âHow do we make Pittsburgh a smarter city?â Dr. Susan Catalano repeats what sheâs been asked. âThatâs a good question.â
Letâs begin with the premise that weâre pretty darn smart as it is. According to Forbes, Pittsburgh stands number two in the country, behind brainy Boston with its Harvard-MIT corridor.
Like Boston, weâve got plenty of college grads and world-class learning centers. We also wrote the book on moving from heavy industry to high tech, translating brain power into start-ups.
Still, economies these days are a moving target and to stay on top weâve got to be smartâand get smarter. Luckily, there are plenty of smart people in Pittsburgh raising the bar for all of us. Here are five in various fields who are leading the way.
Jesse Schell, Chief Executive Officer for Schell Games
As Jesse Schell so memorably said in his presentation at Unboxed, an innovative retreat held by Leadership Pittsburgh for nearly 200 community leaders in November, âtechnology and the power of curiosity will drive the 21st century. The education we need starts where the learner is and goes absolutely anywhere and everywhere.â
Schell ought to know. As a creator of transformational educational games, and a Carnegie Mellon distinguished professor of entertainment technology, he believes we make Pittsburgh smarter by hooking kids early on learningâand keeping them engaged.
When it comes to games, Schell noted, âyou put stuff in and it gives stuff back. Games give clear feedback and a feeling of progress.
âA huge part of what we do at Schell Games,â he says, âis change the way education works so that students can explore ideas in their own way. They can follow their own curiosity and make discoveries.â
Picking up a prototype of their new chemistry set, Schell manipulates a ball with rubber tendrils attached by magnets. âIn schools,â he says, âthey teach chemistry like algebra. When chemistry is really Legos. You snap atoms together and build molecules. Then you haul out your smartphone, take a picture of it, and send it to your app. Pow! youâve found out that youâve made oxyacetylene. Then you read what properties it has and what itâs used for. Kids learn through play!â
This kind of learning fits perfectly here, Schell believes. âPittsburgh has so many self-educating opportunities,â he says. âMuseums. Clubs. Centers. People need to take advantage of them.â See Schellâs video from Unboxed here.
Dr. Susan Catalano, Co-Founder, Chief Science Officer at Cognition Therapeutics
Dr. Susan Catalanoâs research is aimed at making everyone smarter by saving all those minds and all that wisdom lost daily to Alzheimerâs, dementia and other devastating neurodegenerative diseases.
At Cognition Therapeutics, she and her team are working to find if not a cure, then a drug that will slow or stop the brainâs disintegration. âIâm absolutely thrilled to contribute to this work,â Dr. Catalano says. âItâs my sincere hope that we can find a cure for dementia right here in Pittsburgh.â
As chair of Women in Bioâs Pittsburgh chapter, Dr. Susan Catalano supports lifelong mentoring, training, partnering and employing women in the sciences, especially life sciences. âWe put women scientists in front of young women,â she says.
Just back from a Girl Scouts outing at Carnegie Science Center, Dr. Catalano also had a hand in last Septemberâs landmark POWER (Pittsburghâs Outstanding Women Entrepreneurs Rally), where a dozen local women-led life science companies pitched to women investors. âThat was the first time in the cityâs history such a thing was done,â she says. âWe need a woman-and-minority-owned business incubator. I look to helping make that happen.
âPittsburgh is ready for the 21sth century,â Dr. Catalano adds. âWeâre poised for explosive, double-digit growth because we have one of the largest concentrations of neurobiologists in the world. Weâll make Pittsburgh smarter by unlocking the vast potential of cutting-edge companies, especially in life sciences.â
Dr. Walt Schneider, Professor of Psychology, Neurosurgery, Radiology & Bioengineering, UPMC
Dr. Walt Schneider and his team are leading the way in groundbreaking work around traumatic brain injuries.
âFrom traumatic injury to Alzheimerâs, there are 10.4 million cases of brain connectivity disorders a year,â Dr. Schneider told the Unboxed audience in his presentation. âWhat weâve done is develop the technology to see the wiring. We can track the breakage, make it visible and quantifiable. We can see what cable is broken and how badly.
âIf you canât see the problem,â says the former electrical engineer who has been featured on 60 Minutes, âyou canât fix it. Now weâre employing technology and images that were impossible to get just two years ago. We can see damage, quantify it, and show you whatâs missing.â
Pointing out that the trio who created this breakthrough includes a Pittsburgher, Chicagoan and Indian, Dr. Schneider adds, âweâre doing a pretty good job of making Pittsburgh smarter. We have two great universities and a good supply of young talent. I tell colleagues that they can have a good life here.â
What will make it better, he adds, and therefore smarter, is creating a more effective spinoff model.
âWe have no trouble attracting talent,â Dr. Schneider says. âPittsburgh is a wonderful place to take initiative and explore something new. Few places have Pittsburghâs level and quality. Where we have trouble is maintaining entrepreneurial talent. Pittsburgh is a good place to grow ideas. But it can be challenging to get those ideas commercialized. To get things off paper, out of the lab, into the marketplace and economically viable.â
See Dr. Schneiderâs Unboxed presentation here.
Dr. Lenore Blum, Project Olympus Founder
Returning to Carnegie Mellon, where sheâd been an undergraduate in the â60s, computer science professor Dr. Lenore Blum was struck by the lack of entrepreneurial initiative.
It was 1999, and, polling her students, she discovered that none of them planned to stay in town after graduation. There was no network, no business infrastructure, no development money, no business plans. Nothing.
âI was struck by the fact that there was no high-tech infrastructure like that at MIT or Berkeley,â she recalls. âOur students here were being recruited before they graduated. They were getting great jobsâelsewhere. Theyâd come from all over the world but found no reason to stay or develop their ideas here.â
By 2005 she was talking to the Pittsburgh Technology Council, telling them, âwe produce the best students, then export them. But our students love it here and would stay if they had the chance.
âIâm not part of the entrepreneurial or business world,â Dr. Blum says. âIâm a researcher. I came from left field. But what I said struck a resonant chord.â
Two years later, she launched Project Olympus, an off-campus incubator to explore the commercial potential of studentsâ ideasâhow to take them from the university to market.
Organizing what she called Show and Tells, Project Olympus showcased CMU faculty and student research. Wildly successful, to date there have been 18 such showcasesâ10-minute presentations on new ideas. âIt was a place for our students to make business connections,â she says.
And those connections have paid off. In the past three years, Project Olympus has helped launch no fewer than 90 CMU-based spin-off companies. âItâs gotten to be huge on campus,â Dr. Blum says, âand is having a huge impact on the region.â
âI used to ask my students who wanted to stay in Pittsburgh,â she recalls. âThe answer used to be zero. Now all of them do. Aside from loving the place, they say, âweâre so connected, why would we want to leave?
âThe excitement and energy is here,â she says. âWeâre ready to go to the next stage: funding coming into the region. Thatâs critical.â
Catherine Mott, Blue Tree Capital Group/Blue Tree Allied Angels Founder and Chief Executive Officer
âPittsburghâs done a lot of things right as far as how to attract and retain talent,â says Catherine Mott of Blue Tree Allied Angels, a members-only group of investors funding promising start-up companies. The group meets monthly to evaluate and consider private equity investments in early-stage, pre-institutional ventures in the region.
âThereâs a healthy eco-system that supports start-up companies,â says Mott. âWhen we started in 2003 there were only three support agencies. Now there are more than 18 incubators and shared-space accelerators.
âMy own firm has invested more than $30 million in 46 companies, three-to-five new companies every year, $3 to 5 million a year. Theyâre all about transferring ideas into markets. These companies have attracted $338 million in venture capital, almost all of it from outside Pittsburgh. Thereâs a lot of outside interest. That never happened before.
âBut outside capital tends to take companies out of Pittsburgh,â she warns. âWe need to have more firms like mine, more of our own venture capital so that companies will stay and grow here. If we had our own local venture capital we would be smarter and better. I do that,â she concludes. âBut Iâm not enough. We need more.â
We welcome your recommendations for people who are making Pittsburgh smarter in this series. Email us or comment below.