Jared Cohon has been president of Carnegie Mellon University since 1997. He came to Carnegie Mellon from Yale, where he was dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies from 1992 to 1997. He started his teaching and research career in 1973 at Johns Hopkins, where he was a faculty member in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering for 19 years. He also served as Assistant and Associate Dean of Engineering and Vice Provost for Research at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Cohon earned a B.S. degree in civil engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969 and a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973.

An author, coauthor, or editor of one book and more than 80 professional publications, Dr. Cohon is an authority on environmental and water resource systems analysis, an interdisciplinary field that combines engineering, economics, and applied mathematics. He has worked on water resource problems in the United States, South America and Asia and on energy facility siting, including nuclear waste shipping and storage. In addition to his academic experience, he served in 1977 and 1978 as legislative assistant for energy and the environment to the Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan, retired United States Senator from New York. President Bill Clinton appointed Dr. Cohon to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board in 1995 and appointed him as chairman in 1997. His term on the Board ended in 2002. President George W. Bush appointed Dr. Cohon in 2002 to his Homeland Security Advisory Council. He was also appointed as Chairman of the Council’s Senior Advisory Committee on Academia and Policy Research.

During his presidency, Carnegie Mellon has continued along its trajectory of innovation and growth. Priorities have included: undergraduate education; new interdisciplinary initiatives in information technology, biotechnology, environment, and the fine arts and humanities; diversity; international initiatives; and the economic development of southwest Pennsylvania. In recognition of the last of these, President Cohon shared “Pittsburgher of the Year” honors in 2001 with Mark Nordenberg, the Chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh.
 

Dr. Jordan is a University Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Robotics, Emeritus, and Provost Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon. He recently (2003 - 2004) was Acting Director and CEO of the Software Engineering Institute. He was Provost of Carnegie Mellon University from 1983 - 1991, after which he was the Keithley University Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon until 2000. While Provost, he was instrumental in the foundation of the Software Engineering Institute and in the formation of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science. Prior to becoming Provost in 1983, he was the Dean of Carnegie Institute of Technology (Carnegie Mellon’s engineering school) from 1979-1983 and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. While Dean, he was instrumental in the formation of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute. He was Head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1969 - 1979 and the Whitaker Professor of Electrical Engineering from 1972 - 1980.

Dr. Jordan's current research interests are in software engineering, focusing on technological change and technology transfer. He is also conducting research on technological innovation, management of technology, studies of the information and communications technologies industries, and advances in software engineering. Over the years, he has conducted research on semiconductor devices, integrated circuits, thin films, gas sensing devices and systems, environmental and biomedical instrumentation, intelligent sensors for robotics applications, and high-definition television. Dr. Jordan is the author of more than 200 research publications and numerous research reports. He has been a speaker at numerous conferences, seminars, and symposia in the United States and abroad. He has been a Member of the Board of Directors of a number of companies in the US and a Consultant to numerous companies in the US and abroad.

Dr. Jordan has many awards. Among them: Dr. Jordan is a Member, National Academy of Engineering, USA; Corresponding Member, National Academy of Engineering, Spain; Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is “Doctor Honoris Causa” from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain, and The Public University of Navarra, Spain.
 

In January 1991, Thomas J. Murrin was named Dean of Duquesne University's Business Schools. In June of 2000, Tom retired from Deaning to become a University Distinguished Service Professor. At Duquesne, he helped to develop innovative programs to distinguish its teaching, research and service — particularly in the increasingly important fields of Global Competitiveness, Advanced Technology and Economic Growth — while teaching a popular Graduate Course on Executive Insights into Contemporary Global Issues.

Earlier, Tom served for 18 months as Deputy Secretary of the U. S. Department of Commerce; nominated by President George Bush and confirmed by the U. S. Senate. At Commerce, Murrin was deeply involved in a variety of executive activities — including the 1990 Decennial Census; the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and its initial application within the Commerce Department; the modernization of the National Weather Service and the new Advanced Technology and Manufacturing Center Programs. As "Acting Secretary" for Secretary Mosbacher, Murrin attended Cabinet and other top level meetings with President Bush, Vice President Quayle and other senior Federal Government Executives.

After returning to Pittsburgh, he continued to promote Quality and Competitiveness initiatives as a member of the Executive Committee of the D.C.-based Council on Competitiveness and as a Board Member of several organizations, including the Duquesne Light Company and Motorola. He recently retired from these and other Boards; in line with their age policies. He was selected to chair Governor Ridge's "Technology 21" Program; the Pittsburgh Public School System Assessment Panel; the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative; and to serve on the Congressionally-sponsored National Workforce Commission on Information Technology.

During his earlier involvement with educational institutions, Murrin was Distinguished Service Professor of Technology and Management at Carnegie Mellon University; Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Duquesne University; a member of the Board of Trustees of Fordham University; and served on the National Board of "Communities in Schools". As part of Murrin's community activities in Pittsburgh, he led a successful fund-raising effort at Mercy Hospital where he was Chairman of the Board for nine years — and participated in similar efforts at Duquesne University and for the United Way.

Recruited to the Westinghouse Electric Corporation as a graduate student in 1951, Murrin initially worked as a manufacturing/materials engineer. Over the next 36 years, he served in various positions with Westinghouse — including European Manufacturing Representative, based in Geneva, Switzerland; Corporate Vice President of Manufacturing; Senior Vice President of the Defense and Public Systems Group; and President of the Public Systems Company. Murrin retired in 1987 as the President of the firms highly regarded Energy and Advanced Technology Group — an organization of 45,000 associates and nearly $5 billion in annual sales. As a member of the Westinghouse Management Committee from 1974 until retirement, Quality and Productivity Improvement were elevated to key corporate initiatives under his guidance. During his Westinghouse career, he traveled to more than 40 countries.

Building upon his extensive foreign travel and study of industrial operations, Murrin served on the Defense Policy Advisory Committee on Trade of the Department of Defense and was Chairman of DPACT's Subcommittee on Trade Relations with Japan. He was the first Chairman of two prestigious Advisory Committees to the Federal Government i.e., the Board of Overseers of the Commerce Department's Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, and DOD's Defense Manufacturing Board. Murrin was a member of the President's Commission on Industrial Competitiveness --- and Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Aerospace Industries Association.

A native of New York City — born to Irish and Scot immigrants and raised on Manhattan's East Side — Murrin received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Fordham University in 1951 where he was starting tackle under Coach Vince Lombardi. He has done graduate work at several universities — and is a Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering.

Tom Murrin gives invited talks on a variety of topics — and examples include:

"World-Class Manufacturing and Global Leadership" at Carnegie Mellon University's Symposium on "Future Opportunities in Computer Science and Information Technology"; "Workforce Development: Maximizing Competitiveness", at the Annual Meeting of the West Virginia Roundtable in Charleston;" "Change, and Keynote M.C. and Wrap-Up Panelist at AACSB's First National Economic Development Conference in Baltimore, MD. and — recently at Queen of angels Development Dinner; at Vincentian Academy'’s annual Convocation; at CMU’s Information Networking Institute Commencement and at St. Sebastian’s Fiftieth Anniversary Recognition.

Tom’'s current service activities include:

Airport Authority Board, Allegheny County: Committee Chair
Communities in Schools; Executive Committee
Doyle Center; Board Member
Holy Family Institute for Learning Abilities; Chairman
Mercy Hospital’s Foundation; Board Member
National Academy of Engineering; Member
New Century Careers Program; Chairman
Pittsburgh Gateways; Board Members
Pittsburgh Public school K-12 Team; Co-Facilitator
Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative; Chairman
Point Park College’s Business Advisory Council; Chairman
Robotics Foundry, Board Member

He was born on April 30, 1929 and is married to the former Dee Coyne of New York City. The Murrins have eight children and ten grandchildren and live in North Hills, Pittsburgh, PA.
 

Dr. Raj Reddy is the Herbert A. Simon University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He began his academic career as an Assistant Professor at Stanford in 1966. He has been a member of the Carnegie Mellon faculty since 1969. He served as the founding Director of the Robotics Institute from 1979 to 1991 and the Dean of School of Computer Science from 1991 to 1999.

Dr. Reddy's research interests include the study of human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence. His current research projects include Million Book Digital Library Project; PCtvt: 5-in-1 PC architectures for rural environments (PC, TV, PVR, Video Phone, Audio Phone all in one) for use by illiterate people; 100x100 Networks connecting 100 million homes with 100 mbps+ connectivity (with Prof Hui Zhang and others); RADAR - Webmaster Agent subsystem; MAX: Mobile Autonomous Robot Platform (with Dr Khalid Ali and Ajinkya Bhave); Learning by Doing (at Carnegie Mellon West)

He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was president of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence from 1987 to 89. Dr. Reddy was awarded the Legion of Honor by President Mitterand of France in 1984. He was awarded the ACM Turing Award in 1994. He served as co-chair of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 1999 to 2001.
 

David started his career at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute 25 years ago in conjunction with the birth of the Institute. In addition to his usual duties, he is the Director of the Robotics Institute's 25th anniversary event and hopes to welcome you back to campus to join the celebration.

David is a Principal Systems Scientist in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and has been researching Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Manufacturing Technologies for the last 25 years. David is the director of the Rapid Manufacturing Lab at Carnegie Mellon; which has built a large Flexible Manufacturing Cell for Westinghouse, the Intelligent Machining Workstation for the U.S. Air Force, and the Intelligent Bending Workstation for Amada (the largest sheet metal machine tool company). David has written over 70 papers in areas applying Artificial Intelligence to Manufacturing and holds nine patents in related areas. In addition, he co-authored the book Manufacturing Intelligence published by Addison Wesley and directed and produced a PBS short series on the topic of mass customization by applying high technology to manufacturing applications. David is also the current President and CEO of Design One Software, Inc

Robert Full completed his undergraduate studies at SUNY Buffalo in 1979. He also did his graduate work at SUNY Buffalo, receiving a master's degree in 1982 and a doctoral degree in 1984. He held a research and teaching post doctoral position at The University of Chicago from 1984 to 1986 during which time he did research at Harvard University. In 1986 he joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley as an Assistant Professor of Zoology. He was promoted to Associate Professor of Integrative Biology in 1991, and to Full Professor of Integrative Biology in 1995, a position he holds today. In 1996 he was given Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Award. In 1997 Professor Full became a Chancellor's Professor at Berkeley, awarded for "distinguished achievement of the highest level in research, teaching and service." In 1998 Professor Full received a Goldman Professorship for innovative teaching

The Age of Interdisciplinary Integration is upon us. Integrative biology is providing inspiration to disciplines such as animatronics, animation, mathematics, medicine, robotics and space exploration. In return, these disciplines supply biologists with novel design hypotheses, algorithms and measurement devices. One example is in the area of BioMotion. Comparing the remarkable diversity in nature has lead to the discovery of general principles. Animals are amazing at legged locomotion because they have simple control systems, multifunctional actuators and feet that allow no surface to be an obstacle. Extraordinarily diverse animals show the same dynamics - legged animals appear to bounce like people on pogo sticks. Force patterns produced by six-legged insects are the same as those produced by trotting eight-legged crabs, four-legged dogs and even running humans. Rapid running cockroaches can become bipedal as they take 50 steps in a single second and ghost crabs seem to glide with aerial phases. Yet, the advantage of many legs and a sprawled posture appears to be in stability. Mathematical models show that these designs self-stabilize to perturbations without the equivalent of a brain. Control algorithms appear embedded in the form of the animal itself. Muscles tune the system by acting as motors, springs, struts and shocks all in one. Amazing feet permit animals such as geckos to climb up walls at over meter per second without using glue or suction - just molecular forces. These fundamental principles of animal locomotion have inspired the design of computer animated creatures (A Bug's Life, Pixar), new control circuits, artificial muscles, self-clearing dry adhesives, and autonomous legged robots such as Ariel, Sprawl, RHex and RiSE built by the world's best engineers. Revolutionary technological advances in materials and manufacturing promise to make nature even a better teacher.

Sites:

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2002/09/rfull/rfull.html
http://polypedal.berkeley.edu/
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/shapeoflife/explorations/bio_full.html

Takeo Kanade is the U. A. and Helen Whitaker University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his Doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering from Kyoto University, Japan, in 1974. After holding a faculty position in the Department of Information Science, Kyoto University, he joined Carnegie Mellon University in 1980, where he was the Director of the Robotics Institute from 1992 to 2001.

Dr. Kanade works in multiple areas of robotics: computer vision, multi-media, manipulators, autonomous mobile robots, and sensors. He has written more than 250 technical papers and reports in these areas, and holds more than 15 patents. He has been the principal investigator of more than a dozen major vision and robotics projects at Carnegie Mellon.

Dr. Kanade has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (1997) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2004). He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the ACM, a Founding Fellow of American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and the former and founding editor of International Journal of Computer Vision. He has received several awards, including the C&C Award, Joseph Engelberger Award, FIT Award, Allen Newell Research Excellence Award, JARA Award, Otto Franc Award, and Marr Prize Award. Dr. Kanade has served on government, industry, and university advisory or consultant committees, including the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB) of the National Research Council, NASA's Advanced Technology Advisory Committee, the PITAC Panel for Transforming Healthcare Panel, and the Advisory Board of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

Mitsuo Kawato is the Director of the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories (CNS). For the past twenty years, he has been working in the field of computational neuroscience. His approach is that "we construct a brain in order to understand the brain, and we understand the brain through building a brain and to the extent that we can build a brain". More concretely, he has investigated the information processing of the brain with the long-term goal of enabling machines, either computer programs or robots, to solve the same computational problems as those that the human brain can solve, while using essentially the same principles.

From 1981 to 1988, he was a faculty member of Osaka University. In 1987 he became a university lecturer in the Department of Biophysical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering Science, Osaka University. In 1988 he entered ATR Auditory and Visual Perception Research Laboratories, Cognitive Processes Department, as a senior researcher. From 1992 he was department head of Department 3, ATR Human Information Processing Research Laboratories; at the same time, he was appointed as a project leader of Kawato Dynamic Brain Project, ERATO, JST. In 2004, he was appointed as a Research Supervisor of the ICORP Computational Brain Project, JST.

Ray Kurzweil is an inventor, entrepreneur, author, and futurist. Called "the restless genius" by the Wall Street Journal and "the ultimate thinking machine" by Forbes, Kurzweil's ideas on the future have been touted by his many fans, ranging from Bill Gates to Bill Clinton. MIT's Marvin Minsky writes that "with his brilliant descriptions of the coming connections of computers with immortality, Kurzweil clearly takes his place as a leading futurist of our time." George Gilder writes that "Kurzweil's ideas make all other roads to the computer future look like goat paths in Patagonia." Sun Microsystems Chief Scientist Bill Joy, whose own discussions of the promise and peril of technology have attracted worldwide attention, writes in his now famous Wired magazine cover story that "I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met Ray Kurzweil, the deservedly famous inventor of the first reading machine for the blind and many other amazing things." Stevie Wonder writes "Ray's technology and ideas have truly been among the sunshines of my life. Kurzweil's writings are a wonderful riff on the next century from a keen seer, a great inventor, and a good friend."

Kurzweil's most recent national best-selling book, The Age of Spiritual Machines (Viking), has received widespread acclaim. It has achieved the #1 status on Amazon in the categories of both science and artificial intelligence and has been published in nine languages. The New York Times writes, "Kurzweil's latest book ranges widely over such juicy topics as entropy, chaos, the big bang, quantum theory, DNA computers, quantum computers, Godel's theorem, neural nets, genetic algorithms, nanoengineering, the Turing test, brain scanning, the slowness of neurons, chess playing programs, the Internet – the whole world of information technology past, present, and future. Kurzweil's writings are for anyone who wonders where human technology is going next." Wired magazine writes, "Ray Kurzweil has a knack for spotting the next new thing. He has been charging into the future for nearly 40 years. He's best known for guerrilla assaults on conventional wisdom." John Casti of Nature describes Kurzweil's latest book as a "mind expanding account of the rise of intelligent machines. . . .nothing less than a blueprint for how to shove Homo sapiens off centre-stage in evolution's endless play. . . .If you buy into Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns – and all empirical evidence currently available supports it completely -- then the replacement of humans by machines as the primary intellectual force on Earth is indeed imminent."

Ray Kurzweil is widely regarded as one of the leading inventors of our time. TIME Magazine writes, "Kurzweil's eclectic career and propensity of combining science with practical – often humanitarian – applications have inspired comparisons with Thomas Edison." Kurzweil was the principal developer of the first omni-font optical character recognition (OCR), the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed, large-vocabulary speech recognition. These technologies continue today as market leaders in their respective industries, industries that Ray Kurzweil pioneered. Kurzweil has successfully founded and developed nine companies in OCR, music synthesis, speech recognition, reading technology, virtual reality, financial investment, medical simulation, and cybernetic art. Kurzweil's web site, KurzweilAI.net, is a leading resource on artificial intelligence, with more than 100,000 readers.

Ray Kurzweil received the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, the nation's largest award in invention and innovation, and was inducted in 2002 into the National Inventor Hall of Fame. He also received the 1999 National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor in technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony. He has also received scores of other national and international awards, including the 1994 Dickson Prize (Carnegie Mellon University's top science prize), Engineer of the Year from Design News, Inventor of the Year from MIT, and the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery. He has received twelve honorary Doctorates and honors from three U.S. presidents. He has received seven national and international film awards.

Kurzweil is a widely sought speaker and has given keynote presentations at many leading venues, including the Microsoft CEO Summit, the World Economic Forum, Pop!Tech, PC Expo, Business Week, The Council on Foreign Relations, SIGGRAPH, Cowen, TED, ICASSP, the American Psychiatric Association, Agenda, and many others. His presentations to diverse audiences combine wit and keen insight into contemporary issues of technology and its impact on society. His lectures often include appearances by "Ramona," his "virtual female alter ego," and other engaging demonstrations of cutting-edge technologies that Kurzweil and his teams have developed.

Kurzweil has written five books and hundreds of articles. In recent years, there have been hundreds of articles each year by or about Ray Kurzweil in leading publications, including most major national magazines. His first book, The Age of Intelligent Machines (MIT Press), was named Best Computer Science Book of 1990. This book, written in the late 1980s, has been acclaimed for its remarkably accurate predictions about the 1990s and early 2000 years. His new book Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever (Rodale Books), coauthored with Terry Grossman, M.D., describes the science behind radical life extension. Another book, The Singularity is Near, When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking), is due to be published in Spring 2005.

Robin Roberson Murphy received a B.M.E. in mechanical engineering, a M.S. and Ph.D in computer science in 1980, 1989, and 1992, respectively, from Georgia Tech, where she was a Rockwell International Doctoral Fellow. She is a professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of South Florida with a joint appointment in Cognitive and Neural Sciences in the Department of Psychology. Dr. Murphy is the author of over 70 publications in the areas of sensor fusion, human-robot interaction and rescue robotics as well as the textbook, Introduction to AI Robotics. She is Director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue at the University of South Florida, a recipient of an NIUSR Eagle Award for her participation at the World Trade Center, and is a member of the USAF Scientific Advisory Board and the DARPA ISAT.

Positions:

Boston Dynamics, President, 1992 - Present
MIT, Professor, EE&CS, 1986 - 1995
CMU, Associate Professor, CS & Robotics, 1981 - 1986
JPL, Staff Engineer, 1977 - 1980

Education:

MIT, Ph.D., 1977
Northeastern University, BSEE, 1973

Summary Experience:
Marc Raibert has been President of Boston Dynamics since 1992. The company develops dynamic legged robots and advanced human simulation tools for military and government applications. BigDog, Legged Robot Mule, and Chem/Bio sensors for RHex are ongoing robotics activities under Raibert's direction. The Human Simulation work at Boston Dynamics supports the US Army's Future Force Warrior and the US Marine MERS programs.

Before starting Boston Dynamics, Raibert was Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT from 1986 - 1993. Before that he was Associate Professor of Computer Science and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon. He first established the Leg Laboratory at Carnegie in 1981 and continued it at MIT from 1986 - 1995. The LegLab is known internationally for work on legged robots that move dynamically, balance, run, and jump. They include one-legged hoppers, biped runners, a quadruped, and two kangaroo-like robots. Two LegLab robots appeared in Rising Sun with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes in 1991. Several of Boston Dynamics' products are outgrowths of research done by Raibert's group at CMU and MIT.

Before joining CMU, Dr. Raibert was a member of the Technical Staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a Visiting Professor at CalTech.

Vernor Vinge is best known for his science-fiction stories, which  include True Names, Marooned in Realtime, A Fire Upon the  Deep, and A Deepness in the Sky. The last two items each won the  Hugo Award for best science fiction novel of the year. In 2002,  he was writer guest of honor at the World Science Fiction Convention  in San Jose, California. There he received another Hugo, this  time for his novella Fast Times at Fairmont High.

 Vinge holds a PhD(Math) from University of California, San Diego.  From 1972 to 2000 he taught in the Department of Math and Computer  Sciences at San Diego State University. He has now retired from SDSU  in order to write science-fiction full time.