Class Notes Archives
July/August 2009 |
April 2001 Hello everyone! There is a lot of news to share this time so we will dive right in! Annie Fortunato Rhodes and Scott Rhodes moved to Wakefield, MA, this summer. Scott is still happily working at VTechCorp and Annie is getting her master's degree this February in biological oceanography. She is planning to teach high school next fall. Sandy Joung graduated from Harvard Business School (HBS) in 2000 and after a great summer trip to Europe, she returned to Boston to work as an associate at Atlas Venture, focusing on early-stage telecommunications investments. Caroline Pan is in her second year at HBS. After graduating from HBS in June, Sahana Sarma will be getting married in Chicago, then moving to New York. Shalini Verma, who will also be graduating from HBS in June, served as co-chair of the Women's Student Association Annual Leadership Conference. Shalini and Rohit Gupta, who started his residency in emergency medicine at Boston City Hospital, bought a home just outside of Boston. Keith Bevans somehow ended up back in Boston for two years at HBS. Afterwards, he plans to return to Bain & Company in Chicago. Brian Robertson left Amazon.com in December 1999 to start Visible Markets with Sam Choi '93. Visible Markets, based in Boston's financial district, is an exchange for trading bonds between institutions. Brian married Eileen Mcguire on New Year's Eve. Erin McCoy and her partner, Evan Ziporyn, welcomed a new baby girl, Ava Oriane Ziporyn, on April 27, 2000. Erin writes, "she's a joy--keeping us all busy and happy and already displaying her inherited appreciation for music of all kinds!" Teresa Esser is putting the finishing touches on a book about high-tech startups, tentatively titled, The Venture Cafe: Secrets and Strategies From America's High-Tech Winners. The book describes how a group of entrepreneurs who hang out at MIT's very own Muddy Charles Pub turn their ideas into new high-tech companies. The book will be published by Warner Business Books in March 2002. Lee Rockford wedded Kyra Czar from Northampton, MA, in September 2000, and graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst with a PhD in polymer science in October 2000. He's now doing photoresist research at Intel's Components Research Group in Portland, OR. Jen (Chank) Kazmierczak and her husband, Mike, gave birth to a healthy boy, Jonah Michael, in October 2000 and are loving the experience of being parents. Jen returns to work part time at Corning Inc. in mid-February. Nika (Lee) Elugardo and Marcos Elugardo were married in August 1995 and now have a 5-year-old daughter. Last year their family spent two weeks helping at a sports camp for kids and a family holiday music and arts camp for urban families--mostly refugees from Africa, Latin America and Southwest Asia--in Harringay, London. Now Marcos is an engineer for a web development company in Waltham, after having a family web business for three years. Nika is working primarily on publications and ministry support in the development department at the Emmanuel Gospel Center in Boston's South End. James Choung married Jinhee Lee on Oct. 21, 2000. Erin Lavik's play, The Reception, was produced as part of the MIT Dramashop 2000 One-Acts last fall. Morgan Slade served as president of the MIT Club of New York for the last two years. After trading currencies, fixed income and equities for a global macro hedge fund for four years as director of trading and research, he joined Merrill Lynch as a vice president in global equity trading where his group runs Merrill's proprietary equity trading book. He snowboarded at Jackson Hole this Christmas and is looking forward to Tahoe with fellow MIT friends this spring. He is wondering if any 95'ers are interested in a Himalayan Heli-Boarding trip? Stella Lymberis went to Greece in the summer, and is now doing an internship at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital in New York. She is excited to do some physics again during her residency in radiation oncology at New York University. Michelle Vokac is currently in her anesthesiology residency at the Medical College of Virginia, and will be getting married March 31, 2001, to a cosmetic surgeon at the same hospital. Alex and Jenny Chen are doing their residencies at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, and happily celebrated their first wedding anniversary last May. Stephanie DeWeese Sadowski and her husband, Mark '96, recently moved to Charlotte, NC. Stephanie is still with Andersen Consulting (soon to be Accenture) and Mark will be working there as well, starting in January. Fred Hernandez and his wife, Jennifer, are mere weeks away from the birth of their little bundle of joy. "He will probably be a Super Bowl baby!" They recently moved into their new house and hosted family for the holidays. Diane Hodges finally completed her MS in biomedical engineering from the University of Texas, Austin, while working full time at Motorola. She got engaged in August to Donovan Popps and will be tying the knot in Austin in May 2001. Thayne Coffman, currently in Austin, TX, recently got engaged to his long-time girlfriend, Mae, and will be getting married this summer in Maryland where they both grew up. Ed Hernandez and Nicole (Gotti) Hernandez have relocated to Evanston, IL, where Ed is pursuing an MBA at Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of Business. Nicole has joined the Chicago office of GeoSyntec Consultants as an assistant project engineer. Yeh-Jiun Tung will be graduating with his PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from UC Berkeley in February. After that, he'll be moving to the Princeton, NJ, area to work for a small company called Universal Display Corporation which specializes in organic light-emitting display technology. Anna Chwang, who finished her PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota in December 2000, will also be joining the same company in February. Tarik Saleh decided he did not want to look for an apartment in the Bay area after his lease was up so he moved to Knoxville, TN. Nicole Wainwright is living in Oakland, CA, and working at a company called MyTurn.com in Alameda, CA. She spent the millennium in Brazil, and is planning a trip to Thailand in February. Nupur (Gupta) Shah and Mehul Shah '96 had a baby girl, Maya, in September 2000 at Washington Hospital in Fremont, CA. Nupur is still working at Xilinx and Mehul is working on his PhD in computer science at Berkeley. Ben Shih and Eileen (Chen) Shih were married in July 1999 in Los Angeles. They honeymooned in Kauai, HI, and in Moorea and Bora Bora, Tahiti. Ask them about the best trails and snorkeling in Kauai, black pearl shopping in Moorea, shark feeding in Bora Bora, etc. Two weeks after returning to Boston, they discovered that they brought back an awesome but unexpected souvenir. To make a long story short, David Micah Shih was born March 31, 2000. They still aren't sure if he can be considered Hawaiian or Tahitian. They still consider themselves novices in parenting, but they are drinking from that new firehose. After David was born, Eileen decided to take an early retirement. Being jealous, Ben decided to quit also and enter the MBA program at Stanford. If you know anything about debt financing, Ben needs your help. --Ranjini Srikantiah, secretary, email: ranjini@alum.mit.edu |