EMBARGOED for 12:00AM EDT WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18TH June 18, 2014 Background on the Exhibits and Attendees at the First-Ever White Ho
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EMBARGOED FOR 12:00AM EDT WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18TH June 18, 2014 Background on the Exhibits and Attendees at the First-Ever White House Maker Faire The first-ever White House Maker Faire will feature over 100 Makers from more than 25 states, and include more than 30 exhibits. The President will view a subset of these exhibits, representing the incredible range of creativity and ingenuity unlocked by the Maker movement. Following his tour of the White House Maker Faire, the President will deliver remarks to an audience of entrepreneurs, students, business leaders, mayors, and heads of non-profit organizations. Notables attending the first-ever White House Maker Faire Expected attendees include: Senior Administration Officials, Appointees, and Members of Congress John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Jeff Zients, Director of the National Economic Council (NEC) and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy Paulette Aniskoff, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Public Engagement France Cordova, Director, National Science Foundation (NSF) Francis Collins, Director, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Susan Hildreth, Director, Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Innovation Leaders and Communicators Dale Dougherty, Founder, MAKE Magazine Dean Kamen, famed inventor and Founder, DEKA Research and FIRST Michael Gregoire, CEO, CA Technologies Mark Hatch, CEO, TechShop Joseph Magnacca, CEO, Radioshack Justin Rattner, Intel Senior Fellow, Intel Corporate Vice President, and President Intel Foundation Abraham "Avi" Reichental, CEO, 3D Systems Yancey Strickley, CEO, Kickstarter Local Officials Kevin Smith, Mayor, Anderson, IN Elizabeth Patterson, Mayor, Benicia, CA Peggy Smith, Mayor, Charles Town, WV Lee Moritz, Mayor, Conover, NC Mark Olson, Mayor, Fayetteville, NY Dayne Walling, Mayor, Flint, MI Svante Myrick, Mayor, Ithaca, NY 1 EMBARGOED FOR 12:00AM EDT WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18TH Frank Janakovic, Mayor, Johnstown, PA Bobby Hopewell, Mayor, Kalamazoo, MI Madeline Rogero, Mayor, Knoxville, TN Virgil Bernero, Mayor, Lansing, MI Jennifer Selin, Mayor, Morgantown, WV Tom Beehan, Mayor, Oak Ridge, TN Jean Quan, Mayor, Oakland, CA William Capote, Mayor, Palm Bay, FL Bill Peduto, Mayor, Pittsburgh, PA David Hamill, Mayor, Ranson, WV Lovely A. Warren, Rochester, NY Larry Morrissey, Mayor, Rockford, IL Joseph Curtatone, Mayor, Somerville, MA A sampling of the exhibits that the President will see include: $5 Chemistry Set for the 21st Century with a Musical Background: As a child growing up in India, Manu Prakash, of Palo Alto, CA, was a regular science-fair winner with grand dreams of scientific enterprise. Today, he is working to bring low-cost, cutting-edge scientific tools to schoolchildren and laboratories in every corner of the globe. Prakash’s small yet powerful design, inspired by a toy music box, costs only $5, and could enable schoolchildren from low-income communities to not only learn about science and engineering but explore and address real-world issues like water quality and contamination. As part of this vision of reaching more students with the power of discovery, Manu has also created Foldscope, an origami-based paper microscope that costs less than $1. Robotic Giraffe Merges Engineering and the Arts: California-native Lindsay Lawlor, of San Diego, CA, a computer programmer, is passionate about bringing electro-mechanical-animals to life. Lawlor’s Robotic Giraffe is a 17-foot-tall, 2200-lb robotic giraffe that “walks” on wheels and is powered by a 12-horsepower hybrid fuel-engine motor. Lawlor designed the Robotic Giraffe to play music, feature innovative lighting displays, and carry up to 30 people in its carriage. Lawlor’s masterpiece took him more than a year to complete. He continues to evolve and refine the design each year, bringing what he made with his own two hands to Maker Faires and festivals across the country. The electric giraffe is an example of how making, engineering, and design, combined with the arts, can bring science, technology, engineering, and math to a wide-variety of audiences. Newborn Incubator Helping Save Premature Babies in Rural Villages: As a student Maker at Stanford University, Jane Chen, of San Francisco, CA, took on the challenge to develop a baby incubator for $200 – which is about 1% of the price of the existing technology. The result was Embrace, a low-cost infant warmer that does not require electricity and enabling its use in rural areas around the world and expanding access to the medical equipment needed to save babies born prematurely to remote villages. Without a technology like the Embrace infant warmer, mothers of newborns born prematurely in rural villages often lack access to 2 EMBARGOED FOR 12:00AM EDT WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18TH the medical equipment needed to save their children’s lives. From its prototype developed in a TechShop makerspace in San Francisco, Embrace has now helped more than 50,000 babies around the globe. This month, Embrace announced that a donation from Beyoncé would bring their product to 10 countries in Africa and touch the lives of another 2,000 newborns. Homeless Maker Turned Entrepreneur Pays it Forward: In 2011, Marc Roth, of San Francisco, CA, found himself homeless in San Francisco after health challenges left him unable to work. After hearing two co-residents in a homeless shelter talk about a local “TechShop” facility, Marc decided to visit one out of sheer curiosity. Amazed by what he found inside and with the modest amount of money that he had, Marc signed up for a one- month membership to learn basic skills in woodworking, laser cutting, welding, and 3D printing. Within 16 months, this curiosity evolved into Marc launching his own business, SF Laser, to provide custom laser-cutting and etching services. Now Marc is working to provide others with an opportunity similar to the one that changed his life with The Learning Shelter—an online program that will teach tech and manufacturing skills to those trying to get back on their feet. Solving a 5,000 Year-Old Problem: Student Develops Comfortable Crutches: When Partha Unnava, of Atlanta, GA, broke his ankle playing basketball, he made an important discovery—he hated crutches. After spending six weeks hobbling and aching, he decided that it was time to make his attempt at fixing a 5,000-year-old problem. Unnava, now a fifth year Biomedical Engineering student, helped to develop the Better Walk Crutch, which reduces pain and fatigue for crutch users and launched in 2013 at Georgia Tech. Better Walk has since participated in Zero to 510—a medical device accelerator program for start-ups, raised $150K in seed funding from venture capital groups, and obtained letters of intent from orthopedic surgeons who are passionate about bringing this product to the marketplace. Using DIY Balloons to Map Your Community: Up, up, and away was the idea behind an invention from Public Lab- a non-profit organization that develops open source hardware and software from community-based environmental monitoring. Dr. Sara Wylie, of Boston, MA, co-launched Public Lab as a way to create and share Do-It-Yourself tools to empower citizen scientists to study environmental health. A key tool was Grassroots Mapping, a cheap digital camera attached to a balloon or kite to create high-resolution aerial maps that were better and more up to date than satellite photography. Flying these balloon cameras from canoes, the Public Lab tool has been used by community mappers like Eymund Diegel, of Brooklyn, NY, who undertook an effort in his local community to map the Gowanus Canal Superfund site using canoe-based teams of balloon camera photographers. Working with the Gowanus Canal Conservacy, their grassroots maps have not only assisted in the cleanup of the site, but also identified a potential Revolutionary War cemetery, buried under the Superfund landfill. Developing Smart, Eco-Friendly Urban Furniture for the Digital Age: Sandra Richter, of Cambridge, MA, has a passion for developing solutions for an urban living environment, including designing “smart” furniture with her startup Changing Environments. Sandra and her team designed a solar-powered bench, or a “soofa,” that allows people to charge their phones while stopping for a quick rest. The soofa is part of a larger effort to create dual- purpose modular furniture that also serve as hubs for charging electronic devices and sensing 3 EMBARGOED FOR 12:00AM EDT WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18TH local environmental conditions – unique capabilities that have become everyday needs for the mobile generation. Just a week after the White House Maker Faire, Sandra and her team will be installing their first 12 units in Cambridge and Boston. Passionate Individuals Help Labs Become Fab: Nadya Peek, Makeda Stephenson, and Neil Gershenfeld are the dedicated Makers demonstrating the Mobile Fab Lab, an outreach effort founded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA), where Neil serves as Director. CBA’s Fab Lab is a makerspace with the appropriate prototyping tools for independent fabrication projects. Nadya, a graduate student MIT, is working to make product development available to everyone. Makeda, who has been involved with the Fab Lab since she was 13-years-old, is working to promote efforts across the country, for students and adults alike to develop skills, as she has. Bringing Makers to Market in the United States: When Jen McCabe, of Las Vegas, NV, and the team at Romotive built a tiny personal robot named Romo in 2011, she made a splash within the Maker Movement. From her own personal experience, Jen decided that developing hardware shouldn’t be so hard, and has dedicated herself to helping Makers move beyond their garages and into a space where creative boundaries don’t exist. Jen founded Factorli, a small urban factory in Las Vegas, NV, that serves Makers, designers, and startups of all sizes.