Professor Maja J. Matarić, a computer scientist at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering, has been awarded the the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM). Professor Mataric was recognized for her outstanding efforts in mentoring at all levels — K-12 students, students at USC, and young faculty colleagues. It is exciting to see mentoring acknowledged and rewarded at this level! Congratulations Maja! Read the White House announcement here.

The National Academy of Engineering has announced the newly-elected Members of the Class of 2011.  The nine new Members of Section 5 (Computer Science & Engineering) are: Susan Dumais, Microsoft Research Daphne Koller, Stanford University Hank Levy, University of Washington Jitendra Malik, UC Berkeley Nick McKeown, Stanford University Don Norman, Northwestern University Ari Requischa, University of Southern California Fred Schneider, Cornell University Mihalis Yannakakis, Columbia University In addition, Jonathan Rose (University of Toronto) was elected as a Foreign Associate. Quoting from the NAE:  “Members are elected to NAE by their peers (current NAE members). Election to membership is one of the highest professional honors accorded an engineer.  Members have distinguished […]

Lots of interesting stories this past week of relevance to the field: Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers On Tuesday, the White House announced the names of 85 early-career researchers who will receive the government’s highest honor for young scientists and engineers — the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). The PECASE awards were established in 1996 and are coordinated by the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Awardees are selected on the basis of their pursuit of innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology as well as their commitment to community service as demonstrated through scientific leadership, public education, or community outreach. […]

Our colleague Ed Felten, Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs and the founding Director of the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) at Princeton University, yesterday was named the first Chief Technologist of the Federal Trade Commission. He starts this full-time gig January 1, 2011. Ed, who has been advising the FTC as a part-time consultant, will add “unparalleled expertise on high-technology markets and computer security,” FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement announcing his hiring. “And he also will provide invaluable input into the recommendations we’ll be making soon for online privacy, as well as the enforcement actions we’ll soon bring to protect consumer privacy.” For more […]

Congratulations to Paul Debevec — Research Associate Professor & Associate Director of Graphics Research at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies — who won an Academy Award earlier this year for his breakthrough lighting technology work! The Academy of Motion Pictures honored Paul with a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award for “the design and engineering of the Light Stage capture devices and the image-based facial rendering system developed for character relighting in motion pictures.” Paul shared the honor with colleagues Tim Hawkins of LightStage, LLC, John Monos of Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Mark Sagar of WETA Digital. The light stage technology Paul and his team developed has […]

Deborah Crawford, who recently left her position as NSF’s Deputy Assistant Director for CISE (Jeannette Wing’s right-hand person) to become Vice Provost for Research at Drexel University, will receive a 2010 Presidential Rank Award. The Presidential Rank Awards have been given annually by the President of the United States since the establishment of the government’s Senior Executive Service in 1978.  The Award honors high-performing senior career employees for “sustained extraordinary accomplishment.” This certainly characterizes Debbie, whose huge contributions to NSF, the computing research community, and the Computing Community Consortium will be sorely missed. Congratulations Debbie!