Events and Exhibits

Big Ideas in Three Minutes: CMU Doctoral Students Share Research Shaping the Future

Carnegie Mellon University’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) pits doctoral students against the clock and each other to explain complex research and captivate their audience in just three minutes. Ten finalists will compete in the 2026 3MT Championship at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, March 25, in the Cohon University Center’s McConomy Auditorium. A livestream will also be available.

Related: Events and Exhibits, Research Assistance, Scholarly Communications

Love Data Week Photo Gallery

Each February, the Libraries celebrates Love Data Week as a way to recognize all of the ways the CMU community interacts with data in their research and beyond. This year’s Love Data Week, held Feb. 9–13, explored the theme “Where's the Data?” It encouraged participants to think about the journey of their data from collection to access to preservation.

Related: Events and Exhibits, Research Assistance, Open at CMU

Where Industry Meets Experimentation

For many biomedical researchers, the biggest challenges don’t begin with a lack of ideas — they begin with a lack of access. Health data is powerful but deeply sensitive, and collaborating across institutions, countries, or health systems often raises legal, ethical, and technical concerns. Yet solving today’s most urgent biomedical questions increasingly depends on working across those boundaries. To address this challenge, the University Libraries and NVIDIA brought students, researchers, and industry experts together for a three-day bioinformatics hackathon the first week of January. The goal was to explore how researchers can work together while keeping sensitive health data secure and decentralized — meaning the data stays where it is, rather than being copied into one central place.

Related: Open at CMU, Events and Exhibits

From Text to Artifact: Teaching the Constitution in the Renovated Posner Center

Associate Professor of History Scott Sandage is no stranger to the Carnegie Mellon University Special Collections. For several years now, he’s used the resources in the collections — specifically a rare printing of the U.S. Bill of Rights, one of only five extant copies — as a tool to help students engage more deeply in his course “U.S. Constitution and the Presidency.” Sandage’s class examines specific powers granted to the president by the Constitution, and how presidents like Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt expanded the powers of the presidency. The Bill of Rights is central to the class. But with the reopening of the newly renovated Posner Center in fall 2025, the experience of teaching — and learning — with Special Collections has taken on new depth. The updated space enabled Sandage to build a layered, immersive experience — one that brought students back multiple times to learn from experts, examine rare materials up close, and actively debate the Constitution’s meaning.

Related: Special Collections, Events and Exhibits, Using the Libraries

Event Recording: Fine and Rare VI: Rare Books and Ancestral Machines

On January 22, the University Libraries hosted “Fine and Rare VI: Rare Books and Ancestral Machines.” At the virtual event, Curator of Special Collections Sam Lemley invited attendees inside the newly renovated Posner Center for Special Collections, a cabinet of rarities and technological marvels where paper-and-string cipher machines, centuries-old books, cogwheel computers, and nineteenth-century “digital” images sit side by side. A recording of the event is now available.

Related: Events and Exhibits, Special Collections