GIVE INTO LOVE
3D Urban Dance Team is a student organization at The Ohio State University founded in 2001 by University Alumna Tiffany Bivins. The team uses a fusion of jazz, hip-hop, and urban dance styles in their movements to create dynamic routines that not only wow the audience, but showcases their member’s passion and love for dance. Part of their mission is to embrace a variety of dance styles and showcase diversity through art. 3D Urban can be seen performing around Ohio State’s campus at the homecoming parade, Buckeyethon, and their annual Spring Showcase as well as other events in the university as well as Columbus community. They strive to provide high-quality performances that will inspire and leave their audience wanting to see more!
FROM BACH TO 2PAC
Armond Wimberly is currently a 4th year Music Education Major at The Ohio State University. In addition to being a full-time student, Armond is also the Vice President of the OSU Yoga Club and Interim Orchestra Director of Urban Strings Columbus – a youth orchestra that strives to promote more racial diversity in orchestras while preserving the music of African-American artists/composers. Additionally, he works at the Wexner Center for the Arts in the House Management Department. Armond began his musical endeavors at the age of 12 when he picked up the violin. Armond is strongly committed to using music as a device to enact social change. He is particularly interested in providing greater access to high-quality musical instruction for underprivileged minority youth.
#THENOSTALGICBLACKGURL
"CarolineInspires” Bennett is devoted to affirming the lives of Black girls inside AND outside of the academy. Committed to transforming the academy from the inside out she privileges the knowledge she possesses to write, sing, speak and live for access- bridging a gap for the communities she writes with, for and to. Social media has been her saving grace. Through singing and spoken word she encourages the youth to understand “The sky is NOT the limit, YOU are.” The hashtag #CarolineInspires invokes conversations and thought processes that incite an irresistible yearning for transformation. She encourages Black girls and youth to strive towards impact and be more than “impressions”. Caroline’s performances and encounters (she calls it the #CCCAffect: Curls, Curves & Caroline) via social media and in-person are Animated. Radical & Dope! She is on a life-long mission to constantly remind the world: “YES! Black girls can Impress & Impact at the same damn! time.”
IOT & MACHINE LEARNING - CHANGING THE FUTURE
Dr. Dennis Ong is Distinguished Architect and Managing Principal at Verizon. Previously, he served as Chief Architect and Director at Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent, Lucent, and AT&T. He and his teams have launched many innovative and award-winning solutions combining the strengths of high tech companies and multitude of start-up companies. At Verizon, he is working with startups to utilize IoT and Machine Learning to create Smart City solutions to address the most challenging problems facing cities and municipalities. Dennis received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Ohio State University as University Fellow and MBA with honors from the University of Chicago. He was an adjunct faculty at the Ohio State University.
THE NUCLEAR KEY
Doug Hardtmayer is a current graduate student studying nuclear engineering at The Ohio State University. Doug has been interested in nuclear power from a very young age and has been studying it ever since. Since coming to Ohio State, his primary research focus has been in radiation detection and waste management, focusing mainly on pyroprocessing. While waste management is his main focus, he has also been involved and conducted research in health physics, radiation therapy, and radiochemistry fields. He also hosts and produces a podcast titled “RadioNuclear”, which discusses nuclear issues with various industry professionals, and serves to offer insight on the industry. After graduation, Doug will begin working at MPR Associates in Alexandria Virginia, where he hopes to work on some of the most challenging engineering issues facing the nuclear industry.
USING CONTEXT TO
DETERMINE HIDDEN MEANING
Eleni Christodulelis is a PhD student in Hispanic Linguistics and a Graduate Teaching Associate in Spanish at OSU. Raised in a Greek/English bilingual home, the presence of her heritage language in her early childhood sparked her interest in language as a whole and exposed her to the importance of multilingual competence. She learned Spanish early in her schooling in Southern California and Portuguese in college, and it was in these latter years that her main research focus, and the topic of her TEDx talk, was cultivated. Eleni strives to share her appreciation of language as a key to the workings of the human mind with the students in her upper level undergraduate Hispanic Linguistics courses. She believes that our shared ability to interpret contextualized meaning irrespective of our individual language backgrounds speaks to the indivisible connection between language and its use in social interaction.
TABLETOP ROLEPLAYING GAMES AS SOCIAL PRACTICE
John Arcadian is a writer, art director, and freelancer in the tabletop role-playing game industry. John has been writing gaming books and material for 15 years, and is the owner of Gnome Stew — a multiple award winning industry blog. John’s work in tabletop gaming focuses on the social situations connected to the games we play, and how those experiences can give insight into our personal growth. John has written and produced many books of gaming advice and content (The Book of the Tarrasque, Focal Point, Fated Minions of the Source, Masks, Unframed, et. al) and has art directed many more (Odyssey, Never Unprepared, Life and Moon, Rockerboys & Vending Machines, .et al). When John isn’t writing in the tabletop role-playing game industry, he works as a front end web developer.
A RECONCEPTUALIZATION
OF GOVERNMENT
Dr. Raadschelders is a professor of public administration and serves as the associate dean of faculty development at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs. He has been a faculty member since 1983, and has taught at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands and the University of Oklahoma before coming to the Ohio State University. His interests include administrative history, the role and position of government in societies, comparative government and anything else that appears intriguing. He loves teaching undergraduate and graduate students and mid-career professionals, and hopes they will never to lose (or will find again) their “hunger-puppyness,” the childlike curiosity that keeps one searching for answers and, more importantly, is vital for keeping in open mind. Living a comparative perspective has certainly helped with the latter.
THE STRENGTH OF YOUR STORY
Kimothy Wu is a fourth year international student majoring in Strategic Communication. Born and raised in Pretoria, South Africa, she was plucked from her home country (and overweight beagle pup) and whisked away to the world of Ohio, where her love for the arts was uncovered and flourished. Kimothy is a self-taught digital artist and her personal motto in life is: “Live life meaningfully” and one of the ways she finds meaning is to create meaning in the lives she encounters. A large part of her artworks goes toward fundraising endeavours and activism in the realms of environmental sustainability, the protection of endangered animal species, education, disaster relief and mental health. It is her firm belief that true growth lies in going outside of one’s comfort zone, and that a new challenge or difficult situation is simply another opportunity to learn something new.
DO UNIVERSITIES
RE-VICTIMIZE SURVIVORS?
Malia Lee Womack earned a BA from UC Berkeley in Gender and Women’s Studies with a minor in Global Poverty and Practice, and an MA from Columbia University in Human Rights Studies with an emphasis in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is currently pursuing a joint MA/PhD degree at Ohio State University in Latin American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (respectively). Womack interrogates human rights from an anti-racist and intersectional transnational feminist perspective. She challenges the field of human rights’ normative universalizing discourses, and advocates for revisions that take into account globalized power inequalities and the complex needs of marginalized communities and individuals. She is especially interested in interrogating the United States’ colonial relationship to Puerto Rico.
THERE'S NO "I" IN HUMAN
Michael Shirzadian is a PhD student in Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy. His research orbits contemporary rhetorical theory, disability studies, and critical race theory—especially the ways these areas intersect with the logics of political economy. An ardent socialist, Michael spends a lot of time explaining to anyone who will listen how Marxist materialisms and the so-called “new” materialism (attending seriously to the agency of things) are perfectly compatible, even complimentary. Michael is a posthuman—an amalgam of many things, including: American and Iranian culture, caring family members, way too visits to Chipotle, the city of Columbus and its history, anxiety, depression, a mean cocktail of SSRIs, a number of super good friends, the legacies of Christian evangelicalism, racism (esp. after 9/11), too many graduate courses, a kickass partner, a tuxedo cat, a great Pyrenees dog, the excesses of post-structuralist philosophy, and a deep, unwieldy nostalgia.
GENETESIS: A NON-LINEAR STARTUP
Peeyush Shrivastava is the Founder and CEO of Genetesis, a clinical-stage medical device company based out of Mason, Ohio. Peeyush and his co-founders started Genetesis out of their dorm rooms in 2013, and have since grown the company to over 20 employees with over $7 million in aggregate financing to date. Peeyush and the Genetesis team are creating novel biomagnetic imaging technologies to detect, diagnose and enable treatment for the world’s most debilitating diseases, starting with the Faraday Magnetocardiograph, a solution to rapidly detect coronary artery disease. The company’s work has been featured in CNN Money, Inc. Magazine, Forbes, MedCityNews and VentureBeat.
STROKE THERAPY: A BLUEPRINT FOR TEAM SCIENCE
Dr. Nimjee is an Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery and Neuroscience at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. He is one of 3 dual-trained vascular neurosurgeons in central Ohio treating patients with vascular disorders of the brain and spine. He was recruited to The Ohio State in 2014 and leads a translational research lab focused on discovering more effective and safer therapies to treat patients suffering from stroke and other thrombotic diseases. His lab has developed the first antidote-controlled clot-busting drug that has demonstrated superior efficacy to current therapy in pre-clinical models. Dr. Nimjee serves as an educator at The Ohio State, mentoring undergraduate and medical students as well as training the next generation of neurosurgeons.