Meet the Siebel Scholars

Christopher UrmsonCarnegie Mellon University, Computer Science, Class of 2005

United States residents spend an average of 52 minutes each day commuting to and from work. 35,000 lives are lost each year to traffic accidents. And only 8% of roads are currently utilized when freeways are most efficient. According to Chris Urmson, who leads the self-driving car program at Google featured in Wired Magazine, technology has the promise to dramatically impact transportation by potentially doubling traffic efficiency and reducing the number of traffic-related accidents by at least 50% through autonomous vehicles.

Chris is excited about the innovative solutions his team develops and tests, and the potential of cars in the future. As a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University, he began examining how problems change as you drive faster and across different terrains. Initially, his interests were in the context of space exploration and research with a robot moving at a walking pace. Then, DARPA announced the first Grand Challenge, and Chris became intrigued with the idea of building a robot that could move at 35 miles per hour. Could a robot drive 170 miles with no human assistance? His team encountered several technical challenges, and rolled two Humvees during their testing – one crash within 10 days of the competition – but Chris was hooked on this exciting new field.

Prior to Google, he was an Assistant Research Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and directed engineering for the team which won the 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge with a self-driving Chevy Tahoe. His work at Google is very similar to his academic research, but the scale is much larger, with the Google vehicles driving more than 200,000 miles of testing.

Chris received his undergraduate degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Manitoba. He has two young sons who are growing up with a different perspective than he did, with their father’s colleagues including a Mars Rover driver, the founder of a robotic toy company and a NASA engineer who helped discover water on the moon.

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Kamin WhitehouseUniversity of California, Berkeley, Computer Science, Class of 2006

Kamin Whitehouse is developing technology to analyze household behavioral patterns and identify ways residents can save on energy costs. His team has deployed systems in over 20 homes, and early results indicate that the solution can produce a 28% reduction in heating and cooling costs for just a $25 investment.

Kamin, an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of Virginia, leads a research group creating “smart building” technology to improve energy efficiency in office buildings and homes. See their technology in action in this smarthome demo video. He leverages existing smart meter data, provided by utility companies, and develops algorithms to find patterns in behavior that can be used to produce energy usage.

For example, a woman wakes up every morning at 6 a.m., eats breakfast, wanders through the house looking for her keys, and walks out the front door. Most of the time, following this pattern means that the woman will not return home until 6 p.m. Next door, a man also wakes up at 6 a.m., leaves the house, and returns in an hour. Kamin’s technology can learn to automatically turn off the heater for the woman who is leaving to go to work all day, but not for the man who is out jogging.

Gaining this insight requires little effort on the homeowner’s part. In homes that already have smart water and electrical meters installed, residents simply add a sensor to each doorway that measures height, direction, and motion. Through these sensors, Kamin’s technology is able to identify the occupants, the house floor plan, and energy usage by occupant – with data conveniently available on an iPhone application.

Kamin group is working with the UVA business school to ensure that his energy solution is not just innovative, but also cost effective and scalable. They’ve set a goal to reduce energy costs by 30 to 50 percent for no more than $300. In contrast, a typical energy audit can cost $300 to $500, with an additional $3,000 to $4,000 to insulate the house—or a retrofit costing tens of thousands of dollars. Considering the average energy bill is around $80 per month, this investment doesn’t pay for many consumers.

In addition to his Master’s degree and Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, Kamin holds Bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering, cognitive science, and philosophy from Rutgers University.

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Chris Bradford: 2012 Siebel Scholars Impact Award WinnerStanford University, Business, Class of 2005

Joel Mwale grew up in extreme poverty in a rural village in Kenya. After a bout of dysentery from contaminated drinking water, he developed an innovative method to capture rainwater for his community. He expanded his idea into a water bottling and distribution business called SkyDrop Enterprises, which has now provided more than 100,000 bottles of much-needed clean drinking water to African villagers.

Now, Joel is a first-year student at African Leadership Academy, which received a 2012 Siebel Scholars Impact Award for its work developing future leaders like Joel, who can foster peace and prosperity in Africa.

Founded by Christopher Bradford ’05 and Fred Swaniker, African Leadership Academy identifies the most promising 16 to 19 year old leaders and brings them together for a two-year university preparatory program emphasizing leadership, entrepreneurship, and African studies. Through its merit-based system, students represent a wide range of backgrounds; emerging leaders from refugee camps and orphanages learn side-by-side with budding leaders from middle-class and wealthy families. ALA enables them to gain access to the capital and influential networks needed to drive lasting change. These young entrepreneurs – many of whom started businesses as part of the curriculum at African Leadership Academy – have been featured on CNN, presented at the Clinton Global Initiative forum, and written best-selling books.

No matter their educational background, these students share principles of drive, courage, and perseverance, which enable them to succeed in university-prep classes. In 2009, three were among the top 10 performers in the world on their Cambridge University International Exams, the most widely administered pre-university examinations in the world. African Leadership Academy opened its Johannesburg, South Africa campus in 2008, and now has 120 graduates attending top universities in the United States, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Duke, and MIT.

As alumni expand their global networks, it is critical that they maintain connections to Africa, seeing opportunities that ignite their eagerness to return after graduation. To tackle its challenge of strengthening graduates’ ties to each other and to the African continent, Chris will leverage the Impact Award to reconnect graduates at an event modeled after annual Siebel Scholars conferences, with speakers addressing regional issues that will re-energize graduates about opportunities in Africa.

With the Impact Award comes the backing of the broader Siebel Scholars community, which already includes many active supporters. “The Siebel Scholars are a network of some of the brightest young minds on the planet who can have a significant impact on the young leaders on our campus,” Chris said. “Like the Siebel Scholars community, ALA’s young leaders will work together to drive transformative change for decades to come.”

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Michael Rosskamm: 2012 Siebel Scholars Impact Award WinnerNorthwestern University, Business, Class of 2008

While many civic-minded business leaders want to improve K-12 education in the United States, without education backgrounds, they don’t necessarily know where best to channel their passion.

Revive the Dream takes their business expertise and ability to drive change, and provides the context to apply these skills to the education space. By providing the resources, networks, and political savvy to bring about transformative change in the education system, this fellowship program demonstrates how industry leaders can become education reform advocates without building careers in education.

Founded by Michael Rosskamm ‘08, Revive The Dream was named a 2012 Siebel Scholars Impact Award winner for its efforts to revolutionize K-12 education in the United States. Its inaugural 25 fellows were named in fall 2011 and began a series of practical seminars to arm them with the tools needed to change outdated structures, systems, and approaches. Each month, fellows gather with preeminent education practitioners for in-depth discussions on key topics including teacher effectiveness, urban school transformation, alternative models, and advocacy best practices. These leaders are then matched with organizations to serve as strategic partners or board members to leverage their newfound knowledge to impact urban public education.

To develop the program, Mike drew on his experience as a high school math teacher in New York, and later as a management consultant with Boston Consulting Group. He also leveraged the Siebel Scholars community, teaming up with Melissa Kinzler ’08, who sits on the board of Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, on initial strategy, and Micki O’Neil ’07, founder of Foundations College Preparatory School, to develop the curriculum.

With the help of the wider Siebel Scholars community and Impact Award, Mike hopes to expand to 20 cities with 500 fellows each year, driving local change at the national level. “The support of the Siebel Scholars community will allow Revive the Dream to build off of our early successes and continue to grow into a national organization with significant impact both locally and across the country,” said Mike.

Mike is currently a Broad Resident and Senior Director on the Teaching and Learning Team at Achievement First, a Charter Management Group in Brooklyn, New York. In addition to his MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, he also holds a Bachelor’s degree from Princeton University.

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Lindsay Stradley: 2012 Siebel Scholars Impact Award WinnerMIT, Business, Class of 2011

2.6 billion people worldwide lack access to sanitation. The resulting diseases kill nearly 1.6 million children each year. It was these startling statistics that prompted Lindsay Stradley, a Siebel Scholar from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, to cofound Sanergy with her classmates, David Auerbach and Ani Vallabhaneni. The trio shared a vision for using technology and innovative business models to address the social and economic issues that affect those living in urban poverty in the developing world.

Lindsay and her team founded Sanergy in January of 2010 to permanently reduce sanitation-related disease in Africa’s slums by making sanitation accessible, affordable, and sustainable. They developed a cleaner and cheaper alternative to the toilets utilized by inhabitants of the densely packed slums of Kenya, where 80% of the 10 million residents were paying for unhygienic and inaccessible sanitation options that polluted local water supplies.

Sanergy’s innovative sanitation solution begins with the franchise of low-cost, hygienic toilets to residents of slum communities – resulting in decreases in disease, while improving the local job market and increasing the annual wages for these entrepreneurs. Waste from the toilets is then collected and processed off-site by Sanergy employees, preventing the pollution of waterways and once again providing employment opportunities. The processed waste then produces fertilizer for farmers and energy—like biogas and electricity—for the local community.

Sanergy’s pilot locations have provided hygienic sanitation to 150 customers and will expand to serve nearly 5,000 users in early 2012. In less than two years, the company and its founders have already won eight fellowships and awards for their advancements, including the Siebel Scholars Impact Award. “The Siebel Scholars Impact Award enables Sanergy to accelerate its progress towards improving the quality of life for Kenyans living in urban poverty,” said Stradley.

Siebel Scholars are a key asset in helping Sanergy reach their goals. The Siebel Scholars community has already offered to assist with their needs, which include data tracking, waste processing research and development, product design, and operations management. Sanergy has also collaborated with another Siebel Scholars Impact Award-winning organization, the African Leadership Academy, whose graduates have managed sales and marketing efforts locally in Nairobi.

Lindsay has an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management and a B.A. in American Studies from Yale University.

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Get to know our featured Scholars. Click the images to learn more.

Mr. Peer Casillo

Education & Work

School

MIT Sloan

Class

2006

Area of Study

Business

Professional Interests & Experience

Bio

Peer is the Director of Operations and Planning at Novartis Oncology, working closely with the executive team on the division's strategy and interfacing with Novartis's internal and external communications groups. He brings to the role broad experience serving healthcare clients as a consultant at Accenture and, most recently, as an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company. He holds an MBA from MIT Sloan and a Bachelor’s degree from Brown University in Biomechanical Engineering.