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.”