HONORS AND DISTINCTIONS...Takeo Kanade is the recipient of an Aviation Week & Space Technology 1997 Laurels citation, honoring individuals who have made substantial contributions to the "global field of aerospace" in 1997. Honorees are selected from nominations submitted by Aviation Week editors in the categories of commercial air transport, government/military, aeronautics/ propulsion, space, electronics and operations. The "Laureates", chosen from the citation awardees in each category, will be announced in the April 6 issue of the magazine. Takeo, awarded a citation in electronics, was noted for "contributions to computer vision and robotics with applications including autonomous helicopters...His latest work combines the technologies from computer vision, virtual reality and television to create 'virtualized reality', a technology that lets a viewer watch a real event from any perspective." Nothing virtual about this award. Bravo!

NEW INDUCTEES...Congratulations to SCS undergraduates: James Cheney, Scott Hansma, Katherine Smith, and Aaron Wesiberg, who were inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society during the Fall 1997 term. And honors to Andrew Zimdars, who was inducted into Phi Kappa Phi.

NEW AWARDS...Katia Sycara has been awarded a contract under the DARPA Agent-Based Systems initiative to continue her work on the RETSINA (Reusable Environment for Task Structured Intelligent Network Agents) multi-agent infrastructure. The goal of the project is to develop reasoning techniques and coordination protocols to enable multiple heterogeneous agents to adaptively coordinate for planning, information gathering and execution in open environments. RETSINA has already been used to develop various multiagent applications (e.g. the WARREN financial portfolio management system, the THALES satellite visibility tracking system) and recently released its software for agent interoperation through middle agents. For additional details on the project, please visit: /www.cs.cmu.edu/~softagents/

BIRNBAUM SPEAKS AT SCS DISTINGUISHED LECTURE...Joel Birnbaum, Senior Vice President for Research and Development, Hewlett-Packard Company, and Director, HP Laboratories, examines "After the Internet" at the next SCS Distinguished Lecture on Thursday, February 26 at 4:00 pm in Wean 7500 (distinguished donuts at 3:45 pm).

SCS INVITED SPEAKERS...Maxine Eskenazi will serve as an invited expert at the AATOLL (Assessing and Advancing Technology Options for Language Learning) Symposium sponsored by the University of Hawaii and the ORD. She will discuss "Issues in the use of speech recognition for foreign language tutors". The symposium will also assess all available commercial software and setting new assessment standards in the field.

AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING THIS SUMMER?...The SCS Short Courses: A Week of Continuing Education for Professionals, are scheduled for June 22-26, 1998. Held in partnership with GSIA, the week-long program provides "practitioners in the field of Computer Science an exciting opportunity to blend current practices and methodologies with real-world professional experiences." Held on campus, the program affords experienced professionals working in the fields of robotics, multimedia computing, machine learning and discovery, web technologies, networking and software engineering a chance to discuss latest practices and state-of-the-art concepts with faculty/staff from CMU and other leading universities and with respected distinguished leaders in priviate industry. Visit /www.cs.cmu.edu/summer/~shortcourses for details or contact Ann Papuga for registration information.

EMIGRATION CONTINUES...Learn from the master! Takeo Kanade will assess "How to Write a Proposal" at the next CS Emigration Course on Friday, March 6 from 1:00-3:00 pm in Wean 5409.

ALL THINGS BABELED...Robert Frederking was interviewed by NPR's "All Things Considered" for a story on "Online Translation", featured February 12. Babelfish, a new online translation service offered by Alta Vista, provides free translation of English text into German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. It also reverses the process, "rendering" those languages into English. Robert was among those discussing the progress that has been made in machine translation. Work being done in SCS was noted several times. The story is linked to the NPR Web front page: http://www.npr.org/.

IN THE NEWS..."A very easy place to die: Metorites eluded a search team from CMU in Antarctica last month. Life-threatening weather did not", was featured in the Science & Environment section of the February 23 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Among the lessons learned by robograds Liam Pederson and Matthew Deans in Antarctica last month: "how much electricity can be generated by solar panels, how to navigate by sun's position on the horizon, and how to revive a frozen laptop computer by warming it over a stove!" Both students were among the team gathering information to assist them in the design of meteorite-hunting robots. The project members, drawn from the FRC and NASA, will be developing solar-powered robots that search for meteorites for eight weeks each Antarctic summer. Read on. Copies are available from scstoday@cs.

FACULTY MEETINGS...
**CS Faculty Meeting: Thursday, February 26, 12:15 pm, Wean 4623.
**HCII Faculty Meeting: Wednesday, February 25, 12:00 pm, Wean 4623.

GIVE ME A BREAK...Mid-Semester Break is scheduled for Monday, March 2. No classes will meet, but there will be no interruption in normal business hours. Regular class schedules resume Tuesday, March 3. Behave :-)

SCS STAFF AWARDS...Don't forget, nominations are due Friday, February 27!

WORDS FOR THOUGHT...
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25
**POP Seminar: Gary Lindstrom, "The Ubiquitous Module", 3:30 pm, Wean 8220. **HCI SEMINAR: Peter Lucas, Maya Design, "Information Architecture and Cyberspace: An Ecological Approach to Technology Design", 3:30 pm, Wean 5409.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27
**CALD SEMINAR: Bill Skaggs, Assistant Professor, Department of Neuroscience, University of Pittsburgh and Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, "The Biology of Reinforcement Learning". The seminars are held every Friday from 12:00-1:30 in Porter Hall 100. From the organizers, "Bring a lunch, we will provide sodas and cookies."
**ROBOTICS SEMINAR: Ian Davis, Activision, "Interactive Entertainment & Robotics: Shall We Play a Game?", 3:30 pm, Adamson Wing (refreshments 3:15 pm).

MONDAY, MARCH 2
**CULTURAL EXCHANGE SEMINAR: David Johnson, "Routing in Networks of Wireless and Mobile Hosts", 3:30 pm, Wean 5409.

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