August 7, Vol. 25, No. 5                                       

70 To Receive Degrees at Silicon Valley Sunday  
Stephen Hoover
Carnegie Mellon's Silicon Valley campus will hold its 12th graduation ceremony this Sunday, Aug. 10, when 70 students will receive their graduate degrees - 39 in software engineering and 31 in software management.  

The keynote speaker is PARC chief executive officer Stephen Hoover, who earned his master's degree (1989) and Ph.D. (1994) in mechanical engineering from Carnegie Mellon. PARC, a Xerox company, develops innovations and new technologies in collaboration with Fortune 500/Global 1000 companies, startups and governments. Hoover, who holds seven patents, leads PARC's business and research in several diverse areas, including networking, electronics, innovation services and intelligent systems.

Prior to Sunday's ceremony, students and faculty will present their research and projects during the campus' fifth annual Tech Showcase. Posters and demos of research projects are presented to guest judges and prizes are presented for the best work.

Learn more.
 

Flippin' Cool Tool Manipulates Photos in 3-D  
Editors of photos routinely resize objects and move them up, down or sideways, but Carnegie Mellon researchers are adding an extra dimension to photo editing by enabling editors to turn or flip objects any way they want, even exposing surfaces not visible in the original photograph.

This 3-D manipulation of objects in a two-dimensional photograph is possible because 3-D models of many everyday objects - furniture, cookware, automobiles, clothes, appliances - are readily available online. The research team led by Yaser Sheikh, associate research professor of robotics, found they could create realistic edits by fitting these models into the geometry of the photo and then applying colors, textures and lighting consistent with the photo.

Objects that can be manipulated in photos also can be animated; the researchers demonstrated that an origami bird held in a hand (pictured above) can be made to flap its wings and fly away, or a taxi cab shown in a street scene can levitate, flip over and zip off into the heavens.

Learn more. 
 
Weighing the Milky Way    
Does the Milky Way (right) look fat in this picture? Has Andromeda (far right) been taking skinny selfies?

It turns out the way some astrophysicists have been studying our galaxy made it appear that the Milky Way might be more massive than its neighbor down the street, Andromeda.

Not true, says a study by an international group of researchers, including Matthew Walker of Carnegie Mellon's McWilliams Center for Cosmology.

In the study, they demonstrate a new, more accurate method for measuring the mass of galaxies. Using this method, the researchers have shown that the Milky Way has only about half the mass of the Andromeda Galaxy.

Learn more.

See something? Say something. Help ensure the safety and well-being of the CMU community by calling:

University Police: 412-268-2323
Ethics Hotline: 1-877-700-7050

 Calendar Highlights 

 This issue features:

Chuck Bartel
Erica Fuchs

Sue-mei Wu, Gang Liu and Haixia Wang

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