December 20, 2011
GlobalPittsburgh, formerly the Pittsburgh Council for International Visitors, honored the School of Computer Science’s Project Olympus at its annual awards dinner for Olympus’ role in hosting visiting delegations. Senior Business Adviser Kit Needham worked with GlobalPittsburgh to create entrepreneurial events for global visitors.

December 16, 2011
Carnegie Mellon students and the Snackbot robot are featured in a new Pittsburgh promo for ABC’s Good Morning America.

December 14, 2011
Project Olympus director Lenore Blum talks to the Financial Times about supporting student entrepreneurship in a story and video about Pittsburgh’s efforts to reinvent itself.

December 14, 2011
Add Mechatar to the list of hot holiday toys with a CMU pedigree. See Pop City’s story on how Pittsburgh’s Bossa Nova Robotics and Schell Games are combining robotic toys with online games.

December 8, 2011
Video of the Entertainment Technology Center’s Building Virtual Worlds Show can now be viewed as streaming video or downloaded at the BVW 2011 web site.

December 7, 2011
My Keepon, the toy version of the therapeutic research robot used by Robotics Institute PhD alum Marek Michalowski and the winner of the 2010 Smiley Award, is featured in a Wall Street Journal article on popular holiday toys. The toy is manufactured by British toy maker Wow! Stuff in partnership with Michalowski’s BeatBots LLC, a Project Olympus Probe project.

December 2, 2011
Serkan Piantino, who earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science at Carnegie Mellon, will lead Facebook’s New York City engineering office when it opens next year. Piantino previously managed the engineering team behind Facebook's News Feed and built the infrastructure behind Timeline. He currently manages the engineering teams that power Facebook Messages and Chat. He joined Facebook in Palo Alto in 2007.

December 1, 2011
NASA has selected Astrobotic Technology Inc. to develop robotic teams to explore extensive caves on Mars, the Moon, and other planetary destinations. Through a subcontract to Carnegie Mellon University, the research will build on multi-robot and subterranean robot research pioneered at CMU to improve capabilities and reduce risk of failure relative to single-robot missions.

December 1, 2011
Nominations for the 5th Annual Smiley Award are open through 20 January 2012. The award recognizes student innovations in technology-assisted person-to-person communication.