From the value of celebrity endorsements to the way our brain represents words and pictures, the campus explored exciting research being conducted in Pittsburgh during two distinguished lectures in February. Both lectures drew students, faculty and members of the community.

Using 13 years of sales data, the Tepper School’s Kannan Srinivasan put a monetary value on celebrity endorsements in his talk Business Insights from Big Data by showing how Nike golf ball sales increased by 118,000 packs per months when Tiger Woods was using them and playing well. He also shared how data from Google and Twitter can forecast television viewership ratings for primetime shows and sports events. Srinivasan, who is the Rohet Tolani Distinguished Professor of International Business and H.J. Heinz II Professor of Management, Marketing and Business Technologies, spoke in Qatar as part of the Richard M. Cyert Distinguished Lecture Series in Business Management.

In an A. Nico Habermann Distinguished Lecture in Computer Science, Tom M. Mitchell, the E. Fredkin University Professor and head of the Machine Learning Department, used neural imaging data collected over a decade in his talk, How does the Brain Represent Meaning?

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and Magnetoencephalography (MEG), Mitchell and a multi-disciplinary team of researchers in Pittsburgh have investigated neural patterns that emerge in the brain when a person is asked to think of a noun or related action. The team then trained a computer to recognize these patterns and predict the word a person is thinking about based on their brain activity. The researchers hope the technology might have practical applications in treating people with language impairments or disorders.