It was another year of Zoom meetings and virtual conferences, a time when tech companies faced increased scrutiny and increased demand. Cybersecurity and privacy concerns were at the forefront, but didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of tech funders. Pittsburgh’s tech community tackled challenges from new uses for robotics to issues with hackers to developing video games and getting back to the moon.
Membership: The information technology workforce in the Pittsburgh region is 3% of the total workforce ands responsible for 7.3% of the gross regional product.
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“Even in today’s practice, when we talk about manual surgery, very traditional tools are used: saws, chisels, hammers. What robotics does is it brings a level of precision.”
— Riddhit Mitra, the global director of product management and robotics at U.K.-based Smith+Nephew with a robotics division based in the Strip
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“They’re not teenagers sitting bored in a bedroom. This is more like the old-time gangs that say, ‘Pay us or you won’t like what happens to you.’ The thugs that are forcing the network to pay protection money, they’re not at all upset about burning down your business.”
— Timothy J. Shimeall, a senior member of Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute’s CERT division, speaking about ransomware's impact on Pennsylvania businesses
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“Right now, we’re sitting on a lot of secrets.”
— Jesse Schell, CEO of Station Square-based Schell Games, which is incorporating virtual reality into its games
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“When I see a group of men at networking events, I’ll make a point to insert myself as if they were already expecting me to come. That’s a part of just believing I belong in every space. That came with practice on my part.”
— Kelauni Jasmyn, founder and CEO of Pittsburgh-based Black Tech Nation and co-founder of the investment firm Black Tech Nation Ventures
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“We’re kind of like FedEx or DHL. We land them on the moon, and once on the moon, we become like a power station.”
— Ander Solorzano, lead systems engineer at North Side-based Astrobotic
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“Time and time again — postal systems in the 1800s, telephones in the 1900s, video conferencing in the 2000s.”
— Chris Harrison, a researcher and professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute
First Published: June 12, 2022, 9:00 a.m.