For the past three years, Allison Barmann has been directing the Itasca Project for McKinsey & Company, where she works with local CEOs and civic leaders to improve the regional competitiveness and quality of life in the Minneapolis/St. Paul region.

As a Project Manager, she helps this virtual organization tackle education, job growth, infrastructure, and other civic issues to directly impact their local community.  For example, to improve the quality of education for Minneapolis public schools, they developed a strategic plan for the district, and are now offering support and guidance to the schools as they implement the plan. 

Managing the Itasca Project allows Alli to both embrace her interest in the social sector as well as reduce the travel required of a typical consultant – giving her more time to focus on her 3-year-old twins and infant child. 

Alli received a Bachelor’s of Science from MIT, and started her career as an engineer at 3M.  However, she wanted a smaller, entrepreneurial environment, so she joined a startup in San Francisco, where she found her interest in business and marketing.  To further develop her business skills, she earned her MBA at Kellogg.

Her family keeps her busy, but she’s looking forward to getting back on her bicycle for endurance rides.  After business school, she and her husband rode on a 1200-mile, 3-week trip from the coast of Oregon to Montana following the Lewis & Clark trail.   While they’re not planning yet another long journey, they participate in an annual 150-mile, 2-day trip to support multiple sclerosis research.

Mingming Fan is passionate about merging information technology into our daily lives. His graduate research at Tsinghua University focuses on human-computer interaction through sensors, such as the accelerometer in a cell phone that allows you to play a racing game by tilting the phone back and forth to control the car. 

But what if this same technology could be used to sense an elderly patient slipping and falling in his home, and immediately call his doctor for help? As mobile phones become more ubiquitous, Mingming wants to make our daily lives easier through smart technologies. His research seeks to shield the sensors from background interference (such as noise or irrelevant movements), and find ways to focus it on only the relevant inputs. For example, is the noise coming from the user or a television in the background? Is the person slipping, or just picking up an object from the floor?

Mingming is also researching large-scale touch-screen interactions. Multi-touch tables allow people to collaborate by touching the table surface at the same time. For example, a team could design a website by having multiple people move modules around on the same surface. Currently, these devices are restricted by size, so Mingming’s group is combining several surfaces into one large table to better facilitate team collaboration.

After completing his Master’s degree in Computer Science, Mingming hopes to pursue a Ph.D. program in the United States to continue his research in human-computer interaction. Driven by the motto “think big, do small,” he works on small, focused projects that will have a big impact. His goal is to move research work out of the lab into technology solutions that significantly improve our daily lives.  

Karla Brammer ran her fourth marathon this year, the Chicago Marathon, and she’s well acquainted with the injuries that can result.