Class Notes Archives
July/August 2009 |
September/October 1999 Hello Everyone! The Medical Folks: Ruth Lim will be doing a one-year internship in New Haven, CT, and then returning to Boston in July 2000 to start her residency in Radiology at MGH. She's looking forward to a much-needed vacation this summer, and will be spending 4 weeks eating her way through Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore before starting internship. Yum! Rahul Garg is headed to Hopkins for his internal medicine residency. Right now Julia Su is completing her fourth year in medical school at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in NYC and will be doing one more year of research before she begins her residency in pediatrics. Of more exciting news, she married her high school sweetheart (and classmate at MIT) John W. Lin (entered MIT as class of '95 but got his BS in '94, and MS in '95) on March 27th, 1999. Their wedding was held in Taiwan. John who is also in his fourth year (at Johns Hopkins Medical School) matched to his first choice surgery residency at Hopkins and the two have begun house hunting together in Baltimore. If you hear from anyone or know of anyone living in the Baltimore area and can help with the house search, let them know: juliasu@alum.mit.edu. Stella Lymberis completed her third year in medical school at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 'da Bronx. For this coming year, she is planning a year of research. Nicole Fang just finished her last class of her second year medical school education at UCSD. She will be taking Step 1 of the Boards next month and then heading off to Washington, D.C. She has received an NIH-HHMI Research Scholarship to live and work at NIH for a year. Next summer she will be returning to UCSD to complete her last 2 years of medical school. She is currently engaged but doesn't plan to walk down the aisle until her 4th year of med school when she might be able to take enough time off for a honeymoon. Jeff Gonzalez will be staying at UPenn for 3 more years at least as a resident in internal medicine. He just got back from Spain, and recently visited Bobby Wunnava and Rick Mejia '92 in DC. Bobby graduated from George Washington University, was sworn in to be a captain in the USAF, and has headed off to the British Isles for a vacation. He visited Veena Sankappanavar in Ireland, who is in medical school at Trinity College in Dublin. Sookyung Lee and Shinya Fukuda visited him at graduation time. Bobby recently attended the wedding of Jenny Lee and Alex Chen. He reports that Jen Brady is working as a consultant for an environmental firm and recently went to Italy for a week of vacation. Cindy Liu graduated from the Medical College of Georgia and will start her residency in internal medicine in June at Vanderbilt University. Wedding Bells: Phillip Le got engaged to Nicole Keating, a grad student in media studies at UPenn. The two are planning their wedding for the fall. Jin Mo Kim will be a Lieutenant in the Navy in June stationed on board the carrier, USS Enterprise. After graduating in 1995, Jin Mo served two years on board a destroyer in Japan, USS Hewitt, then went to Nuclear Power School in Orlando and Prototype in New York. Now in Norfolk on the "Big E," Jin Mo will be getting married in August to Misun Cho from Denver, CO. On April 28 Tracy Back got engaged to Kevin Embree whom she met while living in Ohio working for Colgate. They are getting married on July 1, 2000, which works out great since she graduates from HBS on June 8 of that year. She has just completed term one of school and will be doing term 2 over the summer. So far things are going very well. She's not sure where she'll be working when she's done with school but it's almost definite that she and Kevin will not be staying in Ohio. Jen (Chank) Kazmierczak was married October 17th, 1998 to Michael Kazmierczak. October was a hectic month, because the week before their wedding, Mike and Jen were in Atlanta for John Simmons and Tatum Wheeler's (BU) wedding. They were married October 9th, and had a wonderful weekend planned in Atlanta for their guests. The ceremony and reception were beautiful, and they got to see lots of MIT alums, including Shehry Rahman and many DKE alumni. John and Tatum came back from their honeymoon in London in time to attend Jen and Mike's wedding a week later in upstate New York. Their reception was at a historic bed and breakfast in Altamont, NY, which was the perfect setting, where they were surrounded by beautiful fall foliage, carved pumpkins, antique barns, a roaring fireplace, etc.! MIT alumni who attended included John Simmons, Jessie (Browning) Paul, Tom J. Paul, Shehry Rahman, and Snow Sudduth. Mike and Jen spent their honeymoon in Colorado, skiing, hiking, fly fishing, and relaxing. In November 1998, Mike and Jen bought and moved into a log cabin in Colton, NY. It is set on a few wooded acres on the Raquette River in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. They are absolutely loving being homeowners, and living their dream of living in their own log cabin! After graduation from MIT, Jen received her MS in environmental engineering from Clarkson University, and she worked as a process engineer for 1 1/2 years at Corning, Inc.'s Canton, NY plant, on the high purity fused silica process. She has recently changed positions within the plant, and is now the plant environmental engineer, which is exactly what she wanted to do when she graduated, so she is really enjoying it! More wedding bells: Robert Lewis and Sherry (Wu) Lewis were married on May 1, 1999 at St. Mary's Chapel in Rockville, Maryland. The weather was perfect, and she was very happy to get-together with several of her MIT classmates that she hasn't seen in a while. Karyn Green was a bridesmaid. Yumi Oshima, Susan Hsieh, Hoang Tran ('94 BS, '96 MS), Philip Soo ('99 PhD), and Ken Battige '90 also attended the wedding. Sherry and Robert are both still working at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as nuclear engineers. They reside in Germantown, Maryland. Amy Koo recently attended the wedding of Jenny Lee & Alex Chen in Baltimore along with a bunch of other MIT alums. While in Baltimore, Amy also had a chance to meet up with Bonnie (Kim) Neiderstrasser who is missing the CA lifestyle. Douglas Simpson got married this fall (October 10) to Neilani Lutich of San Diego. She went to Sarah Lawrence College. They honeymooned in Scotland where they stayed in a castle in the Mary Queen of Scots Room. Since then, they have bought a condo in Medford Mass, and Doug left ACX in Cambridge to design databases for Breuer & Co. in Bedford MA. Neilani is starting a wedding consultant and event planning business, and they are looking forward to the challenges that lie ahead. Anyone can reach Doug at dasimps@alum.mit.edu. Annie Fortunato and Scott Rhodes were recently wed. Fred Hernandez got married on April 24th, 1999 to Jennifer Hendricks and is enjoying being all settled down and grown up. Art Fong was his Best Man. Brian Wright was also a groomsman. There were a decent number of alums at the wedding, considering it was in El Paso, TX: Shirley Hung '98, Joy Upalakalin '97, Stacey Yu '98, Joe Chang, Brian D'Amato '96, Ryan Ehlert, Tommy Kawamoto '96, and Victor Grado '92, among others. The dinner and reception were one giant PARTY for everybody. All he kept hearing from friends and family was "Wow Fred, your MIT friends sure can party. I've never seen anyone so smart drink so much..." And they were all on the dance floor having one helluva good time. After graduation, Patrice Washington spent the summer working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD. She returned to my hometown Chicago and got an MS in materials science and engineering from Northwestern in 1997. She has been working at Motorola in Austin, Texas for a little over a year now. Her first year at Motorola she was in the sector's Engineering Rotation Program, which Diane Hodges and Ben Tao '94 also participated in when they went to work there. Patrice is now working in product package engineering, supporting automotive customers. On March 20, 1999, she married Robert H. Langford, Jr. in Chicago. In attendance, were Maisha Richard, Mr. and Mrs. Keith Bevans, Zana McIntosh '94, Barbara Nichols '94, and several of her AKA sorority sisters from Harvard, Wellesley and Boston University. The couple honeymooned in Fiji. Daricha Techopitayakul just got married to Arak Sutivong after 10 years of friendship. The ceremony was held in Thailand on July 19th, 1998. They would like to thank William Lee, Jimmy Lai (& Rebecca, his fiancee), and Paulus Wanandi for flying over from Singapore, Hong Kong and Austria to attend. Currently, Daricha and her husband are doing their PhDs at Stanford in EE and EESOR (Engineering-Economic Systems and Operations Research). The Next Generation: After working at AMS and Oracle, Zeeshan Khan joined a start-up to develop some exciting NLP software products last year. Right now he is busily recruiting people. He and his wife, Fahria Khan '96, bought a house in San Jose, California and are happy to announce the arrival of their beautiful baby girl, Tasneem Zahra Khan. Laura (Juliano) Chadwick and Tom Chadwick '94 were married in November, 1996, and are proud to announce the birth of their daughter, Julia Grace Chadwick on December 18, 1998. Julia was 6 lbs 4 oz, 19 inches long and arrived just in time for Christmas. They are all doing great - especially now that she's sleeping better! Laura is enjoying her 6 month maternity leave from IBM Microelectronics in Burlington, Vermont (where she has been working since graduation). She's not exactly sure what she'll be doing when she returns, but it will most likely be embedded DRAM characterization. Charles Hightower Jr. and his wife Nikki Hightower gave birth to a beautiful daughter Azana Ndidiamaka Hightower on April 2, 1999. Along with their son Daivon Hightower, they are very happy and proud to have a new member of their wonderful family. Congratulations to all the parents!! New Directions: Stacy Heen moved to Washington DC at the end of April to accept a position with Search for Common Ground, a non-profit organization dedicated to transforming how the world deals with conflict. As Program Coordinator for Search's Iran project, Stacy has the unique opportunity to help build people-to-people bridges in such diverse areas as athletics, cinema, the arts, astronomy, and the environment. For more information about Search's work in Iran and elsewhere, check out their website at www.sfcg.org. Although she has occasional pangs of homesickness for Boston and Nebraska, Washington is a great place to spend some time and her new kitten Nate likes it too. Jayant Kumar is just finishing up his final year at Harvard Business School, and will be returning to Booz-Allen & Hamilton's Communications, Media & Technology Group in New York City. He enjoyed being back in Boston these last two years, and will miss it. Paulo A. Pereira accepted a promotion that has brought him back to Massachusetts from New York City. He's now living in Beverly working at the Billerica headquarters of Teloquent Communications once again. His new job title is "Customer Support Team Manager." He's thrilled to be back home, close to his family and friends. Despite the fact that he graduated Course 7 and never took a computer class at MIT, Sean Dotson is now working as a computer consultant/programmer specializing in web enabled business solutions. Go figure. He has spent the last two years educating himself in the subject, and loves it. He is extremely interested in using these technologies for educational purposes, escpecially with kids. If anyone is interested in talking about it, drop him an email: dotson@alum.mit.edu. He's currently working for a small but quickly growing web development company called Fusive.com, based in Deerfield Beach, FL. If you know of anyone interested in this field, let him know because Fusive is definitely looking for good people. Yvette Croskey "GOT OUT OF KENTUCKY!!!!! FINALLY!!!!" She transferred to Fayetteville, NC to the Nafion unit as the Area Coordinator of the polymers unit. Nafion is the membrane used primarily in chlor-alkali plants right now, but the big use will be as the proton-exchange membrane of choice for fuel cells when that technology takes off. Most car manufacturers are working on developing automobiles that run off of hydrogen (for now -- probably will be methanol later). You might be familiar with the concept: H2 is broken down into protons (which pass thru the Nafion membrane) and electrons, which are forced around the membrane, thus creating a current of electricity. If methanol is the "fuel" source, there's a small chemical plant onboard the car that breaks the methanol down into CO (and then coverts that to CO2) and hydrogen. With oxygen passing over the membrane, basically you end up with an exhaust of water vapor and a small amount of CO2. This way, consumers could take advantage of the methanol distribution systems already available in states like California (where something like 20% of the new vehicles sold in 2004 must be zero (or low) emission vehicles.) Cars will probably be one of the later uses -- stationary power generation (as back-up generators, etc) will probably happen first. So, she is really excited about the possibilities with this product. Beth Siers has not only finished her Masters in record time, but is now home to roost back at the Institute. She earned her Masters in Library Science in May of 1998, and after much job searching/hopping has settled into her new position as Copy Based Cataloger at MIT. "Now the 'Tute gets to pay ME!" She has also recently joined another a capella group, The Copley Cats; look for them at First Night 1999! Stephanie Ford has a new job working for Battelle Memorial Institute, a private research organization. She worka in the Great Lakes Industrial Technology Center in Cleveland where her new title is Industrial Technology Specialist. Lately she has become fascinated with how technology is developed and marketed and this is giving her some great new opportunities. Her primary responsibility is to represent NASA technology in relationships with companies that would like to commercialize it. In doing that and some of the other functions of the office, she works with many start-up companies that are working to develop their business plans and to launch their first products. In some cases she is working with companies that are looking to redefine themselves, to revise their traditional product lines and to pursue newer technologies. She has also had the chance to work with some world-class leaders in innovation. She is enjoying the new landscape and the great opportunity to work with an incredible variety of people and technologies. Andrea Jensen finally graduated from the Air Force's Undergraduate Pilot Training Program and will remain at Laughlin AFB in Del Rio, TX, for the next 3 years as a T-37 instructor pilot. After this tour, she is guaranteed a follow-on assignment to a fighter aircraft, so she's hoping the next few years really fly by! She is in the process of buying a house, and will be spending the summer at Randolph AFB, San Antonio, for pilot instructor training. Jonathan Hardy is about to finish up his master's degree in computer engineering at Mississippi State University. And finally, yes, he'll actually be a productive citizen. He will be working for Trilogy Software in Austin, TX, in early July. He'll be joining several other MIT folk there, a few of whom he knows (Jason Black '98, Joshua Koppelman '94, Carol Lee '96). He can't wait for those 80 hour work weeks he has been able to avoid as a grad student! Chris Ellefson, one of his pledge brothers, visited him recently. Jonathan remarks that Chris is doing fine, "but I think he's having wanderlust right now and is considering trying to find a job in Japan." Back to School: Raj Prabhakar is sad to be leaving San Francisco, Swander Pace Capital and the wonderful world of venture capital, yet happy to begin his MBA at Harvard Business School this August. Before attending he will be working in Bangalore and Bombay, India in international venture capital, learning the ropes overseas. In case anyone is in India this summer and wants to hang out, send email to rajprabhakar@hotmail.com and he can send his contact info. Caroline Pan will be leaving Michigan this year to attend Harvard Business School in the fall. She's pretty excited to be returning to a "real" city after living in metro Detroit! Ford (where she's been working for the past 4 years) has offered to sponsor her on a fellowship as well, so she is hoping that the adjustment back to the student lifestyle won't be TOO difficult...! Now she's just trying to cope with "senioritis" until she stops working (probably end of June). Then she'll be taking time off to travel during the summer (plans include Argentina, California, and hopefully Europe). Sahana Sarma will also be going to HBS in the fall. Dave Pecora has been bouncing around between cities on consulting assignments with American Management Systems, Inc. ... Redwood City, Manhattan, Concord, Fairfax, Toronto, Columbus, Omaha, Walnut Creek ... and will once again be heading home to the Bay Area this fall for grad school. He'll be studying computer science at Stanford. In the fall of 1999, Marc Graham will be returning to MIT to pursue a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. Amechi Nwachuku will also be returning to MIT to pursue an MBA from Sloan. In addition to their graduate studies, they will be working with Prof. Alexander H. Slocum on the development of the Urban Design Corps, UDC (http://udc.mit.edu/), an organization they helped start as undergraduates at MIT. Status Quo: Andrew Kraft is currently the Executive Director of the Association of Internet Professionals (AIP), the world's largest professional association for the Internet industry, which he helped found in 1996. He runs the day to day operations of the organization and interacts with the public, press, government and corporate communities. He also works on the side as a marketing/strategic relationship consultant for a number of companies. Jung Yueh is at Northeastern University, college of computer science. He got his MS two years ago, and says, "A PhD is being worked on, but nowhere in sight. :)" Michele Lombardi has been working for BCG in the Milan Office since September. Teresa Esser is currently writing a book about high tech startups. Her work involves locating and interviewing the entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, corporate lawyers and accountants who go about setting up and developing high tech companies. She is particularly interested in collecting stories about the strange and unusual aspects of life in a startup. Please send e-mail to teresa@alum.mit.edu if you have high tech stories to share. Carrie Miller just returned from a five-day vacation in Los Cabos, Mexico with two co-workers where she had a wonderful time in the sun. Ryan Ehlert is wrapping up his 1st year of b-school at Kellogg in sunny Evanston, IL. "It's been great so far because the classes are much more interesting than engineering classes and the social life is very similar to the high points of undergrad." He has been doing a lot of travelling in the last few months too: Fred's wedding in El Paso; a rugby match at Stanford, CA; 2 weeks in Brazil; a couple weekends in Cleveland..... He'll be working in Cleveland this summer as a management consultant. The last 3 years he was working in Albany NY as a manufacturing engineer. He also tried his hand as a volunteer firefighter for the last year of that, but had to give it up in Chicago because all the stations in the area are paid. Now he just spends his free time trying to improve his golf game - it definitely needs a lot of work. Ken Lin is studying music a Pasadena City College. Jason Mueller moved to Hong Kong last September, after three years in Boston, and is having a great time. He just returned from a week-long live-aboard SCUBA diving trip in the Sulu Sea of the Philippines. Other trips have taken him backpacking in Vietnam and Taiwan, to the demilitarized zone in Korea, and snowboarding in the powder of Japan. He is still consulting for Braxton Associates and living with Brad Begle '94. He has run into a few "techies" including Mike Joo, up in Seoul, where he helped make it very hard for Jason to make it to a few early morning meetings :) He is looking forward to catching up with everyone back in Boston at Phil Nadeau's wedding next fall. Loretta Pioch (Vidos), and her husband Nick Pioch '94, want to thank Eliza Fulton and Gaby Canalizo '93 for being such wonderful hosts during their visit to Hawaii! All this with Loretta being 31 weeks pregnant! Loretta is also enjoying her job at TVisions (www.tvisions.com) as a web developer. It figures that the company is located only a few blocks from the MIT campus. You just can't escape! Masa Nagamiya is still working on several interior parts for the upcoming Lexus LS at Toyota in Japan and is always happy to refer to anyone who is interested in working at Toyota in Japan (language abilities required). There are a lot of great opportunities to learn about business and engineering in a huge Japanese corporation! E-mail: masa@saku.dm.toyota.co.jp if interested.
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