ML IC Schedule

ML Faculty Ziv Bar-Joseph receives $1.2 million from the National Institutes of Health. The aim of the proposed research program is to develop and experimentally test new computational methods for reconstructing dynamic regulatory networks. The methods would be used to study response programs and diseases in several species.

James Kuffner, associate professor of robotics, and Seth Goldstein, associate professor of computer science, are being featured in two episodes of the Discovery Channel series "NextWorld," which airs new programs at 8 p.m. each Wednesday. The "Future Intelligence" episode, which premiered Aug. 13, included segments on Kuffner's work on motion planning for humanoid robots and Goldstein's work on Claytronics programmable matter. Both also will appear in the "Extreme Tomorrow" episode, now slated to air Aug. 27.

A new Carnegie Mellon brain imaging study of dyslexic students and other poor readers shows that the brain can permanently rewire itself and overcome reading deficits, if students are given 100 hours of intensive remedial instruction. "This study demonstrates how remedial instruction can use the plasticity of the human brain to gain an educational improvement," said neuroscientist Marcel Just, director of Carnegie Mellon's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging (CCBI) and senior author of the study. "Focused instruction can help underperforming brain areas to increase their proficiency." Just says that the brain's capacity to adapt as the result of targeted instruction has the potential to influence the remedial learning process in other subject areas, far beyond improving literacy skills. Co-authors of the study are CCBI research fellows Ann Meyler and Tim Keller, Vladimir Cherkassky of the CCBI, and John D.E. Gabriel of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. News Release