Alumni/ae Notes
’33
Ivan A. Getting (S.B. ’33; D. Phil., astrophysics, Oxford
University ’35.Thesis advisor: Karl Compton) was invested with
membership in the International Aerospace Hall of the San Diego
Aerospace Museum in March 2002 “for his outstanding lifelong
career, his numerous aerospace-related engineering inventions,
and particularly for his first-hand involvement in the creation and
implementation of the Global Positioning System.”
’41
Albert M. Clogston (PhD ’41, S.B. ’38.Thesis advisors: Philip
Morse, Julius Stratton) After five years at the MIT Radiation
Laboratory, 36 years at Bell Laboratories, and ten years at Los Alamos
National Laboratory, this year Albert and his wife have moved into a
retirement community near Raleigh, NC.Thanks to fax machines
and computers, he’s still actively carrying out theoretical research on
soliton lifetime and propagation along long chain molecules.
’48
Robert I. Hulsizer (PhD ’48.Thesis advisor: Bruno Rossi) retired in
1986, but in 1993 began teaching freshmen physics 8.01 and 8.02 in
small classes, under a program originated by George Valley in 1970,
and thoroughly enjoys it.
Frank Jamerson (S.B. ’48.Thesis advisor: David Frisch) went to
the University of Notre Dame for a PhD in Nuclear Physics (’51). (MIT
prep helped!) Worked on nuclear weapons testing at Naval Research
Laboratory and the Nautilus nuclear submarine at Westinghouse. At
General Motors Research Laboratories for 35 years: managed Physics
and Electrochemistry departments after research in nuclear
thermionic energy conversion. Magnetics team invented the world’s
most powerful magnet, Neodymium Iron
Boron (Magnequench). Started GM’s fuel cell program in mid 80s,
looks like it will become a reality! Finished GM as Assistant Program
Manager of Electric Vehicle Program, organized U.S. Advanced
Battery Consortium for GM/Ford/Chrysler. Now in retirement,
publishes Electric Bikes Worldwide, a biennial industry report sold to
companies. Also was President of a battery company, RBC Technologies, developing rechargeable zinc alkaline batteries. Married to
Joy Campbell for 52 years with four sons, one daughter and ten
grandchildren.Two sons are Sloan School grads, no other physicists
in the family.
’50
John G. King (PhD ’50) After retirement, John continues to work
on education. His acceptance speech for the 2000 Oersted Medal
(Am.J.Phys. 6911–25 2001) describes his ideas and plans.
50 ) alumni /ae notes
mit physics annual 2002
’52
Parviz Merat (S.B. ’52.Thesis advisor: Robley D. Evans) highlights
his activities during this past year as (1) “General Relativity in K+L
Space-Time Dimensions: Exact Spherical and Cylindrical Solutions”;
(2) “Scenarii for Nature to Compactify to 3+1 Dimensions”; and (3)
“Why Tachyonic Motion is Unobservable?”
Albert D. Wheelon (PhD ’52.Thesis advisors: Profs. Morse,
Feshbach, and Villars) The first of his two volumes on Electromagnetic Scintillation appeared in September 2001, published by the
Cambridge University Press.The manuscript for the second volume
was sent off at the end of January and the actual book should be
available this fall. Albert has found it has been both a joy and a
challenge to return to serious physics in later life.
’53
Caroline Littlejohn Herzenberg (S.B. ’53.Thesis advisor:Yves
Goldschmidt-Clermont) retired in 2001 from the regular professional
staff of Argonne National Laboratory and became a special term
appointee at ANL. She been working part-time with ICF Consultants
as a technical evaluator for the Federal Emergency Management
Agency’s Radiological Emergency Preparedness program. Caroline
has also been out on the lecture circuit at universities and professional meetings, addressing topics relating to women in science,
with principal emphasis on the women scientists of the Manhattan
Project, the topic of her most recent book. In addition, she has
become more active in the peace movement.
Elliott H. Lieb (S.B. ’53.Thesis advisor:Victor Weisskopf) is the
Higgins Professor of Physics and Professor of Mathematics at
Princeton University.This past November 2001, he received the Rolf
Schock prize in mathematics from the Swedish Royal Academy for
his work on quantum mechanics and the stability of matter. He
gave half of the prize money (~ $25K) to MIT to set up an undergraduate scholarship to alternate between math and physics
students. More information can be found at
web.mit.edu/giving/priorities/schools/science/index.html.
’54
Daniel Willard (PhD ’54.Thesis advisor: Bruno Rossi) had a
research appointment at Brookhaven, under Herbert Bridge, from
1954–55. He was then an Instructor in Physics at Swarthmore
College from 1955–58. Following that, he was an Associate
Professor of Physics at Virginia Polytechnic from 1958–61, a
Research Analyst at the JHU Operations Research Office (1961–64),
an Operations Research Analyst and Special Assistant for the Air
and Missile Defense Office, Deputy Under Secretary of the Army
(Operations Research) from 1964–2002. He received the Exceptional
Civilian Service Award in March 2002, and retired in May 2002.
’55
Victor J. Mizel (PhD ’55, S.B., ’52.Thesis advisors: Norman
Levinson,Victor Weisskopf) has just begun in the last two years to
participate with an experimental physicist colleague (James
Hannon) and a mathematical colleague from the Technion (Moshe
Marcus) on the development of a model to describe the highly
unorthodox behavior of heavily Boron doped Silicon crystals.This
represents his first collaboration with an actual physicist since his
S.B., and he’s very excited about the potential of this work to provide
quantum dot materials for very low dispersive lasers and other
important applications. He’s still keeping his “day job” as a Math
Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
’57
Edward A. Friedman (S.B. ’57.) At Stevens Institute of
Technology, in Hoboken, NJ, Edward is the founding director of the
Center for Improved Science and Engineering Education (CIESE).
Since its establishment in 1988, the Center has provided training on
applications of computers and Internet in K–12 mathematics and
science instruction for approximately 10,000 teachers. In April 2002,
the Center received a grant from the Inter-American Development
Bank to develop model schools on the use of Internet in science
education in Costa Rica, Ecuador and Peru.Visit www.k12science.org
for more information.
Jim Strickland (PhD ’57) After 22+ years as chair of the physics
department at Grand Valley State University, Jim retired in December
1995. He and his wife Dot now live in a retirement community in
Holland, MI. Jim has been involved in the science olympiad at
GVSU for the last 18 years; the Grand Rapids Amateur Astronomy
Association for the last 25 years; and has recently joined the Hope
College Academy for Senior Professionals (HASP). Not many MIT’ers
in this neck of the woods, he finds.
’59
Bogdan (Bogie) C. Maglich (PhD ’59.Thesis advisors: Bernard T.
Feld, Louis Osborne) During 1997–2002, Bogie opened up an area of
applied particle physics he named atometry. Its first commercial
application is SuperSenzor, the world’s first and only noninvasive
stoichiometric detector and imager. It has been developed by the
California Atometry Collaboration, a joint industry-governmentuniversity effort. It is a two-person portable system, described in
www.hienergyinc.com.
J. Reece Roth (S.B. ’59.Thesis advisor: Sanborn Brown) is the
Weston Fulton Professor of Electrical Engineering, University of
Tennessee, Knoxville. He recently published Volume 2 of Industrial
Plasma Engineering (www.bookmarkphysics.iop.org), and helped to
form a spin-off company of the UT Plasma Sciences Laboratory
(plasma.ece.utk.edu), Atmospheric Glow Technologies, LLC
(www.a-gtech.com).
’62
Warrington Cobb (PhD ’62.Thesis advisor: Robley Evans) Now at
age 74, he has found in these last four years that genealogy is an
excellent field and the right speed for him. He published a pedigree
of 1,400 ancestors and is now working on his wife’s genealogy.
Robert Heinmiller (S.B. ’62.Thesis advisor: Sanford Brown)
Robert’s company, Omnet, Inc., has been awarded an SBIR Phase II
contract from the Office of Naval Research to develop ground-based
infrastructure for the ocean research and monitoring community
based on the Iridium satellite system. Omnet is building a web site
with an intranet for ocean science professionals, public informational
pages, and eventually a portal to provide “one-stop” access to all
federally-funded resources having to do with the ocean.The Iridiumbased data collection system is a critical component of the
Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS), which will coordinate
U.S. academic and government ocean data gathering activities.
Dan W. Scott (PhD ’62.Thesis advisors: Stan Olbert, Bruno Rossi)
went into the computer industry, developing software and hardware
products. He was also a Professor of Computer Science at North
Texas University and Portland (OR) State University, for a total of 13
years. He worked with Bogdan Maglich (PhD ’62) on fusion power
reactor analysis and developing neutron-gamma detection of
explosives. Regarding health, his congenital congestive heart failure
was cured just last January—hooray! But unfortunately, he has
had Parkinson’s for 18 years and now that is taking over. He has four
children and was divorced in 1981.
’63
Kyoichi (Ken) Haruta (PhD ’63.Thesis advisor: B. E.Warren) After
graduation, he started his work with X-ray diffraction at Bell Labs.
Then Bell Labs changed to AT&T, Lucent, and now Agere Systems. His
position at Agere is Distinguished Member of Technical Staff. He has
been working on the modeling and simulation of the interconnect of
sub-micron cmos technologies.
Gerald W. Scott (S.B. ’63.Thesis advisor:T. J.Thomson) retired in
January 2001 as Staff Member of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak
Ridge,TN. He’s currently employed as a consulting staff member in
nuclear safety by Science Applications International Corp., Oak Ridge
office. Gerald’s work there consists primarily of safety evaluations of
proposed changes to nuclear facilities at the Y-12 National Security
Complex at Oak Ridge.
mit physics annual 2002 alumni /ae notes
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Alumni /ae Notes
Norman Tepley (PhD ’63, S.B. ’57.Thesis advisor: M.W.P.
Strandberg) Since 1988, he has been Director of the Neuromagnetism Lab at Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, and continues as Professor of
Physics at Oakland University, Rochester, MI. His research at Henry
Ford develops new applications of magnetoencephalography,
the measurement of the magnetic fields arising from the brain.
This research has studied migraine headache, sleep and learning
disorders, brain plasticity, and analytical techniques.
Ben Zuckerman (S.B. ’63.Thesis advisors: Gordon Oates, Jack
Kerrebrock) is a Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department
at UCLA. His current principal area of research is spectroscopic
identification of young stars (tens of millions of years of age) close
to Earth; these stars are the best objects in the sky at which to investigate the origin of planetary systems. Recently, he was elected by
the membership of the Sierra Club to a three-year term on the Club’s
national Board of Directors. Should anyone have a reason to reach
me, try [email protected].
’64
Bob Howie (S.B. ’64) is Director of Software Development at a
startup company (Omnicell Technologies, Palo Alto, CA) that went
public last August (OMCL on NASDAQ). As an entrepreneur (before
Omnicell), he started three companies: one went public and two
went broke—so he remains a humble mortal. His entire career has
been in computer software development; he has never done a day’s
work of physics since MIT.That does not mean that four years of
physics at MIT were wasted. Quite the contrary: his education at
MIT taught him how to analyze and solve problems, help his daughter find the integral of secant cubed, and he’s proud to be an MIT
graduate in physics.
Martha Harper Redi (S.B. ’64.Thesis advisor: Lee Grodzins)
has returned to MIT as a visiting scientist at the MIT Plasma Fusion
Science Center. She is Principal Research Physicist at Princeton
University’s Plasma Physics Laboratory. Author of over 100 peer
reviewed publications, she is chair of the American Physical Society
Division of Plasma Physics’Committee for Women in Plasma Physics
and has contributed to the establishment of an early career award
for women in plasma science, the Weimer Award. A draft website
may be found at w3.pppl.gov/~redi/weimer.
’65
Awele Maduemezia (PhD ’65.Thesis advisor: Uno Ingard) retired
from the University of Ibadan, after 25 years as Professor of Physics.
He’s now studying industrial pollution, and is Executive Chairman of
Enville Environmental Consultants Ltd., in Lagos, Nigeria.
Richard Rudzinski (S.B. ’65) and his wife Kay are completing
their 24th year as the owners and teachers at a small Montessori
52 ) alumni /ae notes
mit physics annual 2002
school in Wichita, KS. It may seem strange that one who earned an
S.B. in Physics at MIT has been helping young children with their
“ABCs”, but that has been his calling, and it has turned out to be a
most rewarding one. Richard has always considered his years at MIT
to be some of the most rewarding years of his life academically. And,
even though the children he works with are young, some of the
questions they pose are tough.
Juris P. Svenne (PhD ’65.Thesis advisors: Felix Villars, Arthur
Kerman) is a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy
at the University of Manitoba, Canada. His research is in few-body
problems in subatomic physics, specializing in pion absorption and
production on three-nucleon systems, and the three-nucleon force.
He has 43 publications in refereed journals, including one review
article, plus numerous conference contributions in national and
international conferences. At present, he’s on a six-month sabbatical
leave at the University of Padova, Italy.With colleagues there, a
particularly exciting recent development is a solvable approximation
to the full set of integral equations describing the coupled pionthree-nucleon system, and demonstrating that this theory gives
new insights into the so-called three-nucleon force.There are early
indications that this method has prospects of resolving long-standing discrepancies with data, of the theory of three-nucleon systems,
such as the binding energy of helium-3 and the deuteron analyzing
power in low-energy nucleon-deuteron scattering.
’66
Edward M. Graham (S.B. ’66.Thesis advisors: Richard Morse and
John D.C. Little) Having acquired an MBA after completing his S.B. in
physics at MIT, neither of which is an economics degree, Edward
now works as…an economist! His book, Fighting the Wrong Enemy:
Antiglobalist Activists and Multinational Enterprises, recently received
a strong review in The Journal of Economic Literature—the right
place to be reviewed if you are writing in economics. I sometimes
still wish, however, that I had become a physicist.
Charles M. (Chuck) Newman (S.B. ’66.Thesis advisors: Jerry
Friedman, Henry Kendall) is a Professor of Mathematics and has just
become Acting Director of the Courant Institute of Mathematical
Sciences at NYU. His research is both in probability theory and statistical physics, and he is actively collaborating with Dan Stein (Chair of
Physics at the University of Arizona) on spin glass theory.
’68
Ian S. Glass (PhD ’68.Thesis advisor: George Clark) continues to
work on Asymptotic Giant Branch variables at the South African
Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town, officially half-time, having
passed the compulsory retirement age of 60. Last year, he spent a
month at the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris and three months as a
visiting professor at the National Observatory of Japan in Tokyo and
Nobeyama. He visited MIT in March 2002 for the first time in about
15 years and gave an astrophysics colloquium.
Larry Kirkpatrick (PhD ’68.Thesis advisor: Irwin Pless) Professor
of Physics, retired on May 15, 2002, after teaching at Montana State
University for 28 years. Kirkpatrick is the author of PHYSICS:A World
View, an APS fellow, a former President of AAPT, and served as
academic director of the U.S. Physics Team for eight years.
’70
John S. Carroll (S.B. ’70.Thesis advisor: Hale Bradt) has been a
Professor at the MIT Sloan School since 1983. He studies group decision-making and organizational learning in nuclear power plants,
chemical plants, and hospitals.
David J. Ernst (PhD ’70, S.B. ’65.Thesis advisors Felix Villars, David
Frisch) is a Professor of Physics at Vanderbilt University, and was
appointed Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy in
January, 2002. In April, he was awarded the Alexander Heard Distinguished Service Professor Award from Vanderbilt University.The
award recognized Prof. Ernst’s work on building science, and particularly physics, in Latin America and his work with the U.S. Hispanic
community. Prof. Ernst is a cofounder of the Pan-American
Association for Physics and serves as its Director, and is a cofounder
of the National Society of Hispanic Physicists, and presently serves
as Secretary of the organization.
Peter B. Kramer (S.B. ’70.Thesis advisor: John King) has rejoined
big pharma as Director in the External Science,Technology & Licensing
department of Bristol-Myers Squibb. His younger son Rory is a Junior
at Williams College and his older son Josh is trading distressed loans
for JP Morgan Chase—hopefully not Bristol-Myers Squibb’s.
John F. Parrish (PhD ’70.Thesis advisor: Clive Perry) In October
2001, John F. Parrish was the first physicist inducted into the Science
Wall of Fame at Loyola Marymount University of Los Angeles.The
presentation of the award featured his contributions to shallow
water flow control at the URSA, deep water Gulf of Mexico, well
sites—for which he received Shell Oil Company’s Technology
Achievement Award in 1996.
Robert I. Smith-Johannsen (S.B. ’70, physics and mathematics)
This year Robert has been directing and producing videos for
Microsoft.These are about innovative uses of technology and shot
on location in some of his favorite places: Rio de Janeiro, Canberra,
Moscow, Nizhniy Novgorod, and Los Angeles.
Barbara Sollner-Webb (S.B. ’70.Thesis advisor: Salvador Luria)
received her PhD in Biology from Stanford University (’76), doing her
thesis research with Gary Felsenfeld at the NIH. After a brief postdoc
in the same lab and a postdoc with Ron Reeder at the Carnegie
Institute, in 1980 she joined the Department of Biological Chemistry
at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as an Assistant
Professor. In 1988, she became Professor in that Department; she’s
also an adjunct professor in the Department of Biology at Johns
Hopkins University. Her lab began with developing expression
systems for rRNA genes and studying the mechanism of this transcription by RNA polymerase I, as well as the processing of its primary
transcript. More recently we have turned to a very bizarre form of
RNA processing, called RNA editing, the mechanism of which they’ve
been elucidating. Out of the lab, she and her husband (Denis Webb)
have a daughter (Lisa) who is just graduating from Dartmouth
College. One of their favorite hobbies is riding, and they’ve delightful
horses in the back yard. She hopes her old friends will come and visit!
’71
Jim Mannoia (S.B. ’71) is halfway through his fourth year as
president of Greenville College, a small century old liberal arts institution in Illinois. Sometimes, he thinks he would be willing to trade
the S.B. in physics and PhD in metaphysics for a good grounding in
accounting and construction management! Besides trying to keep
Illinois from cutting financial aid to students, he’s excited about the
faculty asking him to head up a senior capstone course—it will
focus the whole senior class on one real world issue. His son’s doing
an MBA and his daughter’s in law school. His wife of 30 years is still
struggling with cancer, but their faith in God is strong.
Sekazi K. Mtingwa (S.B. ’71, physics and mathematics) served
on a 13-member International Steering Committee to establish a
network of laser research centers throughout Africa, with the largest
three in South Africa, Senegal, and Egypt being multinational user
facilities. For this initiative, he’s the Co-chair of the task team
writing the Business Plan. Sekazi also served as a member of the
Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Research Advisory
Committee (NERAC), which advises DOE on all aspects of its civilian
nuclear energy, science, and technology programs. He served on
the NERAC Subcommittee on Advanced Nuclear Transformation
Technology, which oversees the research and development program
for transmuting radioactive wastes from all the country’s nuclear
reactors. Also, he served on its Subcommittee for Isotope Research
and Production Planning and played a key role in keeping on track
plans for designing a dedicated production facility for radioactive
isotopes for research and medical purposes. Sekazi is also a member
of the Cornell University Consortium for research and development
leading to the eventual construction of the next generation particle
accelerator for colliding electrons and positrons.This past year,
he also Served as a graduate recruiter for the National Academy of
Sciences’Office of Fellowships, as well as Chair of the Physical
Sciences and Mathematics Evaluation Panel for the Ford Foundation
Predoctoral Fellowships for Minorities Program.
mit physics annual 2002 alumni /ae notes
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Alumni /ae Notes
’73
Robert Benjamin (PhD ’73.Thesis advisor:Thomas Greytak) is
the senior author of the first-ever activity book about fluid instabilities, Spills and Ripples, written for students and teachers in grades
5–12.The book contains hands-on lessons about Rayleigh-Taylor
Instability as well as activities about more conventional fluid
experiments.The book is an outreach project based on Benjamin’s
research in fluid instabilities at Los Alamos National Laboratory,
where he is a Laboratory Fellow.
Michael Riordan (PhD ’73.Thesis advisors: Jerry Friedman, Henry
Kendall) has been awarded the 2002 Andrew Gemant Award by the
American Institute of Physics for “skillfully conveying the excitement
and drama of science and for clarifying important scientific ideas
through his many books, articles and television programs.” He
worked with his PhD advisors on the famous MIT-SLAC deep inelastic electron scattering experiments that gave primary evidence for
the existence of quarks inside protons and neutrons.This pivotal
moment in physics history became the source material for his book,
The Hunting of the Quark, which also won the AIP’s Science Writing
Award in 1988. In addition, Riordan has coauthored The Shadows
of Creation with David N. Schramm and Crystal Fire:The Birth of
the Information Age, with Lillian Hoddeson. A 1999 Guggenheim
Fellow, he is currently Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University
of California, Santa Cruz, where he teaches the history of 20th
century physics.
’74
Kwok-Yung Lo (PhD ’74, S.B. ’69.Thesis advisor: B. F. Burke) just
accepted the appointment as the Director of the National Radio
Astronomy Observatory, effective September 1, 2002.
’75
Bob Goodman (S.B. ’75.Thesis advisor: Marc Kastner) moved
from industry to education about three years ago. During that time
he taught physics and chaired the math and science departments at
the Bergen County Technical High School in Teterboro, NJ.This past
year, his school district has been asked to take responsibility for the
Englewood School District, a nearby urban district. Bob continues in
his role at the Teterboro campus while also becoming involved in
that program. Next year he will be spending a majority of his time in
Englewood, restructuring the K–12 curriculum.
Jill Wittels (PhD ’75, S.B. ’70.Thesis advisor: Irwin Shapiro)
completed her first as Corporate Vice President of Business Development for L-3 Communications. One of the responsibilities of this role
is oversight for call internal investments in technology development.
She has also been reappointed to another three-year term on the
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Board of Overseers.
54 ) alumni /ae notes
mit physics annual 2002
’76
Joseph H. Abeles (S.B. ’76, Physics and Electrical Engineering.
Thesis Advisor:William Bertozzi) is Head, Photonic ICs and
Components at Sarnoff Corporation in Princeton, NJ. He has lived
in New Jersey since graduation from MIT! He concentrates on areas
such as high-performance distributed feedback lasers, photonic
analog-to-digital conversion, systems-on-a-chip, radio frequency
lightwave ICs, chip-scale atomic clocks, and analog-optical signal
processing based on research in III–V semiconductor materials,
amongst many others. Under the “Sarnoff model”, by which
employees share in the upside, he co-founded one Sarnoff spin-off
company located in Cranbury, NJ, and is active in developing new
value propositions for investment and successful commercialization.
He would like to hear from any and all friends from Course 8! He can
be reached at [email protected].
Zachary H. Levine (S.B. ’76.Thesis advisor: Rainer Weiss) has
been a physicist at NIST since 1994. In 2001, he became a Fellow
of the American Physical Society,“For leadership in demonstrating
x-ray tomography of integrated circuit interconnects with
submicron resolution.”
David Overskei (PhD ’76.Thesis advisors: Peter Politizer, Bruno
Coppi) is currently President and CEO of Polexis, Inc., a small software company that develops next generation command and control
software for the DOD and situational awareness software for situational awareness applications including enterprises, first responders,
and numerous state, local, federal agencies. Dr. Overskei is also a
founding director of the San Diego Telecom Council, and is actively
involved in high technology start-ups in the communications,
information technology fields, and advanced instrumentation fields.
’77
Anthony Abner (S.B. ’77) is the Chief of Radiation Oncology
at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA, and an Assistant
Professor of Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School.
His primary research interest is the use of radiation therapy for
prevention of restenosis after coronary angioplasty. He also has
ongoing research interests in prostate and breast cancer. He
supervises elective outreach rotations for MIT students during the
Independent Activities Period to introduce them to the practice of
medicine. He and his wife Deborah have been married for 11 years
and have four children:Talia 10, Caleb 7, Kaylie 5, and Jared 3.
They live in Brookline MA.
Dana Edward Backman (S.B. ’77.Thesis advisor: Claude
Canizares) Activities within the past year for Dana: taught in Physics
and Astronomy department of Franklin and Marshall College,
Lancaster, PA, and will take his turn as Department Chair starting
July ’02; did summer research stint at NASA’s Ames Research Center,
collaborating on a Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) project
to examine nearby young solar-type stars for evidence of planet
formation; co-organized a conference held in Tucson in April ’02 in
memory of his postdoctoral supervisor, Fred Gillett of the Gemini
Observatory. Personal news: married Jamie Todd in Santa Cruz, CA,
on June 23, 2001.
David Batchelor (S.B. ’77.Thesis advisor: Stanislaw Olbert)
published a paper on models for the pairs of massive antiparticles
that emerge from the vacuum as quantum fluctuations and
annihilate each other again.The paper appeared in Foundations of
Physics 321 51–76 (2002).
James F. DeBroux (S.M. ’77.Thesis Advisor: Margaret L.A.
MacVicar) Jim is currently the Project Manager for Assessments with
SY Technology, a defense contractor with offices in Crystal City,VA;
Huntsville, AL; and Colorado Springs, CO. SY Technology was recently
acquired by L-3 Communications of New York.This past year, he
headed a team that completed an assessment of the Mobile Tactical
High Energy Laser (MTHEL) for the U.S. Army Space and Missile
Defense Command.
Sylvester James Gates, Jr. (PhD ’77, S.B. ’73, physics and
mathematics.Thesis advisor: J. E.Young, Jr.) was appointed Director
of the Center of String and Particle Theory, Physics Department,
University of Maryland.This year, he gave the Georgetown commencent address, where he received an honorary degree, as well as the
Address at the Library of Congress.
Steven R. Rogers (PhD ’77, S.B. ’72.Thesis advisors: Karl Uno
Ingaard, physics, Chiang C. Mei, civil engineering) During the past
year, Steven filed six new patents dealing with laser pickups for optical storage devices, and completed the development of a multibeam
optical pickup for a large Japanese company. Optics, radar, semiconductors, and electron beam devices are some of the fields in which he
has worked since leaving MIT in 1977.The broad physics training that
he received at MIT has enabled him to change career focus roughly
every five years, so as to constantly stay on the “learning curve”.
’78
Andre-Marie Tremblay (PhD ’78.Thesis advisors: B. Patton, MIT,
P. Martin, Harvard) has been awarded a (Tier I) Canada Research
Chair in Condensed Matter Physics.
’79
Mahmoud Shahram (S.M. ’79).Thesis advisor: Roshi Aggarwall)
is currently working as Director of R&D at Synopsys, Inc. Synopsys is
a leader in Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry. His team is
engaged in research and development of next-generation transistor
level EDA tools with concentration on circuit simulation, verification
and extraction tools for 0.13um and 90nm CMOS technology. In
particular, he’s interested in the development of accurate simulation
models and methodologies, considering IC design issues such as
device modeling and characterization, noise, cross-talk, leakage
current, high frequency effects and IR drops for EDA tools.
David S. Stone (PhD ’79.Thesis Advisor: George Bekefi) After
toiling in the trenches of the high tech electronics industry for twenty
years, last year David started a new business: Lightspan, LLC, based in
Wareham, MA.They design and manufacture exotic optically clear
polymer materials for use in the photonics and fiber optics industries.
As they grow over the next few years, they hope to tap into some
physics talent graduating from the MIT physics department.
’80
John Mace Grunsfeld (S.B. ’80.Thesis advisor: George Ricker)
In March 2002, after 2 years of training, John launched with six
crewmates to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope on Space Shuttle
Mission STS-109.They spent nearly 11 days in orbit at an altitude
of 350 miles and performed five space walks on the telescope,
traveling about 4.5 million miles around planet earth.This was his
fourth space mission, and second mission to the Hubble. For this
mission, he was the Payload Commander, with responsibility for all
of the space walks, the Hubble telescope and payload bay systems.
He performed three of the space walks, including installation of the
new power control unit, solar panel and the Near Infra-red Camera
Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) cooling system. Overall, the
crew accumulated a total of 35 hours, 55 minutes of space walking
time, a U.S. record for space walking time on a single mission.The
highlight of the mission came a couple of months afterwards when
the first pictures from the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS)
were analyzed, demonstrating the fantastic new capability of this
instrument to look deep into the universe. For further details, see
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/archives/sts-109/crew/
grunsfeldreports/gr1.html.
Namir E. Kassim (B.S. ’80.Thesis advisor: Irwin Shapiro) His radio
astronomy group at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) continues
to thrive and grow (http://rsd-www.nrl.navy.mil/7213/nkassim/
kassim.html). Last year he was appointed Project Scientist for the
Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a new radio-telescope being built by
an international consortium led by NRL, MIT’s Haystack Observatory,
and ASTRON (the Netherlands Foundation for Radio Astronomy). For
more about LOFAR see http://www.lofar.org. LOFAR will open a new
window on the Universe by allowing sensitive exploration of one of
the least-explored regions of the electromagnetic spectrum below
240 MHz.
John A. Serri (PhD ’80.Thesis advisor: David Pritchard) has spent
the last 20 years working in the telecommunications/internet industry where he has held a number of senior management positions
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including Chief Technology Officer at Dream Logic Inc., and Vice
President of Information Systems at Globalstar. In 2001, he founded
a software company, Ubiquity Technologies Inc., a developer of
powerful data replication tools based on distributed computing
principles.The company has just released its first product. John
currently resides in Fremont California, is happily married, and has
two teenage children.
’81
Robert Close (S.B. ’81.Thesis advisor: George Bekefi) After a
long hiatus from physics, he has managed to solve the rather basic
problem of finding a mathematical description of torsion in three
dimensions. His hypothesis is that quantum mechanics describes
torsion waves in an ideal elastic solid (the vacuum).The resulting
derivation of the Dirac equation can be found in Foundations of
Physics Letters,15(1):71–83, February 2002.
’82
Bruce Cottman (S.M. ’82, S.B. ’79, PhD ’85 at Rochester
Polytechnic Institute.Thesis advisor: Aron Bernstein) over the last
7 years has started and sold three companies. His last company
merged with eFORCE, Inc., and as part of the deal he got his dream
job of CTO. (He pledged to his family never to be a CEO again!) He
has been keeping himself busy over the last year developing the
methodology and science of predicting and then engineering very
high performance and scalability for very large Web-distributed
systems. So, for former colleagues of medium-energy particle
physics, he’s again in the thick of things with multi-body, strongly
coupled complex systems. If any of you are interested in this
problem, please e-mail [email protected]. His wife Sara and
he were recently blessed with the birth of their last child, Rachel.
Also, he’s looking for tennis zealots to play with, so get in touch.
Scott D. Hyman (S.B. ’82.Thesis advisor: Charles Alcock) is
Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Physics at Sweet
Briar College, a small (600 students), a women’s liberal arts college
in central Virginia. (We graduated a record number of seven physics
majors last year!) After completing my dissertation in experimental
nuclear physics at the University of Maryland, and a postdoc at NIH
on artificial neural networks, he switched research fields (yet again!)
to radio astronomy. He’s now the principal investigator on a project
to use the VLA to monitor the center of our galaxy for transient and
variable radio sources.
Gerard A. Kriss (PhD ’82, S.B. ’78.Thesis advisor: Claude R.
Canizares) has been studying quasars, active galaxies, and the
intergalactic medium using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the
Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic
Explorer (FUSE). Last year he led a team of astronomers using
56 ) alumni /ae notes
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FUSE to observe the detailed distribution of ionized helium in the
intergalactic medium; the results were published in Science. He is an
Associate Astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in
Baltimore, where he has moved from being Spectrographs Group
Lead for HST to serving as the Lead Instrument Scientist for the Next
Generation Space Telescope.
Steven Pollock (S.B. ’82.Thesis advisor: Paul Joss) was promoted
to Associate Professor of Physics, with tenure, at the University of
Colorado, Boulder. He was also named a Pew/Carnegie Teaching
Scholar, 2001–2002.
’84
Randy Hulet (PhD ’84.Thesis advisor: Dan Kleppner) is the
Fayez Sarofim Professor of Physics at Rice University in Houston,
where he conducts research on ultracold atoms. He has been
involved in Bose-Einstein condensation of trapped atoms since the
beginning, in 1995, and are now looking at quantum degenerate
Fermi gases. Lourdes and I have two children, Ben (15) and Gabriella
(11), and are very happy in Houston.
Charles Earl Hyde-Wright (PhD ’84.Thesis advisor:W. Bertozzi)
was just promoted to Professor of Physics at Old Dominion University,
in Norfolk,VA. He uses the high energy electron beam at the Jefferson
Laboratory, in Newport News,VA, to study the structure of the proton
via elastic scattering of real and virtual photons. His next course at
Old Dominion University will be “The Physics of Music.” For more
information, visit www.physics.odu.edu/~hyde/chw.htm.
Alexander Jourjine (PhD ’84.Thesis advisors: Alan Guth, Roman
Jackiw, Dan Freedman) managed the Digital Video Broadcast and
Home Communications department of more than 80 people for
Nokia in Sweden. He was also the Business Development Manager
for Bethic, a US-German-Swedish start-up in the area of IP trading.
He plans to begin a joint MBA/MFS program at Boston College in
the Fall of 2002.
David Nabors (S.B. ’84.Thesis advisors: Michael Feld, John
Thomas) went to Stanford for graduate school and earned a Ph.D
1989, in lasers/quantum optics. He is married, has two great
daughters, ages two and nine. He moved back to Boston and worked
at MIT Lincoln Lab from 1990–93, then returned to the Bay Area to
work at Coherent for four years (1993–97). Since then, he has
worked at startups DigiLens and Bandwidth9, where he is Director of
Package and Optics Engineering, working on MEMS-tunable VSCEL
lasers for telecommunications.
’85
Tom LeCompte (S.B. ’85.Thesis advisor: Ed Taylor) After graduating,Tom spent a year working for McDonald’s Corporation (who
didn’t even realize they needed a physicist when they hired him),
then went on to get a PhD at Northwestern University. He’s now a
staff scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, doing research in high
energy physics at Brookhaven, Fermilab and CERN. (Collaborating
with some of my old professors from MIT!)
Fulvio Melia (PhD ’85.Thesis Advisors: Paul C. Joss, Saul Rappaport) is currently the Associate Head of Physics at the university of
Arizona, and Scientific Editor of the Astrophysical Journal. In October
2001, he published a textbook, Electrodynamics, with the University
of Chicago Press. A second book, The Black Hole at the Galactic
Center, will be published in mid- 2002 by Princeton University Press.
’86
Roy A. Briere (S.B. ’86.Thesis advisor: Bernard Feld) is currently
finishing his third year as an Assistant Professor of Physics at
Carnegie Mellon University. His research is in the HEP experiment
with the CLEO collaboration—they are all eagerly anticipating final
approval of the CLEO-c project. CLEO-c will study precision charm
physics and hadronic spectroscopy, including some topics crucial for
testing lattice QCD.
Brad Waller (S.B. ’86.Thesis advisor: Linda French) is completely
ignoring his training in physics as the Vice President of Business and
Affiliate Development for his company, EPage, the first classified and
auction site on the Web (est.1994) and has become a recognized
expert in the field. Between working on sites he speaks at conferences across the country, most recently on a cruise out of Miami.
’87
Kevin Parent (S.B. ’87. Academic advisor: Marc A. Kastner) is the
president of Things & Ideas, Inc., a California design and engineering
company specializing in roller coasters and other theme park rides
and attractions. Clients include Walt Disney Imagineering and
Universal Studios. In 2000,The Wheel Thing, Inc., a subsidiary of
Things & Ideas, was founded to develop new technology to address
the limitations and failure modes of roller coaster wheels. Kevin and
his business partners were recently granted a patent on an improved
wheel design that will significantly improve performance and
reduce costs for roller coasters and other applications. In summary,
Kevin has helped to reinvent the wheel.
Alfred Tang (S.B. ’87.Thesis advisor:Toyoichi Tanaka) is finishing a
PhD in particle and nuclear theory at the University of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee, this August after a long hiatus from physics. His dissertation is focused on aspects of hadronic physics related to NASA’s
space radiation research. He has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship
at Baylor University to study lattice QCD, beginning this fall.
’88
Don Heimann (S.B. ’88) After a PhD at Caltech and two years
of management consulting at MIT, he’s currently in charge of Unix
Product Marketing at Apple, Inc., where he spends a lot of time visiting national labs and universities, and hanging out at Open Source
conferences (which are full of other MIT alums). He’s been married
just over two years, to a woman he met while visiting India for a
cousin’s wedding (42 hours from “first sight” to engagement!).
More info can be found at www.dernie.com.
Jens O. M. Karlsson (S.B. ’88) was until recently the EAA
Distinguished Assistant Professor in the Departments of Mechanical
Engineering and Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at
Chicago, and has just moved to the Georgia Institute of Technology
to take a position as Associate Professor in the Woodruff School of
Mechanical Engineering. Prof. Karlsson is leading a research program
on cryopreservation of tissue engineered constructs, and is active in
the Society for Cryobiology, which has elected him as Secretary
for 2002–2003.
’89
Mark Andersen (S.B. ’89) is working as a software engineer
for Merrill Lynch and actively involved in improving gifted and
talented education in Massachusetts. Since September, he has been
President of the Massachusetts Association for Gifted Education
(www.massgifted.org), and is also on the Massachusetts Advisory
Council on Gifted & Talented Education. He has earned various
degrees, including a PhD in Political Science from Harvard University,
examining the relationship between community characteristics and
secondary school curriculum in Massachusetts. He can be contacted
at [email protected].
Thomas R. Powers (S.B. ’89, physics and mathematics.Thesis
advisor: Edward Farhi) is the James R. Rice Assistant Professor of
Solid Mechanics and Assistant Professor of Engineering at Brown
University. He is the recipient of a National Science Foundation
CAREER award, and continues to work on biological physics and
soft condensed-matter physics. Last fall, he delivered the T. Francis
Ogilvie Young Investigator lecture to the Department of Ocean
Engineering at MIT.
Eric Reifschneider (S.B. ’89) is a partner in the Palo Alto, CA,
office of Cooley Godward LLP, a national law firm that specializes in
high-tech companies; Eric’s focus is on technology transactions.
He runs into a lot of MIT alumni out there—in fact, several of his
clients and colleagues have degrees from MIT. On the personal side,
he’s married and has a three-year-old son.
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’90
Norris Preyer (PhD ’90, S.B. ’75.Thesis advisor: Marc A. Kastner)
has just been promoted to Associate Professor of Physics at the
College of Charleston in Charleston, SC. He’s currently using Monte
Carlo techniques to study photon transport in human tissue in
conjunction with clinical trials of photodynamic therapy for tumors.
’91
Bennett Brown (S.B. ’91.Thesis advisor: John King) completed
a master’s degree in physics on photovoltaic materials and is now
teaching high school physics and calculus in Solon, Iowa. He’s also
running an organic vegetable farm with three others farmers. His
house is run by wind power and he works with several non-profits
to promote sustainable energy and food production in the Midwest.
Joseph Lehar (PhD ’91.Thesis advisor: Bernard Burke) took a
postdoctoral position at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge
University, where he stayed for three years.Thereafter, he took
another postdoctoral appointment at the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics. After six years there, he changed fields to
biology, and in October 2000 took a research scientist position at
the Whitehead Institute’s Genome Center. After 18 months at the
WICGR, I have just accepted an offer to be a computational biologist
at CombinatoRx, a 50+ employee company that seeks optimal
combinations of therapeutic drugs.You can find more details at
alum.mit.edu/www/jlehar.
Matthew McCluskey (S.B. ’91.Thesis advisor: Jonathan
Wurtele) is in his fourth year as an Assistant Professor of Physics at
Washington State University. He’s studying the vibrational properties
of materials under high pressures. Materials of interest include wideband-gap semiconductors, molecular solids, and organic semiconductors. He recently received grants from the Petroleum Research
Fund and the National Science Foundation.
Michael Rizen (S.B. ’91.Thesis advisor: Martha Gray) After
graduation and a year of biomedical research, Michael completed an
M.D.–PhD program at the University of California, San Francisco. He
received the PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics in 1999 and the
M.D. in 2001. Since that time, he has been doing an internship in
Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, MD. In July 2002, he will begin a three-year Ophthalmology
residency at the Wilmer Eye Institute of Johns Hopkins Hospital. He
has been happily married for four years and had his first child in
June 2002.
’92
Gordon Roesler (PhD ’92.Thesis advisor: Paul Tedrow) is a
Program Manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects
58 ) alumni /ae notes
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Agency. His programs include new designs and missions for
spacecraft and new space technologies.
’93
Stefan Anderson (M.S. ’93.Thesis advisor: John Graybeal) is the
Head of Admissions at Conserve School in Land O’Lakes,Wisconsin.
Conserve School is a new independent boarding high school for
bright students who are interested in environment, ethics, and innovation. It has been exciting being involved in this opportunity to
help design a school from the ground up.Take a look at the school
on-line at www.ConserveSchool.org.
Curt Gabrielson (S.B. ’93.Thesis advisor: John King) After
spending a few years with the Exploratorium Teacher Institute in San
Francisco,and two years teaching English and physics in China,Curt
became involved in the “Taller de Ciencia” network of California.These
are community-based science workshops: free,largely unstructured
spaces for kids to come after school and build science-related projects.
He started one in Watsonville (near Santa Cruz),which has a high
population of migrant farmworkers. (Visitors are always welcome!)
Two years ago,he struck out for East Timor with his partner Pamela to
help rebuild the new nation after the destruction of 1999. He has
written a handbook of 74 hands-on physics activities in Tetum,East
Timor’s main language,to be included in the national curriculum at
middle- and high-school level. Currently,Curt’s raising funds for the
various supplies (thermometers,lenses,spring scales,magnets,etc.)
teachers will need to carry out physics experiments,as well as coordinating teacher training for every physics teacher in the country.
Zoltan Haiman (S.B. ’93, physics and electrical engineering.
Thesis advisor:Walter Lewin) The highlights of Zoltan’s activities this
year were the completion of a three-year postdoctoral position at
the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University, as
a Hubble Fellow, and the acceptance of a faculty position in the
Astronomy Department of Columbia University.
Sera Markoff (S.B. ’93.Thesis Advisor: Claude Canizares) After a
couple years as a Humboldt postdoctoral researcher at the MPI für
Radioastronomie in Germany, Sera is coming back to work at MIT in
September 2002, on a three-year NSF postdoctoral fellowship at the
MIT Center for Space Research. Sera’s research project will focus on
the relationship between black hole/jet systems from the stellar to
the galactic scales, and include a public outreach project in local
schools and at the Boston Museum of Science. Sera’s looking
forward to coming back after almost ten years, and hopes to see
many former teachers and classmates.
Richard Pietri (S.B. ’93) is currently a Postdoctoral Research
Associate in condensed matter physics at the University of
California, San Diego.
Ken Ricci (S.B. ’93.Thesis advisor: George Bekefi) has been working for a venture capital funded Silicon Valley startup company,
Picarro Inc., ever since his graduation from Stanford University (PhD
Physics) in June 2000. Picarro Inc is currently developing a proprietary laser technology for the telecommunications market.
David G. Steel (PhD ’93.Thesis advisor: John Graybeal) is still
living in Seoul, South Korea, working for Samsung Electronics. In
January 2002, he was promoted to Vice President of Business
Development, making him the most senior non-Korean executive at
Samsung. Despite the IT slowdown in 2001, Samsung continues to
do well and David continues to enjoy the business and cultural
challenges. He hopes some of his MIT friends will be able to visit
him in Korea in the near future!
’94
Vince Cianciolo (PhD ’94.Thesis advisor: George Stephans) In the
last year the PHENIX Muon Spectrometer at BNL’s Relativistic Heavy
Ion Collider collected its first data.This was the culmination
of an enormous effort on the part of a large team. As the head of
the group developing and producing the readout electronics for the
Muon Identifier, it was also personally gratifying for Vince. In a
departure from heavy ion collision physics, he also helped secure
the start of a Fundamental Neutron Physics program at Oak Ridge,
which will take advantage of the Spallation Neutron Source, under
construction across the street. Finally, he was very surprised to be
honored with one of the Presidential Early Career Awards for
Scientists and Engineers.
Richard H. Downey (S.B. ’94) last July finished a three-year tour
as a pilot flying EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft for the Navy in Europe
and the Mediterranean. It was a great tour, but he’s glad to be back
in school (he’s a Navy ROTC instructor at the University of Illinois)
and spending lots of time with his family (a lovely wife and three
great kids). He’s working on a M.S. in physics in his spare time and
planning to begin a PhD program in a couple of years after he gets
out of the Navy. His eventual goal is to become a professor, but you
never know.
David S. Hales (S.B. ’94.Thesis advisor: Richard Yamamoto)
After serving four years in a laboratory of the U.S. Atomic Energy
Detection System (Nuclear Treaty Monitoring), David decided to
remain in the U.S. Air Force. He is now serving as an International
Affairs Officer, with a Northeast Asia focus. He has also started a
multinational financial services corporation, doing business between
Japan and the U.S.
Eric Nehrlich (S.B. ’94.Thesis Advisor: Louis Osborne) After three
years of graduate school at Stanford working on the BaBar particle
detector, Eric decided to leave the field of physics. He worked as a
consultant with a friend for a few years as a data acquisition and
instrument control programmer.Two years ago, he joined a biotech
startup (Signature BioScience) in a similar capacity, which has been
a great experience. At Signature BioScience they characterize biological samples like cells and proteins by bouncing microwaves off of
them, extracting electrical characteristics such as permitivity by
examining the return signal, and deriving biological characteristics
from the electrical characteristics. It has been a great opportunity to
draw upon his physics background, as well as his current expertise in
instrumentation software.
Amitabh Lath (PhD ’94, S.B. ’88.Thesis advisor: Henry W. Kendall)
After graduation Amitabh worked as a postdoc on a CP violation
experiment (KTeV) at Fermilab. Since 2000, he has been an Assistant
Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rutgers.
He’s working on the CDF collider experiment at Fermilab; most
recently, he has been involved in the fabrication, installation and
testing of the CDF silicon vertex detector. His group on CDF is interested in searches for the Higgs Boson, as well as other, more exotic
physics signatures. Please visit his home page at
www.physics.rutgers.edu/~lath.
’95
Elizabeth (Beth) Holmes (S.B. ’95) just finished up her PhD
in Astronomy at the University of Florida and is now a postdoc at
JPL in California doing SIRTF (Space Infrared Telescope Facility)
related science.
Vadim Khayms (S.B ’95) After graduating in 2000 with a PhD
from MIT in Aeronautics & Astronautics,Vadim Khayms moved to
California where he works at Lockheed Martin as a spacecraft
propulsion engineer on the design and integration of electric propulsion systems. He also teaches applied mathematics and spacecraft
design courses at Stanford University.
Vijay Pande (PhD ’95.Thesis advisor:Toyoichi Tanaka) Along with
his research group,Vijay has been developing novel algorithms for
the simulation of biomolecular dynamics using worldwide distributed computing. Using a network of tens of thousands of PCs, they
have directly simulated the folding dynamics of small proteins, a
long time goal of computational biology. Finally, in recognition of
this work, he was named one of MIT Technology Review’sTop 100
Young Innovators (TR100) for 2002.
’97
Sabbir Ahmed Rahman (PhD ’97.Thesis advisor: Barton
Zwiebach) designed and developed a computer-aided diagnosis
system for lung cancer as Chief Scientic Officer of Nightingale
Technologies Ltd., UK. He was also the Founding Member of the
Zayed Institute for Research and Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE. He’s
currently chairman of an artificial intelligence software company,
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Seventh Sense Software, based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where they’re
developing both multivariate statistics and multilingual machine
translation software. (See www.seventh-sense-software.com for
more details.) He works closely with the Human Welfare Foundation
in Bangladesh, and is currently a visiting academic at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Imperial College, London, where his
academic research interests lie in multivariate statistics, machine
translation and theoretical physics.
’98
Igor P. Bilinsky (PhD ’98.Thesis advisors: James Fujimoto and Dan
Kleppner) is now a Project Leader in the Los Angeles office of the
Boston Consulting Group, working on business strategy, mostly with
biotech and technology companies.
Andre Basil Fletcher (PhD ’98.Thesis advisors: Bernard
Burke, Paul Joss) is now very much enjoying his second postdoc
as a “Brainpool” research scientist (2001–2003) in the Korean
Astronomy Observatory, Daejeon City, Republic of Korea (South).
’01
Jeff Chuang (PhD ’01.Thesis Advisors: Mehran Kardar,Toyoichi
Tanaka) started a postdoc with Prof. Hao Li (PhD ’92) last August
in the Biophysics Department at the University of California in
San Francisco.They’re working on an exciting project to compare
the mouse and human genomes.The research group has physicists,
mathematicians and biologists working together, which gives one
the feeling of how much more there is to learn, even after finishing
a PhD!
Hugo J. Delgado-Marti (S.B. ’01.Thesis adpervisor : Saul
Rappaport) is currently working on his Master of Science in the
University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras. He’s a Research Assistant
to Prof. Peter Hofner in the study of hard X-ray emissions from
regions of star formation, molecular clouds, and h II regions. He
feels he owes a lot of the progress he has had so far in this project
to everything he learned during his four years as a UROP with Saul
Rappaport, Alan Levine and all the RXTE team.
Baruch Feldman (S.B. ’01.Thesis advisor: Uwe-Jens Wiese) is
nearing completion of his 11-month consultancy at the United
Nations Population Fund. He’s working to improve efficiency and
quality in his unit, a fundraising office liaising with philanthropic
donors. Concurrently, he is taking Public Administration courses and
studying quantum field theory, hoping to enter a PhD program
next year.
Pavlin Savov (S.B. ’01.Thesis advisor: Deepto Cahakrabarty) was
offered the R. Milliken Fellowship at Caltech and accepted it. Currently,
he works in Prof. Kip Thorne’s group in Numerical Relativity. •
60 ) alumni /ae notes
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