Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering Hosts Fourth Annual Washington Speaker Series

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Jun 04, 2010, 09:50 ET

PITTSBURGH, June 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Carnegie Mellon University's Pradeep K. Khosla will moderate a distinguished panel of information communication technology (ICT) experts from 7 to 8 p.m., Thursday, June 10 at the fourth annual Washington Speaker Series at the Cosmos Club at 2121 Massachusetts Ave. N.W. in Washington, D.C.

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The panel discussion, titled "The Globalization of ICT: Evaluating the Role and Responsibility of the Digital Citizen," will feature Alec Ross, senior advisor for innovation at the U.S. State Department; Phillip J. Bond, president of TechAmerica and World Information Technology and Services Alliance; Jeffrey E. Ganek, chairman and chief executive officer of Neustar, Inc.; Rebecca MacKinnon, visiting fellow at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy and co-founder of Global Voices Online; and Romain Murenzi, a visiting professor at the University of Maryland's Institute of Advanced Computer Studies. Prior to the panel discussion, Jon M. Peha, chief technologist at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and a Carnegie Mellon professor in the departments of Engineering and Public Policy and Electrical and Computer Engineering, will speak about the challenges facing today's digital consumers.

"Innovation in technology and information communication technology, coupled with expansive demand for broadband use, will continue to accelerate global economic growth, and we must be able to maximize, harness and control this high-speed communication infrastructure," said Khosla, dean of Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering, the Philip and Marsha Dowd University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and founding director of Carnegie Mellon CyLab. "Because the Internet is a universal networked space, we need to understand the importance and impact this ubiquitous digital information technology communication highway plays in both economic development and sound public policy."

Panel members will outline some of the key issues now faced by Internet users. MacKinnon, for example, will call for the creation of "a global netizenship movement to address the policy challenges of preserving and protecting human freedom on the global Internet."

Carnegie Mellon's Washington Speaker Series is a nonpartisan forum designed to enhance meaningful exchange among business, government and research leaders through an exploration of issues at the intersection of policy, technology and innovation. The series is sponsored by the university's College of Engineering, which is recognized as a top 10 engineering school by U.S. News & World Report.

For additional information about the series, please see www.cit.cmu.edu/alumni/speaker_series.

About Carnegie Mellon: Carnegie Mellon (www.cmu.edu) is a private, internationally ranked research university with programs in areas ranging from science, technology and business, to public policy, the humanities and the fine arts. More than 11,000 students in the university's seven schools and colleges benefit from a small student-to-faculty ratio and an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. A global university, Carnegie Mellon's main campus in the United States is in Pittsburgh, Pa. It has campuses in California's Silicon Valley and Qatar, and programs in Asia, Australia, Europe and Mexico. The university is in the midst of a $1 billion fundraising campaign, titled "Inspire Innovation: The Campaign for Carnegie Mellon University," which aims to build its endowment, support faculty, students and innovative research, and enhance the physical campus with equipment and facility improvements.