Class Notes Archives
July/August 2009 |
November 2003 Chantel and Chris Merkel delivered Alexander Thomas Merkel on March 27, 2003. Phillip Phuc Le and his wife Nicole Keating had their second child, Maya Juliette Le, on June 20, 2003. Everyone is well, and older brother Toshan just adores her. Karin Lin and her husband, Cade Murray '96, had their first baby, Kiera Lin Murray, on Jan. 30, 2003. Keith Bevans reports Keith Jr. will be two this month and his younger brother Malcolm Alexander, born April 11, 2003, is doing great. Paulo Pereira and his wife Leah are proud parents of their first child, Alexandrina Michaela. She was born on April 23, 2003, weighing in at 7 lbs., 5 oz. My husband, Dale Poage, and I had a 9 lb. baby boy, Tejan Srikantiah Poage, on May 8. As of this column, I recently (regretfully) ended my maternity leave. After working for three years for the conflict resolution NGO Search for Common Ground in Washington, DC, Stacy Heen started a two-year master's program last fall at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She spent the summer conducting research on the role of microcredit programs on conflict prevention in a small village in the west province of French-speaking Cameroon. Her research has been supported by the Mellon-MIT Inter-University Program on Non- Governmental Organizations and Forced Migration. Amber Mazooji is back at MIT again, pursuing a joint MBA-MS degree through the LFM program. Kit Yue (Kitty) Wong completed her adult psychiatry training at UT Southwestern in Dallas this June, and moved back to Boston to do a two-year child psychiatry fellowship at the MGH-McLean Hospital program. Unfortunately, she and Brian Davies were (amicably) divorced in June. He received his PhD from UT Southwestern and is working at the Mayo Clinic. Kitty recently met with Dean Franck, who is working for McKinsey, based out of Chicago, and Matt and Holly (Goo) Becker who bought a house in Harvard, MA, last year. Holly has been stationed at Hanscom AFB, where she is working in government contract law for the Air Force JAG Corps. She is currently training to run a leg in a relay during the Air Force Marathon. Matt continues to work for Intel. They look forward to traveling to Ireland and Hawaii this fall. Kitty also reports that Stephen Chan has finished his MD/PhD from UCSF and is doing a residency at Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston. Kitty spent a week with Sheila Mathis this spring in Redwood City, CA, where she works for Infiniera. She also saw Jon Lai, Margherita Chang and Justin Payne, who is having fun driving the fast cars he loves so much. Oliver Schneider has now moved his family back to the Houston area from Europe. Stacy Sonnenberg completed her MBA at Harvard and joined the municipal-finance division of Goldman Sachs. Erin Lavik recently acquired a dog and a home in New Haven, CT, and is now an assistant professor in biomedical engineering at Yale. After three years at Columbia, Edward Baltz is returning to the bay area for a postdoc in astrophysics at Stanford/SLAC. He is getting married next summer to Tracy Piombo, a Wellesley alum whom he knew in high school but just started dating three years ago. Victor Holmes is engaged to Betsy Marvit, Caltech '95. They met online and now live happily in serious geekdom. She's a dotcomer gone vocal-music teacher. A small wedding is planned for October 2003, unless they ask for an extension. Maisha (Richard) Turner is a project engineer for an environmental engineering consulting company and recently received her PE on the first attempt. Almost three years ago she got married and is settling nicely in Houston. After nearly six years at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), Kyle Shinseki left his position as development director in July to begin his MBA at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. After one year in the Lincoln Park area of Chicago, Neil Best and his wife Laura moved to the Ukranian Village. In the spring he accepted a regional-manager position with Direct Push Analytical, an environmental-services firm. He and Laura recently enjoyed two weeks in Costa Rica. After six months of commuting between Boston and Chicago, Matt Cutler and his wife Kristin relocated to Chicago. He is working for SPSS, www.spss.com, as vice president of corporate marketing. Earlier this year he and Kristin spent an amazing week sailing, and celebrating their 30th birthdays, in the BritishVirgin Islands with 16 other people, including Raj Jindal, Brad and Sam Pearson, Rahul Shendure and Erika Shroeder, David and Shelley Brandenburger, and Debtosh and Julie Chakrabarti '94. Alexander Chen and Jenny Lee Chen are happily living and working in the Wimington, DE, area. Alex is a hospitalist at Paoli and Bryn Mawr Hospitals and Jenny is a family physician-obstetrician at an inner-city clinic. Recently, Jessica Qu and her husband visited them. Michelle (Vokac) Lynam update: just finished her anesthesiology residency and is working part time for a private practice group in her hometown of Richmond, VA. Her husband Gregg just opened a solo Plastic Surgery practice called Richmond Surgical Arts. They are expecting their first baby this December. Amy Koo completed her MBAIMSE degree at Stanford in December 2002. After a study trip to Costa Rica and a few months of job hunting, she fulfilled a long-time desire to live and study in Spain. Her rusty high school Spanish was restored after nine weeks of classes in Barcelona, Madrid, and Sevilla, and she rounded out the trip with a week in Portugal. Now she is back in the real world working as a senior logistics analyst for the Raychem Circuit Protection division of Tyco Electronics in Menlo Park, CA. After attending Rob D'Onofrio's wedding on June 1, Mike Bates went to Bangalore, India, for a one-year stint managing a group of engineers at his company's offshore office. He is loving India, but definitely missing home, friends, and family. Manoj Bobby Wunnava moved back to the U.S. from Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, in May 2003. He was working as the flight surgeon for an F-16 squadron in Korea but now works at the Air Force Research Labs at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. At Osan, he worked with Captain Sheryl Ott, an F-16 pilot. He got engaged in February and will be getting married this November to Niha Babu, a health care administrator working in Chicago, IL. Bryn Oh and her family are moving to Pasadena, CA, so that David '91 can work at JPL. Fred Hernandez reports that Brian Wright got married in June to a wonderful woman named Tiffany. He and Art Fong served as groomsmen and Tom Kawamoto '96 was there as a guest. Anna (Tomassini) Plehn and Jose M. Plehn-Dujowich '96 will be moving into their newly built house in Buffalo in August. Friends are invited to visit and see Niagara Falls and Western New York. Jeff Gonzalez has moved to Miami where he is a second year gastroenterology fellow at U. of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital. --Ranjini Srikantiah; 15 Mountain Ave, Westwood, NJ 07675; ranjini@alum.mit.edu. |