According to this article the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Professor Randy Pausch has passed away of cancer. He is well-known for his incredible work in computer science, and during his career developed many research and educational projects. The article contains, among other details, information on Pausch's Alice program that teaches children computer programming.
If you have not heard / watched his Last Lecture, you may do so at
this thread.
I feel that this loss to the scientific community as a whole is also a loss for us, the FIRST community, due to our emphasis in part on science education.