Action
& Impact

An unlikely friendship between student and donor that spans generations.

It’s summer, and Daniel Amankwatia ’19 is on the New York City subway commuting to his internship at PricewaterhouseCoopers and reading a novel given to him by Penny Miller. Meanwhile, at home in Connecticut, Penny is playing an album recorded by Off the Record, Daniel’s campus a cappella group. She knows the lyrics by heart.

The two are unlikely friends. Daniel is the first student to receive the Clinton F. Miller ’34 Memorial Endowed Scholarship, which Penny created to honor her father, a patent attorney who earned his Lehigh degree in chemical engineering over 80 years ago.

Daniel and Penny first got to know each other at the 2017 Scholarship Dinner, where donors and scholarship recipients are given the opportunity to meet. Today, their evolving friendship is one filled with mutual interests, respect, and admiration.

“Getting to know Daniel has reaffirmed my commitment to supporting Lehigh,” Penny says.

“Meeting Penny at the Scholarship Dinner was like meeting a family member,” says Daniel. “When you get that one-on-one, personal connection … for me, it really sparked something. It pushed me to try even harder at everything I do here.”

Daniel is in the Integrated Business and Engineering Honors Program, majoring in mechanical engineering and economics with a minor in aerospace engineering. In addition to his two summer internships, he stays busy during the school year working as an admissions fellow, performing in three singing groups, and planning the University Choir’s next international trip as the group’s tour manager.

“I am blessed to be here,” says Daniel, who says that without financial aid and Penny’s help, he likely would not be at Lehigh.

While Penny earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at two other prestigious universities, she chose to establish the scholarship at her father’s alma mater. “My father was proud to have gone to Lehigh,” she says. “I really felt like I wanted to do something to honor his roots and where he came from and honor him at the same time.”

Penny’s father was the first in his family to attend college. During the Great Depression, he struggled to pay for his education. Like Daniel, he worked multiple jobs, including starting a dance band and performing on a transatlantic cruise ship during the summers. “My father couldn’t afford to go to college, but he somehow managed, so I thought it was appropriate to set up a scholarship to help others in similar circumstances.”

“It is very rewarding to help someone and feel like you are contributing to their success,” says Penny, who told Daniel that her father would be proud of him. “Getting to know Daniel has been a wonderful privilege that I would never have had without the donation and the Scholarship Dinners. It has reaffirmed my commitment to supporting Lehigh.” When he is able, Daniel plans to follow in Penny’s footsteps and help someone else realize their potential, too. “I’ve experienced the impact a donor can have on someone’s life—it’s powerful to have someone backing you, and who believes in your ability to move forward and be successful,” he says.

Until then, Penny and Daniel plan to continue staying in touch, sharing their love of books and music, and celebrating the memory of Penny’s father through Daniel’s continued success.

Meet the researchers behind the artificial intelligence tool that combines data science and psychology.

Martin Harmer, the Alcoa Foundation Professor of Material Science and Engineering, has a vision for what he believes could eventually become the future of science. It is a vision built on the construct of collaboration—and its name is Buddy.

Buddy is a key component of the multimillion-dollar Nano/Human Interface Presidential Engineering Research Initiative. The initiative aims to develop a new kind of artificial intelligence tool designed to help researchers make smarter and better use of data. “If successful,” Harmer says, “our work here has the potential to lead the next revolution in the conduct of science.”

Similar to the way a smartphone is able to “learn” about its user’s needs and habits, Buddy will be able to glean from experience which kinds of data a particular researcher finds useful. With time, the interface between human and machine could become almost seamless, helping researchers achieve goals that may not otherwise be possible.

“We will talk to Buddy like we talk to our phones,” says Harmer. “Buddy will remember what it has done before and will learn from its interactions with us. It will learn what we’re interested in, anticipate what we want to do, and give us a potential solution.”

To get there, however, Harmer understood that a multidisciplinary team was vital to success. So for the past year, Harmer has been collaborating with physicist Jeff Rickman, bioengineer Anand Jagota, computer scientist Daniel Lopresti, and psychologists Kate Arrington and Nancy Carlisle.

“Bringing these disciplines together is very, very difficult,” says Harmer. “It’s hard. We’re out of our comfort zone. We’re going to be struggling to bring all this together. And that’s what makes it worthwhile.”

Since joining the team, psychologists Arrington and Carlisle have harnessed their knowledge of cognitive psychology to help developers design the machine in a way that optimizes its ability to collaborate with the human brain.

“When humans are processing data, it’s important to recognize limitations in humans as well as the data,” explains Carlisle. “Cognitive scientists are trained to understand the limits of human mental processing. It’s what we do. Taking into account these limitations when devising new ways to present data is critical to success.”

“Several research universities are making major investments in big data,” adds Rickman. “Our initiative brings in a relatively new aspect: the human element.”

The team believes Buddy will one day be nimble and flexible enough to assist researchers working in any number of disciplines. But in the immediate future, they believe it will be particularly useful in two areas of research where progress has been slowed by the inability to fully visualize and interpret vast amounts of data: the production of nanomaterials and the development of carbon nanotubes.

The team’s success has the potential to unlock a number of scientific breakthroughs, and despite the enormous challenges it poses, Harmer is confident in their ability to deliver. Lehigh, he says, is tackling a project that many other universities won’t—in a way that most universities can’t.