AIAS Reveals Annual Randy Pausch Scholarship Winners

The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences will award $2,500 to four development students selected to receive the second annual Randy Pausch Scholarship, established to honor the late Carnegie-Mellon professor. John Kolencheryl from Carnegie Mellon University, Sebastian Gosztyla of DePaul University, William Graner of University of Southern California and Kimberly Kiser from Saint Vincent College will receive scholarships to support their beginning careers in game development. Dr. Pausch may be best remembered in the game community for co-founding the Entertainment Technology Center at CMU and for creating Alice, a free 3D programming environment that lets the user easily create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. He lost his life to pancreatic cancer last year. AIAS established the annual scholarship during the late stages of Dr. Pausch's illness, with the aim of recognizing him for his teachings, sabbaticals at Walt Disney Imagineering and Electronic Arts, and consultation with Google on user interface design through support for student dreams. "Being able to help such talented young adults pursue their dreams to be interactive entertainment creators is one of the Academy's most important pursuits," said AIAS president Joseph Olin. "If these awards can help students to 'Dream Big,' as Randy Pausch was fond of saying, than we are truly helping to keep his wishes alive."