Hello everyone. Reunion is just months away, so look for those class e-mails. In the meantime, we’ve got lots of class notes this time around, so let’s get to it!

After graduating MIT in 2000, Pradeep Penta attended UT Southwestern Medical School in Dallas from 2000-2004, graduating with an MD in June 2004. In Summer of 2001, Pradeep traveled throughout India seeing historic sites and temples, enjoying the nightlife of Mumbai, and visiting family. He continues to play baseball as a pitcher in the National Adult Baseball Association. In May 2004, he traveled to Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Glacier National Parks in Montana. Pradeep is now 4 months into his first year of surgical residency at Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center, in the Bronx, New York. Speaking of Pradeep, Darrell M. Drake hopes that Pradeep will still talk to him even though he dissed Texas. Darrell, on the other hand, is still living in Tokyo and loving it. Darrell started a position in web development for a big financial firm, focusing on consumer finance related applications. He plans on sticking around for a few more years, “expanding his influence” to other parts of Asia. He is currently living in a nice house for the moment, so if you’re out that way, Darrell commands: “visit me!” He is looking forward to seeing everyone next summer at the reunion. Berta Liao is living near Darrell, relatively speaking, anyway. She is still with Lehman in Taiwan, and have met two fellow alums also at Lehman, Alex Mou ’93 and Joyce Lo ’99. Berta found out that she and Joyce have many mutual friends, but never connected while at MIT, which means that if anyone is at Lehman in Asia, please drop Berta a line.
Meanwhile, Aisha Stroman has had an adventure of her own here in the country. Aisha graduated from University of Georgia this past June with a Masters in Educational Psychology, Applied Cognition and Development. The day of graduation, her family decided to go to Red Lobster for lunch. Just as Aisha was about to bite into her lobster tail, they heard a pop. They thought that maybe someone’s balloon had popped, but the next thing she knew, her boyfriend exclaims, “He’s got a gun!” and they are ducking under the booth table. Aisha says that she was crammed under the table as far as possible, with her shin pressed up against the bar that holds the table to the wall. “It hurt like hell, but I figured it would hurt less than a bullet to the brain . . . I have never been so scared in my life!” After about five minutes, someone started ushering them out the back door. Unfortunately, Aisha lost her sandals and her purse as she was scrambling from underneath the table and out of the restaurant. Eventually, Aisha was able to buy shoes after walking next door where she begged the cashiers to let them in. She watched the rest of the encounter from across the street. The standoff lasted about 30 minutes before the guy surrendered. After that, Aisha moved to Ocean Springs, MS, for her boyfriend’s job, and she says that she should be at MIT in April for pre-frosh and again for the reunion.
In less dangerous news, Michael Dobson, SM ’00, will start a new job at Bank of America in Charlotte, NC, as vice president and quality process engineer. Michael indicated that the Bank of America job will provide a better career path and utilize his previous work experience and intensive academic training at MIT. He recently left Booz Allen & Hamilton of Lexington Park, MD. His new responsibilities at Bank of America include working closely with the business executive or deployment champion and Master Black Belt to effectively coach and implement (through the DMAIC process) Six Sigma activities that will achieve breakthrough productivity and customer satisfaction improvements. Michael’s new position will drive multiple initiatives to deliver significant measurable improvements to process, productivity, and defect prevention and yield improvement. Michael will also be leading cross-functional teams for in-depth process improvement using Six Sigma, and developing business cases for major initiatives.
After spending more than three years in Atlanta, surviving a layoff with a web consulting firm and being underemployed, Jimmie Walker is finally moving on to greener pastures. Almost a year ago, Jimmie applied for a computer engineering position with the army that required “Secret Clearance.” Well, after a long wait, the clearance is finally complete and Jimmie will start his new career this October in Warren, MI. His wife, Mitzi, and two kids, Jemia and Jimmie IV, will make the long trip with him up north. He and his family are very excited and can’t wait to make an impact with the army. Because Jimmie started with class of 1999, he would like to say “what’s up” to both classes of 1999 and 2000. On the other hand, Evan Efstathiou has been steadily employed and working at Marsoft for nearly four years now and spends most of his time traveling for either work or fencing. He didn’t qualify for the Olympics this year but will keep training for the next cycle. Evan reports that Murthy Mathiprakasam just finished up a Masters degree at Stanford and is still in California. Evans also reports that Ashish Mishra, who was originally supposed to take just a year off from his PhD to work at Microsoft, has been wooed in by the good life and rather challenging projects and shows no signs of leaving Redmond yet.
Renee Lau and Stuart Lin were married in Boston on June 6, 2004, in a beautiful ceremony. Family and friends packed China Pearl for their reception for a night filled with plenty of picture taking, singing, dancing and endless amounts of food. In attendance were Venetia Chan ’01, Allen Chen, Louisa Chiu, Shonna Coffey, Lucy Fang, Linda Huang, Caroline Lee ’02, Joe Pacheco, Chris Salthouse, Morris Tao, Julie Wertz, Ilva Wilson ’01. Carly Klein also got married this year. Carly married Wayne Loeb on August 29 in Ashland, MA. Fellow Alpha Chi Omega’s Lisa Mittelstaedt and Courtney Berman were both in the wedding party, and many other AXO and MIT alums joined in the celebration, including Mikey Fradin, Isabelle Halphen, Ay Ding, Carol Chow, Maria-Isabel Carnasciali, Erick Rios, Zojeila Flores, Wendy Liu, KC Dixon, Anjali Goel, Kara Meredith, Bobby Dyer ’01, Leah Kaplan, Marco Ghiselberti Ph.D. ’04, Sunny Shin ’98, and Stephanie (Mairfert) Brandt ’98. Seems like Carly invited the whole class! The Loebs now live in San Francisco, where Carly is pursuing a Ph.D. in biochemistry at UCSF, and where Wayne is a senior design engineer at Marvell Semiconductor in Sunnyvale. Meanwhile, Randi Rittenband is way past being married and is proud to announce her greatest new product developed to date — her son Tobias Wolf Kofman, who was born June 17, 2004. Her Sloan “gal-pals,” Kris Foss, Kathryn Cosgrove, Gulsun Bozkurt, Natalie Niers, Cindy Weaver MBA ’02 and Kimberly Markert got her through her pregnancy with flying colors. Congratulations, Randi! — Mimi Yang, secretary, 284 Beverly St., #A, Laguna Beach (as in the new MTV reality series), CA 92651; tel: 646-325-3097; e-mail: galaxie@alum.mit.edu.