Class Notes Archives
July/August 2009 |
July/August 2000 Hello everyone! Well, by the time this gets to print we will have just completed our 5th year reunion. I hope to have seen most of you there! The column is rather short this time around. Be sure to send me your notes as I request them. It is truly great to hear from all of you. Without further ado, here we go. The class of '95 is truly reaching the stars. Christopher Paul Barrington-Leigh reports that two years ago he became involved with a space medicine research group in Houston looking at long-term effects of weightlessness on vision acuity. In mid-March, he was selected as an astronaut for the upcoming shuttle mission in November and is about to begin his final training! He would like to thank everyone who has helped him attain this lifelong dream. Congrats! Nicole Wainwright bought a house in Oakland, CA, last year, and quit working for Deloitte Consulting in favor of joining the Internet startup craze in San Francisco. She's currently working at Collab.Net, a company that focuses on providing tools and services to the open source software community (e.g. Linux, Apache, etc.). She also spent three weeks in Brazil over the New Year. Josephine Harada ran in and finished the Los Angeles Marathon ("my first and one of many, I hope!"). She reports that it was a pretty awesome day overall, considering that it was pouring rain until about three and a half hours into the race. She ran it with friend and fellow alum Ken Goodwill '88. Aside from that, Jo is still in grad school working towards her PhD in molecular biology at UCLA. Someday she will actually finish that as well. Jay Moore reports that it's been an eventful year or two for him and Shirley Lin. He finally managed to get stationed at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento, CA, only two hours (when the traffic is good) from Stanford University where Shirley is finishing her PhD. After nearly five years of engagement, they finally got married Sept. 3, 1999. There were several MIT folks at the wedding. Married life is pretty good, but still doesn't involve cohabitation. They'll be fixing that by October; Shirley should have graduated by then, and Jay's last day in the Air Force will be Friday, Oct.13 (which he's choosing to call a very lucky day). Shirley just got a post-doctoral position at the Scripps Institute in San Diego, so he'll be looking for jobs in that area. They are both very excited about finally starting their real life together. Celika Langford is getting married July 8 to Dr. Leon D. Caldwell. She will be moving to Lincoln, NE, to do business development at an Internet startup called Class.com. Keith Bevans celebrated his second wedding anniversary March 22 with Natasha. "No kids yet, but stay tuned!" Amy (Swanson) Witty was laid off from her job at Honeywell in January as an indirect result of the recent merger with Allied Signal. Fortunately, she found a job almost right away, and she likes it a lot better, so it's worked out great. She's now at ADC Telecommunications in Shakopee, MN, working as a mechanical design engineer on new product development for the markets of DSL and telephony. Also, she and her husband, Paul, just bought a house in Prior Lake, MN. They were going to close March 30 and move in April 1. Tracy Back has a busy summer ahead of her. She graduated from Harvard Business School on June 8. Her wedding is on July 1, and she and Kevin will be honeymooning in Mexico for a week. She has accepted a job with Cummins Engine Company in Columbus, IN. The new couple recently bought a house in the country there-they can't wait to move in! She will start work in August on some of Cummins' ebusiness initiatives. "Should be a fun job!" she says. Sahana Sarma is finishing up her first year at Harvard Business School. She reports that Jahnavi Swamy just got transferred to Japan with Procter and Gamble, and Andy Ugarov is working in Tanzania for Pricewaterhousecoopers. Wynne Kwan resigned from her job in Singapore because she realized (a) she doesn't want to do industrial planning for the rest of her life, and (b) she needs a change. She planned to leave work at the end of May and has applied for a volunteer position to teach English and computer skills to students in a local college in Kachin State in Myanmar (formerly Burma). After that, she hopes to be traveling in Indochina (Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the rest of Myanmar). Then she will be traveling through Europe to visit friends on her way back home to New York. From May, she will have no job, no home, no husband, no children and no pets. She should be back in the States by the end of the year. Last November, Jason Mueller made a career shift from consulting for Braxton Associates over to Chinadotcom (in the 24/7 Media Asia subsidiary). He is officially the corporate development manager for 24/7 Media Asia which covers the entire Asia Pacific region. Basically he's doing mergers and acquisitions and new market/new product development. The Internet world in Asia is just kicking in right now. He imagines it is similar to the Valley a few years ago. He's based in Hong Kong and is having a great time! Andrew Kraft's son, Jayden William Kraft (his second child), was born Dec. 2, 1999. He's apparently built like a linebacker! Andrew is leaving his company to start his own dot.com, Executivity, a community and high-end services company for New Economy senior executives. He is also now on the board of three companies and consulting to four more on things like strategic positioning, startup process, acquisition negotiation and partnership development. "So yes, I'm not sleeping much," he says. Alex Chen and Jenny (Lee) Chen are busy yet happy in Charlottesville, NC, almost done with their first years of residency in internal and family medicine. Jenny reports that it was nice to see Jessica Qu and Sung's new home recently in Northern California and to see that Steve Lin, Eric Fong and Alexandra Pau were all doing well. Chris Ellefson is still living in Toronto working on image guided surgery software at Cedara Software (same company as before, recently renamed). This past year he has been getting into running. In November, he ran the New York City Marathon. This spring, he's planning to run the Grandma's Marathon in Minnesota. That's all folks! --Ranjini Srikantiah, secretary, 12 Philo Curtis Road, Sandy Hook, CT 06482; e-mail: ranjini@ alum.mit.edu |