How Remnants Nourishes Empathy for Caregivers of People Living with Dementia
After you walk under a trellis decorated with fragrant and multicolored blooms, a grandmother’s voice welcomes you to tend to the Remnants garden, located in the immersive CAVERN space at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center. As you continue to water and prune, the flowers wilt, the colors fade, and the weeds grow. Remnants provides an immersive, emotional, and transformational experience for guests to understand and empathize with what it is like for a caregiver of a person living with dementia.
To Disrupt or Not To Disrupt: The Hot Metal Book Club Discusses The Innovator’s Dilemma
Everyone talks about disruptive innovation, but how and why does it happen? On May 19, 2026, Ned Uber, PhD, facilitated a discussion at the Hot Metal Book Club to discuss The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen. Grounded in Christensen’s framework that true innovation isn’t about better technology, Uber shared how it's about reframing problems and building business models that allow new solutions to take root.
Hot Metal Campus’s 2025 Year in Review: The Book
This past year marked a defining chapter for Hot Metal Campus. Researchers, entrepreneurs, students, creatives, and innovators across campus came together to strengthen a growing ecosystem rooted in collaboration, discovery, and Pittsburgh’s continued momentum in life sciences, technology, media, and entrepreneurship.
The Book captures that momentum. The inaugural year-in-review publication highlights the people, projects, research, events, and ideas that shaped Hot Metal Campus throughout 2025.
Panther Life Sciences Brings SmartMAPs to Hot Metal Campus
We’re pleased to welcome Panther Life Sciences to Hot Metal Campus. Panther is engineering solutions for skin health by “unlocking the tremendous biological powers of our skin.” The move of Panther to Hot Metal Labs to expand their laboratory operations signals the next step for the team to modernize skin care and bring shelf-stable treatments directly to customers, including their goal of bringing their first clinically proven product to market in 2027.
ETC’s Interactive Storytelling Takes Flight in the Classroom
Once upon a time, in a middle-school classroom in Pittsburgh, students were studying art and engineering. Every day, in school, in activities, and at home, they learned new things, including watching movies and playing games, but could these skills be something they would pursue with higher education in the entertainment technology industry? Until one day, Dawn, an animatronic owl that could turn its head, move its beak, and flap its wings, visited the classroom.
EvolvingSTEM Brings Lab Experiments Straight Into the Classroom
Based out of Bridgeside Point II in Hot Metal Campus, EvolvingSTEM is a science outreach program that brings evolution and microbiology research directly into classrooms across the Pittsburgh region. Run through Professor Vaughn Cooper’s lab in the Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh, the program equips students from grades 6 through 12 with the tools and framework to conduct real experiments on bacterial evolution.
Getting Startups Focused: The Hot Metal Book Club Discusses Crossing the Chasm
It pays off to stay focused. On April 7, 2026, the Hot Metal Book Club met to discuss Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey A. Moore.
How ENGAGE’s Community Learning Shapes Stroke Recovery
ENGAGE focuses on the social side of stroke recovery, helping people rebuild confidence and reconnect with their communities. This group intervention, which was co-designed by community members who are stroke survivors, was tested by a multi-university team of researchers led by Dr. Elizabeth Skidmore at the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Occupational Therapy.
Tacit Uses Haptics to Elicit Intended Emotion
How can virtual reality and haptic gloves work together to create profound emotional experiences? That is the simple but ambitious question that project Tacit aims to explore.
Through the Looking XR Glasses
The most novel story you can tell is the one you choose to enter. To push the boundaries of mixed-reality storytelling and interactive gaming, the ImmerX team at Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) created five immersive worlds to explore in Travel-in-X.
Building Molecules and a Business: The Hot Metal Book Club Discusses The Billion-Dollar Molecule
Spirited discussion, strong opinions, plenty of coffee. On Tuesday, February 24, 2026, the Hot Metal Book Club attendees discussed The Billion Dollar Molecule: The Quest for the Perfect Drug by Barry Werth and the tensions behind innovation, including work-life balance, clashing egos, and the push-and-pull between business expectations and scientific reality.
Kicks Lab Gives Young Adults a Head Start in STEAM Through Shoe Design
Emerging from Carnegie Mellon University’s ETC, Kicks Lab is an experimental, educational video game meant to encourage middle school students’ curiosity in topics that blend science, arts, and engineering through shoe design.
Trinity Brings Cross-Platform Co-op to the Couch
A student team at ETC has been building something ambitious called Trinity. It’s a multiplayer co-op game that unites three players on three different platforms: VR, mobile, and PC. Designed for in-person play, Trinity has brought people together and surprisingly gathered a wider audience than anticipated.
The Intergalactic Buttoneers Modernized the ETC Space Bridge in Time for Fall Festival
There are games that can be played anywhere, anytime, but what about games created for a specific physical place and time? The Intergalactic Buttoneers modernized the iconic ETC Space Bridge, explored a series of location-based experience prototypes, and designed an immersive experience to bring the Space Bridge to life during the 2025 ETC Fall Festival.
A Mythological Conversation with AI
Athena and Poseidon are trading witty banter as a curious visitor looks on. It’s not a scene from Mount Olympus, but a high-tech lab at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). There, a team of graduate students at CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) has used artificial intelligence (AI) to bring these mythological characters to life.
The Implant System that Seeks to Restore Vision Loss
Current treatments for geographic atrophy in age-related macular degeneration (AMD) can slow the progression of vision loss but they do not restore vision. To address this issue, a team of researchers is developing the photovoltaic retina implant microarray (PRIMA) system, an implant system that uses infrared light to restore lost sight.
Hot Metal Campus Closes the Year with Community and a Few Snowballs
Hot Metal Campus wrapped up the semester last week with a holiday gathering that brought together students, faculty, and a handful of industry partners for an evening of informal connection.
Hot Metal Campus’ Professional Development Series Grows Community and Career Confidence
This fall, Hot Metal Campus has become a gathering place for professional growth, practical skills, and real-world guidance through a new workshop series.
If You Have a Question, Others Probably Do Too
Do I belong here? What do I wish I knew when I started this job, degree, or program? A team of University of Pittsburgh researchers used the power of reflecting on these ever-present questions to develop a three-session, evidence-based ecological belonging program, Supporting Hardiness and Inclusion for New Endeavors (SHINE), for entry-level occupational therapy doctorate students.
Physical Therapy Needs to be Closer to Home
Your location shouldn’t affect your ability to participate in a physical therapy program. To address the burden of long travel distances to physical therapy for older adults with knee osteoarthritis living in rural areas, University of Pittsburgh researchers conducted a pilot feasibility study of a novel hybrid in-person and telerehabilitation program that was found to be safe and feasible.