School of Education PhD Alumna Kakenya Ntaiya was featured in Bill Gates' Heroes in the Field series for her work as founder of Kakenya's Dream, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering and educating girls in rural Kenya. Watch the Heroes in the Field video.
Bioengineering graduate student Anna Dzuricky leads the development of Tranquilift, a device that would help individuals with physical disabilities have a more tailored, comfortable, and safe experience at the salon.
Mateus Martins (ENGR ’19G) is making Pittsburgh more equitable through an uncommon route — by improving the city’s streets. As a staff engineer in the City of Pittsburgh’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, his work is about more than ensuring Pittsburghers don’t end up in traffic jams; he wants to make the city’s roads as accommodating to cyclists and pedestrians as they are to cars.
When their government collapsed, thousands of Afghans were suddenly at risk. A Pitt team stepped in to help those desperate to escape. GSPIA students Jake Detweiler, Tahmina Ahmed and Max Degregorio began helping Afghans with their visa paperwork in early August. They were some of the first people to make up what would become the CGM Afghan Asylum Assistance Task Force.
Bioengineering PhD student Madeline Cramer received the 2021 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Outstanding Student Award from TERMIS-AM. The award recognizes Cramer’s research in the lab of Stephen Badylak, professor of surgery at Pitt and deputy director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
Anna Marie Clark, a student in the Doctor of Occupational Therapy Program, and Alison Mahoney, a PhD student in Theatre and Performance Studies, are among the winners of the the 2021 Dick Thornburgh Forum Disability Service Award.
Ariana Brazier, former PhD Student in the Department of English, was one of two outstanding scholars to receive an honorable mention from the Council of Graduate Schools / ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards for the Award in Humanities and Fine Arts. She was nominated by the University of Pittsburgh. [Photo not available]
Nikki Cristobal, a graduate student in Social and Comparative Analysis program in the School of Education, earned the graduate student award. Her work focuses on the resiliency of Indigenous Hawaiian women from Kaua’i island.
Dr. Jessica Thompson, who recently completed her Ph.D. at Pitt Public Health, received an American Public Health Association award for her dissertation research. Her "research among Appalachian women has been recognized for the ways in which it provides a framework for future action-oriented and community-specific strategies to improve cardiovascular disease prevention."
In August, Sean Sweat, a second-year MD/PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, spoke during a segment at the Smithsonian virtual forum, Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past.
