Lea Albaugh Named 2024 Siebel Scholars

News: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/2023/siebel-scholars-2024

Five graduate students in Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science have been named Siebel Scholars for 2024. Lea Albaugh, Bailey Flanigan, Maxwell Jones, Paul Pu Liang and Shih-Lun Wu will each receive $35,000 as part of the program.

Founded in 2000 by the Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation, the Siebel Scholars program recognizes nearly 100 students each year whose work influences the technologies, policies, and economic and social decisions that shape the future.

"Every year, the Siebel Scholars continue to impress me with their commitment to academics and influencing future society. This year's class is exceptional, and once again represents the best and brightest minds from around the globe who are advancing innovations in healthcare, artificial intelligence, financial services and more," said Thomas M. Siebel, chairman of the Siebel Scholars Foundation. "It is my distinct pleasure to welcome these students into this ever-growing, lifelong community, and I personally look forward to seeing their impact and contributions unfold."

Albaugh researches fabrication and material creativity as a Ph.D. student at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. Her work blends hardware and software engineering with design inquiry and craft practice to produce computationally tunable soft textile mechanisms, creative interfaces for complex machine knitting on industrial equipment, and playful and personal interaction with fabrication machines. Albaugh's research publications have been recognized with awards at the ACM SIGCHI and Designing Interactive Systems conferences, and she recently received a university-wide graduate student teaching award recognizing her classroom and lab teaching and innovative curriculum development.