Advisory Board

Ed Barr has served professionally for over 25 years in various marketing, fund development, and management positions. In his last position he served as Vice President of Marketing for Allegheny University Medical Practices, and he has served as a marketing and development consultant to for-profit and non-profit organizations such as Davison Design of Pittsburgh, the Varsity Health Plan of the Sarasota, Florida, the Byzantine Catholic Seminary of Pittsburgh, Genuity Group, The YMCA of Pittsburgh and Renewal, Inc. He is also a partner in the communication firm, Linchpin Learning, whose clients include Cognizant, among the largest outsourcing firms in the world. Professor Barr has taught full time since 2000 in the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management and in the Master of Information Systems Management program, both at Carnegie Mellon University. He also teaches executives through the University of Pittsburgh's Katz Executive Education Center.

Chris Labash teaches business communications and strategy in the Masters in Information Systems Management program at Carnegie Mellon University. Most recently a cofounder of Linchpin Learning, his deep background spans advertising, branding, communications, education, management consulting, marketing, and strategy development. He has co-founded three companies, worked for two major advertising agencies, for one of the world's largest training and development companies, and with many startups and nonprofits. Chris’ research interests center on how forms of electronic engagement apply to different audiences, and on how future technologies will impact the dynamics of workforce communication.

Philip Lehman is Senior Vice President at iCarnegie, Inc, an educational subsidiary of Carnegie Mellon University, where he leads business development, sales, and marketing activities. iCarnegie provides curriculum, degrees, and services "powered by Carnegie Mellon" to educational institutions worldwide. Dr. Lehman has spent more than twenty years in the software industry in Pittsburgh, principally in early- and medium-stage businesses. He was a "Day One" executive at Transarc Corporation (later acquired by IBM), where he started both the distributed file systems and services businesses. He also served as the Services Executive for IBM's Transaction Systems software business.

Matthew T. Mason is on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is presently Professor of Computer Science and Robotics, and Director of the Robotics Institute. His research interests are in robotic manipulation, including manufacturing automation, mobile manipulation, and robotic origami. He is co-author of “Robot Hands and the Mechanics of Manipulation” (MIT Press 1985), co-editor of “Robot Motion: Planning and Control” (MIT Press 1982), and author of “Mechanics of Robotic Manipulation” (MIT Press 2001). He is a winner of the System Development Foundation Prize, a Fellow of the AAAI, and a Fellow of the IEEE.

Jack Mostow is a Research Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Robotics, Machine Learning, Language Technologies, and Human-Computer Interaction, and serves on the Steering Committee for the doctoral Program in Interdisciplinary Educational Research. In 1992 he founded Project LISTEN to develop an automated Reading Tutor that listens to children read aloud. Project LISTEN won the Outstanding Paper Award at the Twelfth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence in August 1994, a United States patent in 1998, inclusion in the National Science Foundation's "Nifty Fifty" research projects in 2000, and the Allen Newell Medal of Research Excellence in 2003. After earning his A.B. cum laude in Applied Mathematics at Harvard and his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon, Dr. Mostow held faculty positions at Stanford, University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute, and Rutgers. He has served as an Editor of Machine Learning Journal and of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, as Program Co-chair of the 1998 National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, and as invited keynote speaker at the 2004 meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics. In 2007 he was elected to the Executive Committee of the International Society for Artificial Intelligence in Education.

Ian G. Rawson, Ph.D., CHE serves as chairman of Hôpital Albert Schweitzer (HAS) Haiti. The hospital is a model for health care organizations in developing countries, and provides health care and community health and development for more than 300,000 people in Haiti’s central Artibonite Valley. Dr. Rawson previously served as president of the Hospital Council of Western Pennsylvania, president of AmeriNet Central, and as a senior manager with Allegheny Health, Education and Research Foundation and Allegheny General Hospital. He is an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University and three other Pittsburgh area universities and serves on numerous community health organization boards. Dr. Rawson holds a Ph.D. in medical anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh and a master’s degree in political science from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. He also attended the Harvard University School of Public Health’s executive program in health planning and management.

Raj Reddy is Dean Emeritus, Mozah Bint Nasser University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics of the School of Computer Science, and founder of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. A native of India, Professor Reddy is renowned for his research in the study of human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence, and is responsible for launching numerous international collaborations. His career has been distinguished by numerous honors, including a Turing Award, the "Nobel Prize of Computing," and the French Legion of Honor.

Mel Siegel is a faculty member in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science. His research and teaching focuses on sensing in difficult environments, stereoscopic displays, and human-computer interactions. He has received the IR-100, an award identifying the 100 most significant inventions of the year, three times. He is a Fellow of IEEE, and is active in the IEEE Instrumentation & Measurements Society. Dr. Siegel taught physics and mathematics as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana and remains active in Peace Corps alumni organizations involved in sustainable development projects.

Anthony Stentz is a faculty member in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, and Associate Director of the National Robotics Engineering Consortium, the technology transfer arm of the Robotics Institute. He is responsible for developing and transferring robotics technologies to U.S. companies in the mining and agriculture industries. Dr. Stentz is renowned in automation for outdoor, mobile machines.

Charles E. "Chuck" Thorpe is Dean of Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar. He is a renowned researcher in developing outdoor robotic vehicles. A Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Dr. Thorpe spent much of his early career in remote areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), remains fluent in its native languages of Lingala and French, and retains many contacts there.

Manuela M. Veloso, Professor of Computer Science, is a member of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. She is a Fellow of AAAI (American Association for Artificial Intelligence), was awarded an NSF Career Award and the Allen Newell Medal for Excellence in Research, and was recently elected as Program Chair of the 2007 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, to be held in Hyderabad, India. Professor Veloso, a native of Portugal, is a pioneer in planning and artificial intelligence research, a leader in robotics and computer science education, and a strong supporter of exploring the role of technology in sustainable development.

Jeannette M. Wing is a Professor of Computer Science and Head of Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. Professor Wing’s general research interests are in the areas of specification and verification, concurrent and distributed systems, and programming languages. Her current focus is on foundations of trustworthy computing, specifically software reliability and security. Professor Wing is a member of many national and industry boards, including the National Academies of Sciences’ Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) Networking and Information Technology (NITRD) Technical Advisory Group, Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board, and Intel Research Pittsburgh’s Advisory Board. She is a Member-at-Large on ACM Council. She is an ACM Fellow and IEEE Fellow.