Latest news with #PrincetonUniversity
Irish Examiner
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Beginner's pluck: Full-time writer and mother Daria Lavelle
From a creative family, literature has always played a large part in Daria's life. 'I was an imaginative child,' she says. 'I invented stories and games, and at 15, I started writing seriously.' She won some teenage writing awards for short stories, and had a play performed when she was at college. 'From the start my writing had a speculative element, of fantasy and magic.' Daria worked in advertising as a brand strategist for 10 years, but she didn't stop writing. I continuously wrote novels. An agent sent out two YA novels, but they died. She started writing Aftertaste in 2019. 'It was my thesis project,' she says. 'During the MFA they matched students with agents. Lucy Carson showed great passion about the novel.' It has sold to 15 territories, and the movie rights sold to Sony. Who is Daria Lavelle? Date/ place of birth: 1987/ Kyiv, Ukraine. 'I was 2 when we emigrated.' Education: Public school in New Jersey; Princeton University, creative writing and comparative literature; Sarah Lawrence College, New York, MFA in fine arts in writing with a speculative fiction focus. Home: New Jersey. Family: Husband James, twins aged 7, and an 18-month-old. A golden Doodle, Stanley. The day job: Full-time writer and mother. In another life: 'Writing is something in my soul. But I'd love to experience film or TV.' Favourite writers: Karen Russell; Erin Morgenstern; Kelly Link; Amy Bender; Anthony Bourdain; VE Schwab; Jennifer Egan. Second book: 'I'm working on it.' Top tip: 'You have to build a whole world, with tools to help the reader immerse themselves in the novel.' Website: Instagram: @ The debut Aftertaste Bloomsbury, €17.99 While dishwashing in a restaurant, Kostya mixes a cocktail and discovers his ability to summon spirits through the food he cooks. Rising through the culinary ranks, he starts to connect the living with the dead through his cooking. But it's a dangerous game, that threatens the stability of the afterlife — not to mention Kostya's love life — with the psychic, Maura. Full of ghosts, and delectable food, this novel explores life, death, love, and friendship, but mostly the effects of grief, and the difficulty of finding closure. The verdict: A gourmet delight. Highly original and hugely evocative, it definitely tugs at the heartstrings.
Time of India
a day ago
- Business
- Time of India
Jeff Bezos educational qualification and career path: How this Princeton graduate built Amazon and flew to space
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez As billionaire entrepreneur Jeff Bezos's marriage to journalist Lauren Sánchez unfolds today in Venice, attention is once again drawn to the staggering journey of the man who transformed the way the world shops, reads, and even thinks about space. The ceremony, which had to be relocated due to protests over overtourism, now takes place in the historic Arsenale complex in Venice's Castello district, as reported by The Guardian . Bezos's rise is inextricably tied not only to his staggering wealth and business empire but also to a formative academic foundation, one that laid the blueprint for an audacious career that redefined e-commerce, cloud computing, and private space exploration. Early curiosity and academic brilliance marked his childhood Born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Bezos was raised by a teenage mother and, later, by his adoptive Cuban-American father, Mike Bezos. His childhood was defined by curiosity, mechanical inventiveness, and time spent on his grandfather's Texas ranch, where he learned the value of self-reliance. He displayed a strong aptitude for science and technology early on — once installing an electric alarm to keep his siblings out of his room. While attending Miami Palmetto High School, Bezos worked at McDonald's and earned accolades including being a National Merit Scholar and a Silver Knight Award winner, according to The Miami Herald . by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Kamiq 130 Edition. Pensato con quello che desideri, di serie. Škoda Scopri di più Undo He also attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida. In his valedictorian speech, Bezos proclaimed his dream of colonizing space and turning Earth into a "national park" — a quote that would later mirror his ambitions with Blue Origin, his aerospace company. Princeton University shaped his tech-first mindset After high school, Bezos enrolled at Princeton University in 1982. He initially majored in physics but later switched to electrical engineering and computer science — a pivotal decision that steered him toward the digital revolution. As he later admitted during a 2018 talk at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., he abandoned his physicist dreams after being bested in a math problem by a fellow student. Bezos graduated summa cum laude in 1986 with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi, and served as president of the Princeton chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS). He was also a member of the Quadrangle Club and graduated with a reported GPA of 4.2. Wall Street to a garage: Bezos's unconventional career launch Post-Princeton, Bezos was courted by major firms like Intel and Bell Labs but began his career at Fitel, a fintech firm, before moving into banking at Bankers Trust. He eventually landed at hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co., where he rose to senior vice-president by age 30. But it was a road trip from New York to Seattle in 1994 that changed everything. Armed with a business plan written in the car, Bezos founded Amazon in a garage — originally a humble online bookstore. Supported by a $300,000 investment from his parents, Amazon grew into the world's largest e-commerce and cloud computing empire, spawning entire industries and altering consumer behavior globally. A space pioneer with a 1982 dream realized In 2000, Bezos founded Blue Origin, citing the same passion for space travel he voiced in high school. By 2015, the company's New Shepard rocket had reached space and landed back on Earth successfully. On July 20, 2021, Bezos himself flew into space aboard NS-16, a milestone that made his childhood vision real. As reported by CNBC , Bezos has sold billions in Amazon stock to fund Blue Origin's ambitions, vowing to move industry off Earth and protect its natural environment. Is your child ready for the careers of tomorrow? Enroll now and take advantage of our early bird offer! Spaces are limited.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
13 US schools top 2025 ranking of best global universities
(NewsNation) — More than a dozen of the United States' higher education institutions ranked in the top 20 of global universities. The 2025-26 ranking from U.S. News & World Report included 2,250 top universities from more than 100 countries and considered factors like the school's international opportunities, student makeup and research opportunities. Indiana's public colleges commit to 2-year tuition freeze Three American universities tied for 16th place in the ranking: Cornell University, Princeton University and the University of California, San Francisco. New York-based Cornell — one of the Ivy League schools under the Trump administration's microscope — earned its rank through its diverse student population and programs. 2M student loan borrowers at risk of garnished wages: Analysis On the other hand, Princeton and the University of California's wide variety of centers, programs and research opportunities were mentioned in their ranking. A Pennsylvania-based public school, the University of Pennsylvania has Penn Abroad, which allows students to take part in 'study abroad, service learning, summer internships and short-term programs each year.' Johns Hopkins University in Maryland partners with international universities to offer more than 400 study abroad programs in more than 50 countries, with opportunities at Johns Hopkins Medicine International, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the School of Advanced International Studies. Though Los Angeles is known as a city of fun, its University of California chapter is all business. The university has 28 centers for multidisciplinary research, with more than 192 research, teaching and student exchange agreements worldwide. 'Ghost students' scam targeting federal student loans Despite problems with the Trump administration over student protests and subsequent job cuts, Columbia capped off the Top 10 of the ranking for its 'study abroad programs, global internships and international service learning and research opportunities,' U.S. News & World Report said. Another university with a heightened international student population, the Connecticut college is home to the Yale Young African Scholars program, which helps African high school students to apply to U.S. universities. With more than 500 study abroad options and more than 8,000 international students, the University of Washington, Seattle offers a global approach to health and environmental studies. The final University of California campus to make the list, the 'International House at Berkeley is home to nearly 600 students and scholars from more than 70 countries,' according to U.S. News & World Report. Stanford University's ranking is reliant on its summer opportunities like the Global Studies Internship Program, which sends students to more than 20 countries on six continents for a wide variety of disciplines. DOJ sues Kentucky over in-state tuition for undocumented students Known for its STEM focus and low acceptance rate, MIT is a thoroughly global school. 'More than 3,430 international students are currently enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and during academic year 2023-2024 the school hosted 2,247 international scholars from 100 countries,' U.S. News & World Report writes. Perhaps the most well-known U.S. university, Harvard has faced challenges from the White House over its campus protests and policies, but it still tops the list of best global universities. Harvard offers courses in more than 100 languages, and international students made up 27.2% of the university population in the 2024-2025 academic year. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
CNBC
2 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
How to reverse alarming education decline in U.S. and around the world: Teach for All founder Wendy Kopp
Wendy Kopp grew up as a member of "the me generation," during a period of time when she says young, highly educated Americans were "convinced that we all wanted to go to work on Wall Street." But that ideology didn't resonate with Kopp, who graduated from Princeton University in 1989. When firms were trying to recruit graduates who could commit two years to work at their firm, Kopp asked herself, "Why aren't we being as aggressively recruited to commit just two years to teach in our country?" She became heavily invested in answering that question. "It's a big, complex, systemic challenge, and we know that no one thing will solve this problem, that ultimately it will take many things, which means it will take a lot of leadership, at every level of the system, the whole ecosystem around kids," Kopp told CNBC's Julia Boorstin in a recent interview for the CNBC Changemakers Spotlight series. Kopp was named to the 2025 CNBC Changemakers list. "We need what we've come to call collective leadership, meaning enough people who are on a mission to make the system work for kids, who are all working together, exercising leadership in their individual positions, as teachers, as school leaders, as school system leaders in government, as social innovators, as advocates, but who are also stepping up from their individual pursuits and working together." Kopp began making that mission a reality decades ago as founder of Teach for America, but the mission has grown. "There was a particular year when we met 13 people from 13 different countries who were determined that something similar needed to happen in their countries," said Kopp. Teach For All, the newer organization where Kopp is also founder and CEO, oversees a network of 15,000 teachers reaching 1.3 million students around the world, from the U.S. to India, Zimbabwe, and Afghanistan. She shared with CNBC her ideas on leadership and what needs to change in the way we educate children, including the role of AI. And she made clear there is still a lot of work left to be done. "We are really in the midst of this very depressing, huge educational decline," Kopp said. "Educational outcomes on average in the developed countries, the OECD countries, have been declining since before Covid, and for something like 30 years-plus, they've been declining in low to middle income countries." Education is not failing students for lack of trying, according to Kopp. "A lot of people are throwing a lot at the issue," she said, but added that a key lesson she has earned is that focusing on the technical practices of education, the curriculum, the technology, and getting the buildings open, is important but not sufficient. "We need to figure out how to foster the sense of purpose throughout a system so that all those things are done with intention, and that's really where we've been lacking," she said. Kopp says AI is a good example of how this lesson can go heeded, or if not heeded, lead to disappointing outcomes. Despite widespread fears about AI, the most important positive from her perspective is that AI has given every teacher a personal assistant. "That's game-changing," she said. "These are some of the most overworked professionals, and now they can do many, many things much more easily. So that is already a revolution," she added. But she stressed that it is only the technology "in the hands of an extraordinary teacher" that is an "incredible accelerant of good things for kids." However, technology in a school "where there's no sense of purpose and where you don't have engaging teachers, becomes the world's biggest distraction." "We need to be really careful about assuming that the technology will solve the problem, because everything we've seen tells us that if we want to have change in education [and] we want to have positive things happening for kids, we need to first think about the people in the puzzle and cultivate what we've come to call collective leadership, cultivate the teachers and the school leaders and the whole system to be on a mission to ensure that all kids learn and to get kids on that same mission." It is only in that context, Kopp says, that technology can be revolutionary. In her early days at Teach for America, Kopp would send handwritten letters to investors and organizations, an era when email did not exist. From 10 letters, she might get one or two positive responses and one meeting with the goal of funding Teach For America. "I just kept telling myself, as long as I get two yesses, or even one yes ... Because then one person connects you to the next person," she said. Kopp said right now there is plenty of evidence of current young generations' commitment to justice, and environmental sustainability, and platforms like social media make the world's challenges more visible than ever. She said the "most valuable asset" these generations have is their time and energy to take on the world's biggest challenges and to be part of collective movements to actually solve them. And she says key to this "boots on the ground" mission will be selling the idea just as she did to the doubters. Back when she was getting Teach for America founded, people in schools and school systems were supportive of the need, but also told her, "this will never work. You will never get college students to do this." That only made Kopp double down on her mission. "That was the feedback, I thought, 'Okay, well, I know we'll get the college students.' I had real confidence in pursuing it." But Kopp also stressed that conviction isn't at its best alone. "We've got to walk the right line between confidence and humility," she said. "We need to act on our convictions, on our values, on our big ideas, but also be open to learning and build the relationships and ask for feedback. I think it's getting that intersection right." As her educational mission has scaled across the globe, Kopp has seen how young graduates from engineers to political science majors can quickly develop a track record of leadership after enlisting for just two years. "Those two years are so important for their students and so important for the leadership trajectories of those teachers. They're completely transformative. They lead to a lifetime of leadership," she said. Dating back to the founding of Teach for America, the organizations have brought in 120,000 people who committed just two years "but have never left the work," Kopp said. "75% of them never leave the work after their two-year commitment to teach. They may leave the classroom, but they become those leaders who are working throughout the system, who have the networks and relationships to work with each other and with many others in the system to affect the changes that we need to see," she said. That has stayed true as the organization's mission expanded globally, and to countries where Kopp worried it would be hard for people to stay long-term. "Yet we saw the same results everywhere, even the same data points. You could be in Chile or Peru or Austria or India, and no matter what, you commit two years, and 75% of you will never leave," she said. If at first young educators came into the mission thinking of it as a "kind of a technical problem and solution," and they would emerge as civic leaders in other segments of society, Kopp says they came out "really understanding the complexity, the systemic nature, the adaptive nature of the solution." "What we saw through that research is they really become the leaders we need, who have such a sense of possibility, such a deep understanding of the issues and their solutions, and we also saw that their career trajectories and priorities completely shift," she said. Kopp says "once you get obsessed with an idea, you can't let it go." "And that's why we need young people tackling big challenges," Kopp said. "They'll ask big questions and dive in without being held back by all the experience." Kopp has traveled the globe as a result of her work, and as a result, she has logged plenty of hours failing to solve a problem unrelated to education: jet lag. But she finally figured it out. "I used to have such severe jet lag when I would go from East to West, back home, and I heard from someone the trick is you don't eat on the plane, and when you land, you go on a run before you eat anything. And for many, many years, I didn't do it. I finally just resorted to it, and I've not had jet lag since." "I travel so much, and it really has solved my problem."
ABC News
2 days ago
- Politics
- ABC News
Former Iranian official says US has not wiped out Iran's nuclear program because of their 'know-how'
Former Iranian ambassador to Germany Seyed Mousavian, who was also part of Iran's nuclear diplomacy team with the UN in the 2000s, says US strikes on major Iranian nuclear sites are only a small victory and Iran's nuclear threat remains real. Mr Mousavian told 7.30 that while physical Iranian assets could have been destroyed as part of the US's so-called Operation Midnight Hammer, the nuclear "know-how" of Iranian scientists has not been. That is despite a number of Iranian scientists being killed in initial Israeli strikes. After the initial Israeli strikes the warring nations exchanged missile attacks before the US president claimed the US attacks caused the destruction of nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. "Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images. Obliteration is an accurate term!" Mr Trump had written on Truth Social. Mr Mousavian, an academic at Princeton University questioned those claims and offered a warning. "I don't know the extent of the damages, nobody knows," Mr Mousavian told 7.30. "There is a dispute in the US ... but even if it is completely destroyed as President Trump has claimed repeatedly, even if it has been severely damaged, what was the objective? To destroy the facilities, building and utilities? "But you cannot destroy the know-how. "The know-how is there, how you can kill the know-how? Iranians, they have the technology and they can reconstruct anything. "Whether that will take one month or five months or six months, it doesn't matter. At the core of why the US says it executed the strikes on the Iranian facilities is yet to be sighted evidence that Iran was closing in on building its own nuclear weapon. It was something Mr Mousavian denied and said Iran had only stockpiled 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 per cent as a "bargaining chip". Weapons-grade uranium is enriched to 90 per cent. He blamed Mr Trump for "killing" Iran's nuclear deal during his first term in the White House, in 2018. "Iran was in full compliance for full three years," Mr Mousavian said. "The US violated when Iran was in full compliance and the US imposed the most comprehensive sanctions ever during the history against Iran. "[The] sanctions and pressures by the US made Iran increase the level and the capacity of its nuclear programme for a bargaining chip in order to bring the US to the table." Mr Mousavian claimed — citing knowledge from a source — that the 400 kilograms was central to negotiations right before Israel struck Iran. "They agreed that the 400 kilograms would be either diluted or exported," he told 7.30. "There would be no danger or fear or concern about making 10 nuclear bombs there. The Iranian enrichment would go below 5 per cent, which is civilian enrichment." 7.30 could not verify these claims. Mr Mousavian said soon after this that Israel launched its first strikes, which have been supported by the US. Where that 400 kilograms of uranium is now remains a mystery but Iran remains a signatory — like the US — to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Asked if Iran might now consider leaving that treaty, Mr Mousavian said that would depend on the actions of the US. "If the US would respect the rights of Iran like other members of the non-proliferation treaty, Iran would stay," he told 7.30. "Iran would never go for a nuclear bomb, like before, Iran would cooperate at the highest level of transparency and inspections." He was then asked if a lack of US respect could mean the Islamic Republic pursues a nuclear weapon. "If the US is going to accelerate hostilities, wars, assassinations, terror and cyber attacks ... why should they not," he told 7.30. 7.30 host David Speers then suggested that comment sounded like "a threat", which elicited an impassioned response from Mr Mousavian. "It is American threat. It is Israeli threat," he said. "Iran has been attacked. Israel attacked Iran, but now you are discussing about Iranian threat." He then accused Israel of having nuclear weapons of its own, but that is an oft-repeated claim that the Israeli government has never verified. Asked where the conflict moves to next, he said "everything depends on the US". And with Mr Trump recently saying neither Israel nor Iran knows "what the f*ck they're doing" that could mean anything. Watch 7.30, Mondays to Thursdays at 7:30pm on ABC iview and ABC TV Do you know more about this story? Get in touch with 7.30 here.
