Contact:
Teresa Thomas
412-268-2900

For immediate release:
July 20, 2006

Study Abroad Scholarship Awarded To Carnegie Mellon Student Ken Lau

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University student Ken Lau has won a $3,000 Freeman Asia Award, which he is using to study abroad in China this summer. He has also received scholarships from both the Richard and Mica Hadar Foundation and Carnegie Mellon's Modern Language Summer Study Abroad program to support his travel.

"These honors are important because they provide the opportunity to study abroad," said Lau. "It has been a dream to study abroad ever since high school."

Lau, son of Sun and Chiu Lau of Brooklyn, N.Y., is a rising senior architecture major with a double minor in Chinese language and photography. As part of his coursework, he has also studied under French stage designer and architect Jean-Guy Lecat in a collaborative project with the university's School of Drama.

In a beginning Chinese language class, Lau seized the chance "to not only learn the language but also to study Chinese culture," said Chinese instructor Chen-shan Wang. "As a teacher, I found Ken's participation in class very enjoyable."

The Freeman Asia Award encourages American undergraduate students to become immersed in the languages and cultures of people in the Far East and Southeast Asia, home to more than a third of the world's population.

Images and descriptions of Lau's design work can be viewed at www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/krlau/portfolio.html.