When the 2013 Carnegie Science Awards are presented tonight inside the Carnegie Music Hall, roughly one in every four will go to someone from UPMC and the Pitt Schools of the Health Sciences. They are:
Steven R. Little, Ph.D., the chair of the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering and, like Vorp, with the McGowan Institute, was named the winner of the Post-Secondary Educator Award.
Houston’s award was as much, if not more, for her community involvement. She works in the First LEGO League coaching and mentoring two teams of local 9- to 14-year-olds with disabilities and without, among other projects that resonate with her.
Houston, a wheelchair user born with a variety of genetic impairments, told the Inside Life Changing Medicine blog on Jan. 31 when the Carnegie Science Awards were announced: “It’s been a lot of fun to play around with the robots and with kids. What’s unique about the teams we have compared to all the other teams in Pittsburgh [is that] we’re very focused on students with disabilities. They might not be on a team anywhere else. This is a really good chance to get kids with disabilities into the STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] fields and getting them excited. Just because they have disabilities doesn’t mean they can’t be in STEM or do what they want to do.”
