Current Scholars
ARCS Foundation Pittsburgh is honored to present awards to outstanding scholars chosen by the scholar selection committee at Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh. A Pittsburgh Chapter ARCS Scholar receives $15,000 in support, payable over three years at $5,000 per year, or until the completion of his or her doctoral degree, whichever comes sooner, provided the scholar maintains established criteria for continuation.
The Jeanne B. and Richard F. Berdik ARCS Pittsburgh Endowed Award
Carnegie Mellon University
School of Computer Science, Department of Machine Learning
Personal: In my free time, I enjoy playing tennis and lifting.
Research: I am interested in building machine learning models that allow robots to adapt their behavior to a wide range of unfamiliar situations. I hope to scale up current approaches to robot learning, so that intelligent agents can achieve stronger generalization ability and be more reliably deployed in the real world.
Research: My research interests involve elucidating the communication between the immune and enteric nervous system and how both contribute to promote protection against gastrointestinal pathogens. The findings of my research have the potential to enhance oral vaccine designs leading to better protection in children from low- and middle-income countries.
The Pittsburgh Chapter Award
University of Pittsburgh
Swanson School of Engineering, Bioengineering Department
Personal: In my free time, I like to skateboard and work on creative projects to help grow the community of non-traditional skateboarders in Pittsburgh.
Research: My research focuses on the development of neural interfaces that allow us to send and receive signals to and from the brain. I aim to develop novel tools to allow us to directly observe and understand the biological phenomenon occurring at the tissue-device interface.
Personal: In my free time, I enjoy playing my violin named Galileo as well as painting using watercolors.
Mellon College of Science, Biological Sciences Department
Research:
Personal: In my free time, I enjoy gardening, painting, and playing the violin. I also love to explore parks and spend time in nature.
Research: My undergraduate research project involved reconstructing marine to freshwater transitions in modern, tropical lake sediment using geochemical proxies. The results showed a possible connection to early human activity in the study region, which made me interested in studying and connecting paleoclimate records to modern climate change and anthropogenic influence in my graduate research. In a warming world where freshwater resources are vital, reconstructions of paleoclimate and early human influence from biogeochemical alterations of lake sediment can provide insight into how climate change can impact society and vice versa.
The Fleischner-ARCS Pittsburgh Member Endowed Award
Carnegie Mellow University
College of Engineering, Material Science and Engineering
Research: Computational modeling of Polymer Systems
The Pittsburgh Chapter Award
Carnegie Mellon University
School of Computer Science, Softward Engineering
Research: Data visualization and data analysis focusing on improving visual communication in learning materials.
The ARCS Pittsburgh Scholar Endowment in Memory of Jack and Gen Esgar
Carnegie Mellon University
Mellon College of Science
Mathematical Sciences
Research:
The Dunn Pittsburgh Chapter Award
University of Pittsburgh
School of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology
Research: Undertsanding interactions between disease-causing organisms and immune response
