Asher Silverglade
Asher Silverglade was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. During that time, he watched a lot of cartoons. Like, a lot. Despite his best efforts, his academic advisor won’t let him count seeing every episode of Ed Edd ‘n Eddy as a distribution credit, and things usually go poorly when he puts it on his resume. However, he’s here to share his love of animation with the world, and where it all went wrong.
Freddy Anzures
Freddy Anzures creates relationships between culture and technology to connect people. He was a member of the Human Interface Group at Apple from 2004 to 2018 and invented user experiences for Mac OS X, iPhone, and iPad under Steve Jobs. A lover of vintage and record culture, he was also the Creative Director of Wax Poetics, a music magazine celebrating the history, influence, and progression of black music. Freddy graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Industrial Design from Carnegie Mellon University in 1999
Jianli Yang
Dr. Yang Jianli is a scholar and human rights activist internationally recognized for his efforts to promote democracy in China. He has been involved in the Chinese democracy movement since the 1980s. He participated in the 1989 Tiananmen protests and co-authored the Constitution of a Federal Democratic China. Dr. Yang returned to China to support the labor movement and was imprisoned for 5 years. Following his release and his subsequent return to the U.S., Dr. Yang founded Initiatives for China, also known as Citizen Power, an organization promoting China’s peaceful transition to democracy. In March, 2010 Dr. Yang co-chaired the Committee on Internet Freedom at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy. In December 2011, Dr. Yang, joined H.H. Dalai Lama and four other delegates, to attend Forum 2000 hosted by former Czech president, Vaclav Havel. Dr.Yang, founder and organizer of China's many major citizen initiatives, is a recipient of numerous international human rights awards including the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom, Harvard Kennedy School Alumni Achievement Award and Morris Abram Human Rights Award.
Po Shen Loh
Dr. Po-Shen Loh is a math enthusiast and evangelist. He is a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University, the national coach of the USA International Mathematical Olympiad team, and the founder of the social enterprise expii.com, an education technology startup providing a free personalized learning platform, which combines algorithms and crowdsourcing to deliver a free artificial intelligence-powered tutor for the world of math and science. As an educator, he led Carnegie Mellon University’s math team to its first-ever #1 rank among all North American universities, and led the USA Math Olympiad team to its first-ever back-to-back #1-rank victories in 2015 and 2016.
Shalaya Minor
Shalaya Minor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is a bright, energetic, conscientious student with a passion for learning, and educating others. Shalaya's desire to bring awareness has led her to Carnegie Mellon University. She is a psychology major with an interest in Theater. Through theater, Shalaya has raised awareness to social justice issues while expressing her own passion and creativity. Shalaya wants to push for representation and acceptance and is working to change the statistic of the low minority rate at predominantly white institutions. She wants any child who has the desire and will for greatness not to be held back by social or economic barriers.
Wesley Pegden
Wes Pegden is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences working on discrete probability, diffusion processes, and combinatorics. He was an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the Courant Institute before joining CMU in 2013, and is currently a Sloan fellow. In 2017, his work was used as evidence in the gerrymandering case in Pennsylvania brought by the League of Women Voters, where he testified as an expert witness.