Class Notes Archives
July/August 2009 |
November/December 1998 Hi Everyone! Looks like the latest trend for our classmates is either to go back to school or get married (or in some cases, do both!) Do keep me informed of the latest happenings in your lives! Diving in, Amy Koo is still working at Sun Microsystems in Milpitas, CA, but she has moved into a corporate apartment in San Jose courtesy of Andersen Consulting due to her dedication to working overtime hours. Jonathan Hardy is spending the summer in California studying Japanese at UC Berkeley. He's staying with Jeannie Tyan '96 and Orion Pritchard '93, and has run into a few alumni out there. Jen Glos was in Japan for a while as an internet consultant for a company called Shingakusha, in Kyoto, but is now working back in the Bay Area. Jon also ran into Alexis '95 from SAE, who is working for a Boston-based biotech supply company and is enjoying CA. Minh Le is having fun in Colorado Springs working for Vitesse Semiconductor. He has also been mountain biking in the summer and skiing in the winter, and is generally having a great time. John and Amy (Singer) Guzek reports that life is Arizona is treating them well. In January, John left the security of Intel to join a startup company called Abpac. They are a subcontract manufacturer specializing in Ball Grid Array microelectronic packaging. It's been quite an adjustment going from a company of 60,000 to 60, but he's really enjoying the work. Amy is still with Motorola, but she has moved to a new position on the modem design team for the Teledesic satellite program. They spent the 4th of July with Brad Brewer in Virginia Beach who was back from Japan (where his aircraft carrier lives) for some training. They had the pleasure of meeting his fiance, Kylie Figel, who he will be marrying in January. Sejal Shah is in the Medical Scientist Training program at Northwestern, an MD/PhD program. She has completed two years of medical school, and at the time of this writing she is almost done with her first year in graduate school. She is in a molecular genetics lab studying translational regulation. David Spetman is moving from a Ph.D. program at Stanford's ME department to a Ph.D. program at the Univ. of Illinois' Aero-Astro department this fall in Urbana-Champaign. Brian Blatnik is spending a hot summer in Houston, working in business planning for Compaq Computer's server division. In the fall, he'll be returning to Kellogg at Northwestern for his second year of B-school. Bobby Wunnava is now done with his 3rd year of medical school at George Washington University in DC. This summer he was in San Antonio, Texas and then Travis AFB in CA for away rotations in air force hospitals. After 3 years in the Graduate program at the University of New Hampshire, Christopher Siren picked up his MS in Physics this past May. He has been an astronomy teaching assistant during the fall and spring in previous years and since June of last year he has also been running the open nights at the UNH observatory. He will be continuing on towards a PhD in the physics program there, with the eventual goal of teaching physics and astronomy. His research involves simulating the SEPICA instrument on the ACE spacecraft, which is designed to examine the species of ions coming off of the sun. More detail can be found on his home page at: pubpages.unh.edu/~cbsiren. Also check out Chris' Myths and Legends page (pubpages.unh.edu/~cbsiren/myth.html). This past June he attended a house warming party for Becky Kuehn (BS Course 5, '93) along with several other 93'ers. On July 5th, the first time his attempt wasn't thwarted by foul weather or a late start, Chris hiked to the top of Mount Washington from Pinkham Notch with some friends. In overseas news, Uday Jhunjhunwala is now in London with Morgan Stanley. After working for Pirelli Tyres for two years, Michele Lombardi will be moving to the Boston Consulting Group in Milan where he hopes to be active with the MIT club. Wynne Kwan has been quite busy in Singapore now for over six months. She is getting quite the international experience, working on a Thai project and writing proposals for new projects in Hong Kong, India, the Middle East, South Africa, and even Trinidad & Tobago. Part of her job requires entertaining prospective clients and showing them around Singapore. Outside of work she has been travelling in Malaysia, Phuket, and Hong Kong, and hopes soon to be getting her scuba diving license so she can plan a trip to the Maldives. Arley Kim is working on her Diploma in Architecture at the Eidgenvssische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland. She would love to hear from any and all of her friends who happen to find themselves in the area, or would like an excuse to come and visit: aykim@stud.arch.ethz.ch. Sarah Vitek is living in Stuttgart, Germany and working at IBM Deutschland. She moved to Germany in August of 1997 and was working for the Max Planck Institute for 4 months until she heard about the MIT-Germany program. She applied while she was there and found the year-long position at IBM writing programs for automating their testing of the HCM product on OS/390 and also creating Lotus Notes Databases. She will remain there until December 1998, with one short trip back to Boston to get married to John Moran (another IBM'er) in September. In the back-to-school contingency, Fouad Saad will be leaving his job at the Cabot Corporation in mid-August to return to the academic world. Even though his last year at Cabot has been challenging and fun, and has allowed him to visit Bombay, Shanghai, Tokyo and southern Japan, Prague, London and Manchester, Paris, Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires, he will be leaving the world of income and travel to give school another shot. After a brief trip back home (Beirut) for vacation, Fouad will attend Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government to pursue a two-year Masters in Public Policy, with the hopes of dabbling in some energy and environmental policy, or perhaps some international relations down the road. Mike Bates is enjoying life at home in Los Angeles while working for the Milken Institute doing global economic research. Look for his spread in the Spring Quarter's Forbes Global issue on the Asian crisis & access to capital in emerging/frontier markets. This fall he will be starting an MBA at UCLA's Anderson School of Business. After getting her master's at MIT in 1996 and working at Motorola in Austin for 2 years, Sandy Joung will be returning to Boston to attend Harvard Business School this fall. Yueh Lee travelled from San Diego to Chapel Hill, where he will be starting an MD/PhD program at UNC-Chapel Hill. Shraddha Dalal is entering Wharton Business School at UPenn in the fall. Recently Ravi Munver, a surgeon at Duke University Medical School, successfully plotted with Ranee Mehra, who is currently at NYU Medical School, to surprise Shraddha with a proposal and an engagement ring in New York City. Shraddha accepted (and threatened Ranee's life) and the two plan to get married in May 1999. Erika Hanley's whole life has turned upside down in the past 4 months. Instead of "quietly" working at Intel, playing roller hockey, and travelling as much as possible, she got into Kellogg in April for her MMM (Master's of Management in Manufacturing) degree. She is incredibly excited to live in the Chicago area and is really looking forward to getting back into school. She also just got engaged to Matt Onken (USC '95). He's currently up in Portland, returning to Phoenix sometime soon, but then she's off to Chicago.... They are going to get married in September 1999, in the Boston area. David M. Frohman and Maria E. Palacios are now both living in Cambridge between Porter and Harvard Square. Maria recently finished her Master's of Regional Planning at Cornell University and is looking to work in the field of low-income housing both internationally and domestically. She spent last summer in the Dominican Republic doing field research in rural housing. She still hopes to travel the world. David left his job as a strategic consultant at Braxton Associates to do some soul-searching. He will try to combine business and psychology while studying organizational behavior at the Sloan School through the MBA program this fall. Currently, he's an independent consultant for the Thomson Corporation, helping them handle their strategy for dealing with the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and supporting their Year 2000 Program Office. He hopes to travel internationally during and after business school (with Maria of course). Carrie Miller became an MIT EC last winter and tells admitted MIT freshmen to "never, ever get a bank account with BayBank, and take 18.03 while you're on pass/fail." She is now trying to be a real grown-up and at the time of writing was purchasing a condo. She is beginning to understand that whole fear-of-commitment thing in an entirely new light now.... Erika Schutte, a Diffusion Process Engineer in front end production at Analog Devices in Cambridge, spent the 4th of July weekend in the Catskills at a friend's house party (5th annual) where the core group of people were East Campus alums. It was a great way to re-connect with everyone. She said it was funny to be talked into walking backward over a cliff by someone who makes their photoresist. She did have rappelling gear on, btw. Sahana Sarma left Boston for the Big Apple, where she has a new job with Bertelsmann Books Online in Marketing. Stacy Sonnenberg was recently awarded a promotion to Chief of Technical Services in the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. She is responsible for all of the larger maintenance projects that the Agency undertakes, and has 90 people reporting to her. She started at Parks & Recreation right after graduation as a Construction Project Manager. She also moved in with her long term boyfriend, Tom Rozinski (a Harvard Law graduate, '87) and got a kitten. For Ben Jordan, the past six months have been very interesting and challenging. He's really happy in Atlanta, but wishes more of his buddies from MIT would take the time to visit! He has kept in touch quite regularly with Javier Nazario, who is in an MS/PhD program at the University of Maryland and is finding plenty of time to party in the Baltimore/DC area. According to Ben, Javi did a European tour with the intention of going to World Cup matches in France -- but Ben thinks he mostly partied and watched the matches on television. Ben also heard from Randy Hyun, who visited last December and is working as a pharmaceutical consultant in California. Jay Moore visited him in the spring and they tried to get fellow Log Will Lee to join them in Atlanta, but Will was too busy working long hours with a start-up in Cambridge. Apparently he just can't get enough. Ben spent New Year's in Times Square as part of an east coast swing where he also spent some time in DC with Javi, Neil Best, and Surekha Vajjhala '96. Marc Graham is working for Corning Inc. in beautiful Wilmington, NC. He designs and manufactures equipment to make fiber (fiber optics). On the side, he has continued to work with Professor Alexander H. Slocum on the development of the Urban Design Corps, UDC (see web.mit.edu/course/2/2.971/www/frames/background.html#journeyofthelos) Charles Hightower Jr. and Amechi Nwachuku have been helping out on the project , along with several other MIT students. For the past few years, Marc has also been working on a project called Journey of the Lost Souls, (JoTLS), which will include a book of poetry/raps and pictures, a CD and possibly a movie. A lot of demo work has been completed on this project, but it is not ready to be presented as a package to the public. Keep us updated, Marc! Marc and Fred Bontemps both informed me that Charles Hightower Jr. and Nikki Ndidiamidi Temeru tied the knot on Saturday, July 4, 1998 and are now Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hightower Jr. Marc remarked that it was a wonderful occasion. Other MIT heads in attendance were Leroy Jackson Jr., Keisha Jackson, Derrick Forbes Jr., Rondell Milton, Melanie Routh, Dennis Yancey, Dameon Harrell, and Amechi Nwachuku. Amy Swanson recently got engaged to Paul Witty, another engineer at Honeywell. The two haven't made any permanent plans yet, but tentatively they're hoping to get married on 11/7/98. Neither of them wants to be stressing about wedding plans for a year like a few of their friends. They plan to stay in Minnetonka, MN, after the wedding. With ring in hand, and plan in mind, Ross Yu drove up to Napa Valley with Kristen Lohman for a little day trip on July 3rd. They started out with a light hike at a Napa state park where they admired the surroundings. From there, they headed over to an inn/restaurant called Auberge du Soleil, which is renowned for its spectacular view of the Napa Valley. They had lunch, some wine and dessert while overlooking the vineyards below. Then Ross knelt down on one knee, proposed to Kristen (who said yes), and with two congratulatory glasses of the restaurant's best champagne on the house, they toasted their future. They haven't set a date yet, but they are planning for a wedding in the summer of 1999 in the Bay area.
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