In the news

The Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Initiative on Innovation and Placemaking is a collaboration between the Brookings Institution and Project for Public Spaces to support a city-driven and place-led world. According to a new report from the Brookings Institute, “Pittsburgh’s innovation economy is strong and growing, but city leaders can do more with its existing assets to compete globally and capitalize on the region’s growing innovation clusters”.

 “Through targeted research and analytics, strategic advising and recommendations, and communications guidance, Brooking aims to help position Pittsburgh as one of the top 30 most innovative cities in the world”.

Recently at the inaugural Brookings Centennial Scholar, Bruce Katz brings a different type of integrated problem-solving to the issues arising from global urbanization and the challenges of a city-driven century. Bruce Katz “Capturing the Next Economy: Pittsburgh’s rise as a global innovation city”.

Linda A. Peteanu has been named head of Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Chemistry. She has served as acting head since January 2016 and succeeds Hyung Kim, who stepped down from the position in the fall of 2015 after serving 14 years as department head. A member of the Carnegie Mellon faculty since 1993, Peteanu is well known for her expertise in applying fluorescence-based methods, including microscopy and electric-field effects, to condensed-phase systems. One focus of her research involves measuring the morphology and electronic properties of molecules used to make light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and photovoltaic cells. Peteanu also applies fluorescence-based methods to the study of nucleic acids as a member of Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Nucleic Acids Science and Technology.

Renowned physicist Scott Dodelson has been named the head of the Department of Physics in Carnegie Mellon University’s Mellon College of Science.Dodelson conducts research at the interface between particle physics and cosmology, examining the phenomena of dark energy, dark matter, inflation and cosmological neutrinos.   
Under Dodelson’s leadership, the physics department will partner with other departments within the Mellon College of Science through a new theory center and continue to collaborate with colleagues in statistics, computer science, and engineering. Dodelson also hopes to increase the department’s partnerships with other universities and research initiatives worldwide and bring physics to the community through outreach programs.

When will we see electric trucks appear on major roadways? Potentially in September. Tesla is currently developing driverless, long-haul electric semi-trucks that can move in “platoons,” or closely knit packs. But some scientists, like Venkat Viswanathan, doubt that Tesla can fulfill its promises. According to Viswanathan, electric trucks are not economically feasible yet because they would require massive batteries to power their long distance road-trips across the country. “Your cargo [would] essentially become the battery,” he says in an article for the New York Times. And because of that, there would be little room to carry goods.

Chandralekha Singh was one of the two team leaders of the US delegation to the 6th International conference on Women in Physics (ICWIP) in Birmingham, UK, in July 2017. She is also a co-editor of the American Institute of Physics Proceedings for this ICWIP 2017 conference to be published in 2018. This picture of Dr. Singh is with Malala Yousafzai, a Nobel peace prize winner, who was a presenter at the conference and Shamima Choudhury, a Physicist from Bangladesh. 

The new Center for Research Computing (CRC), formerly known as the Center for Simulation and Modeling (SaM), is among the first in the nation to have access to Intel’s powerful new computing systems. The system will dramatically increase the speed of computation available to researchers through Pitt’s Center for Research Computing, said Ralph Roskies, associate vice provost for research computing.

In a joint experimental and theoretical study, Di Xiao and collaborators from several groups across the country and from China observed out-of-plane magnetism in a monolayer of chromium triiodide (CrI3). The study, entitled further described the dependence of the magnetic ordering on the number of layers in the material—bilayer CrI3 displays suppressed magnetization, whereas in trilayer CrI3 the interlayer ferromagnetism is restored. This thickness-dependent behavior is typical of van der Waals crystals. The findings are reported in an article entitled “Layer-dependent ferromagnetism in a van der Waals crystal down to the monolayer limit” that was published in this month’s issue of Nature. 

John Keith was among the Emerging Investigators in 2017 recommended by experts in the field of materials chemistry research in a themed issue of the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. His article “Computational investigation of CO₂ electroreduction on tin oxide and predictions of Ti, V, Nb and Zr dopants for improved catalysis” published in the issue outlines the work of Keith and his team on improving the performance of tin electrocatalysts for CO₂ reduction.

University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Patrick Gallagher brings up the challenge of climate change and defends the history of our city in a Science article entitled "Pittsburgh myth, Paris reality".

When announcing his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, President Trump reminded the world that, “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.” In doing so, he repeated a tired trope: that Pittsburgh is a rusty urban relic—a manufacturing city of steel that has fallen on hard times, held back by unfair global competition and onerous environmental regulation. But such a nostalgic version of Pittsburgh, and of many other communities across the country, is a myth. If the president truly wants to represent the interests of Americans, he would learn from the real histories of these regions and promote economic and environmental progress through research, education, and innovation.

Subra Suresh will resign as president of Carnegie Mellon University on June 30, making his tenure the shortest in the school’s 117-year history and placing it in uncharted waters as it seeks a new leader for the second time in less than five years.

In a letter Thursday to the CMU community, he wrote, “My wife Mary and I have reflected on the long-term commitment needed to implement the university’s strategic plan, and we feel Carnegie Mellon would be best served now by a president who is ready to make that extended commitment to generating resources and guiding the university toward reaching these objectives.”

Mr. Suresh has been at CMU for four years.