Awards & More

Pitt computer science professor Diane J. Litman, director of Pitt’s Intelligent Systems Program and a senior scientist in Pitt’s Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC), has been granted senior member status in the inaugural class of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). One of only nine members to be so honored, Litman was awarded the status in recognition of her achievements and long-standing efforts in the field of artificial intelligence as well as for her long-term participation in AAAI. She was accorded the honor in August in San Francisco at the 25th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

Lisa Nelson, a professor in the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, has been appointed to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. The committee works with the DHS Privacy Office as policy advisors on emerging privacy issues surrounding new technologies. Nelson joins members of the private sector and academia on the 20-member board that meets four times a year in Washington, D.C. Nelson specializes in science, technology, and society. She was coprincipal investigator on a National Science Foundation grant to explore societal perceptions of biometric technology; the results of the research were published in America Identified: Biometric Technology and Society (MIT Press, 2010).

An online collection guide at the University of Pittsburgh that outlines the comprehensive Helen Clay Frick Foundation Archives received second place in an annual regional competition. The Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference presented the award to project archivists Matthew Yount and Alesha Shumar of the University’s Archives Service Center, which is part of Pitt’s University Library System. Yount and Shumar worked over the course of six years to process the Helen Clay Frick Foundation Archives, which contains material reflecting the business and financial activities of Helen Clay Frick’s father, coke and steel magnate Henry Clay Frick.