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May/June 2006

Greetings! Jenny Alexander ’06, the recipient of the Arce-Doshi Memorial Fund Scholarship for the past two years would like to share this message with you… “I have received notice that I am the recipient for the Class of 1995 Lizette Arce-Doshi Memorial Fund scholarship for the second year in a row, and I wanted to take this opportunity to thank your class for their support. I am a senior at MIT this year majoring in biology with a minor in chemistry and I am a sister of Alpha Phi. I have previously held executive positions at Alpha Phi and I have been the captain of MIT’s cheerleading squad. I have also been a member of the varsity and club volleyball team, and I actively participate in MIT’s UROP program. I will be pursuing an MD/PhD medical scientist training program next year. Though I have several acceptances, I will most likely choose a program in Texas, my home state, to be closer to my family. Attending MIT has been a major turning point in my life because of the abundant opportunities here that can help establish a successful career. Further, I have enjoyed the challenges the coursework here has presented and I feel that these challenges have prepared me for just about anything I might encounter in graduate training or in a career as a medical scientist. I wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your class’ donation because without support like this, I would not have been able to attend MIT.” This is a great reminder to all of us how much our contribution to the Class of 1995 Funds can assist current students. If you are interested in making a donation, please visit https://giving.mit.edu/givenow/GiftStart.dyn.

And now some news from our classmates… Ashwin Balagopal sends greetings from Ohio. He is finishing up a post-doc at Ohio State and then he is off to a fellowship in Infectious Diseases in Baltimore. He is still trying to keep the music torch lit and is married to a statistician, Shari Modur. Surprisingly, he did not meet her at MIT. Raj Sodhi and his wife, Lucia, are pleased to announce the birth of daughter Sofia and son Jaco on Nov. 17, 2005. Sofia and Jaco were born at 8:27am and 8:29am, respectively. Sofia weighed 5 lbs. 13 oz., and Jaco weighed 5 lbs. 9 oz. They were both a little over 19 inches tall. As you may have well guessed, Sodhi’s life has been downright crazy since the babies were born. He doesn’t think he has ever lost so much sleep since his MIT days. Dan Housman reports that he married Sarah Carvey and had a baby girl, Madeline Eve Housman, in 2005. Madeline Eve was born on Sunday, October 23rd at 7:19am, weighing 6 lbs. and 12 oz. Jenny Lee and Alex Chen are enjoying their son, Calvin, very much. Calvin will celebrate his year old birthday in March 2006. Alex and Jenny have been very blessed to have four great years practicing medicine in Delaware and Pennsylvania and making great friends. They are thinking of moving to be closer to family down south in Charlotte, NC, in August 2006. Please visit! :)

Laura Sever shares that she and her family stayed at their home (Slidell, LA) during Katrina. It was a category five in her neck of the woods, with sustained winds of 176 mph and gusts of at least 190 mph (before the wind gauge broke).All of the trees in her backyard toppled over at the roots, and other trees snapped in half at the trunk, and they watched it all in incredulity as it was happening. (Too bad they don’t own a video camera!) Sever and her family were safe with a roof over their heads, but every structure sustained damage, and half the city was underwater. She asks that we please not forget those living in Katrina’s wake as it is not over yet for many of them. Carrie (Miller) Smith will be traveling with her husband, Wesley, from Ohio to New Zealand for 23 glorious days in March 2006. They will spend 10 days working with Habitat for Humanity, International, to build a home for a Maori family north of Auckland. The rest of the time will be spent sightseeing the north and south islands. Smith’s adventure-loving husband is anxious to try any extreme sport he can; and she is very much looking forward to *not* bungee jumping but taking in as much of the scenery as humanly possible; including (of course) visits to the set locations for the Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia films. Ohio winter doesn’t look quite so bleak with the promise of a New Zealand summer at the end of it…

Andrew Q. Kraft reports that after successfully launching two digital media shows for VNU Business Media, he has recently been hired as VP of Membership & Event Sales at the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Since graduating from MIT's architecture department, Juintow Lin has lived/worked in New York, Venezuela, London, and China. She received an MA in Architecture. from MIT in 2000, and stayed on to work with the Building Technology Group to study sustainable housing in China. Most recently, she has settled down in the Los Angeles area, where she and Michael Fox (SM Architecture ‘96) have formed their own architecture office, Fox Lin Inc. They were married last June in Chicago, with many MIT alums in attendance. 

Lastly, my husband, Brian Carlstrom, and I had the pleasure of traveling to San Diego for a mini-MIT reunion this past fall where we caught up with Marisa (Culmone) and Brian Zuzga ’94, Stephanie Shaw and Simanta Chakraborty, and Nikhil and Susan Lucas-Kamat ’94.

The Zuzga’s are still living in San Francisco where Brian is working for Wily Technology and Marisa is doing mechanical eng. consulting work. Their three year old daughter Sophia is enjoying preschool and playdates with our eldest son, Michael. Stephanie and Simanta are still living in the Marina district of San Francisco. Stephanie is working as a post-doc at UC Berkeley in the Environmental Science, Policy, and Management Lab. and Simanta was recently promoted to VP of Client Services at Reactivity. Susan and Nikhil live in Albuquerque, NM, where Susan is enjoying a real geologist job with the New Mexico Mining and Minerals Division.

Thank you to everyone who has submitted updates. Please remember you can submit updates and photos any time throughout the year to be posted on our class website.

—Jennifer (Tschudy) Carlstrom, secretary, 13045 Alta Tierra Road, Los Altos Hills, CA 94022; e-mail: jtschudy@alum.mit.edu.