Accomplishments

• Lingdong Huang (BCSA 2019) created the world’s first successful programming language based on the Classical Chinese grammar system. Wenyan-lang uses the same tone and syntax found in Classical Chinese literature rather than merely replacing English characters with Chinese.
• Zaria Howard (BHA 2018) and a team in the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry received an $80,000 NEH grant to apply machine learning and computer vision to identify, annotate and organize the Teenie Harris Archive, making it more easily searchable by scholars and the public. Held by the Carnegie Museum of Art, the archive is one of the most important records of African-American life in the mid-20^th century.
• John Choi (BCSA 2017), Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship Innovation Scholar, is the first recipient of the Tellerman Family Innovation Scholarship. He created the startup Choitek, an Olympus PROBE Project, that aims to bring an easy-to-build robot kit to market and was part of the CMU contingent honored at the National Maker Faire in Washington, D.C.
• Jacqueline Barnes (BHA 2016) was selected as an inaugural Highlights Foundation Diversity Fellow for authors and illustrators of color creating stories to enrich and diversify children’s literature.

• Jake Berntsen (BHA 2016) is a member of the popular brass band Beauty Slap. He created new technology to live mix electronic funk dance music with the instrumentalists' brass sound. The group released their first full-length album and frequently books shows across the country.

• Kaytie Nielsen (BHA 2016) has been named a Marshall Scholar. She is studying screenwriting in the United Kingdom, building on her successes in filmmaking and social justice advocacy. Katie previously won a nationally competitive fellowship from the Henry Luce Foundation. The award provides stipends, language training and individualized professional placement in Asia for individuals from various fields and backgrounds who have limited exposure to Asian culture. She also received a Fulbright Award as a first-year creative writing and directing student.

• Harrison Apple, PhD (BHA 2013) is an interdisciplinary artist and historian. They are the co-founder of the Pittsburgh Queer History Project, an oral history and media preservation initiative focused on after-hours nightclubs and working-class LGBTQ lives in Pittsburgh. They received their PhD from the University of Arizona Department of Gender & Women’s Studies with a doctoral minor from the School of Information. Their intellectual work covers intersectional feminist philosophies, political theories of social membership, and archival science. Harrison’s work has been published in Transgender Studies Quarterly, Out history.org and Introduction to Transgender Studies.

• Kathy "Yaeji" Lee (BHA 2015) is a rising singer, DJ and producer who is packing clubs and festivals internationally. Known for her unique style of mixing American and Korean lyrics, she has played Coachella and Lollapalooza, covered Fader magazine, highlighted as Billboard Dance's "Ones to Watch" and selected as Forbes' "30 Under 30" for topping music charts and shifting culture.

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