Olivia Long works to help students like she once was—a first-generation, financially disadvantaged student from a rural background who was interested in science.

As assistant vice chancellor for research inclusion and outreach strategy and a research scientist in the Learning Research and Development Center, Jennifer Iriti aims to build a community at Pitt that can foster new, convergent research training opportunities. Iriti wants to focus on building an architecture that can support researchers who are experts in one area to find areas of convergence with experts from other disciplines.

More than 100 miles north of Pittsburgh in Crawford County, the University of Pittsburgh at Titusville offers education and training for students living within an often-struggling economy. Some of that training is also part of a research and workforce development project using a model first developed by the Swanson School of Engineering known as the Manufacturing Assistance Center (MAC) Initiative.

Angela Stewart’s love of technology was born in the classroom, specifically her middle school computer classroom where the teacher first introduced her to the basics of coding.