News 2020

October 2020

HCII's Rivera Receives Dissertation Fellowship

Byron Spice

Michael Rivera, a Ph.D. student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, is one of just six recipients of a dissertation fellowship sponsored by Google Research and the Center for Minorities and People With Disabilities in Information Technology (CMD-IT). The fellowship, established in 2019 by Google and CMD-IT's Diversifying Future Leadership in the Professoriate (FLIP) Alliance, supports students from groups that traditionally have been underrepresented in computer science. The Google CMD-IT FLIP Fellowships are to be used in a recipient's in final year for completing their dissertation requirements. Rivera's research combines human-computer interaction, materials science and digital fabrication. His dissertation work addresses how soft materials can be integrated into 3D printing processes to create personalized and interactive objects. After completing his Ph.D., Rivera plans to become a university professor. The FLIP Alliance is sponsored by the National Science Foundation and aims to increase the diversity of the computing professoriate in research universities. The alliance includes the 11 universities that produce the largest numbers of computer science research faculty, including Carnegie Mellon University.

SCS Celebrates New Professorships

Byron Spice

A trio of distinguished School of Computer Science faculty members — Christos Faloutsos, Mor Harchol-Balter and Katia Sycara — formally received professorships during a virtual celebration on Thursday, Oct. 22. "The onset of the pandemic forced us to delay and modify the usual ceremonies that accompany these professorships, but our appreciation for the academic excellence and service to the school of these three faculty members is in no way diminished," said SCS Dean Martial Hebert. Faloutsos, a professor in the Computer Science Department, received the Fredkin Professorship in Artificial Intelligence. His interests include large-scale data mining with an emphasis on graphs and time sequences, anomaly detection, tensors, and fractals. He came to CMU as visiting faculty in 1997 and joined CSD a year later. An Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) fellow and an Amazon Scholar, Faloutsos has served on the executive committee of the ACM Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD). He has earned numerous research and teaching awards, including the SIGKDD Innovations Award and the Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery Data Mining Distinguished Contributions Award.

Even Our Language Is Polarized

Byron Spice

It's not news that U.S. politics are highly polarized or that polarization affects cable news channels. But researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, using computer translation tools in an unprecedented way, have found that even the meanings of some words are now polarized. Everyone is speaking English, they said, yet the computer analysis of social media discussions shows viewers of different news channels are, in a sense, speaking different languages. Based on millions of user comments on the YouTube channels for four leading cable news outlets, it seems that viewers of right-wing outlets think of "Burisma," in the same way that their left-wing counterparts think of "Kushner." A "protest" to one set of viewers is a "riot" to another. For one, it's a "mask," to another, a "muzzle." "Black Lives Matter" (BLM) in CNN English is equivalent to "All Lives Matter" in Fox News English. Even more extreme, some right-wing news viewers use "BLM" in the same context as left-wing news viewers use "KKK" (Ku Klux Klan). "Some of these so-called misaligned pairs seem pretty obvious," said Mark S. Kamlet, University Professor of Economics and Public Policy. "But it's surprising how different some of them are. It gives you a sense of the really tragic polarization that exists today." Modern machine translation methods determine the meaning of a word based in large part on context — the other words that it usually appears closest to in texts. "Hello" in English and "hola" in Spanish are identical greetings and, thus, appear in the same context in different languages. Ashiqur KhudaBukhsh, a project scientist in the School of Computer Science's Language Technologies Institute, said the idea behind the new research was to use the same method to analyze the polarization of social media. The goal was to find different English words that are used in the same context by people speaking different news languages. For instance, a conservative might say "Democrats are the greatest threat to America today," while liberals might say "Republicans are the greatest threat to America today." Democrats and Republicans are used in the same context, making them misaligned pairs and an indication of political polarization. To perform their analysis, the researchers used a data set of 86.6 million comments by 6.5 million users to more than 200,000 news videos from CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and One America News Network (OANN). The software completes the analysis automatically, without human intervention. "We think our method is powerful because it's efficient," KhudaBukhsh said. "You don't have to read millions of comments. But if you know that 'mask' translates into 'muzzle,' you immediately know a debate is going on surrounding freedom of speech and mask use." In addition to detecting these misaligned pairs, the method also calculates the degree of similarity between the "languages." In a four-way analysis of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and OANN, words translated from MSNBC English to CNN English had a 63% similarity, while words translated from MSNBC English to OANN English had just a 42% similarity. The researchers also compared the comments of viewers of CNN, Fox News and MSNBC with more than 4 million comments by viewers of late night comedians Trevor Noah, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and John Oliver. They found words translated from Fox News English to comedian English were 75% similar, while words translated from CNN English to comedian English were 83% similar. Doing the same analysis by hand would be impossible, said Kamlet, who holds joint appointments to the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy and the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. "We use a standard statistical package that takes each word and maps it into a 100 dimension space," he explained. "Obviously, you might be able to do cross tabs by hand. But even with cross tabs, you're talking about millions of comments." The research team includes Tom Mitchell, Founders University Professor; and Rupak Sarkar, research engineer for a fall 2020 seminar course on tracking political sentiments using machine learning taught by KhudaBukhsh, Kamlet and Mitchell. Their paper has been submitted to a computer science conference and is available at arXiv.

SCS Students Chosen as Finalists in Collegiate Inventors Competition

Byron Spice

An idea for creating augmented reality (AR) overlays by exploiting the status lights on everyday appliances such as routers, power strips and parking meters has landed a pair of Carnegie Mellon University computer science Ph.D. students in the finals of the 2020 Collegiate Inventors Competition. Karan Ahuja and Sujeath Pareddy, both pursuing degrees in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII), will present the AR concept, called LightAnchors, to final-round judges in a virtual format on Wednesday, Oct. 28, at the National Inventors Hall of Fame in North Canton, Ohio. Results will be announced on Thursday, Oct. 29. With LightAnchors, a user can obtain information about a device simply by pointing a smartphone's camera at it. Information such as the guest login code for a router, the privacy policy of a security camera or the parking rate for a parking meter would appear as an overlay on the smartphone screen. The concept was developed with HCII faculty members Mayank Goel and Chris Harrison and HCII alumnus Robert Xiao, who is now an assistant professor of computer science at the University of British Columbia. Whereas similar AR concepts have used QR codes or other markers to track objects, LightAnchors takes advantage of existing LED lights and light bulbs on a device, allowing the system to anchor the information overlay on the device. If the status lights are connected to a microcontroller — either existing in the device or added at minimal cost — the lights also can be used to transmit encoded information to the smartphone. "You can blink these lights in a way that's imperceptible to humans," Ahuja said. "They can blink to tell you whatever information you want." The research team first presented their work a year ago at the ACM User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) Symposium. It remains an active research project, Ahuja noted. "The vision is pretty big, so we are actively exploring different facets of it," he added. For instance, they are looking at using Bluetooth beacons and other nonlight sources as additional spatial anchors for the system. Pareddy said they are also working on ways to use lenses to increase the data rates possible with the status lights and are trying to make it a "plug-and-play" system that will be easier for people to implement. The Collegiate Innovation Competition is particularly attractive, they said, because the judges include a number of influential inventors. "It's basically a great opportunity to get recognition to propel your idea to a commercial platform," Ahuja said. Neither he nor Pareddy are ready to forsake their academic studies to pursue a startup, he added, "but we hope to drive collaboration to make it into an industry standard and push it out to the world." Voting for the People's Choice Award of the Collegiate Inventors Competition continues through noon ET on Wednesday, Oct. 28. You can show your support for the LightAnchors team by voting on the competition's website.   

Five SCS Seniors Named ACS Scholars

Byron Spice

Five School of Computer Science seniors have been selected as Andrew Carnegie Society Scholars for 2021. The award recognizes their academic excellence; volunteerism; leadership; and involvement in student organizations, athletics or the arts. Parmita Bawankule, Pranav Kumar, Arnav Mahajan, Stephen Price and Chloe Yan are among 40 students from across the university selected for this honor. Each scholar receives a monetary award from the society to support their academic and personal growth. Bawankule, a computer science major from San Jose, California, has been involved in both SCS4ALL and Women @ SCS for the past three years, leading meetings, organizing social and orientation activities, and serving as a Women @ SCS Big Sister. She has been a teaching assistant for 15-251, head teaching assistant for 15-151, and has had three internships. Kumar, a CS major from Houston, Texas, has been the head teaching assistant for 15-122 for multiple semesters and has completed various internships. A member of Student Senate, he serves on the Campus Life committee. He is a member of CMU OM, a South Asian club, and is involved in the Robotics Club. Mahajan, a CS major from Troy, Michigan, has excelled in both coursework and research in the the Robotics Institute and Human-Computer Interaction Institute. He was one of two presidents of the Robotics Club as a junior, and has served on the Student Senate and its Communications committee. He's also volunteered with CMU's Habitat for Humanity chapter. Price, a computational biology major from Houston, Texas, has completed four semesters of research in the Department of Psychology and has won awards at medical hackathons sponsored by Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pittsburgh. He has attended the Out for Undergrad (O4U) conference and advocated for LGBTQ+ students in STEM, serves as a campus emergency medical technician, and is the founder and first president of the undergrad Computational Biology Society. Yan, a CS major from Singapore, has helped her fellow students as an EXCEL leader with SCS Academic Development and as a teaching assistant. She joined Alpha Phi Omega, the national service fraternity, to volunteer in the community. She also played on the varsity women's basketball team.

Guide Helps Startups Incorporate Ethics Into Business Plans

Byron Spice

Founders of new ventures may spend most of their time creating business plans, perfecting new technology and contracting with suppliers, but it behooves them to also think about how to treat employees fairly, design and market their products ethically, and be transparent with investors. To help founders establish these ethical values early and determine how they will act on them, Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab has developed a guide for use by business accelerators and other organizations promoting startups. Written by Jessica Pachuta and Dror Yaron, both research staff members at CMU's Robotics Institute, the guide, "Making Ethics Practical in Startup Spaces," helps founders anticipate ethical dilemmas and tradeoffs before they are faced with making difficult or irreversible decisions. "It's hard for a lot of young businesses to access formal ethics training," Pachuta said. "Most people in startups don't have time to stop and read Aristotle." She and Yaron embedded themselves last year in Innovation Works' AlphaLab Gear accelerator, working with eight of its companies to develop a guide that is practical and accessible. It's available online, but is designed for use by a facilitator, not as a self-help tool. Operating within an accelerator, such as AlphaLab Gear, provides accountability as founders think hard about what values really matter to them, she explained. "We have been proud to partner with CMU's CREATE Lab to pilot this ethics guide in our accelerator programs, AlphaLab and AlphaLab Gear," said Jim Jen, chief operating officer of Innovation Works. "Developing a company foundation and culture based on an ethical framework is critical for startups as they face numerous challenges in interacting with customers, partners, investors and employees as they grow and scale their companies." Building ethics into the day-to-day operations of a business isn't just a matter of doing good, but of being competitive, Yaron said. That's particularly true in recruitment, he added, noting that employees appreciate and seek out employers they can trust. "People will accept pay cuts to work at a place they believe in," Yaron said. The guide doesn't prescribe a set of ethical practices, but includes exercises that lead founders to identify their top priorities and create a plan for putting those values into action. The Hillman Foundation and the Benedum Foundation supported the CREATE Lab in developing the business ethics guide.

Carnegie Mellon Heads New Center for Studying Structure of Cell Nucleus

Byron Spice

Carnegie Mellon University will direct a new multi-institution research center funded by the National Institutes of Health to develop a better understanding of the three-dimensional structure of cell nuclei and how changes in that structure affect cell functions in health and disease. Jian Ma, the lead principal investigator of the new center and an associate professor in CMU's Computational Biology Department, said researchers will be developing fundamental knowledge to provide new insights into the role that the three-dimensional organization of cell nuclei plays in developmental disorders, aging and other cell processes. The five-year, $10 million effort is formally called "Multiscale Analyses of 4D Nucleome Structure and Function by Comprehensive Multimodal Data Integration." It is funded through the 4D Nucleome (4DN) program of the NIH's Common Fund, which sponsors research of broad relevance to the NIH's many specialized research institutes. In addition to CMU, the center will include researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC); Harvard Medical School; San Diego Biomedical Research Institute; Brown University; the Allen Institute for Cell Science; the University of Dundee; and the National Cancer Institute. A growing body of research shows that the cell nucleus is highly compartmentalized, and that this spatial phenomenon relates to cell function. But scientists don't yet understand how a type of structure in the nucleus called nuclear bodies tug and tether with the chromosomes that carry the genetic code, as well as other biomolecules such as RNA and proteins. "The spatial organization of the chromosomes in the nucleus, especially the dynamic interactions with nuclear bodies, is critical but we don't have a complete picture of it yet," Ma said. "Our plan is to generate multimodal data, such as imaging as well as genomic data, and develop advanced machine learning algorithms and integrative structure models to make sense of it." The goal is to find causal relationships between the large-scale spatial genome structure and genome function, such as gene transcription and DNA replication. Once assembled, those multimodal data sets, including the multiscale navigable reference maps of nuclear organization — and the new computational tools and visualization platform created to make sense of them — will be made widely available to the research community, he added. Other principal investigators for the multidisciplinary center are Frank Alber of UCLA, Andrew Belmont of UIUC and Chao-ting Wu of Harvard Medical School. Co-investigators include David Gilbert of San Diego Biomedical Research Institute, Nicola Neretti of Brown, Susanne Rafelski of the Allen Institute for Cell Science and Jason Swedlow of Dundee. Tom Misteli, NIH Distinguished Investigator at the National Cancer Institute, is also part of the center. This work is supported by the NIH under award number 1UM1HG011593.

Sandholm Named Among Top 100 Entrepreneurs

Byron Spice

Goldman Sachs has named Tuomas Sandholm, the Angel Jordan University Professor of Computer Science, one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2020. Sandholm was cited for his role as founder, president and CEO of Strategy Robot Inc., a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff that applies game theory, artificial intelligence and optimization to military, war gaming, force design, portfolio planning, course-of-action creation, security, intelligence, cybersecurity, world stability and policy challenges. "For over 150 years, Goldman Sachs has supported entrepreneurs as they launch and grow their businesses," said David M. Solomon, chief executive officer of the financial services company. "That's why we are pleased to recognize Tuomas Sandholm as one of the most intriguing entrepreneurs of 2020." Sandholm has been pioneering computational game theory in his CMU laboratory for two decades. With his students, he has developed the leading solvers for many classes of game. They have created, for example, the first superhuman AIs for No-Limit Texas Hold'em, both for the two-player and multiplayer setting. The latter is the first superhuman gaming milestone in any game beyond two-player zero-sum games. He directs the Electronic Marketplaces Laboratory in the School of Computer Science and is co-director of CMU AI. He has launched a number of companies related to his research. Goldman Sachs announced Sandholm's selection during its Builders + Innovators Summit. The event, which this year takes place virtually, includes general sessions and clinics led by seasoned entrepreneurs, academics and business leaders as well as resident scholars.

COVIDcast Now Monitoring Daily U.S. Mask Use, COVID-19 Testing

Byron Spice

Nationwide trends in mask use, access to COVID-19 tests and test results are now being monitored by Carnegie Mellon University and shared publicly as part of a symptom survey distributed daily to Facebook users. Since April, CMU's Delphi Research Group has been collecting real-time data on self-reported COVID-19 symptoms nationwide, providing county-level information about the coronavirus pandemic that is updated continuously and available from no other source. The survey has now been expanded to include questions about how people are responding to public health recommendations, such as mask use, and whether people are getting the access to COVID-19 testing that they want. "Some of these topics were partially addressed by the original survey, but we knew that as the pandemic changed and public health priorities adapted, our survey had to change, too," said Alex Reinhart, assistant teaching professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science and a member of the Delphi group. Aggregated data from the survey is updated each day and shared publicly via the COVIDcast website. Data also is shared in greater detail with health researchers. Delphi uses the data to develop localized forecasts of COVID-19 activity. The University of Maryland has a similar effort, using a daily survey distributed by Facebook to gather international data on the pandemic. As part of its Data for Good program, Facebook distributes the surveys to a selection of its users each day. Facebook does not gather any information from users — CMU and the University of Maryland conduct the surveys off Facebook and manage the findings. More than a million U.S. residents have responded since CMU's expanded survey was deployed a month ago. Monitoring the prevalence of mask use and how it changes over time and in different locales will help CMU better understand where the virus is most likely to spread and what measures prove most effective in preventing its spread, Reinhart said. In New England, hit hard by the first wave of COVID-19 early this year, the survey shows that most people wear masks. Thus far, the lowest rates of mask use are in the central United States, such as North and South Dakota, where case rates are now rising rapidly. Questions have been added regarding COVID-19 testing — if people who want tests have access to them, whether people are testing positive and who is getting tested. "Our survey doesn't replace official public health reporting on COVID testing and case counts, but it can provide insights not available any other way," Reinhart said. "By providing these signals to the public, we hope to give researchers, public health officials and journalists the information they need to form a more complete picture of the pandemic." In its COVID-19 data gathering and forecasting efforts, CMU's Delphi research group is leveraging years of expertise as the preeminent academic center for forecasting influenza activity nationwide. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has designated the Delphi group as one of two National Centers of Excellence for Influenza Forecasting. At the CDC's request this past spring, the group extended and adapted its flu forecasting efforts to encompass COVID-19.

Two SCS Students Win 2020 Google Ph.D. Fellowships

Byron Spice

Abdelkareem Bedri and Anjalie Field, Ph.D. students in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute and Language Technologies Institute, respectively, have received 2020 Google Ph.D. Fellowships. They are among 53 recipients this year worldwide. The Google Ph.D. Fellowship Program recognizes outstanding graduate students doing exceptional and innovative research in areas relevant to computer science and related fields. In addition to providing tuition and a stipend, the program matches each fellow with a Google research mentor. Bedri's research has focused on tracking physical activity and calorie intake, striving to make food tracking "as easy as tracking footsteps." He has built wearable devices powered with machine learning models to automatically detect eating and drinking activity, help identify food types, and estimate consumption. Field's work focuses on developing social-oriented natural language processing (NLP) models. This has included research on detecting gender bias in social media and analyzing bias in narratives about the #MeToo movement. Her latest efforts involve a collaboration to analyze case notes written by social workers through the development of interpretable NLP models.

Astrobotic Delivers CubeRover to NASA for Testing

Byron Spice

The Pittsburgh space robotics company Astrobotic has delivered its CubeRover to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the robot will undergo a battery of mobility and drop tests in a simulated lunar terrain. Co-developed by Astrobotic and Carnegie Mellon University with input from a NASA Kennedy team, CubeRover is a small, light robotic rover designed as an affordable mobile platform for scientific instruments and other payloads to operate on the surface of the moon. "Because our CubeRover is so light — in the four-kilogram range — it dramatically reduces flight cost, making the moon more accessible to more customers," said Mike Provenzano, Astrobotic's director of planetary mobility. CubeRover is a commercial version of Iris, a CMU-built rover scheduled to land on the moon as early as next summer.

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