Carnegie Mellon University

President Obama visits, CMU grabs spotlight

It was no accident that President Barack Obama chose CMU to co-host a major conference capping eight years of advocacy for science, technology and innovation. Speaking in the Cohon University Center during his fifth visit to Carnegie Mellon, he told 700 leaders in academia, industry and government that Pittsburgh is the home to transformational technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics, not to mention world-class universities. He even gave a shout-out to the CMU-sponsored robotics club “Girls of Steel.”

University Communications & Marketing played a central role as CMU planned and executed the ambitious White House Frontiers Conference with the University of Pittsburgh and the White House. In just six weeks, UCM provided guidance on content, spearheaded communications efforts, built key messages and visuals essential to telling our stories, and provided an inspirational experience to a captive, relevant audience.

The event garnered top-tier media coverage and the social media results were extraordinary — the conference tallied 891 million social media impressions. UCM’s work helped strengthen CMU’s reputation as a mecca for technological innovation, while providing a platform for deepening relationships that stretch from Silicon Valley to Washington, D.C.

Success by the numbers

8,000+

media placements

891 million

twitter impressions

140,132

pageviews - frontiersconference.org

42,855

facebook engagements

21,431

views across 11 stories to cmu.edu/news

6,765

livestream views

Learn more about the areas of expertise we used with this project:

Executive Communications External Partnerships Graphic design Media Relations Photography Storytelling Video