Carnegie Mellon University

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July 21, 2016

Personal Mention

Martin GaynorPresident Barack Obama cited a paper by Heinz College faculty member Martin Gaynor and colleagues in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Obama’s July 11 special communication outlines progress made under the Affordable Care Act and calls on policymakers to continue to increase access to health insurance and decrease health care costs. Obama noted Gaynor’s Health Care Cost Institute paper is one of several studies that found the out-of-pocket costs enrollees in employer-sponsored coverage pay has been close to flat since 2010.

Edda Fields BlackAssociate Professor of History Edda Fields-Black has been selected for a Senior Ford Foundation Fellowship Award in support of her project, “The Requiem for Rice.” Through its fellowship programs, the Ford Foundation seeks to maximize the benefits of diversity at colleges and universities throughout the country. A modern take on Verdi's “Requiem," Black’s work also has been chosen as the third and final project in Carnegie Mellon's Center for the Arts in Society's (CAS) Performance Initiative. Learn more about “The Requiem for Rice.”

John ChoiJohn Choi, a senior in the Bachelor of Computer Science and Art Program and a Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship Innovation Scholar, is the first recipient of the Tellerman Family Innovation Scholarship. Choi, who builds robots and creates video games, has created the startup Choitek, an Olympus PROBE Project, and aims to bring an easy-to-build robot kit to market following graduation. A member of the CMU Robotics Club and Game Creation Society, Choi and his human-sized helper robot, Mark 2, were part of the CMU contingent that was honored at last month’s National Maker Faire in Washington, D.C., for their contributions to the Maker Movement. Established in 2013 by Shanna M. Tellerman, a 2003 graduate of the College of Fine Arts who earned her master’s degree in 2005 at the Shanna TellermanEntertainment Technology Center, the scholarship will help provide partial scholarship support for an upperclassman in the Innovation Scholars program each year. She is the founder and CEO of Modsy, a home design app that allows you to visualize design ideas in the context of your own home. Previously, Tellerman was a partner at Google Ventures, and founder and CEO of Sim Ops Studios, a 3-D game developer. In 2009, she was named one of BusinessWeek's best young entrepreneurs and in 2014 she was named one of Silicon Valley Business Journal's Women of Influence. This year she was honored with a Recent Alumni Award for her exemplary professional achievements.