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portrait of Lindsey Shultz between book cases in the library

October 16, 2019

Personal Mention

Answer: Who is Lindsey Shultz? She’s the 2004 Carnegie Mellon alumna who won more than $100,000 on Jeopardy! over four episodes in March and returned to the game show’s Tournament of Champions, which will air in November. “I was stoked. The feeling of getting to do it all over again, it was amazing,” Lindsey said. “The first time you go in you have no idea what to expect. The second time, it’s like being an alum visiting a university. You know the people. You know the community.” Shultz earned her bachelor’s degree from CMU’s Science and Humanities Scholars program before completing her medical degree at Cornell University and master’s degree in public health at Columbia University. Today, she is working to change the world as a “physician who does not practice” by researching harm reduction and health policy. She focuses on promoting the need for safe needle exchanges and injection rooms as well as how to build upon and improve the Affordable Care Act. Find out more.

portrait of Newell WashburnAssociate Professor of Chemistry Newell Washburn has received a more than half-million-dollar grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to develop a machine learning algorithm that could help design more durable and energy-efficient concrete. Creating more environmentally friendly concrete has proven to be difficult due to the composite’s complex composition. Washburn and his collaborators plan to create a method that uses machine learning to assess new formulations for concrete to identify products that can be created in a more sustainable manner while maintaining the high strength required for bridges, roads and other infrastructure. Washburn’s team includes Barnabás Poczos of the CMU’s Machine Learning Department and Kimberly Kurtis from Georgia Tech. Their work is especially novel because the development of a machine learning tool for accelerated materials discovery for infrastructure use has been largely overlooked. Find out more.

portrait of Ralph Vituccio"Haenyeo," a documentary by Ralph Vituccio, an associate teaching professor in the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), has been nominated for Best Short Documentary in the Rome PRISMA Independent Film Festival in Rome. The film follows the Haenyeo, an ancient culture of women divers from Marado Island off the coast of South Korea, as they dive for valuable shellfish. For hundreds of years, women in the South Korean island province of Jeju have made their living harvesting seafood by hand from the ocean floor. Known as Haenyeo, or sea women, they use no breathing equipment, although a typical dive might last around two minutes and take them as deep as 10 to 20 meters underwater. Eighty percent of the dwindling Haenyeo are over the age of 60, and it is predicted that within 10-15 years the Haenyeo will disappear. This documentary follows the last five remaining Haenyeo from the tiny island of Marado in the Korean Strait. Haenyeo will premiere at the Pittsburgh Shorts Film Festival on Nov. 4.  Find out more.