Lecture Previews

Martin S. Gaynor: Health IT Seminar

Monday at 1:30 p.m.

Gates Hillman Complex 6115

Carnegie Mellon economics and health policy professor Martin S. Gaynor will deliver a lecture titled “Introduction to the Health Care Cost Institute: What to Do with Five Billion Health-Care Records.”

The lecture will discuss the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI), which compiles comprehensive health care claims data for the privately insured. HCCI will analyze the data and make it available for selected scientific studies.

Gaynor is the chair of the governing board of HCCI. His research focuses on the economics of health care markets and organizations, and has been published in many scientific journals.

Gaynor has worked with many divisions of the U.S. government and other national governments. In 1996, he received the Kenneth J. Arrow Award for health economics.

Henry Hornbostel Lecture: Tatiana Bilbao

Monday at 6 p.m.

Carnegie Library Lecture Hall

Tatiana Bilbao runs a multidisciplinary design firm that focuses on architectural design. Her studio analyzes urban and social crises, and uses them as design tools to open up niches for cultural and economic development.

Although the firm is based in and largely designs for Mexico, it has also created buildings and exhibitions in China, Spain, France, and the U.S. Bilbao was the recipient of the Emerging Voices 2009 prize from the Architectural League of New York.

Daniel Eisenstein

Tuesday at 4:30 p.m.

Mellon Institute Auditorium

Harvard professor of astronomy David Eisenstein will deliver the physics department’s annual Buhl lecture.

This year’s lecture is titled “Dark Energy and Cosmic Sound.” Eisenstein will speak about the acceleration of the universe’s expansion.
According to Eisenstein, the sound waves that propagated in plasma during the first million years of the universe provide an observational test for the phenomenon of expansion acceleration.

Over the last decade, his research has specifically focused on the development of the baryon acoustic oscillation method to measure cosmic distance.

Eisenstein is currently the director of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III.

Dennis C. Blair

Wednesday at 12:15 p.m.

Gates Hillman Complex 4307

Dennis Blair, a retired Navy admiral, will deliver a lecture titled “Getting Cyber Security Policy Right.” Blair served as the Director of National Intelligence from January 2009 to May 2010.

As part of his job, he oversaw 16 national intelligence agencies. He was in charge of a large budget and provided important intelligence support to the president, Congress, and field agencies.

Blair has also served as the chief executive officer of the Institute for Defense Analyses.

He also served in the Navy for 34 years prior to his retirement in 2002.