About
你好! My name is John Paul Helveston. I am a PhD student in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. I graduated from Virginia Tech with a B.S. in Engineering Science and Mechanics (ESM) and minors in Asian Area Studies (Chinese) and Violin Performance in 2010. Personally and professionally, much of what drives me is a general desire to change the world for the better. After graduating from undergrad, I took a year off to return to Asia and explore opportunities there as well as continue improving my Chinese language skills. After traveling, studying, and working as an intern at the Innovation Center for Energy and Transportation in Beijing, I returned to the States to begin my PhD studies at CMU. My research focuses on the Chinese automotive market. I am comparing how local factors in China and the U.S. influence the development of energy saving vehicle technologies.
I took up Chinese at the beginning of my sophomore year at VT in the fall of 2006. The next spring, I received the Horton Scholarhip, which provided me a unique opportunity to travel to China and complete a project of my own design. I chose to travel to Dalian in the summer of 2008 to study language and culture at Liaoning Normal University, then to Shanghai in the fall to gain international engineering experience as an intern for General Electric. The project opened my eyes to a much larger world and was my first introduction to China (photos and blog posts from this trip can be found my China Page). After returning to the U.S., I applied for and was awarded a Critical Language Scholarship by the Dept. of State to study Chinese in Harbin, China during the summer of 2009. 
The experience made me fall back in love with China prompting me to seek opportunities there after graduation.
Besides studying engineering and Chinese, I am also an accomplished musician, and have been playing piano since age 5. At the age of 10, I began studying the violin, which quickly became my primary instrument. I have studied with the legendary Dora Marshall Mullins of Virginia Beach, VA, and I have played in multiple ensembles, including the Virginia Beach Symphony Orchestra (now “Symphonicity”), the New River Valley Symphony at Virginia Tech, and the National Taiwan Normal University Symphony. I am also a self-taught mandolinist and guitarist and enjoy playing jazz and bluegrass. I have fortunately had many opportunities to play with multiple ensembles, most recently the Muddy Basin Ramblers, a New Orleans style jazz band in Taipei, Taiwan, and the Hot Club of Beijing, a gypsy swing band in China’s capital.
My strongest passion is swing dancing. In the fall of 2006, I attended several swing dances hosted by the Virginia Tech Swing Club Soley Swing. I was quickly hooked, and by the end of the next semester was taking student-taught classes. Over the following summer of 2007, 
I traveled all over the south east U.S. attending workshops and dances while interning with General Electric in Greenville, SC. By the end of the summer, swing had become a major part of my life. At Virginia Tech I taught with the Solely Swing dance club, and I now continue to travel to dances and workshops all over the world. I primarily dance lindy hop, blues, charleston, and balboa.
My latest swing dancing endeavors have gone international, including participating in the first ever Hong Kong Lindy Exchange in November 2008, and participating in the Pusan Summer Swing Festival and Jeju Swing Camp in South Korea in August 2009. I recently helped make swing dancing history in China by participating in and helping organize the first ever international swing dance event in Shanghai called “Swing Out Shanghai,” and then performing with the Hong Kong Big Band at the Bao Steel Stage at the Shanghai World Expo. In 2011, I’ve participated in the Hong Kong Swing Festival and Great Wall Swing Out in Beijing, China. My most recent achievement in dancing was winning 1st place in the Open Strictly Lindy Hop competition with my friend Annabel Truesdell at the 2011 International Lindy Hop Championship in Washington, D.C. You can see the video of the finals on my videos page.
I hope to continually update this website as I travel around the world and encounter new experiences. Please enjoy my site and I would love to hear any feedback you may have (please use my contact page). Cheers!
- John
About This Site
This website was built so the rest of the world could take a glimpse into my world; so friends can keep in touch and strangers can say hello. All visitors please feel free to send feedback or contact me any time!
That being said, I must pay my respects to those who unknowingly helped me create this site through their online tutorials and advice on web design. Having no web building experience before, this site is 100% self-taught and self-built.
First of all, this site was built using WordPress, one of the most powerful and simple web design platforms out there. Many thanks to all contributors and designers who put it together and continue to make it one of the best blogging platforms in the world.
The site layout and design was built using the Woo Theme “Irresistible.” Thanks to Woo Themes for making such versatile, customizable, and most importantly free 
themes.
For added functionality, I used the following WordPress plugins:
Askimet – An anti-spam plugin
Homepage Excerpts – Makes all but the most recent blog entry a short teaser
wordTube – A great video player plugin that uses the famous flash media player by Jeroen Wijering
Flickr Photo Album – The brilliant Flickr plugin that automatically created my Photo page.
Contact Form 7 – Creates the contact form found on my Contact page
Last but not least, I also want to thank brillant developers who’ve greatly influenced my site building knowledge:
Ian Stewart and his WordPress Theme Framework Thematic, and the concept of the Child Theme that he invented.
Vladimir Prelovac and his theme Amazing Grace. Although not used here, I learned a lot of information from his work and used it to build the website for Virginia Tech’s swing dancing club, Solely Swing.
