Dietrich College News

Dietrich Prepares Students with Grand Challenges

All first-year students at Dietrich College are required to take a Grand Challenge Seminar, a course offering students an interdisciplinary deep-dive into complex global problems like climate change, food insecurity and racism.

Read about two fall 2024 seminars co-taught by instructors across the humanities and social sciences.

Ramdas Receives Presidential Early Career Award

Aaditya Ramdas, associate professor with joint appointments in the Statistics & Data Science and Machine Learning departments, has been awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest accolade bestowed by the U.S. government on early career scientists and engineers. 

Read more about Ramdas' work.

Neuroscience Institute Spurs Collaboration, New Discoveries

The Neuroscience Institute (NI) brings together interdisciplinary expertise to understand and improve brain function in both healthy and diseased brains, invent and apply the next generation of neural technologies and tools, and educate the next generation of neuroscience leaders.

Read more about the exciting research conducted at the Neuroscience Institute.

CMU Students Create Inclusive Programming at UPMC Children's Hospital

Kiyono Fujinaga-Gordon, assistant teaching professor of Japanese studies in the Department of Languages, Cultures & Applied Linguistics, worked with undergraduate students to create programming for UPMC Children’s Hospital’s closed-circuit television station for patients and their families.

Learn how CMU students are using their language and cultural skills for good. 

Faculty Spotlight: Shihong Huang

Shihong Huang, teaching professor in the Information Systems Program, uses software engineering to improve how humans and systems cooperate symbiotically to carry out tasks with mutual adaptation to optimize performance.

Read more about Huang’s work and her goals for the next generation of scholars.

Upcoming Events

• Humanities Center Inaugural Event: Join us in celebrating the opening of the Humanities Center 2.0 on Tuesday, Feb. 25 at 12:30 p.m. in the Cohon University Center's Connan Room. Register for the Humanities Center event.

• Faculty Dialogues Dinner: Join Dr. Edda Fields-Black, professor in the Department of History, as she shares her never-before-seen research and interpretations of Harriet Tubman's life and legacy, including Tubman's role in one of the most dramatic events of the Civil War. Dinner will take place on Thursday, Feb. 27 at 6 p.m. in Baltimore, MD. Register for dinner with Fields-Black.

• Alumni Events: From cherished, in-person Carnegie Mellon traditions to virtual learning experiences with researchers at the cutting-edge of their fields, CMU offers a variety of events for alumni to connect with each other and the university, expand their knowledge and networking opportunities, and make memories together. Explore alumni events.

Dietrich College Alumni: Be a Part of Research!

Dietrich College's Department of Social and Decision Sciences is at the forefront of the field of behavioral economics, and we need your help to stay on the cutting edge. George Loewenstein, a long-time CMU professor and one of the founders of the field of behavioral economics, is looking for alumni to participate in one to three 15-minute online experiments per year. He is especially looking for alumni who graduated between 2018 and 2024, but any and all are more than welcome.

Current topics include curiosity, intergenerational understanding, persuasion, attention, memory, meaning and diverse aspects of public policy.

Alumni interested in participating are encouraged to register for the study online.

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