On Monday, November 30, you are invited to attend a free taping on campus of the CNBC special program, Meeting of the Minds. The program will feature leading manufacturing executives and CNBC host Maria Bartiromo. For free tickets to this show, go to cmutickets.cnbc.com to register. The show will begin at 6:30 p.m. on November 30 in Wiegand Gym in the University Center. Audience members are asked to arrive at 4:45 p.m. News Release

Customizing Electric Cars For Cost-Effective Urban Commuting!
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute have converted a 2001 Scion xB into an electric commuter vehicle that will serve as a test bed for a new community-based approach to electric vehicle design, conversion and operations. The vehicle is part of a new research project, ChargeCar, headed by Illah Nourbakhsh, associate professor of robotics. News release; also see Pittsburgh Post-Gazette feature.

Jim Whitehurst, president and CEO of Red Hat Inc., dedicated the Red Hat Computer Laboratory in the Gates Center and presented a special talk about how Red Hat has built an S&P 500 business using open source as a business and organizational model. News release

Developing the new Google Wave!
Seth Covitz is a software engineer at Google developing Google Wave, an online tool that combines live conversation with documentation. It's one of the most talked about tech developments in years — with some speculating it will eventually replace email. As a software engineer on the product, Covitz credits Carnegie Mellon with helping him succeed at Google on a daily basis. Read Carnegie Mellon story

A Carnegie Mellon team will be competing at the World Finals of the Association for Computing Machinery’s International Collegiate Programming Contest in China next year, but it won’t be the Tartans. Judges of the East Central North American Regional Programming Contest say they misjudged one of the problems, mistakenly disallowing a solution to Problem B. Once the correction was made and points re-tallied, they proclaimed a team from the University of Waterloo as the champions and awarded second place to the Carnegie Mellon Dragons, a team consisting of sophomore Si Young Oh, junior Yun Dong "Stanley" Yeo, and senior Dan Schafer, all computer science majors. News brief

Next week is Global Entrepreneurship Week. This year, Carnegie Mellon University has an array of events scheduled on campus dedicated to fostering the entrepreneurial spirit of our community. Project Olympus is one of the organizers and sponsors. Check out the calendar of events to see all events at a glance with dates, times, and locations.

Light a Light for Randy: Professor Randy Pausch inspired millions through his work and “Last Lecture,” including the tens of thousands of individuals like you who purchased a DVD of his lecture. In celebration of his life and legacy, Carnegie Mellon University dedicated the Randy Pausch Memorial Bridge in his honor. Dedication and Lighting Information

An iPhone application that turns the Apple phone into a translator that converts English speech into Spanish, or vice versa, is now being sold by Jibbigo LLC, a startup company launched by Alex Waibel, professor of computer science and language technologies at Carnegie Mellon University.

News release

Eric P. Xing, associate professor of computer science, machine learning and language technology, is one of 38 scientists and engineers chosen for funding through the U.S. Air Force’s highly competitive 2010 Young Investigator Research Program. News Brief.