Pitt Faculty Win Bellet Teaching Awards

PITTSBURGH-University of Pittsburgh Professor Daniel Mossé, Department of Computer Science, and Anthony Bledsoe, a lecturer in the Department of Biological Sciences, have been named winners of the 2006 Tina and David Bellet Arts and Sciences Teaching Excellence Award.

(Interviews with Bledsoe and Mossé, along with footage of them in their respective classrooms, can be seen at www.umc.pitt.edu/m/060403video.html.)

Established in 1998 with a $200,000 donation from the Bellet family, the annual award recognizes outstanding and innovative teaching in undergraduate studies in the School of Arts and Sciences. An additional $100,000 was donated to the University last year through the Bellet family. Award recipients will each receive a one-time cash prize of $2,000 and a grant of $3,000 in support of his or her teaching.

Mossé came to Pitt as an instructor in 1992 and was named a professor in 2004. Among the courses he teaches are Distributed and Real-Time Systems Seminar, Research Topics in Computer Science, Advance Topics in Operating System Seminar, and Social Implications of Computing Technology.

His research interest is in distributed systems, specifically the allocation of computing and network resources in the realm of real-time, power management, security, and fault tolerances. He has been involved in the design and implementation of distributed, real-time operating systems. His work bridges the gap between the operating systems and networking research fields.

Mossé earned the Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics at the University of Brasilia in Brazil in 1985 and the Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees in computer science at the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1990 and 1993 respectively.

Bledsoe joined the University as an instructor in 1987. He teaches Foundations of

Biology II and Ecology. Bledsoe also taught ecology for two summers in the Honors College Yellowstone Field Course.

A former postdoctoral fellow in Pitt's biological sciences department, Bledsoe also was a Rea Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and a Guyer Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Zoology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In addition, he served as a visiting faculty member at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.

His research interests in avian systematics and evolution focus on the reconstruction of avian phylogenies through analysis of molecular and morphological data and the use of estimates of phylogeny to gain insight into the ecology and biogeography of birds and basic mechanisms of evolutionary change.

Bledsoe received the Bachelor of Arts degree in biology and environmental studies from the University of California Santa Cruz in 1978 and the Ph.D. degree in biology from Yale University in 1984.

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