Jeff Han Steals The Show At Nvision '08

Jeff Han, founder of Perceptive Pixel and a computer scientist at New York University, recently stole the show at Nvision 08 as he demonstrated his interface-free, touch-driven computer screen. Here's an article about it and if you'd like to see Mr. Han demonstrating the screen, click here.

We are hoping to get a video interview with Mr. Han and perhaps a personal demonstration to post on this blog so check back!

Perceptive Pixel, Inc. was founded by Jeff Han in 2006
as a spinoff of the NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
to develop and market the most advanced multi-touch system in the world.

NYU Student-Alumni Mentoring Event

Please join fellow NYU alumni and students for an open house to share your career advice, practical tips, and the secrets to your success. Come and enjoy refreshments and get acquainted with students who need and want mentors, and share with them valuable input that will help them to achieve their goals and shape their future.

Your participation is needed to help create a warmer, stronger alumni-student community at NYU. Alumni who attended this event last year had a wonderful time and made valuable connections with students. We hope we can count on you to do the same this year. Below are the details for this great event:

September 3
6:00-8:00PM
Jeffrey S. Gould Welcome Center
50 West Fourth Street (at Washington Square Park East)

For more information please email Melissa Davison at melissa.davison@nyu.edu and say you saw this on our blog.

KTLA Anchor Cher Calvin (CAS, '97)

Cher Calvin (CAS,'97) anchors the "KTLA Morning News," and is a 2005 Emmy Award recipient. She has also picked up three Golden Mike Awards for KTLA, two for Best Public Affairs Program, "Access LA" and one Golden Mike for the "KTLA Morning Show".

Born and educated in the US, Cher took up broadcast journalism in New York University and began her career at the news desk of TIME Magazine while completing her internship at Cable News Network (CNN) in New York. She was eventually offered a part-time job at CNN, and continued working at TIME and CNN simultaneously until she moved to Manila to have her taste of Philippine broadcast journalism.

You can read a recent interview with Ms. Calvin published in the Asian Journal Online by clicking here.

Galaxy Craze (GSAS, '97)

Galaxy Craze's new novel, Tiger, Tiger, picks up where her previous novel By The Shore ends.

GALAXY CRAZE received a BA from Barnard College and attended the NYU creative writing program on a full scholarship from The New York Times. Born in London, she currently lives in New York City. She is the author of By the Shore, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for best debut.

Click here to read an article in today's LA Times about Ms. Craze.

Upcoming Events: NYU Women's Initiative

October 7
6:30–8:00 PM
The Grey Art Gallery
100 Washington Square East

The NYU Women's Initiative Presents
The Poetics of Cloth: African Textiles / Recent Art
This dynamic exhibition will compare and contrast traditional textiles with contemporary paintings, sculpture, photographs, and videos by leading African artists, illuminating the connections between past and present. These stunning works will demonstrate how African artists from different countries and backgrounds share a common engagement with one of the most fundamental and traditional forms of African art.

We hope you can join us for this wonderful event.
Click here for more information and here to register for the event.

In The Land of No Right Angles

Daphne Beal(GSAS '98)has published her debut novel, In The Land of No Right Angles, which chronicles the friendship between a Nepalese woman and an American woman. A former editor of the New Yorker, she has also done editorial work for Artforum and The Chinati Foundation's publication Art and the Landscape. She is married to the writer Sean Wilsey.

Click here to get more information on Daphne Beal and In The Land of No Right Angles, and here's a recent interview with Ms. Beal, published in the New Jersey Star Ledger.

"Off The Beaten (Subway) Track" by Suzanne Reisman (CAS, '97)

Tired of visiting the same NYC attractions? Well have we got a treat for you! Let us introduce you to Suzanne Reisman (CAS, '97) who is today's guest blogger and sent in the following entry:

NYU is a top ranked university, and one of its many attractive features for students, faculty, and staff is that it makes use of the greatest campus in the world: New York City. When I decided to attend NYU in 1994, I had every intention of returning to my hometown of Chicago after graduation. Yet after living in New York for only three years, I found that it was impossible to leave. In my subsequent 11 years as a full-time New Yorker, I explored the City diligently, looking for the things beyond the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, and Central Park that make New York what it is. The resulting book is Off the Beaten (Subway) Track: New York City's Best Unusual Attractions (Cumberland House Publications).

NYU's Washington Square campus is not only surrounded by cool little museums, like the Ukrainian Museum (check out the pysanka, known in English as Easter eggs), the Forbes Galleries (most impressive toy collection ever), and the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (self-explanatory), but it's central location allows for the easy implementation of what I call the "subway road trip." Subway road trips are city-dwellers a low carbon footprint way to go see some unusual sites, just like one might do on a typical road trip, but not requiring the use of a car. Off the Beaten (Subway) Track offers 101 sites that are easy to get to using the subway and/or bus from around NYU.

For example, one might head over to Union Square and jump on the #4 train to the Bronx. The intrepid explorer can debark at Burnside Avenue and head over to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. On the way to this leafy, bizarre monument to 100 "great Americans," you'll pass by Aqueduct Walk, a portion of the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail, on your way to the Bronx Community College campus. (This was originally the campus of NYU, which is responsible for the Hall of Fame.) Contemplate the various busts that represent each Hall of Famer, then hike up University Avenue (or jump back on the #4 train) to Kingsbridge Rd. Just west of the subway station is the 258th Field Artillery Armory, reputedly the World's Largest Armory. Sadly, the fantasy castle-like building is in horrific disrepair, but hopefully some day it will be restored and usable by the community. Continuing east on Kingsbridge Road, you will arrive at Edgar Allen Poe's cottage. Yes, right in the center of Grand Concourse sits a cottage which contains the bed Poe's wife Virgina died in! This is also where the great poet wrote Annabell Lee, Eureka, and The Bells. Return to NYU by hopping a downtown D train to West 4th Street.

For more subway road trip ideas, pick up a copy of Off the Beaten (Subway) Track online or at the NYU Bookstore.


Thanks so much Suzanne. We have our own office copy of this fabulous book and are looking forward to navigating the unusual attractions uncovered by Suzanne. Why not pick up a copy this weekend and start exploring?

Courant Team Creates iBird

Have you always wanted to experience the feeling of flying through the air like a bird? Well now you can, thanks to a group of students and faculty at the New York University Media Research lab who have created the iBird, a "bird-flight simulator" that gives one the sensation of flying through a virtual world without ever leaving the ground. Click here to see a video demonstration and here for more information about the simulator.

"Don't Tell A Soul", A New Thriller By Author David Rosenfelt (Heights '70)

David Rosenfelt (Heights, '70), the author of a legal mystery series, has written his first stand-alone thriller, "Don't Tell a Soul", currently in bookstores. He has also written three television movies, including the TNT movie Deadlocked, starring Charles Dutton and David Caruso. Mr. Rosenfelt and his wife began the Tara Foundation in 1995, an organization named after their golden retriever that rescues dogs. For more information on Mr. Rosenfelt please visit his website by clicking here.

Francis Tuoti (Heights '52), Still Riding

Francis Tuoti(Heights '52) is the oldest member of greater Danbury's Hat City Riders motorcycle club. The Hat City Riders motorcycle club is open to anyone interested in riding, regardless of age, race, gender or type of bike.

Click here to read an article by Tiffany Citroen about Mr. Tuoti and his passion for riding, published in The News Times.

Marcus Jackson (GSAS '06)

Marcus Jackson's (GSAS '06) poem, "Mary at the Tattoo Shop," was published in the July 21, 2008 edition of the New Yorker. To read the poem click here and click here to read a recent article on Mr. Jackson.

"At Home with Their Books"

There's a wonderful article in today's New York Times on the incredible mural, At Home with Their Books, by artist Elena Climent. The mural, measuring 30 ft. wide by 10 ft. high and comprising six panels, is the artist’s largest work to date. It is read from left to right and depicts intimate scenes of the spaces in which famous writers from New York City composed their well-known novels, poems, or essays, presented in chronological order. The writers are Washington Irving, Edith Wharton, Zora Neale Hurston, Frank O’Hara, Jane Jacobs, and Pedro Pietri.

If you would like to come to campus to see the mural it is housed in NYU's Languages and Literature Building, 19 University Place ( at E. 8th St.). It's truly an amazing work of art and we know you will enjoy it.