced the appointment of Dan Siewiorek as Co-Director of the Human Computer Interaction Institute, a position he started in August. He will assume the position of Director of the Institute effective January 1, when Dan Olsen will depart from SCS. As Dan "O" noted, "Dan "S" is a wonderful addition to the Institute. He has a long track record of involving social science and design in the construction of new computing technologies. We are excited to have his insight and leadership." Congratuations and thanks to our Dans!

NEW FACES IN SCS ADMISSIONS...
**Suzanne Crow assumed the responsibilities of Robotics Graduate Programs Coordinator in August. She joined RI by way of the Physics Department, where she held a similar position for several years and replaces Marce Zaragoza, who has moved on to the HCII, where she now serves as Master's Program Coordinator.

**Catherine Morrow joined the LTI this summer, as their new Graduate Program Coordinator.

HEED ALL YE SCS UNDERGRADUATES!...amass at 4:45 pm on Tuesday, September 22 on the lawn by the patio in front of Wean Hall for the 1998 Undergrad Group Photo. You'll be glad you did ;-)

BOC/TOC JUST A WEEK AWAY...The Business Opportunities Conference and Technical Opportunities Conference will be held Thursday and Friday, September 24-25, respectively, in the University Center. As the two major careers fairs on campus, this is an excellent opportunity to meet with representatives from over 200 companies and to discuss jobs opportunities. Resumes are always greatly welcomed. Stop by to check out the action, beginning at 10:00 am both days. If you haven't submitted your resumes for the SCS Career Office Resume Book Collections, please start "hustling." Time is running out!

JAVA DAY '98...On Saturday, September 26, SCS will host "JAVA Day", sponsored by Sun Microsystems. This is a unique opportunity for faculty, students and staff from SCS and across campus to come together to learn firsthand from Sun's technical gurus and management about the intricacies/future of Java. The program is scheduled from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm in McConomy Auditorium in the University Center, with ongoing demos throughout the day. For a complete agenda, speaker overviews, and registration, visit /www.cs.cmu.edu/~javaday.

SCS CELEBRATES HOMECOMING 98...An exciting series of speakers, including John Nash, Nobel Laureate and Senior Research Mathematician at Princeton's Department of Mathematics, will join us at this year's "Wean Hall Bash", a joint program of events hosted by Mathematics, Physics, and SCS, on Friday, October 16. David Parnas, NSERC/Bell Industrial Research Chair in Software Engineering and Director of the Software Engineering Programme at McMaster University, will lead off the weekend at the SCS Distinguished Alumni Lecture on Thursday afternoon, October 15. Watch for more details!

THE SOFTWARE ENGINEERING SYMPOSIUM '98...is taking place at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center (downtown Pittsburgh) from September 14-17. Hosted by the Software Engineering Institute, a complete agenda information can be found off the SEI homepage at www.sei.cmu.edu.

CS DISSERTATION AWARD WINNER...Congratulations to David Redish on his recent receipt of the Computer Science Doctoral Dissertation Award for 1998. His thesis (aka tome!) "Beyond the Cognitive Map: Contributions to a Computational Neuroscience Theory of Rodent Navigation" was written under the guidance of his advisor, David Touretzky. In addition to a $1,000 award from the Computer Science Department, David will be honored during a Distinguished Lecture he will present on April 8, 1999.

SCS INVITED TALKS...
**Ed Clarke delivered two invited lectures in August at the "5th Workshop of Logic, Language, Information, and Computation" in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and at the "XVIII Congresso da Sociedade Brasileira de Computacao" Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
**Jeannette Wing recently presented "Formal Methods: Past, Present, and Future", at the "Fourth Software Reuse Symposium: From Architectures to Products" at Fort Meade, Maryland.

FACILITIES UPDATE...SCS Facilities is pleased to announce a new color Canon CLC 800 printer/copier, SPECTRUM, that prints 400dpi Continuous Tone Color. "It is capable of everything that our current color printers can do and much more" notes Kirk Berthold. It prints with a faster/higher resolution on letter, 11x17 paper, or transparencies and is capable of printing Duplex paper. The printer is located in Wean 4215. Three training sessions have been scheduled for Wednesday, September 16: Printing Training at 10:30 am and 2:00 pm in Wean 4625, and Copier Training at 1:00 pm in Wean 4215. If you would like to use the copier function of this machine, send mail to Help+printing@cs for registration details or visit: www.cs.cmu.edu/~help/printing.

SCS CALENDAR UPDATES...Send mail to copetas@cs. See your events listed at www.cs.cmu.edu/~calendar

WORDS FOR THOUGHT...
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16
**HCI SEMINAR: Robert Kraut, "Internet Paradox: A Social Technology that Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-being", 3:30 pm, Singleton Room, Roberts Hall

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18
**ROBOTICS SEMINAR: Frank Demmler, The Enterprise Corporation of Pittsburgh, and Jack Roseman, GSIA/CMU, offer "Technology Commericalization: The Entrepreneurial Pathway", 3:30 pm, Adamson Wing, Baker Hall.

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