Public Learns How GlobalPittsburgh Connects Region with Visiting Delegations at 2012 Annual Dinner

Members, supporters and friends of GlobalPittsburgh gathered on Monday, Dec. 17, 2012 for the GlobalPittsburgh Annual Dinner to learn why the eyes of the world are focused on the Pittsburgh region as a global center for energy innovation, education, technology, environmental research and business.

Through an interactive program we called Your Passport to Pittsburgh - Making the Western Pennsylvania Connection, they experienced first-hand the many benefits GlobalPittsburgh provides to the regional community and economy, while having fun, networking with friends old and new, eating delicious food, enjoying a stunning view of the Pittsburgh skyline, getting their pictures taken in a free photo booth sponsored by Westinghouse Electric, and entering a drawing for an iPad Mini sponsored by UPMC.

They met and learned from the valuable resources in the Pittsburgh region, just as our delegations of global leaders do when they come here as part of the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program and other similar programs that bring emerging leaders to the United States.

Upon arrival, they received a GlobalPittsburgh Passport similar to the itinerary we prepare for our visiting delegations. They strolled around the room and engaged with many of the same leaders from the region who have met with international visitors in the past year, including ExperiLearn, the National Energy Technology Center, the Center for Women's Entrepreneurship at Chatham University, Innovation Works and the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.

They ate some of the best food in town from gourmet serving stations, saw old friends and made new ones, conversed with some of the top experts in fields including energy, engineering, sustainability and higher education, and enjoyed a cultural performance by the guitar duo of Ferla-Marcinizyn.

Bill Flanagan of the Allegheny Conference was our local “tour guide” as emcee for the evening. At the end of the evening, we gave away an iPad Mini to one lucky guest.

Just like our visiting delegations, guests also had a chance to interact with some of the host families who regularly welcome visitors into their homes.

View more photos of the event at http://bit.ly/U6KvU8.
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International Education Advisers Spend Week in Pittsburgh Learning About Sending Students to United States and Local Institutions

A group of 21 international education advisers from the U.S. State Department's worldwide network of 450 EducationUSA advising centers recently spent a week in Pittsburgh to learn about sending students to the United States, hosted by GlobalPittsburgh.

The advisers were participating in a week-long training institute titled Essentials of Advising (Level 1), which was conducted Dec. 9-15 on the campuses of institutions participating in the Study Pittsburgh initiative of the GlobalPittsburgh Education Partnership (GPEP).

Advisers came from Austria, Bangladesh, Brazil, China (2), India (2), Indonesia (2), Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Mauritius, Pakistan, Paraguay, Romania, Russia, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

Trainees learned about the American system of higher education, including the admissions process for undergraduate and graduate students, tuition and financial aid, and campus life. They also visited several campuses, met with faculty and administrators, and engaged in a university fair to learn more about local institutions.

“This was a great opportunity for local universities and for the Pittsburgh region, and we already have been told that more students from these advising centers will be considering Pittsburgh in their education plans,” said Thomas Buell, Jr., Director of the Study Pittsburgh initiative and Director of Marketing for GlobalPittsburgh.

The advisers will be promoting educational opportunities in the United States to international students around the world, and any positive connections they make in Pittsburgh will have a long-lasting positive impact on the number of students who choose to come to study in this region, he said.

"We know from studies that international students create an economic boost, and if each one of these advisers sends just one student to Pittsburgh over the next year, that would have a greater than $500,000 impact on the region through tuition, fees and living expenses," Buell said, citing reports from the Institute of International Education.

Several of the advisers indicated that they will be adding Pittsburgh colleges and universities to their list of recommended education destinations in the United States.

"I have already been speaking about Pittsburgh to student advisees and I sincerely hope that this transpires into admissions," said Zafeena Suresh, EducationUSA adviser in New Delhi, India, after she returned home. "I look forward to a long and fruitful association with GlobalPittsburgh."

Marta Garcia, EducationUSA adviser in Caracas, Venezuela, called the program the "perfect combination for a very informative and assertive training experience. Pittsburgh is a formidable discovery both culturally and academically! [We] will be keeping in close touch."

Reving Mizory, EducationUSA adviser in Erbil, capital city of the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq, said the training institute will expand his ability to serve students in his advising center.

"It was a very significant trip for me because it was my first visit to the U.S.," Mizory said. "I got to see the university campuses and what it is to be an international student at a U.S. university. It will help me a lot when I go back home and talk about this experience to our prospective students. It is different when you talk about it and you hear it from someone, and when you experience it yourself. I talked to the American students and I talked to the international students here. It was a very rich experience. It will help me a lot."

Formed in 2010, the GlobalPittsburgh Education Partnership is a growing consortium of colleges, universities and English as a Second Language (ESL) programs in the Greater Pittsburgh Region that have joined together to explore ways to increase international student enrollment in the region, to create partnerships and exchange programs with their counterparts abroad, and to engage students in the community once they arrive.

Current members of the GPEP include:
• Art Institute of Pittsburgh
• Carlow University
• Carnegie Mellon University
• Chatham University *
• Community College of Allegheny County *
• Duquesne University *
• LaRoche College
• Penn State – Beaver
• Penn State – Greater Allegheny *
• Penn State – New Kensington
• Point Park University *
• Robert Morris University *
• The University of Pittsburgh
• The University of Pittsburgh English Language Institute
• The University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business
• The University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing
• Washington & Jefferson College
• West Virginia University
• West Liberty University

(Asterisk indicates campus that hosted training sessions or events)

In economic terms, international students make a significant positive impact in the region, contributing an estimated $2.6 million to the regional economy for every 100 international students enrolled at regional colleges and universities, or $250 million in tuition and living expenses to the Pittsburgh-area economy, according to the IIE. More than 9,800 international students are enrolled in the Greater Pittsburgh region, the IIE reported.

GlobalPittsburgh, formerly the Pittsburgh Council for International Visitors, is a non-profit organization that engages international delegations, groups and individuals by creating itineraries and facilitating introductions through the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) and other international programming agencies in many fields, including energy and environment, life sciences and medicine, education, business and technology, clean/green design, advanced manufacturing, arts and culture, government and finance, social services and law, and other areas.

For information about GlobalPittsburgh's Study Pittsburgh initiative, go to www.studypittsburgh.org. 
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Pitt Med School, Carnegie Mellon and Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center Share $9.3 Million Grant to Establish Biomedical Technology Research Center

The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) have been awarded a five-year, $9.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to establish a Biomedical Technology Research Center (BTRC) to develop computational tools for modeling and simulating biological systems from the tissue level down to the molecular level.

By filling in the missing pieces between modeling efforts at disparate scales of structural biology, cell modeling and large-scale image analysis, this new collaborative initiative seeks to identify the molecular and cellular mechanisms that control neurotransmission and signaling events, which in turn could lead to the development of novel treatments for nervous system disorders.

"With these tools, our goal is to better understand and appreciate the impact of defective proteins and interactions at the cellular level, and their effects on the central nervous system behavior," said Ivet Bahar, Ph.D., professor and John K. Vries Chair of the Department of Computational and Systems Biology at the Pitt School of Medicine. "We hope to bridge the gaps between molecular-, cellular- and tissue-level information to build integrated models of cell signaling and regulation."

Bahar is the principal investigator for the award, titled “High Performance Computing for Multi-scale Modeling of Biological Systems,” from the NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Robert F. Murphy, Ph.D., director of the Lane Center for Computational Biology in Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science, will lead CMU’s participation.

The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center’s long-established National Resource for Biomedical Supercomputing (NRBSC), headed by Markus Dittrich, Ph.D., was seminal to and is the third major partner in the new BTRC. The collaboration also includes the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif.

"We have imagined this new center as a Pittsburgh center, joining the two universities, the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon, with PSC strengths in training and biomedical supercomputing,” said Dr. Murphy, the Ray and Stephanie Lane Professor of Computational Biology and professor of biological sciences, biomedical engineering and machine learning.

"We now have an opportunity to combine that work with work in the Lane Center on image-derived modeling of cellular organization and machine learning for structural biology to go beyond what we’ve done before," he said.

Dr. Dittrich said the collaboration opens many opportunities for his National Resource for Biomedical Supercomputing (NRBSC).

"As core members in the new BTRC we continue our work in cellular modeling, structural biology, and large-scale volumetric image analysis and welcome the synergy of working with the outstanding computational biology programs at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon,” he said.

As part of the NIH grant, a supplementary award of $1.1 million provides two years of additional support for the Anton supercomputer, which the NRBSC has made available to U.S. biomedical scientists since 2010.

Dr. Bahar’s team will tailor computational models for five biomedical research projects including neurotransmitter signaling, immune cell regulation and neuronal circuit reconstruction that are under way at Pitt, Caltech, Allen Brain Institute (Seattle), and UT Southwestern Medical Center.

"Until now, experimental scientists have been collecting data that are not testable by computational methods, while the computational scientists have been building models and making predictions that can’t be verified experimentally," Dr. Bahar said. "We aim to bridge this communication gap, too, so that we can solve relevant problems computationally while generating new hypotheses that can be tested in the lab."

As one of the nation’s leading academic centers for biomedical research, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine integrates advanced technology with basic science across a broad range of disciplines in a continuous quest to harness the power of new knowledge and improve the human condition. Driven mainly by the School of Medicine and its affiliates, Pitt has ranked among the top 10 recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health since 1997.

Likewise, the School of Medicine is equally committed to advancing the quality and strength of its medical and graduate education programs, for which it is recognized as an innovative leader, and to training highly skilled, compassionate clinicians and creative scientists well-equipped to engage in world-class research. The School of Medicine is the academic partner of UPMC, which has collaborated with the University to raise the standard of medical excellence in Pittsburgh and to position health care as a driving force behind the region’s economy. For more information about the School of Medicine, go to www.medschool.pitt.edu.

Carnegie Mellon (www.cmu.edu) is a private, internationally ranked research university with programs in areas ranging from science, technology and business, to public policy, the humanities and the arts. More than 11,000 students in the university’s seven schools and colleges benefit from a small student-to-faculty ratio and an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. A global university, Carnegie Mellon’s main campus in the United States is in Pittsburgh, Pa. It has campuses in California’s Silicon Valley and Qatar, and programs in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and Mexico.

The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (www.psc.edu) is a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh together with Westinghouse Electric Company. Established in 1986, PSC is supported by several federal agencies, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and private industry, and is a partner in the National Science Foundation XSEDE program. The National Resource for Biomedical Supercomputing (NRBSC) was established in 1987. As part of PSC, the NRBSC focuses on computational biomedical research at the interface of supercomputing and the life sciences.

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GlobalPittsburgh Selected By U.S. State Department to Coordinate Weeklong Training Program in December for International Education Advisers

GlobalPittsburgh has been selected by the U.S. Department of State to host and coordinate a weeklong training program this month for 20 representatives from its worldwide network of 450 EducationUSA advising centers, which promote educational opportunities in the United States.

The program, titled Essentials of Advising (Level 1), will be conducted Dec. 9-15 on the campuses of institutions participating in the Study Pittsburgh initiative of the GlobalPittsburgh Education Partnership (GPEP).

Advisers will be coming from such countries as Austria, Bangladesh, Brazil, China (2), India (2), Indonesia (2), Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Mauritius, Pakistan, Paraguay, Romania, Russia, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

Formed in 2010, the GlobalPittsburgh Education Partnership is a growing consortium of 16 colleges, universities and English as a Second Language (ESL) programs in the Greater Pittsburgh Region that have joined together to explore ways to increase international student enrollment in the region, to create partnerships and exchange programs with their counterparts abroad, and to engage students in the community once they arrive.

Trainees will learn about the American system of higher education, including the admissions process for undergraduate and graduate students, tuition and financial aid, and campus life. They will also have the opportunity to visit several campuses, meet with faculty and administrators, and engage in a university fair to learn more about each institution.

“This is a great opportunity for the GPEP members and for the Pittsburgh region,” said Thomas Buell, Jr., Director of the Study Pittsburgh initiative and Director of Marketing for GlobalPittsburgh. “These advisers will be promoting educational opportunities in the United States to international students around the world, and any positive connections they make in Pittsburgh will have a long-lasting positive impact on the number of students who choose to come to study in this region.”

Current members of the GPEP include:
• Art Institute of Pittsburgh
• Carlow University
• Carnegie Mellon University
• Chatham University *
• Community College of Allegheny County *
• Duquesne University *
• LaRoche College
• Penn State – Beaver
• Penn State – Greater Allegheny *
• Penn State – New Kensington
• Point Park University *
• Robert Morris University *
• The University of Pittsburgh
• The University of Pittsburgh English Language Institute
• The University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business
• The University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing
• Washington & Jefferson College
• West Virginia University
• West Liberty University

(Asterisk indicates campus that will hosting training sessions and events)

In economic terms, international students make a significant positive impact in the region, contributing an estimated $2.6 million to the regional economy for every 100 international students enrolled at regional colleges and universities, according to the Institute for International Education. About 7,000 international students are currently enrolled in the seven-county metropolitan area.

GlobalPittsburgh, formerly the Pittsburgh Council for International Visitors, is a non-profit organization that engages international delegations, groups and individuals by creating itineraries and facilitating introductions through the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) and other international programming agencies in many fields, including energy and environment, life sciences and medicine, education, business and technology, clean/green design, advanced manufacturing, arts and culture, government and finance, social services and law, and other areas. 

For information about GlobalPittsburgh's Study Pittsburgh initiative, go to www.studypittsburgh.org.  READ FULL ARTICLE