Pittsburgh’s disadvantaged young adults experience greater degrees of economic disparity due to structural barriers between them and economic opportunities and experience devastatingly high levels of violence, physical, and emotional abuse.

We worked closely with disadvantaged young adults, co-designing a program that exposed them to new ways of learning, design thinking and making, advanced technologies, and alternative ways of dealing with stress, self-worth, and care. Our training program, Night Owl Bakers (NOB), provides a holistic approach to self-identity and employment preparedness for young adults between the ages 16-22. The curriculum has 3 phases that progress from a series of cross-disciplinary, hands-on experiences in business and financing, technology and science, food literacy and sourcing, and self-care and mindfulness. Ultimately, the program is designed to prepare participants for the future so they can experience a fuller sense of who they are, what they are a part of, and that they are capable of joining the workforce prepared.

In parallel with the training program, we want to build an intelligent system to support on-demand work that matches individuals skills, preferences, location, and environment. Our on-demand NOB work app uses smartphones to identify and recommend relevant just-in-time work opportunities for the youth to apply their new skills.

Symptoms such as nausea, pain, and fatigue are common during cancer treatment, fluctuate over time, can impair function and quality of life. At UPMC Hillman Cancer Center and most other medical centers, there is no standardized approach to tracking these symptoms over time and between doctor visits. This results in needless patient suffering as most symptoms and side effects are poorly managed. There is a need for solutions designed specifically for cancer patients (who tend to be older and sicker and who may require long-term monitoring over many years) to easily monitor the symptoms that matter most to them, to see clear patterns in how their symptoms vary over time and in response to their activity, sleep, and medications, and to share this information with their doctors.

Implicit bias continues to be a persistent source of prejudice and discrimination across many domains. This pressing social issue has significant negative consequences, particularly for stereotype-targeted groups, such as women, people with disabilities, low socioeconomic status populations, and racial minority groups. The threat linked with being the target of bias has been shown to activate a variety of anxiety- and stress-related physiological responses, including changes in heart rate acceleration, skin conductance, body temperature, and blood pressure.

We are looking for solutions to link bias experiences with physiological responses to make people aware of their implicit bias. Using mobile and wearable sensors we are looking to detect occurrences of bias and the social contexts and locations in which the experience with bias are more likely to take place in the city of Pittsburgh.