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Carnegie Mellon will celebrate the life and legacy of Randy Pausch with a special memorial event at 4:30 p.m. September 22
September 22 Event will be Streamed Live on ABCNews.com
PITTSBURGH—Carnegie
Mellon University will celebrate the life of Professor Randy Pausch
with a special memorial event at 4:30 p.m., September 22. Pausch, a
beloved professor who became famous worldwide for his inspirational
“Last Lecture,” died July 25 at age 47 of pancreatic cancer.
“Remembering
Randy: A Celebration of the Life and Legacy of Randy Pausch” will
include recollections and tributes from a number of Pausch’s friends
and colleagues. Attendance in Rangos Hall of Carnegie Mellon’s
University Center will be by invitation only, but the entire event will
be streamed live on ABCNews.com. “We have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of affection
for Randy and the deep sense of loss felt by so many of the people who
came to know our friend and colleague over the past 11 months,” said
Jared L. Cohon, Carnegie Mellon president. “We wish we could
accommodate everybody who would like to attend this event, but the size
of even the biggest room on campus, not to mention our limited parking,
makes that impossible. By making live streaming video available, we
hope that everyone can join us as a virtual community.” The university is encouraging its schools and colleges to
organize their own gatherings of students, faculty and staff to watch
the webcast on ABCNews.com, and hopes that friends of Randy elsewhere
in Pittsburgh and across the country do likewise. The School of
Computer Science will host a webcast of the event in 7500 Wean Hall. Like the video of Pausch’s Sept. 18, 2007 lecture, video
of the memorial event will be posted soon afterward on the Carnegie
Mellon channels of YouTube and iTunesU. The video also will be
available at http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/LastLecture.
Information
about Pausch, his lecture and the Sept. 22 celebration is available at
www.cmu.edu/randyslecture. Links to the webcast on ABCNews.com also
will be available at this site.
Pausch, who earned his
doctorate in computer science at Carnegie Mellon in 1988, joined the
faculty with appointments in the Computer Science Department, the
Human-Computer Interaction Institute and the School of Design in 1997.
A popular professor who encouraged artistic and technical people to
work collaboratively, he was known in academia for co-founding the
pioneering Entertainment Technology Center and for creating the
innovative educational software tool known as “Alice.”
Pausch gained his greatest fame for his life-affirming “Last Lecture,”
which he delivered to his students and colleagues a few weeks after
learning he had just months to live. Intended as a roadmap for his
three young children, the talk included his insights on finding the
good in other people, working hard to overcome obstacles and living
generously. Video of the lecture has been viewed by millions of people
over the Internet and later was the basis for a book, “The Last
Lecture,” that became an international bestseller. He was the subject
of an hour-long ABC News Primetime special and appeared twice on the
Oprah Winfrey Show. ABC News declared him one of three “Persons of the
Year” for 2007 and TIME magazine named him to its list of the 100 most
influential people in the world.
Note to reporters, assignment editors: Media
access to Rangos Hall during the memorial service will be limited.
Journalists who are planning to cover this event must contact Ken
Walters or Byron Spice at Carnegie Mellon no later than September 17. About ABC News Digital: ABC News Digital includes
ABCNEWS.com, the 24-hour online news service of ABC News launched in
May 1997 and consistently ranked among the top news sites; ABC News
NOW, a 24-hour digital network that offers a wide range of live and
on-demand programming, is currently available to 44 million users
across cable, broadband and mobile. ABC News is available anytime,
anywhere on your mobile device: m.abcnews.com
Contact:
Byron Spice
412.268.9068
bspice@cs.cmu.edu
Anne Watzman
412.268.3830
aw16@andrew.cmu.edu
Ken Walters
412-268-1151
walters1@andrew.cmu.edu
Natalia Labenskyj, ABC News Media Relations
212-456-4396
natalia.a.labenskyj@abc.com
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cs.cmu.edu
