University Libraries, ETC, IDeATe, and Sustainability Initiative

Nicky Agate is Associate Dean for Academic Engagement at CMU Libraries and Editorial Director of CMU Press. Her current projects focus on open educational resources for algorithmic, media, and data literacy (POEM, funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services until it was cancelled in April 2025); values-enacted leadership training (VELI, funded by the Mellon and William and Flora Hewlett Foundations); and academic culture reform (HuMetricsHSS, funded by the Mellon Foundation).

Sayeed Choudhury joined Carnegie Mellon University in 2022 as Director of the Open Source Programs Office (OSPO). Since then, he has been promoted to Associate Dean for Digital Infrastructure and Associate Dean for Research. He is has a Principal Librarian faculty appointment, with additional faculty affiliations with the Heinz College Block Center, the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, and the CMU-NIST Cooperative Research Center for AI Measurement Science and Engineering (AIMSEC). Previously, Sayeed was Associate Dean for Digital Infrastructure, Applications, and Services at Johns Hopkins University. 

Sayeed has has served as principal investigator for projects funded through the Omidyar Network, National Science Foundation, Institute of Museum and Library Services, Library of Congress' NDIIPP, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Open Society Foundation, Microsoft Research, and a Maryland based venture capital group. He has also served on various Boards including the Open Source Initiative, National Museum and Library Services, National Academies Committee on Forecasting Costs for Preserving, Archiving, and Promoting Access to Biomedical Data, the National Academies Board on Research Data and Information. He was also a member of the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access. He has testified for the Research Subcommittee of the Congressional Committee on Science, Space and Technology. He is an advisor to the Schmidt Sciences Humanities and AI Virtual Institute, and the Human AI Collective Advisory Board - BGV & EAIGG.

Sayeed's research interests focus on digital infrastructure, particularly from a systems engineering perspective, emphasizing openness as a design principle. He is interested in direct social impact, particularly based on experience working for the United Nations, US Army Corps of Engineers, and with local community centers in both Pittsburgh and Baltimore.

Tom Corbett is an Instructor at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, where he teaches in the Integrative Design, Arts, and Technology (IDeATe) Network. His teaching centers on game development, virtual and augmented reality, and real-time immersive systems, with an emphasis on bridging technical skills and creative practice.

Before joining Carnegie Mellon, Tom worked as an Associate Producer at Electronic Arts, developing projects for emerging platforms, including streaming technologies and early VR/AR prototypes. Prior to that, he served as Associate Director of the AT&T AdWorks Lab and helped launch the AT&T Experience Council.

Tom’s professional background spans video games, interactive exhibits, architectural visualization, distance learning, and medical animation - an interdisciplinary foundation that informs his teaching and approach to immersive media.  Tom holds a Masters of Entertainment Technology from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as a Bachelors of Architecture and a Masters of Science in Architecture from Virginia Tech.

Melanie Gainey is a STEM Librarian and serves as library liaison to the Biological Sciences, Computational Biology, and Biomedical Engineering Departments and the Neuroscience Institute. As a trained neuroscientist, she brings research expertise to her role. She holds a PhD in Neuroscience from Brandeis University and studied plasticity of neural circuits in sensory cortex during her postdoctoral training at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at U.C. Berkeley. In her role as Director of the Open Science & Data Collaborations Program, Melanie supports and advocates for open science at Carnegie Mellon and the broader research community. She provides instruction on a variety of information and data literacy topics and hopes to make the research process easier and more efficient for students. She is a member of CMU Libraries Evidence Synthesis team and collaborates with researchers at CMU on their synthesis projects.