CELEBRATE TAKEO'S UNIVERSITY PROFESSORSHIP... Congratulations to Takeo Kanade on his appointment as the U.A. and Helen Whitaker, "UNIVERSITY" Professor of Computer Science and Robotics. In honor of this wonderful accomplishment, a reception will be held on Monday, April 13 from 3:00-5:00 pm in the Singleton Room (Roberts Hall). Stop by and help us celebrate!

OUTSTANDING PAPER AWARDS...Two out of three "Outstanding Paper Awards" at this year's AAAI conference went to members of the SCS community. The recipients are Justin Boyan and Andrew Moore for their work on a new learning algorithm STAGE, and Sebastian Thrun and his former group at the University of Bonn for their work on the interactive museum tour-guide robot. For Sebastian and his group, this paper was one of five at AAAI this year!

AND MORE AWARDS...Sebastian Thrun, Reid Simmons, and Pradeep Khosla have been awarded a contract under the DARPA Tactical Mobile Robotics initiative to pursue research on distributed mapping, planning and execution for teams of mobile robots. They have also won a related contract in conjunction with Draper Labs and RWI, on collaborative system design for tactical mobile robotics. So watch your step when you enter Wean Hall: There could soon be robots all over the place!

THESIS PROPOSAL...PARAG BATAVIA takes heed of "Driver Adaptive Warning Systems" at his robotics thesis proposal on Tuesday, March 31 at 11:00 am in FRC 100. His committee includes: Chuck Thorpe (Co-Chair), Dean Pomerleau (Co-Chair), Illah Nourbakhsh, and George Bekey (University of Southern California).

CS DEPARTMENTAL MEETING...Don't forget! Members of the CSD are invited to the CS Departmental Meeting on Thursday, April 2 at 4:00 pm, Wean 7500. Refreshments will be served at 3:45 pm outside the room. Awards will be distributed, departmental updates offered, and your questions answered.

IN DEFENSE...BRIAN NOBLE successfully demonstrated "Mobile Data Access" at his CS thesis oral on March 27. His committee included: M. Satyanarayanan (Chair), Dan Siewiorek, Hui Zhang, and Randy Katz (University of California at Berkeley).

SCS INVITED TALKS...Manuela Veloso was the "Speaker of Honor" at the March 19 dinner honoring women in science and engineering. Held on campus, the audience of over 130 individuals were reminded of the many and varied accomplishments of some remarkable community members.

RI FACULTY CANDIDATES...Martin R. Stytz, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Air Force and Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Air Force Institute of Technology finds The Virtual SpacePlane", on Friday, April 3 at 10:00 am in Wean 4623.

CS FACULTY CANDIDATES... Michael Mitzenmacher, Digital Systems Research Center, spins up "Tornado Codes, with Applications to Reliable Multicast" on Monday, April 6 at 10:00 am in Wean 4623.

1998 MOBOT CLINIC...On Wednesday, April 1, a Mobot Clinic is schedule for all Mobot Race participants (and prospective participants) from 12:00 to 2:00 pm on the race course in front of Wean Hall. The 2-hour clinic enables contestants to run the course under actual race conditions, with members of the Mobot Steering Committee on hand for technical, logistical and development advice. Come by and test out your vehicle! The Mobot Finals are scheduled for Friday, April 17 during Spring Carnival Weekend. All members of the CMU community are welcome to attend or enter a vehicle. More details are available at /www.cs.cmu.edu/~mobot or from mobot@cs.cmu.edu.

CMRI INVITES YOU TO DRIVE A SIMULATOR...Faculty, staff and students are invited to test out the new technology emerging from the Driving Research Center. Test Drive the Mark II Mobile Driving Simulator, a device that mimics the full motion and sounds of a car in multiple driving scenarios. The Mark II, provided by CMU's research partner, I-SIM, is only part of the event. CMRI researchers will also outline plans for the installation of a high tech truck simulator at the Driving Research Center and discuss the anticipated economic benefits from this effort. The campus briefing takes place Thursday, April 2, 10:30-11:30 am, the Connan Room, University Center. Individual simulator test drives, lasting 5-10 minutes, are scheduled for Thursday, April 2 from 12:30 pm - 4:30 pm and Friday, April 3 from 9:00 am - 4:00 pm, in the loading dock area outside of the University Center.

SPECIAL AI SEMINAR...Murray Campbell (CS PhD '87) returns to campus on Tuesday, March 31 for the AI Seminar. He examines "Deep Blue: The IBM Chess Machine", at 3:30 in Wean 5409. His talk examines the factors involved in Deep Blue's successes and raises some of the "many" questions about machine and human intelligence prompted by last year's victory.

SCS DISTINGUISHED LECTURES...Rework your calendars. The next SCS Distinguished Alumni Lecture is scheduled for Thursday, April 16 and features Jim Mitchell, Sun Fellow and Vice President of Architecture & Technology, JavaSoft. On Wednesday, April 29, Alan Kay, Disney Fellow and Vice President, Research and Development, Walt Disney Imagineering, will deliver the SCS Distinguished/Hank Wan Memorial Lecture. Both talks are scheduled for Wean 7500. Watch for details!

EMIGRATION COURSE...The next CS Emigration Course is scheduled for Friday, April 3 from 1:00-3:00 pm. Entitled "Working In Industry", this panel discussion includes a distinguished group of visitors, including Vijay Saraswat (CS '89) from At&T Research, Alfred Spector from IBM, John Wilkes of HP Laboratories; David Garlan, and others. Don't miss this one!

OF SPECIAL NOTE...Hank Pellerin, currently a high-school student, spent last summer visiting Roger Dannenberg's lab. He produced the paper, "Determining the unique characteristics of an authentically produced trumpet note in context", exploring how to make music synthesizers sound more like acoustic instruments. Hank presented his research at the South Carolina Junior Academy of Science (SCJAS), in the computer science/mathematics division, where he won first place in both the written paper and oral presentation categories. He also won a special award from the South Carolina Association of Mathematics Teachers. Bravo to our summer alum!

BRUEGGE SIGHTINGS...Many of you have seen Bernd Bruegge "popping up" in the hallways over the past few months. He has accepted a full-time position as a Professor of Applied Software Engineering at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen. He does, however, retain an appointment in CS and is making regular monthly appearances in the department. If it seems like you are seeing him according to a lunar calendar, that's about how often he is coming in :-)

IN THE NEWS...Astro Teller was the featured author of "Smart Machines, and Why We Fear Them", appearing in the March 21 New York Times OP-ED section. As he noted, "the cultural definition of artificial intelligence -- or AI, as it is known -- goes something like this: 'AI is the science of how to get machines to do the things they do in the movies'. No wonder the subject makes some people nervous." He adds, "The popular media portray AI as one of the heights of human accomplishment, but also as an inevitable catalyst for the downfall of our species." Now that you are intrigued. Copies are available from scstoday@cs.

COMMENCEMENT CHECK-LIST...
*Have you ordered your cap and gown? April 3 is the due date for campus orders (late-orders will be accepted until April for those of you now off-campus).
*Did you pick up your commencement program guidebook from your academic program office?
*Have you sent in your rsvp to your program administrator or commencement@cs?
*Do you know when commencement is :-)
*Check out /www.cs.cmu.edu/~alumni/commencement98.html for more details.

WORDS FOR THOUGHT...
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1
**HCI SEMINAR: Peter Brusilovksy, HCI Institute, "Adaptive Navigation Support in Hypertext and Hypermedia", 3:30 pm, Wean Hall 5409.

THURSDAY, APRIL 2
**SPECIAL SEMINAR: William Tetzlaff, Distinguished Engineering and Senior Manager, Systems Technology at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center (Hawthorne) looks at the "Video Server Disk Assignment and Scheduling", 11:00 am, Wean 4625. To schedule an appointment to meet Bill or Ram Chillarage, contact copetas@cs.cmu.edu. They are interested in talking with graduate students considering career options at IBM.
**SDI SEMINAR: Vijay Saraswat (another CS Alum!), AT&T Laboratories, "The World of Community", 12:00 noon, Wean Hall 8220. To schedule an appointment to meet Vijay, contact heartherm@cs.cmu.edu.

FRIDAY, APRIL 3
**ROBOTICS SEMINAR: Jean Ponce, Department of Computer Science and Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "Grasping and Manipulation: Geometry and Algorithms", 3:30 pm, Adamson Wing.

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