Eric Ferring, tenor and 2014 Drake alumnus, was recently accepted as a an artist in the Ensemble of the Ryan Opera Center with the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Eric, a former student of Leanne Freeman-Miller and a 2014 Drake graduate with a degree in vocal performance, is the first Drake music alumnus accepted into this internationally renowned professional company.

This summer he was an apprentice artist with the Sante Fe Opera, the top summer apprenticeship program in the United States. Also, for the past two years, he has been a full-time resident artist at Pittsburgh Opera.

During his time at Drake, Eric was a member of the Drake Choir under the direction of Aimee Beckmann-Collier, professor of conducting, and starred in several roles with the Drake Opera Theater, led by Ann Cravero, associate professor of music.

Eric is the first singer from Drake, since Sherrill Milnes, who is on his way to having a professional operatic career. His success is a reflection of Drake’s excellent voice/opera program.

—Leanne Freeman-Miller, Department of Music

Data2X announced the winners of the Big Data for Gender Challenge, a competition that offers funding to research teams with innovative solutions to filling global gender data gaps. Through this challenge, Heath Henderson, assistant professor of economics, and a team of researchers from the International Food Policy Research Institute, Food and Agriculture Organization, and Makerere University Business School were awarded $100,000 for their project: “Gender and Mobile Money Networks.” The project seeks to use transaction-level data from mobile money users in Uganda to examine gender-related differences in mobile money access and usage.

Data2x is an initiative hosted by the United Nations Foundation that seeks to promote women’s empowerment by informing policy through improved collection of sex-disaggregated data and gender statistics.

—Dianna Gray, College of Business & Public Administration