Elizabeth Caniano - Introduction

I am a first-year Master's student in Public Policy and Management.  My interest in the design and administration of public welfare and health services, especially at the local and state levels, led me to CMU and Pittsburgh.  I consider Northern/Central Virginia my homebase, though I grew up on a dozen or so military bases in the US and Germany due to my dad’s position in the Army.  I attended Smith College, a small liberal arts school in Massachusetts, and studied economics and Italian language and literature. 

For the past few years I worked in research administration at the Joslin Diabetes Center, a Harvard Medical School research institute in Boston.  I supported a range of basic science grant proposals and reports (for federal, charitable and industry sponsors) for two professors studying integrative physiology and type 2 diabetes.  I really enjoyed learning of the different funding streams, climates and collaborative energies fueling research for such a pressing public health issue, as well as the institute's efforts to build bridges with industry leaders and venture accelerators.    

From this class, I am excited to expand my understanding of the types of environmental, political and institutional factors that shape innovation culture and application, and their broader economic and social reaches.  I am particularly interested in the development of public health-minded technologies and information dissemination, and the influence of public-private partnerships (like Pittsburgh’s Life Sciences Greenhouse) in setting the pace and direction of  research and entrepreneurial initiatives.  Moreover, I wish to study how these processes and practices have/can be applied to different public issues and geographic areas (environmental sustainability and food security, for example).