MIT News

News of the MIT Community

Published by MIT Technology Review November/December 2020

THE

RESEARCH

MUST

GO

ON

In March, MIT shuttered nearly all its on-campus research operations.

Here’s how the labs are reopening.

Plus: The long path to inclusivity at MIT

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9/14/20 3:47 PM

TONY LUONG; MELANIE GONICK (INSET)

Seniors arriving on campus for the fall term headed to MIT’s custom-designed covid testing trailer, which lets caregivers swab noses using gloves protruding through heightadjustable panels. On August 31, MIT Medical administered over 2,700 tests—more than many states did that day—and topped that with a record 4,979 tests on September 14. Of the 22,176 tests given at MIT between August 17 and 31, only 10 (0.05%) were positive. The positive rate for September was 0.04% as of mid-month.

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9/16/20 5:07 PM

Contents

Diversity at MIT

Departments

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The long path to inclusivity

Taking action for the common good

Ten years after the Hammond report recommended ways to increase faculty diversity at MIT, little has changed.

By Amanda Schaffer

From the president | Broad in scope, large in ambition: MIT’s Climate Grand Challenges.

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77 Mass Ave

A small-pond fish in the sea When I dove into the MIT ocean, I had no idea how crushingly large it would feel. But MIT can’t help students feel at home without understanding what they don’t know.

By Benjamin Oberlton ’19 16

Engineering while Black Reckoning with Blackness as a first-generation immigrant at MIT.

By Vincent Anioke ’17 20

COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY TONY LUONG / THIS PAGE: CALVIN CAMPBELL/COURTESY OF MIT MUSEUM

A front-row seat to #BlackLivesMatter I’m an aspiring engineer with many passions. But to some people, simply being Black and female makes me inherently lazy, inferior, and undeserving.

By Veronica Muriga ’22

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A brain region specializing in facial recognition appears to play that role even in those born blind; research reveals how human hair dulls razors; a mask mandate could have saved thousands; solar panels produced more power during lockdowns; speech analysis could detect asymptomatic covid cases.

Profits and purpose Meet the author | Engineer turned

economist Rebecca Henderson ’81 presents the business case for saving the planet.

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“I burned with indignation” 1865 | In the early 1900s, MIT

alumnae worked tirelessly to win women the right to vote.

By Anna Nowogrodzki, SM ’15

Alumni connection

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Quarantine connection: Alumni are pairing up virtual friends across generations.

Research in the time of covid

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In March, MIT shuttered nearly all its on-campus research operations.

Here’s how the labs are reopening.

By Michael Blanding

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Project Interphase instructor Gary Wilkes ’74, SM ’76, reviews trigonometry with incoming first-year minority students in this photo from 1975.

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Cover story

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Class notes and course news David Rapoport ’70; Janice Perlman, PhD ’71; Gloria Ro Kolb ’94; Daryl Fairweather ’10; Frederick Goff, SM ’01 63

Puzzle corner

Senior editor

Alice Dragoon Chief creative officer

Eric Mongeon Art director

Emily Luong Photo editor

Stephanie Arnett Copy chief

Linda Lowenthal Alumni connection editor

Nicole Estvanik Taylor Puzzle corner editor

Allan Gottlieb ’67 Contributors

Vincent Anioke ’17; Michael Blanding; David L. Chandler; Jennifer Chu; Peter Dizikes; Kylie Foy; Zain Humayun, SM ’20; Veronica Muriga ’22; Anna Nowogrodzki, SM ’15; Benjamin Oberlton ’19; Amanda Schaffer; Anne Trafton; the MIT News Office MIT News and MIT Technology Review are provided to all alumni compliments of the MIT Alumni Association.

Contact MIT News:

mitnews@technologyreview.com One Main Street, 13th Floor Cambridge, MA 02142

9/15/20 11:57 AM

From the president

Taking action for the common good

In 1979, a federally commissioned study led by meteorology pioneer and MIT professor Jule Charney helped alert the world to the processes driving global warming—at the time, a looming but not yet imminent threat. Today, climate change is no longer a challenge for some distant future; it is a present and accelerating crisis requiring swift, far-reaching action. There is room and reason for every one of us to get involved.

To find out how others at MIT are working on this immensely complex problem and how you can participate too, I urge you to explore the MIT

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Climate Portal at climate.mit.edu. There you can also find our recent series of six symposia focused on the frontiers of climate science and technology.

To inspire and enable the boldest work of our faculty on this great rolling threat to life on Earth as we know it, in July we announced the MIT Climate Grand Challenges. With this effort, led

by Vice President for Research Maria Zuber and Associate Provost Richard Lester, we are seeking and expecting daring initiatives for sharpening our understanding of the impacts of climate change, combating its causes, and adapting constructively to its impacts.

Broad in scope, large in ambition: MIT’s Climate Grand Challenges

Principal investigators from across the Institute are now developing ambitious multidisciplinary ideas for tackling our climate emergency and designing the most effective levers for swift, large-scale change. We seek to accelerate projects that offer not only solutions but plans for rapid implementation—projects that are transformative, broad in scope, and large in ambition. In other words, the kind of work that brilliant people from around the world come to MIT to do.

I look forward to sharing details about the final selections. Up to five projects will be chosen, and MIT will then focus intensely on securing the funds for the work to succeed.

Responding to the challenges of climate change will require structural transformations, serious technological advances, and significant changes in collective behavior—a tall order. Yet every emergency reveals that “impossible” things are actually doable; in response to covid-19, our society has demonstrated its ability to change more and faster than we ever imagined. There is value in having stretched our thinking about the possibilities of human adaptation, and in having proved that, at our best, we do have the capacity to take action together for the common good.

L . RAFAEL REIF

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9/14/20 10:08 AM

77 Mass Ave

Face value

STEVE SHANNON, MIT

A brain region believed to specialize in identifying faces plays that role even in people who were born blind.

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More than 20 years ago, neuroscientist Nancy Kanwisher ’80, PhD ’86, and others discovered that a small section of the brain located near the base of the skull responds much more strongly to faces than to other objects we see.

Known as the fusiform face area (FFA), it is believed to be specialized for identifying faces.

Now, Kanwisher and her colleagues have shown that people who have been blind since birth experience activity in the same region when they touch a three-dimensional model of a face with their hands. The unexpected finding suggests that this area does not require visual experience to develop a preference for faces.

Studying people who were born blind allowed the researchers to tackle longstanding questions regarding how specialization arises in the brain.

“This is part of a broader question that scientists and philosophers have been asking themselves for hundreds of years, about where the structure of the mind and brain comes from,” says Kanwisher, a professor of cognitive neuroscience and a member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. “To what extent are we products of experience, and to what extent do we have built-in structure? This is a version of that question, asking about the particular role of visual experience in constructing the face area.”

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In the new study, the team created a ring of 3D-printed objects that included faces, hands, chairs, and mazes, and rotated them so subjects could handle each one while being scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

With sighted subjects, they found—as expected— that an area corresponding to the location of the FFA was more active when they touched the faces than when they touched the other objects, though the signal was weaker than that produced when they looked at faces.

The researchers then did the same experiments, using tactile input only, with 15 subjects who had been blind since birth. To their surprise, they found that the brain showed face-specific activity in the same area, at levels similar to those recorded when sighted people handled the 3D-printed faces.

After exploring several possible hypotheses for why face selectivity always seems to develop in the same region, the researchers found evidence for one in particular: that this function arises in the FFA because of its connections to other parts of the brain, especially the frontal and parietal lobes, which are involved in high-level processing of sensory information.

“It’s suggestive of this very interesting story [about how] the brain wires itself up in development,” Kanwisher says. —Anne Trafton

9/14/20 5:17 PM

77 Mass Ave

Toward better blades

A mask mandate could have saved thousands

MIT researchers have discovered how human hair can chip away a razor’s edge.

How much do wearing masks and staying home reduce the spread of covid-19? A new study has some numbers.

How can mere human hair defeat razors so quickly when the blade is 50 times harder than the hair? MIT researchers are on the case.

Associate professor of metallurgy C. Cem Tasan and colleagues found that shaving does not simply wear down the blade over time: a single strand can cause the edge to chip under specific conditions, which then leaves the blade vulnerable to further chipping. As more chips accumulate, the edge can quickly dull, especially if the microscopic structure of the steel is not uniform. The angle at which the blade approaches the hair and the presence of defects in the steel’s heterogeneous microstructure also play a role.

Key to the findings were a series of experiments by graduate student Gianluca Roscioli, who used a scanning electron microscope to examine razor blades after shaving his face and then built an apparatus to carry out cutting tests on his own and his lab mates’ hair inside the microscope. The team also did computational simulations of a blade slicing through a strand to predict the conditions under which the blade would be likely to chip.

The researchers have filed a provisional patent on a process to manipulate steel into a more homogenous form that could yield longer-lasting, more chip-resistant blades. Says Roscioli, “We’ve learned how to make better blade materials, and now we want to do it.” —Jennifer Chu

A nationwide mandate requiring employees of publicfacing businesses to wear masks could have saved 17,000 to 55,000 American lives this past spring, according to a study coauthored by an MIT professor and posted on the MedRxiv preprint server in July.

The researchers identified the impact of mask mandates by comparing the before-and-after figures on cases and deaths in states that implemented such policies at different times. After accounting for factors like population density, age and health of state residents, and additional responses to the pandemic in each state, they estimated that imposing a national mandate on April 1 would have reduced the number of deaths by 40%, with a confidence interval of 90%, between then and June 1.

“It is a very effective policy that includes relatively little economic disruption,” says Victor Chernozhukov, a professor in the Department of Economic s and the Statistics and Data Science Center at MIT, and one of the

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authors of the paper detailing the results. “We found it produced a considerable reduction in fatalities.”

Drawing on medical data, Google mobility data, and the t i m i n g of st at e p o l i c y announcements, the study also found that in the same time frame, the total number of covid-19 cases in the United States would have likely been 80% higher without the stay-at-home orders implemented by the vast majority of states. With a 90% confidence interval, that means the orders prevented an additional 500,000 to 3.4 million cases.

Finally, the researchers evaluated how much the reduction in activities like commuting and shopping trips has followed specific state policies, and how much has stemmed from personal decisions. They conclude that these factors are about equally responsible.

The paper has not yet been peer-reviewed, but the researchers are continuing to analyze these issues. “We hope to produce another paper that focuses on the effects of mask mandates during the reopening phase,” Chernozhukov says.

—Peter Dizikes

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9/11/20 8:47 AM

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Covid-19’s sunny side Lockdowns eliminated so much pollution that solar panels were able to produce more power.

As covid-19 brought travel and commerce to a standstill, air pollution cleared significantly enough to boost the performance of solar panels. In Delhi, one of the world’s smoggiest cities, output from solar installations increased more than 8%, according to a study by MIT mechanical engineer Tonio Buonassisi, former MIT research scientist Ian Marius Peters, and colleagues.

The study was an extension of research the team has been conducting in Delhi for several years. Using pollution data collected at the US embassy and meteorological data collected by monitors at the solar installations, they had concluded that pollution generally reduced output by about 10%.

To assess the pandemic’s impact, they compared the data from before and after India went into mandatory lockdown on March 24, and also compared this with data from the previous three years. Pollution was down by about 50% after the shutdown, they found, and total solar output increased by 8.3% in late March and 5.9% in April— three to four times the typical fluctuations.

An 8% increase might not sound like much, Buonassisi says, but “the margins of

profit are very small for these businesses.”

The findings demonstrate, he says, that the very act of using more solar electricity to displace dirtier fossil fuels makes the solar systems more efficient: putting solar panels on one’s house is “not only putting money in your pocket, but it’s also helping everybody else out there who already has solar panels installed, as well as everyone else who will install them over the next 20 years.” —David L. Chandler

Covid symptoms may hide in speech

JOSE-LUIS OLIVARES, MIT

Signal processing reveals that patients speak differently before any other signs are detectable.

Being sick, whether with a cold or covid-19, changes your voice in a variety of ways. Now MIT Lincoln Laboratory researchers have found that processing speech signals may reveal such changes in covid-19 patients before the effects can be heard, potentially offering a way to identify asymptomatic cases.

Thomas Quatieri of the laboratory’s Human Health and Performance Systems Group had previously used signal processing to detect indicators of disease in the speech of people with neurological disorders such as ALS and

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Parkinson’s. Thinking about the symptoms of covid-19, he and his colleagues reasoned that inflammation and breathing difficulties would be likely to affect the loudness, pitch, steadiness, and resonance of patients’ voices, perhaps before obvious symptoms developed.

So they combed YouTube for interviews celebrities who’d tested positive for covid-19 had given while presumed asymptomatic. Then they downloaded older interviews with the same people and used algorithms to extract vocal features from each audio sample. The

results suggest that the disease’s impact on muscle movement in the respiratory tract, the larynx, and articulatory features like the tongue, lips, and jaw causes subtle voice changes.

The team is now working to validate the data and, with Satra Ghosh at the McGovern Institute, exploring ways to use it in mobile apps for screening. They also hope to consider neurophysiological impacts linked to covid-19, like the loss of taste and smell, Quatieri says: “Those symptoms can affect speaking too.” —Kylie Foy

9/11/20 8:47 AM

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9/18/20 9:56 AM

Meet the author

Profits and purpose In 1996, Life magazine published a shocking exposé of child labor practices in South Asia.

The lead photograph showed a 12-year-old boy in northern Pakistan, stitching soccer balls stamped with the Nike logo. It would take two years—and a collapse in profits—for the company’s cofounder and CEO, Phil Knight, to declare a commitment to social responsibility. In 2015, Nike was independently ranked the world’s most sustainable sportswear company.

Is it possible for businesses to turn a profit while helping society instead of harming it?

In Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire (Public Affairs, 2020, $28), Rebecca Henderson ’81 argues that not only is it economically feasible for them to address global challenges like climate change, economic inequality, and the failure of political institutions, but they may be our greatest hope. “Business is arguably the world’s most powerful global institution,” she says. “And so I believe very strongly that business must be a part of the solution, and can play a centrally important role in helping to create a just and sustainable society.”

Henderson contends that the century’s greatest challenges have been caused by the corporate hunger to maximize shareholder profits, a pursuit rooted in the ideas presented by Milton Friedman and other economists after the Second World War. “Profit maximization only increases prosperity and freedom when markets are genuinely free and fair,” she writes.

“Modern capitalism is neither.”

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Now, Henderson says, businesses must rethink their role. The compelling narratives in her book follow individuals at the helm of companies like Unilever, Toyota, and Walmart as they pursue profits and purpose with equal ambition.

“At one level, the book is about how there is a business case for business to save the world,” she says. “But the other thing is that we’ll only take advantage of that business case if we think about our mission as businesspeople in a different way—if we are purpose driven, if we think about ourselves as members of a broader community, if we bring our full humanity to work.”

Those values are reflected in Henderson’s life. At MIT, she was fueled by a mechanical engineer’s desire to see the bigger picture: “It really bothered me that I would drive past a factory and not know what was going on inside it,” she recalls. After graduating in 1981, she became one of the first women at the McKinsey office in London and then, curious to understand why some organizations resisted change, embarked upon a PhD in business economics at Harvard.

Years later she returned as faculty, and her MBA students encouraged her to write a book. “Sometimes students say, ‘What’s the one thing we should take away?’” she says.

“I say, ‘Love the ones you’re with and live the life you have, because that’s all we have.’”

“That’s why I tried to make the book personal,” she says. “I don’t think we’ll solve the problems we face unless we really get personal.” —Zain Humayun, SM ’20

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In her new book, engineer turned economist Rebecca Henderson presents the business case for saving the planet.

Recent books from the MIT community Climate Change from the Streets: How Conflict and Collaboration Strengthen the Environmental Justice Movement

By Michael Méndez, MCP ’03 YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2020, $30

The Sword Is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the Limits of Military Force

By Jeremy Pressman, PhD ’02 MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2020, $37.50

Education Crossing Borders: How Singapore and MIT Created a New University

By Dara R. Fisher, SM ’13 MIT PRESS, 2020, $30

Continuum Mechanics of Solids

By Lallit Anand, professor of mechanical engineering, and Sanjay Govindjee ’86 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2020, $85

Beautiful Symmetry: A Coloring Book about Math

By Alex Berke, graduate student in Media Arts and Sciences MIT PRESS, 2020, $19.95

Enduring Cancer: Life, Death, and Diagnosis in Delhi

By Dwaipayan Banerjee, associate professor of science, technology, and society DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2020, $25.95

Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing, Revised Edition

By Kimberly Vermeer ’82 and Walker Wells ISLAND PRESS, 2020, $35

Send book news to MITNews@technologyreview.com or MIT News, 1 Main Street, 13th Floor Cambridge, MA 02142

9/14/20 10:09 AM

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1865

“I burned with indignation”

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n 1892, Hannah Knox Luscomb took her five-year-old daughter, Florence, to hear Susan B. Anthony speak. The speech made such an impression on Florence that she always began her life story with this moment, which inspired her long career as an activist. She would begin as a college student, working in concert with a group of MIT alumnae who played key roles in the quest to earn women the right to vote.

Having been raised by her mother to develop what she called “an independence of mind,” Luscomb set her sights on attending MIT when she finished high school.

“Most of my boy classmates were going to MIT,” she later recalled thinking. “Why shouldn’t I go?” So she enrolled at the Institute to study landscape architecture, and with three of her male classmates, she walked six miles every day from Allston to MIT’s Boston campus and back.

Although she was one of just 12 women among 1,200 students, Luscomb described MIT as “a preview of heaven.” When a male student released a mouse under her seat in a lecture, she calmly pronounced it a nice-looking mouse. Nor was she fazed by the inhospitable reception MIT gave to suffrage activism. “Any notices of the suffrage meetings put up on the bulletin boards were immediately torn down,” she would later recount. That didn’t stop her from joining the College Equal Suffrage League. She also became an officer in the Cleofan, the society for women at MIT. “I burned with indignation at this insult to my human dignity,” she later said of being denied the right to vote.

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Already a fiery and persuasive public speaker by the time she entered MIT, Luscomb became known for her open-air speeches. While still a student, she volunteered to speak in rural towns on trolley tours sponsored by local women’s suffrage groups. Wherever the trolley would stop, she’d disembark and deliver an impassioned speech while standing on top of a Moxie box borrowed from the nearest drugstore.

Fellow suffragist Katharine Dexter McCormick, Class of 1904, also took part in such trolley tours. Over two months in 1908, McCormick and other members of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA) visited three towns a day, speaking 97 times to a total of about 25,000 people. “One long scramble,” McCormick called it in a letter to her husband, “with hardly a moment anywhere for so much as a fresh washing or a shampoo.” Along the way, they also joined a circus parade; in their stop in Lawrence, Massachusetts, they went up in a hot air balloon and rained leaflets on the crowd.

In their quest to convince women they deserved a voice in democracy, the MIT suffragists were undaunted by naysayers.

“Equal suffrage is not held back by opposition,” Luscomb said in a speech to the MWSA. “That helps us. We are handicapped by indifference and its resulting ignorance.”

As they sought to combat that indifference, the suffragists were not afraid to trample on convention. When police tried to block McCormick from speaking on Nantasket Beach, she waded into the ocean and gave her speech as the water lapped around her knees. McCormick

In the early 1900s, Florence Luscomb, Katharine Dexter McCormick, and other MIT alumnae worked tirelessly to secure the right to vote for women.

By Anna Nowogrodzki, SM ’15

went on to serve as an officer in the prominent National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1912 to 1920, managing state-level strategic plans, training delegates in the effective use of publicity, and managing NAWSA’s internal operations.

At the turn of the century, the mere fact that McCormick and Luscomb spoke outdoors was considered radical.

Respectable women had previously been expected to speak only at indoor lectures.

But when Mary Hutcheson Page (Class of 1888) cofounded the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government (BESAGG) in 1901 with Maud Wood Park and Pauline Agassiz Shaw, they had broken ground by adopting tactics used by British suffrage activists, including door-to-door canvassing and open-air speeches. BESAGG became the most important and most progressive (that is, least anti-immigrant) suffrage group in Massachusetts. But Page left the public speaking to others, focusing instead on fundraising, writing, and recruiting other gifted women to the cause.

Page wasn’t the only MIT alumna to wield her pen in support of suffrage.

Eugenia Brooks Frothingham (Class of 1899), a well-known novelist, published an essay titled “Fears of the Anti-Suffragist” in 1914. And when Luscomb earned her MIT degree in 1909, she joined the Walthambased architectural firm of fellow MIT suffragist Ida Annah Ryan, Class of 1905, and together they sponsored a women’s edition of the Waltham daily paper in 1913.

(In 1906, Ryan had been the first woman to earn a master of science degree from the Institute and the first woman in the

9/14/20 6:32 PM

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (PAGE, SASH); WIKIMEDIA (RYAN, LUSCOMB); MIT MUSEUM (MCCORMICK)

1865

When she wasn’t giving suffrage speeches, Florence Luscomb (Class of 1909) often sold copies of the Woman’s Journal at the corner of Winter and Tremont Streets in Boston.

At right, three fellow MIT suffragists, top to bottom: Mary Hutcheson Page (Class of 1888), Katharine Dexter McCormick (Class of 1904), and Ida Annah Ryan (Class of 1905).

country to earn a master’s in architecture; hers was one of the country’s first women’s architectural firms, specializing in municipal buildings and workers’ housing.)

Ryan, a member of the Waltham Equal Suffrage League, gave Luscomb permission to take summers off to work on suffrage activism, but by 1918 Luscomb had left architecture to work for suffrage full time. Her speeches could be heard at rallies and factories across the US and even in London: at her peak, she gave 255 speeches in three years.

On the brick sidewalk at the corner of Winter and Tremont Streets across from Boston Common, Luscomb regularly stood and sold copies of the suffragist newspaper Woman’s Journal from her tote bag under

a hawker’s license. She also worked for BESAGG, serving as its assistant executive secretary. Determined, stubborn, and tireless, she was motivated by what she described as an “almost compulsive desire to be busy and useful.”

Six months before the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 gave women the right to vote, McCormick cofounded the League of Women Voters with Carrie Chapman Catt, becoming its first vice president. Later in life, she would fund the development of the birth control pill and the construction of MIT’s McCormick Hall, providing the first housing for women at the Institute.

Meanwhile, the indefatigable Luscomb found many other causes to fight for,

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protesting McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, and nuclear weapons and serving as executive secretary of the Boston chapter of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Every summer into her 70s she climbed Mount Chocorua from her one-room wood-heated cabin in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. At 89, she was still chopping wood and planting a vegetable garden there. Never having married, Luscomb lived for decades in co-ops with much younger roommates. In 1976, she was profiled by the Boston Globe while living in a commune in Cambridge. “I like living with young people,” she told the Globe reporter. “It keeps me current. We’re a good left-wing group here, although I suppose I’m the most radical.” ■

9/14/20 6:32 PM

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INSIDE A small-pond fish in the sea When I dove into the MIT ocean, I had no idea how crushingly large it would feel. But MIT can’t help students feel at home without understanding what they don’t know.

By Benjamin Oberlton ’19 ...... 14 Engineering while Black Reckoning with Blackness as a first-generation immigrant at MIT

By Vincent Anioke ’17 ......... 16 A front-row seat to #BlackLivesMatter I’m an aspiring engineer with many passions. But to some people, simply being Black and female makes me inherently lazy, inferior, and undeserving.

By Veronica Muriga ’22 ....... 20

Ten years after the Hammond report recommended ways to increase faculty diversity at MIT, little has changed.

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9/14/20 4:26 PM

The long path to inclusivity

By Amanda Schaffer

Illustrations by ANDREA D’AQUINO

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9/14/20 4:26 PM

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fuoma Ovienmhada, SM ’20, who began a PhD program at the Institute this fall, has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford and a master’s degree from the MIT Media Lab. But even with those credentials, she says, she’s experienced implicit racial bias on campus. In a recent engineering class, she says, fellow students questioned her ability to keep up and were dismissive of her opinions: when it came time to collaborate on a project, one “joked that I should just make the fliers.”

Ovienmhada, who is co-president of the Black Graduate Student Association, finds that experiences like this have undermined her confidence and mental health. “I’ve felt a burden related to my race and gender,” she says. “It takes a toll.”

In July, President L. Rafael Reif announced plans to address systemic racism at the Institute, acknowledging that multiple previous initiatives haven’t done enough. Those efforts, which have proceeded in fits and starts since at least the 1960s, aimed to create a more inclusive environment on campus and to increase the number of students and faculty from underrepresented minority groups. But the work has involved “great heartache and frustration,” Reif noted, and created an “invisible,

1892 Robert R. Taylor, MIT’s first Black graduate, is the nation’s first accredited Black architect.

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uncompensated burden” for minority members of the MIT community. It also remains unfinished.

He argued, however, that the Institute and the country at large are now at a turning point, catalyzed by the covid-19 pandemic, the police killings of George Floyd and other Black Americans, and widespread attention to issues of racial justice.

This moment “feels precarious,” he wrote. “It is extraordinary, therefore, that it also feels hopeful.”

Among Black students and faculty members, there is a sense, albeit a cautious one, that the moment is ripe for change. “I am certainly encouraged by the recent new commitments that have been made at MIT and believe they are promising early steps,” says Paula Hammond ’84, PhD ’93, the David H. Koch ’62 Professor in Engineering and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering.

Ten years ago, Hammond oversaw a report on diversity, which made recommendations on faculty hiring, retention, and mentoring. These “did not take root,” she says. In 2010, Black professors made up 3% of MIT’s faculty; in 2020, that figure remains at 3%. (While Black representation among full professors increased from 2% to 3%, among assistant professors it declined from 5% to 3%, and among associate professors from

1968 Shirley Ann Jackson ’68, PhD ’73 (physics), and Jennifer N. Rudd ’68 (biology) become the first Black women to earn degrees from MIT. In 1973, Jackson becomes the first Black woman to earn a PhD from MIT and the second in the US to earn a doctorate in physics.

1968 Students found the Black Students’ Union (BSU), with the goals of supporting each other and bringing more Black students to campus.

1969

“Project Interphase was the singular most important academic experience I ever had in my life.”

Sylvester James Gates Jr., ’73, PhD ’77, director of the Theoretical Physics Center at Brown University, on MIT’s scholar enrichment program launched in 1969 for incoming minority freshmen

1970 Frank Sidney Jones, director of the MIT Urban Systems Laboratory, is named the Jones Ford Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning, becoming MIT’s first tenured African-American professor.

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MIT News

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Feature

Previous page The BSU Intramural Basketball team, 1968.

Project Interphase alum Jim Gates ’73, PhD ’77, as an instructor in 1975.

A 1968 exhibit points out the Black community’s limited input in MIT’s urban development work.

Slow progress

Since 1892, when Robert R. Taylor became the first Black student to graduate from the Institute, making

This page Robert Taylor (left), MIT’s first Black alum, in 1906.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (TAYLOR); MIT MUSEUM (JONES)

MIT’s first tenured Black professor, Frank S. Jones.

1972 Clarence G. Williams is named assistant dean of the graduate school, charged with leading the effort to recruit and retain minority graduate students.

Within a year and a half, he doubles their number.

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1974 BLACKS REPRESENT Sponsored research staff 1.4%

Academic staff

Faculty 1.6%

2.0% Administrative staff

4.5%

him the nation’s first accredited Black architect, progress toward improving diversity and inclusion at MIT has been slow and fraught.

By the mid-’60s, only a handful of African-Americans were enrolling each year, representing less than 1% of the student body. It wasn’t until the civil rights movement finally began to spur national change in the late 1960s that MIT took deliberate action, establishing a Task Force on Educational Opportunity in 1968 and directing a new assistant director of admissions to attract more minority students to MIT. Also in 1968, students founded the Black Students’ Union.

In 1970, Frank Sidney Jones, an expert in urban planning, became the first Black professor to receive tenure. In 1975, MIT had five Black faculty members with tenure; in 1980, it had six; and in 1981, it had nine. But the numbers declined during the 1980s—and the number of non-tenured Black faculty members dropped from 15 in 1975 to just seven in 1985. In 1988, President Paul Gray ’54, SM ’55, ScD ’60, who had committed publicly to increasing faculty diversity, expressed disappointment at the results. By 1990, members of underrepresented minority groups accounted for 14% of incoming undergraduates but less than 3% of professors.

1975 Labor expert Phyllis Ann Wallace, a Black professor whose research helped the federal government win a precedentsetting sex and race discrimination lawsuit against AT&T, becomes the first woman to earn tenure at Sloan.

In 1999, Clarence Williams, HM ’09, an adjunct professor of urban studies (now emeritus) who served as special assistant to the president for minority affairs, told Technology Review: “It is ludicrous to say that we cannot increase the number of people of color on the faculty when we get the best in the country as freshmen.”

(Two years later, MIT Press would publish Technology and the Dream: Reflections on the Black Experience at MIT, 1941–1999, his candid 1,000page book of oral histories that did not shy away from chronicling the frustrations of Black students, faculty, and staff.)

In several high-profile cases, Black faculty staged protests or left MIT, either because they were dissatisfied with the climate at the Institute or because they did not receive tenure. Theoretical physicist

1975

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION GOALS

1976 The Black Graduate Student Association (BGSA) is founded to “encourage minority entrants and help shape a community of Black graduate students at MIT.” COURTESY PHOTO

5% to 4%. See chart, page 19.) Now, however, the promise of an Institutewide strategic plan, to be released in February 2021, suggests that MIT may be ready to do more. “Real systemic change can only happen in a sustained fashion,” Hammond says.

Danielle Wood ’04, SM ’08, PhD ’12, an assistant professor in the Media Lab, says she is “thankful that MIT and the broader US society are having a discussion about racial injustice.” Still, she’s concerned that interest will wane if the issue fades from the news. “I’m eager to talk to anyone who wants to talk about this, but I am also waiting to see how long it will last,” she says.

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With 18 Black faculty members and 216 minority office/clerical workers, MIT falls short of its goal: 31 faculty, 279 office staff.

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A small-pond fish in the sea When I dove into the MIT ocean, I had no idea how crushingly large it would feel. But MIT can’t help students feel at home without understanding what they don’t know.

I

distinctly remember the day I found myself sitting at the kitchen table, talking on the phone with my father about where to go to college. It was March of my senior year in high school and I had just finished eating dinner with my family, a simple chicken fried rice I made when I got home from school late. My father wasn’t living at home then for reasons I won’t get into here, so we kept in touch with 10-minute calls every few days. With my laptop in front of me, I pulled up all the acceptance letters I had received, each one offering to change my life.

As I reread them, I remembered the elation, the fear, the disbelief, the hope that had accompanied each letter. I remembered sitting down with my mother as she told me that she didn’t know how we could possibly afford for me to attend any of those prestigious universities. I remembered later crying in the middle of Briggs Field during CPW when I received a scholarship that would cover my attendance anywhere. I remembered my parents always telling me I could do it if I really worked hard. I remembered my teacher telling me kids “like me” didn’t go to schools like that.

As I sat there on the phone looking at the blue glow of my laptop, trying to decide where I would spend the

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next four years of my life, my father asked me, “Do you want to be a big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in the ocean?”

The interesting thing about being transported from a small pond to the ocean is that you really do not know what the ocean is until you see it. No one in the pond where you grew up, where everyone looks like you, where everyone understands you and your situation, has ever been to the ocean.

The ocean is this mythical place that was only meant to be explored by those deemed “good enough.” For you, it has never existed as anything other than a metaphor. It is not until you find yourself in that ocean that you can even begin to understand the impossible depths that now surround you. It is not until you find yourself in that ocean that the darkness of those depths begins to close in around you, forcing you to realize how small a fish you truly are.

Looking back on my time at MIT, I find myself connecting to the words of mechanical engineering professor James H. Williams Jr. ’67, SM ’68. One of a very small group of Black professors at MIT who started in the ’70s, he has long advocated for Black students and written about what makes their experience unique. In the March 1991 MIT Faculty Newsletter, he wrote:

BY Benjamin Oberlton ’19

“Though many college administrators throughout the country focus on jobs for their graduates, at MIT we should have loftier aspirations.

While this is true for white students, it is critical for Black students. Here’s why. After four or more years at MIT, white students return to white society. After four or more years at MIT, most Black students do not return to Black society. Most enter a twilight zone: a non-nurturing limbo, hauntingly incapable of accepting them as unmarred people. So, if we as educators do not provide the opportunities for the enhancement of the sociological and emotional ties between Black students and the Black community, we are promoting the further decay of both the Black community and the twilight zone.”

When you dive into the ocean as a small fish, it rarely crosses your mind that you will not be returning to your pond anytime soon, if ever. Now that the ocean is your home, the farther you swim, the less you will see of anything that will remind you of the pond from which you came. Even 50 years after Professor Williams began trying to help his alma mater grasp this, I would argue that MIT still does not fully understand the gravity of his words.

I distinctly remember how so many of my friends freshman year hit the

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ground running. Their families had prepared them for this, their high schools had prepared from this, their national science fairs had prepared them for this, their international math competitions had prepared them for this.

Meanwhile, I was trying to grasp that there was an international math competition in the first place. My friends would talk about where their family traded stocks, or a professor would reveal that most biotech companies got their first couple of million from friends and family. I learned you didn’t need a master’s degree to get a PhD, and that people made careers out of trading and consulting. I remember realizing I didn’t know how much I didn’t know. The size of the ocean felt crushing in those moments—and it can still feel that way even years later.

I am thankful that I had the opportunity to learn all these things during my time at MIT. But I am also profoundly aware that I picked up this knowledge from passing remarks I happened to overhear; I could easily have missed them if I hadn’t been paying attention. Rarely did it seem the Institute intentionally was trying to help me understand the new world I found myself in. In the same way that I didn’t know what I didn’t know, MIT doesn’t know what many of its students don’t know, and therefore cannot really work to bridge this gap in understanding—and this is a problem.

I look back at my time at MIT with a smile, but that does not mean I walked away without acknowledging the Institute’s flaws. MIT accepts its Black students, but does not understand what its Black students need.

MIT has historically been a place that draws the biggest fish from the biggest oceans. But it needs to take the time to understand its big fish from the small ponds, too. ■ Benjamin Oberlton ’19, who earned his degree in biological engineering in May, began the immunology PhD program at Stanford University this fall.

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Sylvester James Gates ’73, PhD ’77, who became an assistant professor in 1982, resigned in 1984, citing MIT’s failure to follow through on its promised goals of attracting and retaining more underrepresented minorities. “I have always felt there is a reciprocity in a relationship with any institution that would hold me to its standards,” he later said. “MIT simply failed mine.”

In 1991, mechanical engineering professor James Henry Williams ’67, SM ’68, exasperated with the lack of faculty diversity, initiated a series of weekly sit-ins outside President Charles Vest’s office and explained in the faculty newsletter, “At MIT my twoness, a professor and a Black professor, has been honed into antagonistic strivings rather than complementary ideals; each appearing at odds with the other, each imposing major risks of invisibility upon the other. It didn’t have to be so.” Perhaps the most well-known conflict came in 2007, when biological engineering professor James Sherley, who had been denied tenure, conducted a hunger strike that received national attention before he left MIT. The case led Frank L. Douglas, a professor of the practice and executive director of the MIT Center for Biomedical Innovation, to resign in protest.

A landmark report

In the wake of Sherley’s departure and extensive discussions about racial equity on campus, Reif, who was then the Institute’s provost, asked Hammond to lead the study on faculty diversity, with representatives from each of MIT’s schools.

For two and a half years, she and her team conducted surveys, interviews, and cohort analyses with underrepresented minorities at MIT, and in 2010 they released their landmark report. This report found that a large percentage of minority faculty were

15

drawn from a narrow pool: 36% had received an undergraduate or graduate degree from MIT, and 60% had received their PhDs from either MIT, Harvard, or Stanford. “That was surprising,” says Hammond. Her group also found that compared with white colleagues, a disproportionate num-

Professor Phyllis Ann Wallace (right) receives a National Economic Association Award in 1982.

ber of minority faculty members left the Institute without promotion. “We did a survival curve,” she says. The results were sobering: they found that minority faculty were half as likely to be promoted at the assistant professor and associate professor levels.

For those who did receive tenure, dissatisfaction seemed to run high, even though among white faculty, “the cohort that’s tenured is the most satisfied,” Hammond says. In fact, the further minority faculty got in their careers, the less satisfied they were compared with non-minority colleagues. “We thought this had to do with the wear of always fighting for diversity, always fighting to be who you are in a world that keeps leaving little suggestions that who you are is not really the norm at MIT,” Hammond says. “They just get tired.”

The Hammond group’s recommendations for structural and cultural change included broadening the range of high-quality schools from which departments recruited faculty and holding departments accountable for goals related to minority hiring. “It should be part

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of what we talk about when we talk about how well a department is doing,” says Hammond. “If we don’t reward faculty involved in diversity—if it’s not part of our reward system, part of our metric—it’s not going to change.” This point in particular generated pushback from some quarters, she recalls, with some faculty members objecting to the erroneous idea that this would mean “quotas” for minority hiring.

Hammond’s response, she says, was that “excellence comes from inclusion, and MIT will not be excellent if it doesn’t advance its diversity.”

Hammond and her colleagues also suggested ways to create a more welcoming atmosphere. They recommended investing in anti-bias training; allocating money for programs to bring in more minority grad students, postdocs, and early-career professors; and having departments assign formal mentors to junior faculty members. Minority faculty need to feel “that they are part of the group and that those who surround them are invested in them and want to see them succeed,” she says. “Indifference can be just as bad as someone making negative comments.”

Meaningful mentorship

As Black faculty members have frequently pointed out, effective mentoring involves not only a welcoming tone but specific actions and offers of inclusion as well. Danielle Wood of the Media Lab says that as an undergraduate at MIT with “middle-of-theroad grades,” she received “a mix of useful and not-useful mentorship.”

One advisor openly discouraged her from pursuing a career in science.

But when she worked as a teaching assistant for aero-astro professor Olivier de Weck, SM ’99, PhD ’01, she received what she now considers some of the most crucial guidance of her career.

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Engineering while Black

Reckoning with Blackness as a first-generation immigrant at MIT.

M

y first week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was rife with revelations. I learned that five days sufficed to build a photosensitive robot from wires, circuit boards, and Legos; that burritos were tasty, if a bit messy, their insides prone to spilling on formerly white shoes; that I had an accent. This last bit revealed itself directly, from the passing remarks of an airport taxi driver, and indirectly, from a classmate’s occasional furrowed brow when we were deep in conversation.

Like breathing, recurring sensory details recede into the background. In Nigeria, where I was born and raised, nearly every skin I saw was black, so color had no weight. In America, skin had spectra, variation. With each new tone that the eyes processed, a flood of implicit associations followed. White was the norm. Black was fraught, frequently associated with headlines about imprisonment, police killings, everyday discrimination, and angry protests. For many, those associations would subconsciously shape their very first impression of me. Paradoxically, I was now both “newly Black” and “always Black.”

New fears echoed uneasily within me. They started to subside in my first

few weeks at the Institute, whose actions seemed to indicate: “We see you; we welcome you; you belong.”

We had the ABCs of student groups: African Students Association, Black Students’ Union, Chinese Students Club, etc. Campus event calendars were filled with offerings like graduates of color speaking candidly about their post-Institute careers, or professor-led panels on the importance of a diverse research team in developing machine-learning algorithms. Black Lives Matter was vividly affirmed, on posters in long hallways, in emails from President Reif, in the empathetic words of a resident dorm advisor. A titanium bubble seemed to separate MIT from the rest of the world, a dome deflecting the javelin jabs of racism. In spaces where few looked like me, I thrived emotionally.

With my floormate Kevin, I built Olaf, my first snowman, six feet of densely packed snowballs adorned with twigs and tar-black stones. I joined a fraternity, and we screamed ourselves hoarse atop the highest roller coasters of Six Flags, golden arcs of sunlight on our faces.

Still, loosely scattered moments reminded me of the ever-present implications of skin. A Black Lives Matter poster in the Infinite Corridor was defaced. A fellow student, prone to all

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Many of us felt that we needed to be as perfect as humanly possible, lest our individual failings become the

GUTTER CREDIT HERE

stereotypes of Blackness.

manner of silly jokes, said off≠ handedly that he was glad MIT had lowered its bar for people of color through affir≠ mative action, because we ì always make parties lit.î Shame followed me to bed that nightó shame for my own silence, my anxious avoidance of con≠ frontation, my inability to explain why his joke, uttered with a smile, stung so sharply. In a computer science recita≠ tion, the teaching assistant asked us to form pairs, and I panicked. I was the only Black student. Would it matter?

And if not now, in some other class?

These off≠ kilter moments were the exception, I reminded myself. But within this dynamic of ì mostly good,î I realized that my moments of joy were often at the mercy of a physical attri≠ bute beyond my control, as if my skin could turn on me at a momentí s notice, poisoning the air with a peerí s subcon≠ scious bias. Consider how you might feel about opening doors if doorknobs had a 1 in 200 chance of zapping you with electricity.

Harder still was realizing that my ì 1 in 200î was ì 1 in 50î or ì 1 in 5î for other students of color. We were drawn to each other through movie nights featuring stars like Lupita Nyongí o, through feasts of West African jollof rice and spicy stewed chicken.

Beneath the buzz of flickering projec≠ tor screens, we passed intimate details

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BY Vincent Anioke í 17

of our lives back and forth with uncom≠ mon ease. I came to understand how the experiences of Blackness within the Institute formed a diverse tapestry rather than a monolith, even if some commonalities emerged. Black friends struggling severely with mental≠ health issues met a range of responses from their instructors, from extensive sup≠ port to indifference to weariness at a perceived lack of effort. Black peers who felt they were simply getting by received outsize affirmation: ì Youí re so impressive, so articulate.î For them, it became a taxing mental exercise in discerning good≠ faith praise from con≠ descension, in resisting the impres≠ sion that academic strength was being implicitly positioned as un≠ Black. Many of us felt that we needed to be as per≠ fect as humanly possible, lest our indi≠ vidual failings become the stereotypes of Blackness. This state of mind meant that even setbacks as simple as an internship rejection were doubly scru≠ tinized: were my skills insufficient, or did my Blackness seep through the rÈ sumÈ ? Were these pervasive feel≠ ings legitimate, or were we haunted by illusory mirages?

While we pondered the nuances of collegiate micro≠ and macro≠ aggressions, we were treated to a more dismal spectacle looping on the major news networks. People who

looked like us were shot, beaten, and choked to death, sometimes in front of their families. We saw their killers wan≠ der from the blood trails of their jagged knives to the untouched aftermath of their tidy lives. Social≠ media gurus became detectives overnight, studi≠ ously digging up scraps of irrelevant background infoó this criminal record from eight years ago, or that threaten≠ ing posture in the ninth frame of the video, glimpsed better with a squint.

We saw some of our classmates use this moment of our collective pain to play devilí s advocate.

A country that once equated Black bodies to goods prime for sale and harvest will not magically purge itself of inequality overnight. No, that imbal≠ ance soaks the fabric of its very insti≠ tutions. The titanium bubble Ií d earlier imagined did not exist, and the worldí s outside troubles found their way in.

Because racial imbalance is ever present, Black students at MIT feel the weight of their Blacknessó the uneasiness, the double discerning, the otheringó and have to manage the dissonance of experiencing these feelings in one of the worldí s most renowned universities.

As a proud alumnus, I can say that my four years at the Institute remain some of the best years of my life. I danced in the hallowed space where technology becomes magic. I formed everlasting bonds. I thrived. Yet, like my Black peers, I often had to grapple with understanding the consequence of my skin within, and beyond, MITí s doors. I had to reconcile the good, the great, with a world still fractured by racial inequality. To many, the reflex≠ ive response is ì Deal with it!î Such a state, they argue, is as inevitable as life itself. Unchangeable.

Not to MIT, which has always prized in its students a hunger for taking on the impossible. And cer≠ tainly not to me. ■ Vincent Anioke í 17 is a software engineer at Google Canada.

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MIT News

During an hourlong drive to New Hampshire for a project they were working on, de Weck gave her advice on what it would take to apply to graduate school. Until then, she hadn’t truly understood the requirements. “I didn’t understand the importance of showing that you’ve done some research and that you know how to write about your work professionally,” she recalls. “And maybe I never would have known if not for that road trip.” Wood also credits de Weck with helping her publish her first paper and inviting her to attend a conference where she met several Black graduate students, who offered further encouragement. In

1985

3.8%

FEWER BLACK FRESHMEN

Only 3.8% percent of MIT’s freshman class is Black—the lowest percentage in 10 years.

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2018, Wood became the first Black female professor hired by the MIT Media Lab. Ovienmhada, who is one of Wood’s graduate students, says that sensitive mentorship from another Black woman has been a valuable part of her MIT experience. At the same time, she notes that the work of mentoring Black students and serving on diversity committees can place a burden on Black faculty members, especially if those efforts aren’t rewarded in tenure decisions. Meanwhile, the proportion of underrepresented minority students on campus has remained largely unchanged since 2005. Although the US population is 13.4% Black, according to 2019 US

1992 Philip L. Clay, PhD ’75, becomes head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, the first Black professor to chair a department at MIT. Clay goes on to serve as MIT chancellor from 2001 to 2011.

2007 After being denied tenure in 2005 and staging a hunger strike to protest a decision he contended was driven by racism, James L. Sherley, associate professor of biological engineering, leaves MIT.

Students in the lab, 1986.

Paula Hammond ’84, PhD ’93, led the committee that released the Report on the Initiative for Faculty Race and Diversity in 2010.

Census estimates, Black students at MIT account for just 6% of undergraduates and only 2% of graduate students (see chart, page 19).

Eager to see more diversity and inclusion at the Institute, Ovienmhada recently helped spearhead a petition in support of Black lives at MIT, which echoes many of the recommendations of the Hammond report. It also harks back to similar calls in 2015 from the Black Students’ Union and the Black Graduate Student Association (BGSA).

Measuring outcomes

Some recommendations from the Hammond report and those student

2010 A committee led by Professor Paula Hammond ’84, PhD ’93, releases the Report on the Initiative for Faculty Race and Diversity on how race affects recruitment, retention, professional opportunities, and collegial experiences for minority professors at MIT.

2015 With her appointment as head of the Department of Chemical Engineering, Paula Hammond becomes the first MIT graduate, first woman, and first person of color to chair an academic department in MIT’s School of Engineering.

MIT MUSEUM (STUDENTS); WEBB CHAPPELL (HAMMOND)

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initiatives have gained traction, particularly those having to do with mentoring. Still, many have not. In 2018, the Institute Community and Equity Office (ICEO) posted scorecards quantifying the Institute’s progress: only 30% of the recommendations in the Hammond report, 29% of those presented by the BGSA, and 57% of those offered by the Black Students’ Union turned out to have been implemented. “Little progress has been made because there weren’t accountability mechanisms between the Institute, the administrators, and the students, who know what they need,” says Ovienmhada. “The Institute should be trying to earn our trust. They should be trying to make MIT better for us. It shouldn’t have to be my job to make MIT better for myself.”

Recently, however, there have been signs that the Institute is taking a more strategic and quantifiable % African-American or Black MIT faculty

SHAM STHANKIYA

ASSISTANT ASSOCIATE

PROFESSOR TOTAL

2010

5%

5%

2%

3%

2011

4

6

2

3

2012

3

6

2

3

2013

2

5

2

3

2014

1

5

2

3

2015

2

4

3

3

2016

2

5

3

3

2017

2

4

3

3

2018

2

4

3

3

2019

3

3

3

3

2020

3

4

3

3

2015 Melissa Nobles is named Kenan Sahin Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS), making her the first Black dean of one of MIT’s five academic schools.

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Student leaders Ade Samuel, Ellen Rice Staten, Rasheed Auguste, Tiera Guinn, Alberto Hernandez, and Isaiah Borne pushed for diversity in 2015.

2015 The BSU and the BGSA present recommendations to MIT’s Academic Council to cultivate and support a racially diverse MIT community.

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approach. As Reif announced, MIT plans to raise money for new graduate fellowships for students from underrepresented groups. It has promised to invest in antiracism research and foster learning about racial injustice on campus. Perhaps most important, it is creating an Institute-wide action plan to establish centralized goals and lay out a transparent process for achieving them. This work will be led by associate provost Tim Jamison and community and equity officer John Dozier, who was hired this spring.

At an Institute-wide Day of Dialogue in August, Dozier and Jamison publicly discussed the development of the plan, which will be presented to the MIT community in February 2021. Implementation will then take place over a period of three to five years. Dozier, who reports to Provost Martin Schmidt and meets regularly with President Reif, acknowledged that MIT has received over 170 recommendations on diversity, equity, and inclusion, the Hammond Report among them, in the last decade. The current effort will honor that work, he said, but will be different in part because it will provide a framework for defining clear goals while holding specific program and activity leaders accountable for meeting them. He also said that MIT’s decentralized style of

organization, which has helped keep it nimble and innovative in research, has led to a wide range of inclusion efforts, with varying results. The strategic plan aims to achieve more consistent results with a coordinated approach. The idea, he says, is to make sure that all students, postdocs, staff, and faculty experience a sense of value and belonging that nurtures creativity and innovation.

Dozier also made it clear that the plan to be announced in February will zero in on the most important goals.

“This cannot be a kitchen-sink plan where we include everything,” he said. “We have to make some priorities over the next three to five years.”

Meaningful results will mean, in part, far more Black faculty. “We should put tremendous emphasis on recruiting African-American faculty—picking up the phone and convincing them that MIT is a place where their opportunities

2020 STUDENT DIVERSITY UNDERGRADUATES 2005

2020 6% Black

6% Black 12% Hispanic and Latino

15% Hispanic and Latino

2% American Indian or Alaskan Native

0% American Indian or Alaskan Native

GRADUATE STUDENTS 2005 2% Black

2020 2% Black

3% Hispanic and Latino

5% Hispanic and Latino

0% American Indian or Alaskan Native

0% American Indian or Alaskan Native

2020 The BGSA and BSU launch a petition to support Black lives at MIT. President Reif announces the development of a comprehensive, Institute-wide action plan for diversity, equity, and inclusion, slated to be announced in February 2021 and implemented over three to five years.

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MIT News

A front-row seat to #BlackLivesMatter

B

efore coming to the States for college, I had never gone beyond the borders of Kenya.

While I had expected some level of culture shock, I wasn’t prepared for the jarring reality of being Black in America. Sure, I had skimmed through US Black history in my high school lessons, so I was familiar with the basics—slavery and its abolition, the civil rights movement, school desegregation. I had read of police brutality in horror, but Black Lives Matter was just a hashtag that I didn’t fully understand.

Back home we face white supremacy too, but it takes different, often subtle forms, such as economic neo-colonialism. And then I came to America, and I saw the racism behind the hashtag firsthand.

As I settled into life at MIT, I couldn’t help but notice the ease with which my white counterparts seemed to cruise through life, opportunities within arm’s reach. Yes, they worked hard, but there was definitely something else at play. It took me a while to realize that they were sailing through a system built from the ground up to accommodate whiteness. I was not inadequate or inferior, but trying to fit into spaces that had not been created with people like me in mind.

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Being Black in America, I found, involved a constant, intense process of reconciling how I view myself and how others view me. I am African, Black, female, an aspiring engineer, multifaceted in my passions. But I came to learn that to some people, simply being Black and female makes me inherently lazy, inferior, and undeserving, at best an accessory or a means to the success of some more deserving man. And yet I’m relatively lucky, living in a progressive bubble at MIT. For too many Black people in this country, their racial identity is the one factor that determines their hopes and dreams—and in some cases, whether they live or die.

This year proved especially gut wrenching. A day after the video came out showing Ahmaud Arbery being shot and killed by two white men as he was jogging, I received a call from a close Kenyan friend living in one of the more conservative US states. As a member of his college’s track team, he was expected to log daily miles for training, but he could not bring himself to run outside anymore. “I feel like there’s a moving target on my back, and I keep checking to see if someone’s following me,” he said. When the video of George Floyd’s brutal murder went viral, I had just started a UROP at a lab I had

BY Veronica Muriga ’22

been longing to join. For my first week I simply could not be productive. The trauma of seeing a man who could easily have been my uncle die at the hands of people charged with protecting him—and knowing that this was the reality for Black people in this country—shook me to the core.

So when the Black Graduate Student Association (BGSA) and the Black Students’ Union (BSU) created a petition to support Black lives at MIT this spring, I was excited.

The first part of the petition calls for three- and 10-year strategic plans to address racial bias at MIT. The second part zeroes in on a key issue of the BLM movement, focusing on reducing the scale of policing at MIT. This raised important questions among my fellow members of the Women’s Independent Living Group. Living off campus in the heart of Cambridge, we rely heavily on the MITPD for our security, and officers have always been willing to show up for us whenever we need them. Wouldn’t defunding our campus police leave us vulnerable? Would we need to allocate resources to hiring a private security firm? Wouldn’t this go against our commitment to serving as a less costly alternative to on-campus housing—an attractive option for lower-income students, many of

GUTTER CREDIT HERE

I’m an aspiring engineer with many passions.

But to some people, simply being Black and female makes me inherently lazy, inferior, and undeserving.

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Being Black in America, I found, involved a constant, intense process of reconciling how I view myself

GUTTER CREDIT HERE

and how others view me.

whom are minorities? I delved into the petitions, and the greater BLM movement, for answers.

In the US, “Abolish the police” has become a raw, riveting rallying cry of the BLM movement. The essential idea is to shift some police funding to improved medical care and social work in Black and brown communities as a way to reduce crime, without eliminating trained responders to deal with violent crimes. But we need to have honest, introspective conversations about what this would mean, especially for Black women and LGBTQ+ people. While some Black women have been saved by the police from abusive men in their lives, others remain trapped in such relationships for fear that calling the police could send their Black male partners to the morgue. This is a teachable moment for our white counterparts, but it should also be a teachable moment within the Black community—a time for Black men to listen as Black women and Black LGBTQ+ people talk. What kind of world would a Black girl, a Black transgender or nonbinary person, feel safe in?

It should be a teachable moment for the Institute, too. In 2015, the BSU and BGSA outlined steps that MIT could take to create a more equitable,

ND20_Diversity_package.indd 21

inclusive environment. Somewhere along the way, this initiative trailed off, and it took a video of a Black man being choked on the street by a police officer to revive the conversation. Yet it seems that some of the steam is already dying down. Five years from now, will Black students be presenting yet another set of recommendations, referencing those still not complete from five years ago?

We can’t let that happen. WILG ultimately decided to support both parts of the BLM at MIT petition because MIT needs to hold itself accountable for its initiatives on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

One crucial lesson I have learned from my two years at the ’Tute is how to be a problem solver, through pure grit and commitment. We can solve this critical problem too. MIT needs to commit to diversity and equity by investing in a concrete, well-funded, fully staffed strategic plan to create an environment where Black students feel welcomed and understood—and can thrive. ■ Veronica Muriga ’22 is an electrical engineering and computer science major from Nairobi, Kenya. Find her summary of the petition supporting Black lives at MIT, as well as resources for becoming antiracist, at www.technologyreview.com/BLM.

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will be boundless,” says Emery Brown, the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience, who contributed to the 2010 Hammond report. “Up until now, that hasn’t been done to the extent it needs to be.”

Brown—who is also director of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program, associate director of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and an investigator at the Picower Center for Learning and Memory— adds that while MIT has created great professional opportunities for him, he has also experienced microaggressions on campus. “I was going up in an elevator one time and someone asked me, ‘Whose lab do you work in?’ Another time I was coming upstairs after having taught, and my hands were full, and one of the research scientists from one of the other laboratories came up to me and said very aggressively, ‘What are you looking for?’ I just ignored it, but it was very clear what was up.”

Such encounters, he says, are part of the reality you live in if you’re a Black person in the US. As a new faculty member, Brown saw very senior Black professors “who were quite jaded about the prospects of improving diversity,” he recalls. “I was like, ‘Wow, that’s interesting,’ because when I got here I was psyched to make it happen for myself and others. Over time, I’ve come to understand why they feel that way.”

“We’re having a serious conversation about race in the United States that we haven’t seen since maybe the civil rights movement,” he adds.

However, “good intentions and memories can fade fast. It is incumbent upon us not to drop the ball this time, and channel all these fervent sentiments into real action and change.” ■

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Research in the

Clean-room suits have always been the norm in Canan Dagdeviren’s “YellowBox” lab at the Media Lab, but now masks—and social distancing—are required in all MIT labs.

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time of covid

In March, MIT shuttered nearly all its oncampus research operations. Here’s how the labs are reopening.

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By Michael Blanding Photographs by Tony Luong

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M

aria Zuber got the word on a Friday: Harvard had shut down its research labs. As vice president for research, Zuber consulted with lead researchers across campus over whether MIT should follow suit. “Don’t you dare,” she remembers them saying. “Don’t you dare be like those Harvard people.”

As covid-19 cases continued to rise across the country, however, she and other senior administrators made the difficult decision by that Sunday: MIT would be scaling down its research to near zero for the first time since opening its doors 155 years ago. “It was a complete shock to people,” Zuber says. “We gave labs three days to come up with a plan, and another three days to execute it.”

MIT has always prided itself on being always open. Professors go into the lab at 3 a.m. to check on experiments and find that grad students may be just putting on another pot of coffee. Closing just isn’t in the Institute’s DNA. “We view ourselves as a 24/7 institution,” says Zuber, who is also the E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics.

Since that Friday the 13th in March, however, MIT has had to adjust to research in the time of covid. With more than 90% of its labs shut down by March 20, researchers have had to adapt to working from home and collaborating over Zoom. Meanwhile, faculty tapped to serve on the Research Ramp-Up Lightning Committee began collaborating in mid-April to solve a daunting engineering challenge: how to open up MIT’s research labs safely once more.

Ramp down Krystyn Van Vliet, a professor of biological engineering and materials science, was on a plane home from Singapore just days after the first three covid cases were identified there. She knew the outbreak would soon be hitting the US. By the time she got back to Cambridge, Van Vliet had started preparations, drafting plans to divide her team into three units that would work different

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MIT News

shifts so if any one person contracted the virus, others would be protected.

Then, less than two months later, came the order to shut down her lab entirely. At the time of the announcement, she was working on a line of stem cells that take 80 days to grow. “We had to close down that experiment and lose three months of work,” Van Vliet says. Her team frantically gathered whatever data they could before they had to dispose of the cells. “You have to manage the disappointment,” she says.

As MIT’s associate provost, Van Vliet had the additional responsibility of managing the use of lab space on campus during the pandemic, leading nightly meetings of the Space Contingency Working Group. “MIT ramped down, but it never completely closed,” she says. Exemptions were given to labs studying the coronavirus, working on such things as developing and testing a new vaccine or designing a new ventilator.

In addition, researchers could apply for exemptions to work on ongoing experiments involving expensive materials or

as possible. Canan Dagdeviren, an assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab who designs conformable electronic devices for biomedical applications, counted herself lucky. As a junior faculty member facing space and budget constraints, she had set up her space from the start as an efficient “lean lab.” Color-coded maps in her clean room and cloud storage of data allowed her to shut down quickly. “We have standard operating procedures for emergencies, and everyone knew what to do,” Dagdeviren says. “They took it all apart from start to end in 15 minutes.”

For researchers working on complicated biological or animal experiments, turning on a dime to shift to a virtual lab wasn’t so easy. Neuroscience professor Jim DiCarlo, head of the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, does both computational modeling and behavioral experiments involving primates. “Our experiments with animals had to basically stop—it’s painful from a research perspective,” he says. Some types of research, for example, involve implanting electrodes into the

Closing just isn’t in the Institute’s DNA. “We view ourselves as a 24/7 institution,” says geophysics professor Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research.

rare animals, such as a specialized strain of transgenic mice. Koch Institute director Tyler Jacks, a professor of biology, was about four months into experiments testing a new drug for efficacy against certain types of cancer. “Animals had been dosed multiple times, but the research wouldn’t be completed for another month or two,” he says. “To terminate abruptly would result in the irrevocable loss of data, materials, and frankly resources.”

In the end, about 10% of labs, including his, stayed active.

Everyone else, however, was forced to shut down as quickly and completely

brains of the primates and must be monitored closely for six months. While none of those experiments were then under way, the closure meant any new experiments had to be put on hold. “We couldn’t perform them from an ethical perspective unless we knew they were going to continue the entire time,” he says.

Someone, of course, also had to keep caring for the animals. The job of making sure that happened fell to Jim Fox, professor of biological engineering and director of the Division of Comparative Medicine, which oversees more than 100,000 animals—including mice and rats, zebrafish

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With strict social distancing rules in place, a researcher’s jacket marks the only chair in use in a CSAIL lab on a Tuesday in September.

Drawers at CSAIL that once held cables are now stocked with gloves, masks, and hand sanitizer.

In the atrium of Building 46, a sign reminds Brain and Cognitive Sciences researchers of the one-person-per-table limit.

and zebra finches, pigs and primates. Some rodents were euthanized, but other mice and rats and all other animals remained on campus, spread out over seven buildings, throughout the closure. “Primates are in a special category because of cost and availability and ethical issues,” he says. “Others are specially genetically engineered animals that are very difficult to replace.”

While there was concern that some primates could contract the coronavirus, their animal technicians were already wearing full protective gear—surgical masks, face shields, lab coats, gloves—to stop transmission of any pathogens. For those caring for other animals, Fox mandated the use of masks as well as the usual gloves and lab coats, stepping up sanitation procedures too.

None of the animals contracted covid during the three-month lockdown, but three technicians did. “Fortunately, they stayed home and were retested, and all came back to work without a problem,” Fox says.

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Lockdown Having shut down their campus operations, most researchers across MIT had to shift their work to a virtual environment.

Many, like DiCarlo, were still able to be productive remotely. “We’ve got plenty of data, and took advantage of the time to get it better organized and analyzed,” he says. “The silver lining of this is that we can catch up on all of the things we usually don’t have time to do.” In the time away from the lab, he says, his team was able to make headway on long-standing goals of sharing data more publicly and developing a platform for benchmarking computational models against experimental data.

Still, the three-month closure was difficult for grad students dependent upon their research for an advanced degree.

“I was in the middle of an experiment involving several monkeys, and starting to

get some really good data, as coronavirus started to break out,” says Michael Lee, a grad student in DiCarlo’s lab who conducts behavioral experiments with primates to study visual computation and learning. “It was a little disappointing not being able to continue.”

Although he wasn’t completely stuck, since some of his work involves coding and analysis he could perform remotely, it was nerve-wracking to pause his research. “Like

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many graduate students, I feel pressure to always be striving toward graduation, so there was some feeling of anxiety about how long my experiments would be on hold,” Lee says.

Other researchers had to figure out new ways to continue their work virtually.

“As a junior faculty member, I don’t have the luxury to stop or slow down,” says Dagdeviren, “so I said to my students, ‘We can’t go inside the clean room physically, so why don’t we do experiments in simulations?’”

She reached out to theoretical physicists at the University of Buffalo, who collaborated on simulations for the materials they were studying in the lab. “Now our students are not only experimentalists,” she says, “but they are starting to be theorists as well.”

For researchers at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), staying out of the lab posed other challenges. “There are some students and researchers who need access to special equipment like robots and 3D printers,”

Researcher Nicholas Miller has a section of Mark Harnett’s lab to himself at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

A hand sanitizing station in Building 46.

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says CSAIL director Daniela Rus. Some were able to send files to a fabrication company to print designs, while others bought their own desktop 3D printers. “We’ve been able to fabricate in our homes, but not as extensively and not with as wide a range of materials as in the lab,” she says.

Her team, however, has also used the time away from the lab to develop new simulations. For a project involving new control systems for autonomous driving, the researchers were able to work with an existing data set to simulate various driving conditions, such as different lighting or weather. “All of these things are actually quite difficult to implement in simulation, but we have made a great deal of progress and are very excited about getting more capable in training a [machine-learning model] starting with one data set,” Rus says.

Of course, researchers also had to deal with new communication techniques for a world in which they couldn’t just

scribble equations and formulas on the nearest whiteboard. “Even though the work can be done online, the thinking is often done in person,” says Van Vliet, whose lab already had some experience using online tools to share screens with colleagues in Singapore.

Adjusting to a covid world, in which many researchers were juggling their work with other issues like caring for children at home, meant having to plan much of that formerly spontaneous conversation in advance. “We had to use Slack or a group calendar to say ‘We’re going to get together and talk about this’—not just leave it to email or chance,” she says.

Ramp up “How do you manage access to MIT’s buildings in a campus that’s been historically open?” asks Joe Higgins, vice

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Cover story

president for campus services and stewardship. It isn’t a rhetorical question. “There are some doors on campus that have never had locks on them,” he says.

But if researchers were ever going to return to campus, then controlling access to the buildings would be critical to keeping them safe. Tackling that was one of many issues on the agenda for the group of faculty researchers and administrators Zuber appointed to the Lightning Committee, so named because they were charged with swiftly proposing guidelines for safely reopening MIT’s research labs.

“We had to work at lightning speed,” says Jacks, who chairs the committee. Other members include heads of the biggest departments, labs, and centers on campus, including DiCarlo and Rus. “These are people who are used to not only doing research but also planning and overseeing research activities,” Jacks says. “We could get input from other faculty and disseminate information so the guidelines came from the ranks, if you will. I think for MIT at least, it was a more appropriate strategy

which are interconnected, into 13 clusters, and essentially cut them off from each other.

“We had to create artificial neighborhoods,” says Van Vliet. “We’d say, ‘Your lab is in Cluster 1, and you guys are going to go in and out of this door, and this door only.’” (Of course, it wasn’t practical to block off the many connections of the Infinite Corridor itself. “This is an honor system,” Higgins says.)

Unlike many universities, however, MIT had used key cards to control access only to certain buildings; others were never locked. So a pilot program was set up for three buildings housing most of the work that continued on campus during the lockdown: Buildings 76 (the Koch Institute), 68 (Biology), and E17-E25, which houses many administrative and academic groups, including the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. People were given access to particular buildings, tapping their IDs at temporary card readers to get in. Greeters also staffed check-in desks to confirm that those entering were

“How do you manage access to MIT’s buildings in a campus that’s been historically open? There are some doors on campus that have never had locks on them.”

than having them come from above and be imposed on all the labs.”

Together, Zuber, the committee, and Van Vliet and the MIT Space Contingency Working Group ultimately decided on 42 exterior doors that would allow access into the buildings—with other entryways locked for the foreseeable future.

Once inside, researchers would be expected to head straight to their labs, avoiding the usual serendipitous encounters in the Infinite Corridor that often spark collaborations. To limit opportunities for the coronavirus to spread, Van Vliet’s Space Contingency Working Group divided the campus buildings, many of

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on the approved access list, and to provide face coverings if needed.

It very quickly became clear that such a system was not scalable to the entire campus, so the Information Systems & Technology (IS&T) team began to look into access control applications, using hospitals as a model. The IS&T engineers then designed Covid Access, a system tying identifying information for each person requesting campus access to the results of a covid test. Everyone coming to campus must get tested regularly (as often as twice a week), and attest to being symptom-free each morning through the Covid Pass app, which feeds into the Covid Access system.

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“We had this eureka moment, where instead of having people claim they were healthy at a station, we could link that to an access card that wouldn’t work without it,” Higgins says. IS&T had to program researchers’ MIT IDs to serve as keys that would allow access only to their particular building clusters, a process that required some tweaking. They also provided keycard access to specific buildings for vendors and contractors, including those servicing labs and lab equipment.

To ensure proper social distancing, Massachusetts had set guidelines of eight people per 1,000 square feet of space, or 125 square feet per person. The Lightning Committee recommended that MIT start with 160 square feet per person, which would leave lab capacity at approximately 25% of pre-covid numbers. The question was how to get labs to adhere to the requirements. “Everybody at MIT wants to know what the rules are so they can break them,” Higgins jokes.

Early on, they considered giving principal investigators the option of getting to 25% lab density by thinking about it in terms of hours worked or lab space. “We said, let’s gamify it and give them space and time, and they can solve for either equation,” Higgins says. In the end, they had PIs calculate the maximum number of researchers who could be in their lab at once, given the 160-square-feet rule, and divvy up the available hours as they saw fit.

As both an administrator and a researcher, Van Vliet appreciated being able to schedule her team’s work this way: “It gave me flexibility as a PI to say, okay, I have a bundle of hours—how can I schedule them? Like I was scheduling shifts of staff of a diner.” In addition, if a particular lab needed more hours in a particular week, it could trade with a neighboring lab for hours in the following week.

The Lightning Committee worked through countless such issues, collaborating closely not only with IS&T, Higgins and the Campus Operations team, and Van Vliet and the Space Contingency Working Group, but also with such groups as MIT Medical, the Environmental Health and

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Some corridors are designated for one-way traffic, as this CSAIL door sign indicates.

Safety group, the procurement team, and MIT Emergency Management.

Keeping everyone safe meant requiring everyone in the buildings to wear masks at all times—except when they were eating or drinking, or alone in a closed-door office.

So the team that had collected personal protective equipment from the Institute’s labs to donate to frontline health-care workers in the early days of the pandemic shifted its focus to preparing for the repopulation of campus. They called upon alumni and research networks in Asia and South America, where equipment is manufactured, to help restock PPE. And since the usual decentralized approach to ordering supplies wouldn’t work in a pandemic, they also worked with MIT’s procurement team to set up the MIT Covid-19 Store, which delivers free PPE in a day or two to any department requesting it.

Meanwhile, a faculty team on campus and researchers at Lincoln Laboratory’s Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Systems Group began developing the MIT Covid-19 Response System (better known as MCRS), which includes a dashboard to help MIT’s medical and operational leaders understand infection risk on campus. Integrating de-identified data from multiple sources—such as Covid Access, daily records of campus badge readers, and PIs’ floor plans for the research

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MIT News

ramp-up—the system models building density and traffic patterns and will eventually incorporate predictive analytics. An initial version launched in September.

As Zuber and the Lightning Committee prepared to open laboratories again in early June, a shortage of disinfectant wipes forced a one-week delay. “We got all the key cards changed and the app written, and everything worked perfectly,” says Zuber, “and then the wipes didn’t arrive.” But on June 15, after the team had sourced a reliable supply of spray disinfectants, MIT’s labs officially ramped up to 25% capacity again.

With many researchers leery of using public transportation, the MIT leadership team made parking free on campus. “It was just about being realistic and doing a little to reduce people’s anxiety,” he says.

A new normal The measures put in place appear to have paid off—between mid-June and mid-August, just four cases of covid were detected on campus. After a month of 25% density, the Lightning Committee allowed labs to increase capacity to 50% of their previous person-hours, decreasing the required space per researcher to 125 square feet.

(An anticipated third phase this fall would in theory open labs up to 100% capacity, though researchers will still be encouraged to do whatever work they can at home.)

To accommodate more researchers on campus and the arrival of seniors for the fall term, MIT Medical ramped up its testing capability significantly in mid-August. Of the more than 22,000 tests given to those seeking campus access between August 17 and 31, just 10 (or 0.05%) were positive, resulting in prompt quarantining and the usual protocol of contact tracing.

In ramping up, labs have had to make adjustments for a research environment in which members are required to wear masks and stay six feet apart. “People are much more careful about how they allocate their time,” says Rus. “Their time on campus is much more intentional—they come in to make a surgical strike to use

the 3D printers or run a robot experiment that was tested in simulation.”

DiCarlo agrees. “It’s sort of come in, get the data, get out,” he says. In former days, a part of his space in Building 46 was the “wet lab” where researchers suited up with masks and gloves to perform experiments, while the rest was “dry space” where they could have a cup of coffee and socialize.

“Now it’s like the entire building is a wet lab,” he says. “You may see a few people walking by wearing masks, but otherwise it’s pretty quiet.”

When Lee started to work again with his monkeys, he says, “I was amazed at how shiny the floors were.” He was able to pick right back up with the experiments.

“Luckily, my monkeys still knew how to do the behavioral tasks I had given them,” he says. Still, he misses the camaraderie and long conversations with lab mates. “I do miss being with my lab friends and colleagues,” he says. “It’s pretty lonely.”

Researchers have had to make numerous adjustments. Van Vliet says she can no longer work side by side with students even though “you need to be looking into the same microscope to help them.” Her team has taken to wearing head-mounted GoPro cameras while working under the hood, so that colleagues can watch virtually on a screen. “The cell types we work with are precious—we have to work with them just right,” Van Vliet says. “Our brains are getting rewired as we go.”

For all the inconveniences and difficulties, the experience has not been without its serendipitous benefits—in new virtual ways of working, enhanced simulations for experiments, or different perspectives on how the research will ultimately be used.

“We never would have done an experiment in which we told people to work at home for long periods of time,” says Zuber.

In any good research, however, sometimes the biggest discoveries come from the results you never expected. “People have shown themselves to be incredibly productive and worked really effectively at home,” she says. “I think there is going to be a lot more flexibility in the future in how people work.” ■

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Alumni connection

Alumni are pairing up virtual friends across generations

By Julie Fox

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Quarantine connections

COURTESY PHOTOS

S

arah Dash ’99 and Lane Anderson ’62 are on a Zoom chat—one of several conversations they’ve had this year, though they’ve never met in person. Dash is recalling a moment early in the coronavirus pandemic when her spirits were particularly low. Listening to a recording of the Schumann cello concerto featuring Anderson, she says, was the antidote that got her through the day. She gets a bit emotional as she shares this with him.

While “there’s no upside to this pandemic,” she says, without it, the two surely would have never become acquainted. Based in Maryland and Monaco, respectively, they first connected in June through an initiative started by volunteer leaders in the Class of 1999.

“I knew about all of the challenges with social isolation, especially with older people, and I thought it would be a nice way to connect,” explains Dash of her motivation to enroll in the Alumni Helping Alumni program, which was started as a response to the pandemic by Class of 1999 president Christine Kornylak, Pooja Devendran ’99, and a handful of other classmates.

“There was just this feeling of: How could we help?” says Devendran. “There were so many MIT initiatives already—trying to develop vaccines, obtaining PPE. In considering where might there be a hole that we could fill as alumni, we kept coming back to connection and camaraderie.”

Kornylak adds that the group “decided to focus on social-emotional health because that’s something that we could dive right

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Then + Now Above, Sarah Dash ’99 at her MIT graduation and Lane Anderson ’62 as an incoming student in 1958.

Below, Dash and Anderson today.

into—a way to bring the community together.” While the initial purpose was to check in on older alumni, the benefits have been mutual. “We were focused more on helping the seniors, but a lot of the ’99ers have felt like it’s been a therapeutic experience for them as well,” Kornylak says.

“So I think that was a nice lesson—that help can come in many forms.”

After Kornylak and Devendran made a few calls to gauge interest among elder alums, the group created a sort of virtual pen pal program across the generations.

They reached out to their entire class to find interested individuals as well as to members of the Cardinal & Gray Society— MIT alumni who graduated 50 or more years ago—with the help of that cohort’s chair, Rick Lufkin ’68.

The (MIT) ties that bind Once alumni sign up for the program, Kornylak and Devendran typically pair them up with the aid of a simple prompt: their favorite place to relax while at MIT. All participants receive an email with the phone number and email address of their match (pairs may choose the mode of communication they prefer); the Class of ’99 alum is expected to reach out within a day.

Dash and Anderson say that their shared experience of having felt somewhat like misfits at MIT is what has created a fast friendship. “I must say that Sarah’s phone calls were a great help getting through eight weeks of confinement,”

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Alumni connection

Anderson says. “They were real high points. Our first conversation lasted for an hour and 20 minutes and I just had the best damn time!”

The two bonded over the challenges they faced at MIT and their love for the arts and humanities. Both switched majors to Course 21 and took off-campus dance classes. “It was almost uncanny, some of the similarities,” says Dash. These also include ties to France and a love of music (Anderson is retired from the position of principal cellist of the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra).

As president and CEO of the nonprofit Alliance for Health Policy, Dash spends much of her professional time in conversations about the pandemic. She says talking with Anderson has been a welcome reprieve, and that reflecting on her time at MIT has been healing for her. “I think Lane helped me tremendously, connecting over our shared perspective, even from years ago,” she says.

Gary Fallick ’58, SM ’60, and Irene Kim ’99 also hit it off quickly, united by MIT experiences like p-sets and the feeling of drinking from a firehose—even if Fallick hadn’t used those terms as a student. “What MIT people have in common is the joy of learning,” says Kim, a liver and kidney transplant surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Their initial email exchange progressed to phone calls, but the pair have also continued their written correspondence. “It’s a fun message to get in my inbox, whenever Gary sends something to me,” Kim says.

“It’s been a lot of fun hearing about what MIT was like in the past.” For instance, she was fascinated to hear Fallick’s description

Then + Now Above, Irene Kim ’99 and Gary Fallick ’58 as students. Below, Kim and Fallick today.

of the MIT 1950s dating scene, including the tale of how he met his wife on a double date (she was his roommate’s date) and then asked her out when he spotted her on Bay State Road outside of his fraternity house.

“I consider myself lucky that I got paired up with Irene,” says Fallick, who is retired from a career in technical marketing and serves as president of Lexington at Home, an organization of residents in his Massachusetts town who wish to age in place. Fallick has volunteered as his MIT class secretary for 25 years and has also been involved in reunion planning. Kim says: “My hope is that at some future reunion,

“Our first conversation lasted for an hour and 20 minutes and I just had the best damn time!”

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Gary and I get to see each other, hug one another, grab a drink together.”

What started as a group of MIT classmates brainstorming ways to help now involves nearly 60 alumni exchanging emails, phone calls, video chats, photos, and memories, sometimes daily. Its organizers want to see this seed of an idea continue to develop. In August, Lufkin was planning to reach out to more potential participants from the Class of 1970 and earlier classes.

“The concept of lockdown, at least for the Cardinal & Gray demographic, is probably going to be with us for months yet, so the unmet need is very real,” he says. ■ Interested in joining the Alumni Helping Alumni program or starting a similar program for your own class?

Visit www.technologyreview.com/ alum-pairs for links and details.

COURTESY PHOTOS

Through covid, and beyond

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Class notes

Class notes 1949 and earlier classes Lewis R. Aronin ’40 died at home in Lexington, MA, on May 21 at the age of 100 years and nine months.

Lewis graduated first in his class from Norwood High School in 1936 and obtained an SB in applied physics from MIT. He worked for the Waltham Watch Company as a research engineer until 1949. He returned to MIT on the research staff of the MIT Metallurgical Laboratory. In 1954 he published a significant paper on the effect of fast neutrons on materials and was subsequently elected to Sigma Xi. In 1958 Nuclear Metals assumed the MIT Metallurgical Project and Lewis became group leader of physical metallurgy and manager of metallurgical research until 1966. When the company folded, Lewis became a consultant for Kennecott Copper Corporation’s Ledgemont Laboratory in Lexington, MA, and later joined the Army Materials Technology Laboratory in Watertown, MA, where he supervised programs on the development of advanced materials for ballistic missile defense interceptors until his retirement in 1990. Lewis was a member of the American Society for Metals (ASM) and the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) and was a charter member of the Boston chapter of the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering (SAMPE), where he was treasurer for 15 years and was made an honorary senior member for his service. He was also a Mason and a Melvin Jones Fellow in the Lions Club, having been a member of the Lexington Lions Club since 1969. Most recently, Lewis had been a volunteer for MIT’s AgeLab and participated in the 85+ Lifestyle Leaders.

Lewis was preceded in death by his beloved wife of 59 years, Natalie Aronin, and his sister, Thelma Kopstein. He is survived by his two

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daughters, three grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

William F. Hart Jr. ’41 died June 5, 2002, at home in Pawling, NY. Colonel Hart retired in 1972 after more than 30 years in the Army Corps of Engineers.

He served during WWII in the India– Burma Theater, commanded the 35th Combat Engineer Group in Vietnam, and served in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His decorations include the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal, and Meritorious Service Commendation Medal.

He was born in New York on March 8, 1918. He obtained a master’s degree in international affairs from George Washington University while attending the Army War College in 1964.

He was predeceased by his wife, Frances Vey Hart, in 1994 and by a daughter, Leslie, in 1999, and is survived by three children and three grandchildren.

Robert Louis Rorschach ’43, SM ’50 (Course 10), died on March 9, 2020.

Bob was born on Aug. 20, 1922, in Tulsa, OK, and graduated from Tulsa Central High School. At MIT he was a member of the pistol team, the Glee Club, and the VooDoo Magazine staff.

He served as a naval officer in the Pacific theater during WWII and earned an MS in petroleum refining from Tulsa University (’47). During a long career in chemical and gas processing and in engineering design, he wrote computer programs for the design of fired process heaters and held a patent in very-low-temperature refrigeration.

A recipient of the Bronze Beaver Award in 1980, he served as president of the MIT Club of Oklahoma, director and vice president of the MIT Alumni Association, regional chairman of the MIT Educational Council, and secretary of the Class of 1943. He was also involved in his church and was among the founding members of Inverness Village, a retirement and eldercare community in Tulsa, where he served as vice president and director. He enjoyed singing, performing in productions of

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News and notes from undergraduate alumni

Light Opera Oklahoma as well as the Inverness Village Men’s Chorus, and was a lifelong reader and a student of military history. He is survived by Susan, his wife of 73 years, as well as six children, five grandchildren, five greatgrandchildren, his brother Richard, and many nieces and nephews and their families, who will remember his encouragement, support, and example.

Seymour Collins ’46 died at home in Ashland, OR, on April 19. He was born March 31, 1925, in Brooklyn, NY. After MIT, Seymour completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard. His 40-plus-year career as a mechanical engineer included positions at several companies across the US. He designed and directed the development of many products and held two US patents. In 1965, he became president of Ko-Cal Division/Koehring Company in Stockton, CA, and relocated there with his family.

He took up jogging, then running, a passion he pursued for more than 30 years. Seymour typically ran 10 miles daily, and he completed 13 marathons, including the original course in Greece and the New York Marathon. On his 60th birthday he ran 60 miles without stopping in 11 hours and 15 minutes, and, equally satisfying, finished ahead of his sons (ages 19 and 21) in a six-mile race in July 1976.

Seymour authored 12 books, including his autobiography, The Wandering Jew. In 2012, Seymour and wife Annie moved to Mountain Meadows, a 55+ active retirement community in Ashland, OR, where he led two creative writing groups and a literary group and penned “Table by the Window,” a regular feature for the Mountain Meadows literary magazine. He wrote, produced, and directed several plays and taught the community to play the billiards game 38. The 38 Seymour Classic is now an annual tournament there. He created Chautauqua, a discussion group for wide-ranging topics he called “Nontrivial Pursuits.”

Seymour is remembered as a decent, caring man who deeply loved his family and extended family. A man who loved the many dogs in his life.

A man who was heartbroken over the loss of his son.

His life was an example of honesty, hard work, and discipline, but also of laughter and a deep appreciation for those who make the effort each day to make the world a better place. The world is, indeed, a better place because of Seymour Collins.

Seymour leaves behind his loving wife of 32 years, Annie Taylor; daughter Ellen Corcoran; son Clifford; and five grandchildren and six greatgrandchildren. His son David preceded him in death, as did siblings Sidney, Bernie, and Dorothy.

Jerome Gumenick ’46 was born on March 3, 1926, and died on Aug. 3, 2019. His last known address was in Lake Worth, FL. Oivind Lorentzen Jr. ’46, of Greenwich, CT, died on March 27 with his children at his side. At 101, he was probably the last of a generation of Norwegian shipowners who came to America for refuge from war-torn Europe.

He left Norway in 1938 to study marine engineering at Berlin Institute of Technology but transferred to MIT the next year.

After the invasion of Norway, Oivind enlisted in the Royal Norwegian Air Force. He was stationed in the Shetland and Orkney Islands and piloted Sunderland flying boat patrol bombers over the North Sea throughout the war.

After the war and graduating from MIT, he and three brothers joined his father’s business as fifth-generation shipowners. From their bases in Oslo, New York, Rio de Janeiro, and Bermuda, the four brothers operated liner trades between the US and South America and eventually pioneered new trades and developed specialized vessels for trade and transport.

As chairman of the AmericanScandinavian Foundation and president of the Norwegian-American Chamber

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of Commerce, Oivind promoted relations between the two countries.

He was named Knight of the First Class of St. Olav’s Order by HRH King Harald in 1980 for his work as attaché for the Norwegian team at the Lake Placid Olympics.

Oivind was a noted member of the postwar generation of ocean racers based in Long Island Sound, successfully competing in local and international races with sailboats he built. He belonged to several yacht clubs and was the commodore of Indian Harbor, and he loved to ski.

Oivind was predeceased by two wives: Evelyn Byrd LaPrade, the mother of his three children, whom he met in Cambridge before the war, and Dorothy Holzinger Meeker. Erika Hall, his love for the last 20 years, is the reason for his extraordinary will to keep on living.

Oivind lived a full life, rich in his love of people, and in his final hours he asked for only two things: “no aggression” and peace. He had fought for peace and harmony his whole life. With wisdom, generosity, and an acute sense of what is right and correct, he achieved both.

Oivind is survived by Erika Hall and three children, seven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Monroe Gliedman ’46 died on April 3. Raised in the Bronx, he graduated from the then-still-new Bronx High School of Science and entered MIT through the V-12 program, where he studied aeronautical engineering.

Monroe served in the US Navy from 1943–1947 and was supply officer on the USS Greenwich Bay. After graduating from Columbia University College of Dental Medicine, Monroe entered private practice and served for 62 years as a volunteer faculty member in the school’s division of orthodontics.

He began jogging in his early 50s and ran the New York City Marathon four times.

Monroe was the twin brother of the late Richard Gliedman ’46. He leaves Grace, his wife of 60 years, and children Wendy, Michael, and John and their families. He will be remembered with love by his family and friends.

Eleanor C. (Ellie) Hogan ’46 died April 27 at age 94 after contracting the novel coronavirus.

Eleanor and family lived in Framingham, MA, for 47 years and in Southborough, MA, for 16 years.

For the last three years Ellie lived at

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MIT News

Carmel Terrace and St. Patrick’s Manor in Framingham.

Ellie was born in Cambridge, MA, to Irish immigrant parents and graduated top of her class at Cambridge Latin High School in 1944.

She received her degree in electrical engineering at MIT after only two and a half years. She then worked at MIT as a project manager on their analog differential analyzer, a forerunner of the digital computer.

Ellie was a brilliant mathematician, a quality only exceeded by her kindness and loving heart. She dedicated her life to her family.

A devout Catholic, Ellie was active in her church, and she enjoyed square dancing and touring the US by car with her husband of 59 years, Randall J. Hogan Jr., who predeceased her.

Ellie’s memory will be cherished by their six children, 14 grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren.

Mario Vinci ’46, of Newport Coast, CA, died on Feb. 10. He was born Dec. 26, 1925. Mr. Vinci had many years’ experience in the fields of mechanical and industrial engineering, with specific capabilities in data communication and computers, and mechanical, thermal, and vibration design analysis.

Mr. Vinci received his BS in mechanical engineering from MIT and pursued graduate studies at the University of Southern California Graduate School.

Willis Reals ’47, SM ’49, died on April 13 in Lincoln, MA. Bill was born Sept.

12, 1925, in Utica, NY. He attended New Hartford High School and graduated valedictorian before attending MIT. He then worked for the Texas Company for 41 years. Bill’s tenacity, drive to succeed, boundless energy, inspiring loyalty, unquestionable integrity, and belief in himself inspired people and led him to successive leadership positions within the organization.

Starting at the Lawrenceville, IL, refinery in 1949, Bill retired as senior vice president of Texaco and chairman of Texaco Chemical. He then devoted his time, energy, and expertise to causes including the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Marine Spill Response Corporation, and Falmouth Hospital, where he led the consolidation of the Falmouth and Cape Cod Hospitals into Cape Cod Healthcare and conceived of and completed the construction of an assisted-living facility. His ongoing

leadership, friendship, and dedication had enormous impact. His skill in uniting people in a common cause, making each one feel critical to the whole, and energizing a group was unique—especially when he dressed as Spider-Man to rally the team.

Bill was passionate about learning, a love he instilled in his children and grandchildren. He faithfully read the New York Times; cited the dictionary as his favorite book; and voraciously consumed history, biographies, and Agatha Christie mysteries. But he also appreciated tawdry romance novels and Star Magazine—“for the crossword puzzles.” Bill enjoyed building model ships, cabinet and furniture making, stamp collecting, and sailing. He was a proud and cerebral man, often mistaken for being terse, which served as cover until you truly came to understand him.

Bill was predeceased by his wife, Priscilla, the mother of his two children. Bill is survived by wife Joan, children Susan and Jeffrey, and four grandchildren.

Thomas Merritt McEvoy ’47, aged 95, died peacefully on March 2 at Calvary Hospital in New York. Born in Brooklyn, NY, Tom’s family moved to Westchester County in 1928, where he lived most of his life. Tom graduated with honors from Iona Prep in 1941, then enrolled at MIT, which he postponed to fly B-24s in Europe during WWII as part of the Army Air Corps 491st Bomb Group.

Returning to MIT, Tom was president of his fraternity, Beta Theta Pi, and earned degrees in engineering and business administration. He first helped run his family’s ecclesiastical garment business and then worked for many years for family-owned construction company D.F. MacNamee, where he was president from 1963–1987 and was honored with the Anthony Tocci Scholarship Foundation Labor Management Civic Achievement Award in 1964.

Tom was also honored as a Knight of Malta for his lifelong dedication to caring for those in need. He joined South Shore Medical Center’s board of governors in 1974, for whom he chaired the buildings and grounds committee.

In 1950, Tom married Celia “Susie” MacNamee, proposing after just three dates.

Tom was active in the Boys and Girls Club of New Rochelle and was awarded Man of the Year in 1972. He helmed

the area Rotary Club, which awarded him Service Above Self in 1975. Tom was president of Wykagyl Country Club and a governor for Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, NY. He loved playing golf, especially in later years with Susie and his grandchildren.

He served as vice president of Ward Pavements, Dover Stone & Sand, and Westchester Colprovia. He was a trustee of Westchester Heavy Construction Laborers from 1970–1987 and a director of Westchester Federal Savings and Loan from 1974–1988. Tom retired from D.F. MacNamee in 1989 and then was a commercial broker with Henry Fries Real Estate until 2000.

Tom is survived by Susie, his wife of nearly 70 years, and four children, 11 grandchildren, and three greatgrandchildren. His quick wit, selfless service to others, and devotion to his family and community will be greatly missed by all.

Philip R. Jonsson ’47 died on April 22 at his home in Little Rock, AR, at the age of 95.

Born in Englewood, NJ, Philip’s family moved to Dallas, TX, when he was 10. He studied physics and business at MIT and served with the Army during WWII. Philip started in the oil business in West Texas in the ’50s, founding Great Plains Land Company. Then, as an investor and director of Citizens Bank and Dallas radio station KRLD, he began a long career in broadcasting.

He founded Signal Media in 1984 with stations in Tulsa, OK, and Little Rock, AR, then acquired KHLR in 2011.

Philip also helped create and publish the illustrated history series Adventure Tales of America.

A generous citizen philanthropist, Philip supported numerous organizations, including the Dallas Symphony Foundation board (past president), the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe (board of managers), the University of Texas at Dallas (board of visitors), and the Arkansas Cancer Research Center Foundation (now the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute; past president and board member), and served on the boards of the Little Rock Symphony and the University of Arkansas Foundation, among others.

Philip loved tennis, snow skiing, Native American art, reading history, exploring the Holy Ghost Canyon of New Mexico, and traveling with his family. He is survived by wife

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Class notes

Diane Yost Jonsson, four children, seven grandchildren, three greatgrandchildren, and sister Margaret.

Dale Spear Harris ’48, of Lansdowne, VA, passed away on June 28, 2019. He was born Feb. 29, 1924, in Prairie du Sac, WI. Dale graduated from the US Naval Academy, attended MIT, and served in the US Navy during World War II. Settling in Northern Virginia in the early ’60s, Dale continued to serve in civilian service as a program manager with the Department of the Navy.

He was predeceased by first wife Gloria Ruth Karle Harris in 1984 and brother Lyle in 2018. Dale leaves his family to cherish his memory, including wife Pauline Neill Harris, son Dale, daughter Holly, granddaughter Sophia, and brother Kenneth Harris.

Robert Louis Silberman ’48 died peacefully at Woodside (Friendship Village) in Kalamazoo, MI, on March 2, at age 91. At MIT Bob majored in mechanical engineering and earned an MBA from the University of Chicago.

He served in the US Army Corps of Engineers from 1948 to 1949, and remained in the Army Reserves until his family moved briefly to Canada in 1960.

Bob loved his wife with all his heart. He also loved his family, cookies, candy, computer programming, electronic devices, sports cars, jokes, and dancing.

He is survived by his four children and three grandchildren.

Harmon Poole ’48 (Course 16) died on May 15 at 95 at his home in Wolfeboro, NH. His many friends and classmates remember his quick, self-effacing wit and loyalty to MIT. Like many ’48s, Hap paused his MIT years for a two-year Navy tour. He was extremely proud of his service, donning his uniform for Memorial Day parades in his hometown of Simsbury, CT, where he and wife Nancy lived for 54 years, and even last year, at age 94. Hap worked tirelessly to honor fellow veterans.

In 1948, Hap went to work for Bendix, followed by stints at Walter Kidde, Chandler Evans, and Altair in different engineering roles. He then sold specialized packaging equipment to various New England companies, covering thousands of miles in his car and making countless friends. He retired in 1995.

He was predeceased by Nancy in 2018, after 67 years together. Hap leaves behind daughters Robin and Cate and their spouses, three grandchildren,

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three great-grandchildren, and many fine memories. He was an avid skier, outdoorsman, and Little League coach, active volunteer, Red Sox and Patriots fan extraordinaire, great friend to many, generous family man, and lover of dogs and life. He will be greatly missed.

Alfred J. (Fred) Cann ’49, SM ’53 (Course 6), of Brookfield, NH, died at home on June 5 after a short bout with leukemia.

Born in the Netherlands in 1926, Fred emigrated to the US with his family in 1940. Interrupting college, he served in the Navy as an electronics technician’s mate. He enjoyed a long career at Sanders Associates (BAE Systems), working on radar, radar jammers, and missile guidance. Fred had hundreds of patents, wrote articles for technical journals, and continued writing after his retirement in 1989.

In retirement, Fred rekindled his interest in playing the mandolin and contra dancing. After a stroke at age 88, he played harmonica at jam sessions and dances. He enjoyed volunteering at Mountain View Community and the Heritage Park Railroad Museum.

He was married to Edna Banis for 54 years, who predeceased him in 2012.

He is survived by their two daughters, Stefanie and Jodi, and five grandchildren.

Victor Llewellyn Ransom ’48 was born in 1924 in New York City. He went to Stuyvesant High School and then to MIT. Vic took leave during his sophomore year for service training. A member of the 477th Bombardment Group, he was among the 101 Tuskegee Airmen who took part in the Freeman Field mutiny protest against segregation in 1945.

He worked for Bell Laboratories until his retirement in 1990 and also taught electrical engineering as an adjunct at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Victor married Dorothy Ransom, a schoolteacher, in 1946; they were married for 73 years. In the 1960s the family moved from New York City to Tinton Falls, NJ, when Bell Laboratories relocated to Holmdel, NJ. Victor volunteered as a recruiter for MIT and for the Tinton Falls Library. The family were long-time members of the New York Society of Ethical Culture and then the Unitarian Universalist Church of Monmouth County. Victor was an avid swimmer and bicyclist.

He is survived by daughter Pamela Ransom, Harvard ’73 and MIT PhD

’80, and son Victor Ransom, Wabash College and University of Chicago.

His aunt, Margaret Flagg-Holmes, was an original founder of the sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, one of the largest for African-American women in the country, and his uncle, Lewis Flagg, was the first Black judge in Brooklyn.

You can read more about Vic Ransom at MIT Black History and New Jersey Monthly (njmonthly.com/articles/ jersey-living/double-victory/).

–Please send news for this column to Class Notes, MIT Technology Review, 1 Main St., Cambridge, MA 02142; email: classnotes@technologyreview.com.

1950 Lloyd Max Licher, 92, of Corte Madera, CA, died on March 18 at Kaiser Hospital after a brief battle with pneumonia. His passing was sudden and unexpected; he was in good health and active both mentally and physically up until the end.

He is missed by his loving partner, Ingalill Gilbraith; his sons, Max and Bruce, and their spouses; granddaughters Sophia and Arabella; and many friends. Born in Beloit, WI, Lloyd earned a degree in aeronautical engineering from MIT. He was the executive director of the Soaring Society of America and editor of Soaring Magazine for more than 20 years. Lloyd launched his second career as the seniors coordinator for the Marin County YMCA. He organized field trips and hikes and created new activities such as the mind exercise class. Under Lloyd, the senior program grew and thrived for over 20 years. Lloyd met Inga through the YMCA; she was his life partner for his remaining years. In his final years, Lloyd enjoyed the good relationships he had and embraced every opportunity to make the world a better place, through even the smallest actions. Lloyd regularly walked the Corte Madera/Larkspur trail along the old railroad tracks, where he picked up more than 120,000 pieces of litter over the years. Lloyd lived his life fully, was true to himself, and had no regrets in the end.

Malcolm Jay Lipson, 89, died on May 27 in Providence, RI. Unfortunately, we have no further information.

Walter Donatelli, a longtime resident of East Boston, died peacefully at his home on April 16, 2011, at age 85.

A US Army veteran, Walter served his country proudly during WWII, where he fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He retired from the Army as a major after

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three years active duty and 20 years in reserves.

Walter had a long and distinguished career as a manufacturing and industrial engineer. He worked for GTE Sylvania and Philips of North America for many years. Walter held several patents, managed engineering projects, and improved quality control and performance in manufacturing.

He is survived by a brother and a sister and by several nieces and nephews.

Paul Wolfe Cooper, 84, died on Feb. 24, 2013, in New Jersey. Unfortunately, we have no further information.

Pressley W. Jones, 89, died April 10, 2018. He was an MIT graduate in food technology and worked with food preservation in the Army. Then he worked on a cattle ranch before joining Gerber in Michigan. He later transitioned to lead the full dinners division of Sara Lee in Chicago. After four years he returned to Michigan, where he first bought a restaurant in Newaygo, then built a new restaurant in Croton. He had to build a walk-in cooler, so Pressley studied refrigeration—followed by electronics so he could maintain it. This interest led to converting CBs to ham radios and the discovery that the ham radio industry lacked appropriate wire, so Pressley created (from the ground up) the Wireman, a business that supplies high-quality materials for amateur and professional radio.

Pressley was the loving husband of his late wife, Virginia. He is survived by three children, two grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

David Roller, 86, of Apple Valley, CA, died on Jan. 21, 2017. Unfortunately, we have no further information.

–Thomas R. Keane, secretary, 332 Spalding Rd., Wilmington, DE 19803; tel: 302-658-2095; email: tomkeane@ alum.mit.edu; David E. Gushee, assistant secretary, The Mansions at Decatur, Unit 331, 2677 Lawrenceville Hwy., Decatur, GA, 30033; tel: 804-3504966; email: gushee@alum.mit.edu.

1951

70th Reunion

Please send news for this column to William R. Miller, class secretary, email: miller8130@roadrunner.com.

1952 I’m writing mid-July, at what seems a new high point in cases of the

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coronavirus. I am relieved, and somewhat surprised, to report only one death for the past two months.

The Houston Chronicle reported that Paul Kaminsky SM ’53 (Course 12), died on April 4. Paul was a man of amazing intelligence, dry wit, and endless patience. He left MIT in 1953 to serve for two years with the US Army as a first lieutenant during the Korean conflict. While stationed in Richmond, VA, he met a Southern belle, Charlotte Doggett; they married in 1955.

Together for 65 years, their life journey together began with a rocky start. A car accident during their honeymoon landed Charlotte in the hospital with a broken jaw. They moved to Houston in 1955, where Paul began his 43-year career in the petroleum industry as an exploration geologist working variously for Shell Oil Company, Sunbelt Exploration, Mosbacher Energy, and Wainoco. His career took them from Houston to Tyler and Corpus Christi, TX; Denver; Midland, TX; and finally back to Houston. Along the way they made lifelong friends at each stop. He is survived by Charlotte, son Paul (known as Keith), daughter Kerry Johnson, and five grandchildren and three greatgrandchildren.

–Ed Margulies, 925 Stonegate Dr., Highland Park, IL 60035-5146; tel: 847-432-3947; email: edmargulies@ alum.mit.edu.

1953 As I write this in July, we have been locked down in our house in Guatemala for four months, with no end in sight.

Everyone wears a mask but leaves much to be desired with social distancing. I wish we could share our experiences in this unusual time.

I’ve heard from several classmates who have had bad falls with unfortunate consequences. Please take special care regarding falling.

Jim Earl has been working on printmaking since retirement and is very skilled. He had a one-man show of his etchings and silk screens at the Foundry Gallery in Washington, DC, from July 1 to August 30.

Alfred Brenner died April 13 in Chevy Chase, MD. Throughout his long career, he was an investigator and leader in high-energy physics and supercomputing. He taught physics at Harvard, headed the computing department at Fermilab (Batavia,

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MIT News

IL), directed the John von Neumann supercomputing center (Princeton, NJ), and worked for many years at the Institute for Defense Analyses (Alexandria, VA) until his retirement.

A lifetime enthusiast of classical music, opera, and travel, he was dearly loved and will be greatly missed. He was the cherished husband of Natalie Brenner; brother of Samuel Brenner and Judith Rustin; former spouse of Rosamond Brenner; father of Tamara Brenner, Kendra Kroll, and Lyle Brenner; and treasured uncle, grandfather, stepfather, friend, and colleague.

Donald Miller died May 26 in Franklin, NC. He completed his MBA at Stanford and was a legacy member of Beta Theta Pi. Donald was a first lieutenant in the US Army and a member of the American Legion. He worked for Procter & Gamble as a food chemist.

He helped develop products recognized by millions, including Jif peanut butter, Crisco, and the Duncan Hines line.

His daughters were his favorite “taste testers.” He was also a successful real estate agent, land developer, and restaurateur, with many varied interests.

A problem solver, Donald could make absolutely anything out of PVC pipe. His hobbies included radios, woodworking, and a great love of water, from boating to sports to fountains. His interests also included computers, his dogs, and fast cars, especially the Indianapolis 500.

He enjoyed music, especially of the ’50s, but his favorite was André Rieu.

Donald leaves his wife of 66 years, Sally Smith Miller; his daughters, Karen Miller Stiwinter and Kimberly Miller Sherrill; two grandsons; three greatgrandchildren; and his great-greatgrandson, Barrett.

–W. James Mast, s e c re t a r y, telephone: 011-502-7832-4811; email: wjmast1@gmail.com.

1954 William Hobart Combs (Course 1) died May 11 in Fort Myers, FL. He was born Dec. 22, 1927, in Whitesburg, KY, to Nola and William Hobart. Bill’s six siblings remember having “the greatest childhood ever,” with Bill as the creative spark for building things and producing a small neighborhood newspaper. His obituary says, “Bill was smart, creative, and witty. He could build anything, fix anything, grow anything, and he always had a joke or a song to punctuate any moment. There is not a person he met

who does not think of him fondly. He passed on many skills, stories, and jokes that will never be forgotten.”

Bill began his working life with the L&N Railroad in Eastern Kentucky.

During WWII, he taught Morse code in the US Army. After his service, Bill entered MIT; he was a member of Phi Kappa Sigma and the heavyweight crew team. His family says he was the first person from Whitesburg to attend MIT. He worked in the heavy construction industry after graduation and then at the Institute for more than 20 years, until his retirement. Bill lived in New Hampton, NH, and Lexington, MA, during this time.

He and wife Ann traveled throughout the US and the world. He was an amateur radio operator and stayed in touch with friends and other ham operators across the globe and through the years. Bill served on several 1954 fundraising committees and was on the planning committee for our 45th reunion. He was a member of an Institute Advisory Council beginning in July 1976.

Bill was predeceased by his wife, Ann, and sister, Iris Campbell. He is survived by children Jennifer Combs of New Hampton, NH, and Patricia Darnell of Oakland, CA, and grandchildren Matthew, Christopher, and Nicholas Darnell. He is also survived by siblings Ina Hunsicker of Fort Myers, FL; Nona Polly of Lexington, KY; Richard Combs of Chandler, AZ; Nadine Ison of Las Vegas, NV; and Brenda Stallard of Fort Worth, TX. Joseph Peter Pennimpede (Course 2) died on April 26 in Beverly, MA. Joe was born on March 24, 1933, in Morristown, NJ, the son of Pius Joseph Pennimpede and Mary Selling. At MIT, Joe participated in the ROTC program and the Hobby Shop. He lived in Baker House. After graduation, Joe completed the General Electric management training program before he was called to active duty at Fort Devens, MA. He served in the Army and Army Reserves, achieving the rank of captain. Joe was a Korean War veteran and member of the National Society of Scabbard and Blade and of the American Legion. Joe married Lois Ellen Lindberg, of Arlington, MA, on Oct. 9, 1954. They moved six times with two small children before permanently settling in Danvers, MA. Joe was an accomplished engineer who developed conceptual designs instrumental to the Apollo space program. He worked for both RCA

and GE during his 35-year management career, retiring in the 1990s. During his years in Danvers, Joe was actively involved with the American Cancer Society and the Peabody Institute Library. He stayed busy helping youth, assisting seniors, and in town government. Joe served as a selectman and town meeting member. After retirement, he was appointed to the Danvers Finance Committee. He and Lois enjoyed travel, especially to Bermuda and Sanibel, FL. Joe is survived by his wife of more than 65 years, Lois, and their four children: Ronald Pennimpede, Lynne Ann Helmuth, the Reverend Deborah Kunkel, and Stephen Pennimpede.

Lovingly known as “Pa” to the younger generations, Joe had five grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, and one greatgreat-grandchild. His brother Ronald Pennimpede of Morristown, NJ, also survives him.

–Barbara Black, secretary, 16309 19th Ave. SE, Mill Creek, WA 98012; email: bbblack@whidbey.net

1955 Hi classmates, this column is mostly about our virtual 65th reunion.

Ted Papastavros (Course 10), class reunion chair, wrote, “Because of covid-19 our 65th reunion was held ‘virtually’ via Zoom on May 30, as part of MIT’s overall one-day virtual reunion program.” The following classmates participated in the Zoom meeting: James Ahlgren, Harold Austin, Sture Bengston, Richard Bergman, Robert Bowman, Arthur Brownlow, Mel Barkan, Don Burrer, Robert Craven, Robert Cruikshank, Gil Davidson, Gerson Ecker, Ed Elizondo, Philip Gruber, Lawrence Ingber, Lester Lee, John Lindenlaub, Henry Oliver, Ted Papastavros, DuWayne Peterson, George Raymond, John Russell, Joseph Saliba, Donald Steig, John Seagle, Austin Somes, Dennis Shapiro, Eric Thompson, Thomas Unger, Al Wechsler, Lennard Wharton, David Wilbourn, Jerrold Zindler, and Lee Zuker. Many also have postgraduate degrees from MIT or other universities, which are shown in their Alumni Directory listing. “Thirtyfour classmates attended,” Ted added, “50% more than the Alumni Association had estimated would be attending when a traditional in-person reunion was anticipated.”

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Class notes

Ted opened the meeting by welcoming everyone to our first “virtual” class reunion. A special tribute was made to the late Paul Attridge (Course 15), who was scheduled to cochair the reunion but who passed away suddenly last year. Paul was a major contributor and chief cheerleader for all of our past reunions. His enthusiasm and dedication to our class was legendary.

He will be sorely missed, especially his booming voice that kept us organized when we went astray.

Ted then introduced Gil Davidson to lead a short business meeting. Gil also paid tribute to Paul Attridge, then reported that the nominating committee had recommended that the current slate of officers be nominated to serve for the next five years. This was seconded, and the attendees unanimously elected the following officers: Gil Davidson, president; Dennis Shapiro, vice president; Richard Bergman, secretary; and John Russell, treasurer.

Gil next read the names of 67 classmates who had passed away since our 60th reunion and asked for a moment of silence in their memory, then welcomed the class and added his comments. Next, treasurer John Russell reported that the class treasury at present totaled a robust $2,600.

Our gift chair, DuWayne Peterson, reported on the results of the Class Gift.

Pete did his usual super job in raising money for our class: Our 65th Reunion Gift total is $1.76 million, with close to 30% participation. This is a summation of all gifts received since our 60th reunion, and given our class size, is a remarkable total.

The rest of the session was devoted to comments from attendees. Classmates were asked to say a few words about themselves. Almost all present chimed in, and it was great to hear what people were doing, as well as their specific greetings to other classmates.

Ted ended the meeting by advising that the reunion committee had decided to postpone, not cancel, our 65th reunion. He encouraged everyone to show up in person next year and help celebrate our 65th a year late. The intent is to repeat the program that had been planned for this year. Updates will be forthcoming.

From me, your class secretary: I was scheduled to make comments during the business meeting, but joined late, making my brief comments as part of the comments from attendees. You’ll

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not be surprised that I basically said to please keep your class notes coming!

While preparing this column I emailed the class officers asking if they wanted to add anything to the above; their additions are in the unabridged notes on the class website, 1955.alumclass.mit. edu. I also emailed attending classmates who had not sent in a class note since I became secretary, requesting a note.

I received a fine update from Bob Craven (Course 6); more of it will be in the next column: “I retired in 1995 after a 40-year career as an electronic design engineer specializing in precision measurement circuits and systems.

Anita and I then built a new house attached to our ski house in Easton, NH, which is near Franconia Notch State Park and Cannon Mountain Ski Resort, where we live now. Over the years, we’ve been involved with numerous civic, political, youth, and sports activities. In recognition of our longtime contributions to our town, the 2018 Annual Report of the Town of Easton was dedicated to Anita and me.

“Last fall, Karl Reuther (Course 2) and his wife, Gayle Galan, visited us for a day. Karl has retired as president of Reuther Die and Mold in Akron, OH, and Gayle is an emergency MD. They had come east because Gayle was presenting a paper at a medical conference in Boston. [We] shared a delightful dinner together at one of the fine New England inns in the area and reminisced about old times at MIT when we were fraternity brothers living together.

“Since our 60th reunion (Anita from Wellesley and me from MIT), we have continued taking trips offered through the MIT Alumni Travel Office and enjoying exposure to foreign cultures.

We’ve traveled to Portugal and Northern Spain (2015), Morocco (2016), Australia and New Zealand (2017), Japan (2017), Burgundy and Provence (2018), and a Danube River cruise from Vienna to the Black Sea (2019). We had signed up to do an Adriatic and Aegean Sea trip with a pre-trip to Athens this September.

However, we canceled this trip because of the pandemic.

“Anita and I attend MIT reunions every year, and I’ve been a member of our class reunion committee for the last several reunions. This year we initially considered holding a traditional offcampus event at a nice inn on Cape Cod or in Maine following the on-campus activities. However, considering our

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advanced age, we decided instead on a bus tour to see all the new campus buildings and to dine at a nearby restaurant. But the coronavirus struck, causing all reunion activities to go from physical to virtual.”

On a sadder note: Tom Andrew Thilveris (Course 4A) died March 26. He was the husband of Elizabeth H. Thilveris, last known address in Scottsdale, AZ. If you have more information about Tom or Elizabeth, please let me know and I will include it in a future column.

–Richard I. Bergman, secretary, 134 Leabrook Ln., Princeton, NJ 08540; email; ribergman@alum.mit.edu.

1956

65th Reunion

Beloved classmates: It’s true, there were no reunions at the Institute in 2020, but we are still planning for our 65th reunion in 2021, hopefully in a safer environment for us geezers and geezettes. Stay tuned for more info.

I’m sorry to report the deaths of four classmates: Charles B. Fink, prominent architect and professor emeritus of the Rhode Island School of Design School of Architecture, died on Feb. 25, 2018, at age 85 at the HopeHealth Hulitar Hospice Center in Providence, RI. Known by most as Chick, he lived in Providence and Newport and attended Hope High School. He was a Francis Wayland Scholar at Brown University before transferring to MIT after freshman year to attend its fiveyear architecture program. There he won a six-month Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill travel fellowship, which he used to study and draw European architecture.

Chick worked full-time until age 80.

One of his final projects was designing renovations of several units in Rhode Island Hospital, where, ironically, he briefly became a patient during the design process. Architecture and art were so central to him that even just days before he died, Chick drew the Rhode Island State Capitol from memory. Beloved by clients who often became friends, he could design an entire house on a matchbook cover in an hour. Architect of many significant projects, he left his impression on the landscape of Rhode Island, including designs and renovations in homes along Ocean Drive in Newport and in commercial buildings, hospitals, banks,

and public housing, from renovating kitchens to designing cities. He valued every project, each born of his respect for natural forms and environmental considerations.

Chick enjoyed the aesthetics of sailing, restoring and sailing his old wooden ketch and his antique Chris Craft runabout. He rejected modern boat electronics and taught himself and others celestial navigation for the Rhode Island Power Squadron. He was also passionate about music, launching an introductory survey course at RISD and studying the cello. Chick was editor of the MIT humor magazine, honing a talent for caricature in his cartoons, which remain treasured by friends and family. Chick also excelled at crossword puzzles. Of all his projects, he most loved his renovations of the Beechbound Carriage House in Newport, where he lived for many years alongside his co-owner clients, who became dear friends.

He is survived by wife Judith, daughter Amy, and granddaughter Julia.

Laughton (Larry) Fine passed peacefully on Jan. 14 at age 85 after a long journey with Parkinson’s disease.

He is survived by daughter Ann, sons Don and Tom, three grandchildren, a large extended family, and many friends and respected colleagues. He was predeceased by his wife, Gladys.

Larry also leaves his “fourth child,” D F Electronics, the electronics design and manufacturing company he cofounded and ran for 44 years, now in the hands of two of his children. Larry’s wisdom, wit, integrity, kindness, intelligence, even temperament, and support for his family and friends will be sorely missed. For a quiet man, he left quite an imprint on the world.

Jacob David Gubbay, scholar, athlete, and humanist, entered eternal rest on April 16. The coronavirus took his life, but his memory and deeds live on. Jacob grew up in India, son of Violette Zilkha and David Gubbay.

He was valedictorian of his class at the Cathedral School in India. With a Sassoon Scholarship, Jacob immigrated to the US to attend MIT. He received a master’s degree from Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. He was a materials scientist at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge and at Honeywell for 25 years. Jacob was also a consultant and teacher and held US patents as coinventor of several metallurgical components. He

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belonged to many organizations and was a dedicated swimmer, maintaining lifelong fitness. He leaves behind his wife of 49 years, Janet, and his sister, Angela.

Jacob and Janet lived in Cambridge, North Andover, Winchester, and Melrose, MA. Jacob made a positive difference in the lives of all who knew him. He encouraged others to believe in themselves and he helped them accomplish their goals.

Eric Gerard Riedel, of Devon, PA (originally from Dobbs Ferry, NY), died peacefully on May 13 at age 86.

An Air Force veteran, he is survived by wife Barbara, daughter Sarah, and extended family in both the US and Germany. Eric was an accomplished pilot and flight instructor and an active member of the Philadelphia Glider Council in Bucks County. He was also an avid world traveler and visited dozens of countries. He enjoyed gardening, classical music, and family genealogy.

Our sincere condolences go out to the Fink, Fine, Gubbay, and Riedel families and friends.

That’s it for now folks. Please continue to be kind to each other, and remember to wash your hands, wear a mask, and practice social distancing.

Hopefully things will be better for our reunion. Stay safe!

–Lloyd Beckett, secretary, P.O. Box 1082, N. Falmouth, MA 02556; email: papa@alum.mit.edu.

1957 Tony Ryan hasn’t been out of the house in four months except to get the mail and newspaper. He can’t see his five kids due to the virus. Groceries and meals are delivered. He gives thanks for gambling, books, and video games; otherwise, not much to do.

Tony is working on financing his three businesses, which were shut down because of the virus. He is trying to survive and is thankful for the Paycheck Protection Program. Jeff Wisnia also hasn’t had much activity other than picking up takeout or babysitting his newest grandchild, one-year-old Alex, in Billerica, MA. Phil Richardson still works in real estate development, spending summers (including this one) in Chatham, MA. He says it’s a nice change from the Bay Area. Bruce Blanchard is one of the 2020–2021 recipients of the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award presented

by Marquis Who’s Who.

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MIT News

John Decker reports: “Since I’ve been retired for 20 years, the pandemic lockdown hasn’t changed my life significantly. The main difference is that my three or four meetings a week in Honolulu (I live on Maui, a separate island 100 miles away) are now Zoom meetings. Instead of getting up at 4:30 a.m. to catch the 6:00 a.m. flight to Honolulu, renting a car, fighting traffic into downtown to make a two-hour meeting at 10:00 a.m., I now drift into my office with a cup of coffee around 9:55 a.m. to log onto the meeting—a BIG improvement! With two degrees in Aero and Astro from MIT and a PhD in plasma physics from Cambridge University, I’m a guitar maker. I now can spend time in my workshop making guitars. Again, this is a big improvement.

Both Linda (my wife of over 62 years!) and I remain in good health, and we’ve decided that Maui isn’t too tough a place in which to be socially isolated.”

Ed Roberts w r i t e s , “ I h ave just completed a major new book, Celebrating Entrepreneurs: How MIT Nurtured Pioneering Entrepreneurs Who Built Great Companies. It is a continuation of the work I’ve done since I started researching MIT spinoff companies in 1963, leading to my founding and still currently chairing the MIT Entrepreneurship Center and its now Institute-wide programs. One of the ‘praisers’ of the book is Ray Stata, founder, CEO, and then chair of Analog Devices, a company [that maintained] its original MIT leaders for the past half-century. Another classmate in the Celebrated Entrepreneurs category is Charles Koch, who transformed his MIT father’s early petroleum-technology firm into the giant Koch Industries, with over $100 billion in revenues. Some Course 6 grads may also remember being TA’d by Irwin Jacobs, cofounder of Qualcomm, also in the book. No doubt others will encounter and remember faculty and alums interviewed and cited in the book for their post-MIT entrepreneurial achievements.

“The first part [of the book] tells how we built our ‘MIT Entrepreneurial Ecosystem’ and brought it to impact the world. Rafael Reif refers to what has happened to MIT over the past 57 years, starting a few years after our graduation, as ‘a continuing entrepreneurial tornado,’ and he means well by that. The second part of the book, no doubt more interesting to many real and aspiring entrepreneurs, includes … interviews

with the key founding entrepreneurs of many companies in … life sciences and biotechnology, the internet, CAD/CAM and robotics, and ‘modern finance.’ The final chapter is much more recent in company vintage, and far more diverse in the gender and country-of-origin composition of the young entrepreneurs discussed, now coming from all over the world, including many developing countries. That chapter also presents the founders’ insights on such hotshots as HubSpot, Okta, and PillPack, all coming out of MIT within the past decade.”

You can find more information on www.celebratingentrepreneurs.com, or order the book on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback. Ed adds, “The front cover page states, ‘All author proceeds from the book will be donated to endowment funds that help support the MIT entrepreneurship programs.’

I hope that some of our class will join me in donating to encourage even more impactful entrepreneurs from MIT.” I. Ira Zames (Courses 6 and 15) died on April 25, 2020.

–Don Roellke, secretary, 4870 Carriagepark Rd., Fairfax, VA 22032; tel: 703-978-7370; email: daroellke@ alum.mit.edu; class website: http:// alumweb.mit.edu/classes/1957/.

1958 Toni Schuman, emailing from California, spurred by the constraints imposed by the pandemic, suggested we invite classmates to write short essays about the world, coping with the indignities of aging, and spending our golden years in quarantine. “It might give us a chance to vent a little, even if our words won’t be read for several months. So here’s my contribution: “Getting old sucks. I used to be able to leap tall buildings and stop bullets with my magic bracelets, but now it’s all I can do to wander into my office at home and check email. Of course, most of it is junk, but every once in a while I get a letter from an old friend or something to make me laugh. I do a lot of useless puttering. The stay-at-home rules currently in place really impede my ability to socialize, like lunching with friends, attending classes in person, and filling my cart at the supermarket. I’ve gotten used to Zoom and other online services but not gracefully. Now that it’s spring I’ve been puttering in the garden, but even the tomato plants are lethargic. I just hope I live long

enough to see my grandkids graduate from college (assuming classes resume) and maybe even get married.”

Earl Rose responded: “I’m sheltered in place with my husband, John, and some days it is very close quarters. We shop together, which offers new insights into the reason we have stayed together for 45 years. We fight good. Life at 82 is good, a smaller world. I’m on the HOA board, the treasurer. Love to sign checks. Our kids are well and back East, so we don’t have many family obligations other than being wise and alive. Six grands so far. I am a committed introvert, so this period of time is natural for me. It is also a little scary. But people in our class were raised through WWII. My Dad went away for three years on a destroyer. We went through a few recessions and the Korean War. The civil war of the ’60s, really the ’70s. And so on. I came out in the midst of the gay rights movement. Marches.

Wow. It is like a movie to me but quite real in my still-working mind. I think it is still working. They say one does not know, but I think I am still doing the do.”

Paul Rothschild a p p a re n t ly ducked the proverbial bullet: “Thanks for the email. Sounds like fun. We are still hunkered down in Florida.

[Planning on] returning to Ohio next week. We consider ourselves very fortunate—we took a weeklong cruise between Christmas and New Year’s with our entire family (three sons, three daughters-in-law, and 13 grandchildren). Probably just before disaster befell the cruise industry. Hope you are doing well.”

Lee Freese is staying close to home.

He writes, “I had a rewarding career at Freese and Nichols Consulting Engineers, now 900 people in the Southeast US. I have a great wife and three very smart kids, two wonderful grandchildren. Life is good.”

Hillel Auerbach reports, “We (wife, children, and grandchildren) are all well and bearing up under the current restrictions. I manage to fill a day quite easily, as a portion of my law practice is still active. Books and TV also pass the time; I’m tutoring my seven-year-old granddaughter in math twice a week!

As for the invitation from the Class of ’99, I really do not remember ‘fond stories’ of my time at MIT. I enjoyed it very much—it was fun. But no stories.”

In this issue we note the passing of three classmates: Eugene L. Zuch of Melbourne, FL, died on April 15. Gene was raised in

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Class notes

Cincinnati and attended MIT on a full scholarship. He received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and then served three and a half years as a US Army Signal Corps officer stationed in Fort Monmouth, NJ; Fort Huachuca, AZ; and Butzbach, Germany.

After the Army, Gene returned to MIT to work at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory and complete a master’s degree in electrical engineering and a bachelor’s degree in management from the Sloan School of Management. He then went into private industry and worked for several small electronics companies in Massachusetts and South Florida. He retired in 2005, shortly before turning 70. Gene was an amateur cartoonist, an avid reader of the Wall Street Journal, and above all, a devout Christian. In 2003, he married Virginia Provencher; they were together until her death in 2019.

He is survived by his stepdaughters, Majorique Glass, Joanne Beyke, and Danielle Provencher; four stepgrandchildren; a step-great-grandson; and his nephew. He was predeceased by his step-grandson.

Gaillard Ravenel Nolan passed peacefully at home surrounded by his family on March 23. At MIT he earned an SB and SM in Course 2. Gil was a member of Phi Beta Epsilon. Later he received an MBA from Northeastern University.

Gil was a leader in the field of medical instrumentation design. He held 13 US and foreign patents. He always strived to help others through his work. Gil was a dreamer and an innovator with an insatiable thirst for knowledge. He loved his wife and family, sailing on the East and West Coasts, working on wooden boats, and being outdoors and on the water. He was an avid reader, enjoyed hiking and cross-country skiing, and traveled extensively with his wife in the US and abroad.

He is survived by his loving wife of 57 years, Meryl Richardson Nolan; his two sons, Gaillard Jr. and Merlyn and their spouses; two grandchildren; and his brother, Dr. Stanton Peelle Nolan. Another brother, Parker Nolan Jr., predeceased him.

Joseph G. Walsh, of Boca Raton, FL, passed away peacefully at home on May 2. Born and raised in Dorchester, MA, Joe served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War. After MIT, he worked for many years as an engineer at Draper Laboratory. Joe enjoyed

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skiing in Vermont and sailing in the Caribbean and, in recent years, relaxing with his friends at Holloway’s Irish Pub in Boca Raton. He is survived by one of three sisters, one of three brothers, and many loving nieces, nephews, and loyal friends.

The class extends deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of Eugene, Gaillard, and Joseph.

–Gary Fallick, secretary, 4 Diehl Rd., Lexington, MA 02420; e-mail: gary_ fallick@alum.mit.edu; class website: 1958.alumclass.mit.edu.

1959 Last year in the July/August column I printed the names of our classmates currently listed as “lost” by the Alumni Association. I didn’t expect much to come of it. After all, they are “lost.”

Then, out of the blue, one day in July of this year, I heard from Ingar Fred Andersen. He didn’t know he was lost or how he got lost, but he wanted to be found. Consider it done! He lives in Concord, NH. Drop me a note for Ingar’s contact information.

William Bowden Alexander died on Dec. 5, 2019. The following obituary is from Blileys.com. “He was a loving man, full of integrity and faith in the Lord. William was a master sailor, an avid reader, a brilliant thinker and he loved gardening. He was a beloved husband, cherished father, and faithful friend.” We send condolences to his wife, Reba, and their four children and seven grandchildren.

Sidney Saul Handel died on April 8 at his home in Tel Aviv. Obituary source: the Boston Globe, lightly edited here. “Sidney started life in Dorchester, MA, then moved to Waban, MA, during junior high school. He graduated from MIT in economics and received his PhD in economics from UC Berkeley. After working at the Rand Corporation, he changed careers, attending the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. After returning to Newton, MA, he became a practicing Jungian psychoanalyst on Beacon Hill and was one of the founding members of the C.G. Jung Institute Boston before immigrating to Israel in 1999. Sidney was proud of and deeply loved his children and grandchildren. He was committed to intellectual pursuits and was devoted to his weekly poker games, at the Harvard Club in Boston and later in Tel Aviv. He was also a board member

of the West End House in Brighton when he lived in the area.” We offer sympathy to his family.

George Henry Bloom died on Dec. 5, 2019. The following notes are from the Burlington Free Press, lightly edited. “He was raised in Brooklyn and Monticello, NY. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Vermont. George worked for GE for 45 years. In 1976 he designed and assembled the EX83, the most accurate turret system made at the time. In 1979 he received the Engineer of Year award from GE. He also received an award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers for his presentation of the ‘Analytical Methods of Calorimetry’ in a New England regional contest, and he held a patent award for Automatic Feeding of a Howitzer. George volunteered with the Kiwanis at the Champlain Valley Fair and at the Baird Children’s Center in Burlington, and he coached Little League baseball. He was active in the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Burlington, serving on the board of trustees and as board president.

George was a man of his word, and his ethical beliefs shaped not only his life but the lives of those he loved.

George will always be remembered for doing the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink, his love of nature and his daughters, walking his beloved German shepherds, constantly winning at Scrabble, writing his annual New Year’s Day Prediction questions, reading voraciously, and closing his eyes when he listened to a particularly beautiful piece of music.” We offer condolences to the family.

George Durham Kraft died on May 23 in Chicago. The following notes are from Friedrichjones.com, lightly edited.

“Dr. Kraft received his BS from MIT, and an MS in 1961 and a PhD in 1966 from Case Institute of Technology.

He was a member of Sigma Xi and Eta Kappa Nu and was active in the IEEE for many years. Dr. Kraft spent 15 years with AT&T Bell Laboratories as a research scientist and was a professor with the Illinois Institute of Technology from 1968 until retirement in 2004. He became a full-time professor in 1980 and was tenured faculty at the IIT School of Engineering and the Stuart School of Business. He authored numerous books, articles, and professional papers.

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Dr. Kraft was a man of endless interests and ceaseless studies.” We offer our sympathy to his family.

John Warren Fish died in January.

We have no additional information, but we send our sympathy to his family.

–Dixon Browder, secretary, 5419 Vista Grande Dr., Santa Rosa, CA 95403; tel: (707) 527-8002; email: browder@alum.mit.edu.

1960 On May 31, 60 members of our class held a virtual 60th reunion. Stories were shared, and at a second virtual meeting, the class elected Bob Gurnitz as president for the next five years and Bob McClatchey as vice president; treasurer Dan Whitney was reelected, as was class agent and secretary Frank Tapparo.

Marc Weiss is our new webmaster.

Many attendees expressed interest in continuing the Zoom meetings, which we plan to do. If you have ideas for such meetings, please contact Bob Gurnitz at rgurnitz@aol.com.

In conjunction with reunion activities, Professor Marty Culpepper, a Class of 1960 fellow and MIT’s “makers czar,” gave a presentation on successful innovations being supported by our Endowment for Innovation in Education (EFIE), which brings makerspace to the MIT community.

We also received a letter from Amitava Mitra, executive director of the New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) program, another EFIE success story. Mitra said the program would not have been possible without the support of EFIE. With EFIE’s help, NEET’s first cohort of undergraduates completed the three-year NEET certificate program and graduated with the Class of 2020.

I hope you did not miss our Class Notes in the May/June and July/August digital issues of Technology Review.

I received two questions asking how to find the Class Notes in the digital version of MIT News. If you had this problem, you can read them online at www.technologyreview.com/ digitalmagazine. You will see the image of the most recent Technology Review cover. Scroll down to the MIT News cover. Next to that image are two options: to open a PDF with the Class Notes and Course News or a PDF without them. You will need to sign in using your Infinite Connection credentials.

These notes will not do justice to the correspondence I received, always a

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problem (but a welcome one) at reunion time. Among the interesting submissions was one from Peter Silverberg that included a letter he received from Earl Pike relating his travels to Fort McClellan Army Chemical Center and his indoctrination activities as a newcomer to the Chemical Corps.

Dave Powell is back to full-time retirement since successfully getting a replacement professor to run the GPS Lab at Stanford. Dave feels lucky to be within easy access to the coastal trail in Half Moon Bay just south of San Francisco.

In a message to Dave Powell, Mike Kasser gave a quick bio. Mike was born in Hungary in 1940 and came to the US in 1949. He entered MIT when he was 15. Graduating in Course 10, he stayed for his SM, then earned a doctorate in Grenoble, France. He realized he didn’t want to be a chemical engineer so went to Harvard Business School.

After working several years in New York City, Mike bought a sawmill and land and eventually NYC property.

With his second wife, a triathlete, Mike moved to Hawaii and then Tucson, where they have lived for 30 years. Mike has endowed a chemical engineering professorship, as well as MIT’s sports rehab center.

Like Mike Kasser, Charlie McCallum entered MIT earlier than most of us.

He started school in a combined first and second grade; he finished both grades and moved to third grade in his second year. Charlie admits that while his academics advanced, it hurt his social development, as in grade school and junior high he was always treated as one in the next class down. The upside was that Charlie developed a curious and ambitious intellect.

George Koo (geopkoo@gmail. com) continues to play tennis but has found “rejuvenation” by switching to pickleball. George likes pickleball’s “warm, inclusive culture.” He adds, “One can join a game wherever it’s being played. Fun for seniors able to take two to three quick steps and laugh at mistakes and missed hits.”

Richard Greene was one of a number of NROTC classmates who enjoyed our Zoom reunion. Richard has been a professor of physics at the University of Maryland since 1990. He received a three-year National Science Foundation grant to continue his research into the experimental properties of exotic quantum materials. He plans to retire

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MIT News

at the end of the three years. Richard has endowed for the outstanding PhD thesis in experimental physics. It is an international award and creating it “has been one of the most satisfying things that I have done in my life.”

Sue Schur tell us that covid-19 restrictions closed the gallery where she was to have her December exhibition, which we had reported in our last column.

John Gintell enjoyed our virtual reunion that “brought back many memories of that important part of my life.” John finds it hard to think of attending MIT from somewhere not on campus, as being in the classroom was a big part of his educational experience.

Chris Simonson was another one of our NROTC reunion attendees. After his Navy commitment (extended a year by the Berlin Wall), Chris attended grad school in astronomy at Ohio State, with his main interest being plasma physics, astrophysics, and finally galactic dynamics. An undergrad circuit theory course at MIT aided in his grad studies, showing him how to study patterns similar to radio observations of the Milky Way. However, somehow he was misled by dark matter and misinterpreted his results as the nearest galaxy. He eventually corrected his mistake in a 2018 publication of the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences.

We sadly report the deaths of two classmates and extend our sympathy to their families, colleagues, and friends.

Lawrence Roven of Ashland, OR, died in April. Larry had been an Oregon resident for more than 40 years. After graduating with us, Larry, known to many as “Yehuda,” enrolled in MIT’s architecture program, but he left to form a silkscreen textile and neckwear brand. Larry sold that company and moved to San Francisco, where he studied piano and voice and worked as a baker. He returned to Oregon in 1979 to operate his own bakery in Ashland. In his later years he focused on singing and songwriting, playing in many local venues. Larry was a member of numerous civic organizations and will be remembered for his love of dogs.

He is survived by a sister and brother.

Harold Holzer died in May. Harold was preceded in death by his wife, Consuelo. He is survived by two children and his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. After military service, Harold worked first for GE, then PerkinElmer on the Lunar Module,

“While I earn less than an active practice doc in my zip code, I’m not forced to see a patient every eight minutes. It’s exactly the way I want things.

The life of the mind is much more exciting than the life of the dollar.” —Tom Lawford ’61 and then returned to GE at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, where he worked on industrial procurement.

Harold was an accomplished pianist, and he and Consuelo were active in area musical theater, including the Schenectady Light Opera Company.

The Holzers moved to Cape Coral, FL, in 1985, continuing their activities in the theater and the arts and teaching workshops in jewelry making. They continued their support of the arts after they moved to Bradenton, FL, in 2004.

–Frank A. Tapparo, class secretary/ agent, 15 S. Montague St., Arlington, VA 22204; email: ftapparo@alum.mit.edu.

1961

60th Reunion

This column was submitted midJuly for publication in November.

Classmates for whom we have current email addresses received an advance copy when submitted (four months prior to publication). If you are not receiving an advance copy, send your updated email address to our class secretary. The advance copy of these Class Notes is accompanied by a letter containing various tidbits not included in the column, along with a historical photo or drawing related to our class. The most recent class letter contained a Don Hatfield drawing of James Killian on a four-dollar bill, which elicited favorable comments from John Maslanka and Susan Kannenberg, among others. A copy of this column, as well as other material submitted, is posted on our class website, www.1961.alumclass.mit.edu.

Several classmates remarked on the pandemic. W. Mills Dyer: “We are surviving these peculiar times, though not without problems. My wife has developed a chronic neuropathy over the past four-plus years, which makes ambulation difficult. So our days of travel are over. Hopefully a successful vaccine will be developed rapidly that will enable the country (and the world) to return to normal.” Edward Fitzgerald: “I retired my consultant work last June and am in San Diego in lockdown mode. For

fun, I got a new Tesla 3 last March and upgraded its hardware card to AP3 so I can play around with city self-driving mode (very restricted so far). My wife, Cristina, and I take rides in the Tesla, walk around the neighborhood, make biweekly trips to the grocery store, and wait for the vaccine. We’re in a strange new world, and we look forward with trepidation to what the future holds.”

Kenneth Scott: “This year has been difficult for me. In addition to the strict lockdown in Massachusetts/Boston, Cynthia died unexpectedly in January.

Were she still here, the lockdown would be almost fun, but as it is, it’s very isolating. My membership in Beacon Hill Village has been a saving grace.

Early on they assembled a virus response team (nonmedical). Almost every BHV activity has migrated, mostly to Zoom, reducing social isolation.”

Two classmates who had not written in 10 years finally did. Philip Robinson: “After my career as a senior executive with three very different electronics/ software companies and on several volunteer nonprofit boards, Sally and I now enjoy an active ‘senior period.’

Our two daughters and their families live nearby, and we’re lucky to be part of their lives. Two grandchildren have graduated in chemical engineering, and two others are continuing college, though with the additional challenge of the coronavirus impact. My work included extensive international travel, which we’ve continued in retirement.

At home outside Portland, OR, we enjoy maintaining our garden overlooking a lake, golfing, and taking regular walks. I have great memories of my years at MIT and feel fortunate that life continues to be good to us.”

Allan Douglas wrote, “I read in the class notes that you and Edward Tucker were in Sydney in February.

Ed and I were thesis partners 59 years ago. I guess this was the year to visit Australia. Linda and I took a world cruise on the Queen Mary 2, which docked in Sydney on March 5–6. We’ve cruised to Canada and South America; this year’s world cruise started in New

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Class notes

York and was scheduled to end on April 25. On March 15, after skipping all the Asian ports, the rest of the cruise was cancelled. We returned from Fremantle, Australia, to New Jersey after 42 hours of travel, just in time for the shutdown. We closed our business, Xenopore, six years ago after 25 years supplying products for biotech research. We split our time between New Jersey, where we’ve lived for 30 years, and southern California, where we have a home overlooking the ocean. We had a Zoom Father’s Day gathering with five of my six sons and eight grandchildren, all spread over the country. Elliot went to UMass after his MIT degrees (Courses 3B and 21E), received a PhD in polymer science, and is a professor at the University of Florida. Joe’s master’s degree is due to his advisor insisting he complete the paperwork for it while he worked on the PhD (both in Course 6).”

Tom Lawford reported, “I still enjoy working part-time for the Smithsonian in their occupational medicine clinic just outside DC in Reston, VA. As a Myers– Briggs INTJ, I love one-on-one. While I earn less than an active practice doc in my zip code, I’m not forced to see a patient every eight minutes. It’s exactly the way I want things. The life of the mind is much more exciting than the life of the dollar. It’s been a great ride, and I thank MIT for the early liftoff. I’m set up for telemedicine with camera and a Zoom account, but right now I’m a teleconsultant for Smithsonian staff, who are all at home. When they want a doc to help make decisions, they call me to discuss the case. Then I can remotely access our electronic medical records system at the Smithsonian and write my clinical note. I’m lucky; at age 80, odds are one in six that catching covid-19 would kill me, so I’m grateful for not going in.”

We also had brief notes from Donald Greenlee (who mentioned Peter Bankson, Arthur Chen, and William Hecht), Thomas Knatt, Peter Ross, and William Strauss.

Since our last column, the death of Edward Agro was reported. Reported deaths are immediately listed on the home page of our class website. We try to publish the obituary of every classmate whose death is reported to us. You can find and search them in the Obituary and Remembrance section of our class website and can post (through our class secretary) your own remembrances in response.

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–Arthur A. Katz, class secretary, 18 Orsini Dr., Larchmont, NY 105381642; tel: (914) 834-8393; email: akatz@ alum.mit.edu.

1962 Class President George Meyer wrote: “This is as apolitical as I can get, but it expresses my feelings: Black lives matter; Latino lives matter; DACA lives matter; LGBTQ lives matter; Jewish lives matter; Muslim lives matter; Hmong lives matter; refugee lives matter; Rohingya lives matter; Uighur lives matter; Syrian lives matter. If we talk to each other, hopefully we can better understand others. Please stay safe, wear a mask when out of the house, keep physical distancing, avoid indoor gettogethers, practice good handwashing, and do not drink the Clorox or the Kool-Aid.” We offer our sincere condolences to Terry Bray on the passing of his wife, Judy, and to Larry Pitts on the passing of his wife, Mary. Our spouses are so much a part of our lives and achievements, we all feel the loss, as we know others do. Your class officers are considering a special memorial section of our class website for you to submit memories or information on spouses, friends, or companions.

Dr. Mohamed Talaat Badrawi, SM ’63 (Course 16), Aero/astro, died May 24 in Giza, Egypt. He was elected to Sigma Gamma Tau and obtained a PhD in 1967 from the University of California Berkeley. His daughter, Fadia Badrawi, wrote: “I regret to let you know that my father passed away … of covid-19. [He] had no underlying health issues and we are shocked and saddened by this loss.

He is survived by my mother, myself, my brother, and two grandsons.

“My father was a pioneer, one of the few in Egypt at the time to transfer into MIT from Cairo University. He graduated as an aeronautical engineer and worked for United Airlines in San Francisco and Chicago. He returned to Egypt in 1975, when his father passed away, to try and recoup the family assets that were sequestered under Nasser. He had been in Cairo ever since. He was an exemplary father and husband. He thankfully lived a full life. We will miss his wisdom, humor, love, and creativity.”

Dr. Roberto Peccei, PhD ’69, died on June 1, following a hip fracture. Dr. Peccei was 78 and had Parkinson’s disease. An internationally renowned

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The late Roberto Peccei, PhD ’69, with Stanford University colleague Helen Quinn, contributed the Peccei-Quinn Symmetry—an elegant theory that predicts the existence of very light particles called axions, which may be the mysterious “dark matter” accounting for most of the matter in the universe. particle physicist, he was UCLA’s vice chancellor for research from 2000 to 2010. He is fondly remembered as an outstanding member of the MIT ski team. Dr. Peccei taught undergraduate and graduate students at UCLA, including in his popular physics of energy courses. He was dean of the division of physical sciences at UCLA from 1993 to 2001. David Saltzberg, chair of UCLA’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, called him “a giant of theoretical particle physics” who made “monumental achievements and contributions to both science and the university, and who provided sage experience and wisdom in physics, in leadership and in life.” Peccei, with Stanford University colleague Helen Quinn, contributed the Peccei-Quinn Symmetry—an elegant theory that ties together several branches of physics and has important implications for our universe. The Peccei-Quinn Symmetry predicts the existence of very light particles called axions, which may be the mysterious “dark matter” accounting for most of the matter in the universe.

Born in Torino, Italy, in 1942 and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Peccei entered MIT as a physics undergraduate.

He earned his master’s at New York University in 1964, then returned to MIT to earn a PhD in physics. After a brief period of postdoctoral research at the University of Washington, he joined the physics faculty of Stanford in 1971. In 1978, he joined the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Munich, Germany, and from 1987 to 1989 was the head of theory at one of the largest and most highly respected European laboratories, the German Electron Synchotron (DESY), in Hamburg.

Peccei joined UCLA’s physics faculty in 1989, where he conducted research in theoretical physics and served in many senior administrative positions.

His extended obituary is posted on our class website.

David Bragdon wrote: “Chances are good that many classmates are currently downsizing, plan to, or already have.

Dan Smythe said he was relocating in June, and Ollie Smoot said he and Sandy have scheduled their migration at June’s close. Regina and I will haul worldly goods to Northampton, MA, on July 6 and 7 and should be resting in lawn chairs under the oak tree in our new backyard on July 8, unless it rains.

Our new neighbors already include us in their Zoom meetings, so we have a jumpstart on getting to know everyone. Walt Colby lives an easy walk to downtown.”

James Draper wrote: “Our classmates have been successfully hunkering down.

As class agent, sending thank-you notes has been an adventure; the Alumni Association has greatly helped me with email notes! This even though MIT staff have been unable to enter MIT buildings to forward me blank thank-you notes.

An MIT memorial lectureship has been created in the name of my good friend Chuck Kolb ’67 (who did not succumb to covid-19). Contributions may be made to the Charles E. Kolb Lectureship Fund (3150905), which extends MIT’s quality research discussion in the atmospheric sciences. With social interaction nearly eliminated I have been writing, gardening, and sanding canoe paddles for when we get out on the water.”

–Hank McCarl, secretary, email: hmccarl@alum.mit.edu; Herschel Clopper, asst. secretary, email: HerschC@alum.mit.edu. Keep in touch at http://alumweb.mit.edu/classes/1962.

1963 Larry Casey wrote that he and Ira Blumenthal were partners on their bachelor’s thesis, attempting to build a gyro-stabilized, remote-controlled bicycle. They couldn’t quite pull it off, but they came close. Larry says it would be a snap with today’s technology! He grew up in South Boston, attended Boston Latin School, and spent six years commuting to MIT for SB and SM degrees in Course 16. He married the girl of his dreams after the first degree and spent two years in the Army, including a delightful year in

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the tropics of Southeast Asia. After the second degree, Mary and Larry settled in Acton, MA, and he had a 34-year career with Raytheon, mostly in Bedford and Tewksbury. He was heavily involved in the early design and development of the Patriot air defense system, and then gravitated to the management of a couple of “integrated design” departments covering the spectrum of Raytheon’s programs, including the AMRAAM (air-to-air missile) and several “black” programs that led to some of the advanced systems in service today.

Mary and Larry raised two kids, Chris and Kathy, and enjoyed the thrills and hassles of early growth, youth sports, high school anxieties, college admissions, weddings, and the arrival of six grandchildren, five of whom are already college graduates! Along the way, they found New England winters less and less tolerable. They purchased time-share property in Aruba and spent many weeks there, meeting friends from across the US and world during the next 30-plus years. They celebrated their 50th anniversary there in 2014.

In 1995, Larry managed several programs in Huntsville, AL, for Raytheon. They liked the area so much they decided to stay after Larry retired in 2002. Warm winters, year-round golf, Tennessee River bass fishing, and ridiculously low taxes in a vibrant city that sucks down incredible Defense and NASA dollars have made for a sweet retirement, not to mention worshipping at the shrine of Alabama college football.

Occasional trips north to visit family keep them in touch with their Boston roots. Larry says “the first 78 years have been great, thanks in large part to MIT,” and he looks forward to the next several.

Alan Marty was in Course 7 (Biology) at MIT, with our class until 1962, when Northwestern University gave him early admission to medical school. Then he was admitted to the ’66 surgical internship class at Harvard’s Brigham Hospital in Boston (then called Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, after a man who supposedly owned all the whorehouses in Boston).

He got an NIH research fellowship at University of California San Diego’s bioengineering department, followed by surgical residency at UC San Diego and a cardiac surgery fellowship at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles.

In May 1972, just before delivering a paper at Stockholm’s Karolinska

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MIT News

Hospital, Alan spent a few days cruising the Greek Islands and met a French lady named Marie-Paule. After giving the paper, he went to Paris, continued to Los Angeles with Marie-Paule, and they got married that August. After serving as a commander in the Medical Corps of the US Naval Reserve, Alan practiced cardiac surgery in Portland, OR, then helped start a cardiac surgery program in Evansville, IN, where his sister lived.

Alan and Marie-Paule moved to Chicago in 2016 to be close to their two daughters and two grandchildren. They live parttime in Paris on the Left Bank. Alan has published over 500 articles in medical journals and has served on the editorial boards of three medical journals. He has written two books about WWII Paris, including The Art of Walking in Paris: Pathways to the Sublime. If you would like to read it, contact Alan at aempmarty@aol.com.

Dee and Tony Geisler are world travelers and have been everywhere.

Tony wrote about their March 2020 trip to Jordan and Egypt. They visited Aswan and flew to Abu Simbel to see the Temple of Ramses the Great. That’s when the fun began. Their children told them to get out of Egypt that day or they might get stuck there. The government had issued an order canceling flights to 20 European countries. Tony and Dee were scheduled to fly from Cairo to Paris and on to San Francisco. I don’t have room for all the details, but the trip involved driving through the desert in a sandstorm and getting the last flight out of Aswan to Cairo. On the final flight home Dee and Tony were the first off the plane. They had their temperatures taken and went home to self-quarantine for 14 days. On March 16 residents of the Bay Area were told to shelter in place. Days later Gov. Gavin Newsom shut down the whole state. Tony says he and Dee are fine, Jordan and Egypt were terrific, they survived some pretty hairy situations, and for many reasons it was the trip of a lifetime.

Harold Solomon died in 2013 in Japan, where he lived and worked for many years. I knew Harold from Baker House. He was an enthusiastic participant in intramurals when I was athletic chairman. I could always count on Harold coming out to play.

After getting an SB in physics, Harold received a PhD in meteorology in 1969 from MIT. His professional work centered on physical oceanography and climate studies. Harold wrote several

“As I write this, we are at our home on Cape Cod, socially distancing. We’ve cleaned out our freezers, which had a lot of UFOs (unidentified frozen objects). We’ve can actually now see the back wall on several shelves.” —Bill Ribich ’64 books, including one on mountaineering in Japan.

Roger Pyle died unexpectedly at home in St. Charles, IL, in May. He was born in Shanghai, where his father was an electrical engineer with the Shanghai Power Company. Roger lived in Brazil from 1951 until he entered MIT in 1959.

After earning an SB in physics, he got a PhD in physics with a specialty in space physics from the University of Chicago in 1972. In 1965 he married Beatriz Maranho Pyle, of Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Together they raised three children.

From 1972 to 1998 he was a senior research associate in the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago.

In 1998 he joined the Bartol Research Institute Neutron Monitor Program at the University of Delaware. After Roger’s official retirement in 2007, he moved to Illinois, joined his family’s consulting firm, and continued managing data from the nine University of Delaware neutron monitors in the US, Canada, and Antarctica. Roger is survived by his wife, Beatriz (Tiza); his children, Katherine Underwood and Robert Pyle; four grandchildren; and his brother, Lawrence. He is also survived by his faithful dog, Suds.

Our condolences to the loved ones of our classmates. If you have remembrances to share, please send them to me.

Send me an email and let me know what you are doing. Your classmates will enjoy hearing your stories. Regards to all.

–Mike Bertin, 22 Gillman St., Irvine, CA 92612; email: MikeBertin01@ gmail.com. If you want to schmooze, call 949-786-9450.

1964 The good news is that I didn’t receive any obituaries this month; the bad news is that only three people answered my requests for news.

Ed Casper reports that all of his musical activities (accordion, singing) have been canceled due to covid-19.

He says it’s a good time to brush up on techniques, new songs and new versions

of old songs, new improvs, etc., all in anticipation of a busier future.

He and Gale are still busy; he works as director of technical and regulatory affairs at Lifeplus International (vitamins, nutritionals, etc.) in Batesville, AR, for their expanding market, especially in Europe. At work they practice social distancing along with wearing masks and gloves and lots of sanitizer everywhere.

David Saul started last fall as executive in residence at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) Business School. WPI went fully online in March, and the coming fall will bring a lot of changes. David, and yours truly, wish all our classmates to stay safe and healthy.

James Dorr has been sheltering in place and continuing to write and market horror and science fiction stories.

He has a number of stories in various anthologies and magazines as well as a couple of books. Most notable are his “novel in stories,” Tombs: A Chronicle of Latter-Day Times of Earth, from Elder Signs Press, and The Tears of Isis, from Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing.

The latter was a 2013 nominee for a Bram Stoker Award for Fiction Collection.

James also has a novelette in Unreal from The Great Void Books, plus stories either published or forthcoming in Black Infinity and Pulp Literature magazines, all available on Amazon and similar book sites. See his blog at www.jamesdorrwriter.wordpress.com/ for updates.

As I write this, we are at our home on Cape Cod, socially distancing. We’ve cleaned out our freezers, which had a lot of UFOs (unidentified frozen objects).

We’ve can actually now see the back wall on several shelves. I’ve also finally organized my several large boxes of photographs … and now I’m beginning to wonder if our children or anyone else will ever look at them.

Two of our grandchildren, ages 13 and 11, live with us on the Cape and attend day camp near our house. Due to covid-19 they’ve eliminated swimming at the camp but still do tennis and sailing, which fortunately keeps them occupied most of the day and gives us some rest.

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Class notes

As I reported in January, we were in Vietnam as the pandemic broke out.

The number of people wearing masks there rapidly went from the usual 5% to about 90%. They certainly didn’t practice social distancing, and as of this writing they have had less than 200 deaths in a country of 90 million. I lost my iPad during our flight and so became quite friendly with the lost-and-found manager at Ho Chi Minh Airport. He reports that except for a lack of travelers everything is back to normal.

–Bill Ribich, 18 Revere St., L ex i n g to n , M A 0 24 2 0 ; e m a i l : WCRibich@comcast.net.

1965 Vinod Jhunjhunwala: “Covid-19 has really made things different and difficult!

We were stuck in Florida for three and a half months and now hesitate to leave New Jersey. Thanks to the initiative of Dave Mickelson ’66, we organized a video chat with five other ’65 alumni. It encouraged me to have a video chat with ’65 Chem Engineering Practice School.

Waiting for travel to reopen to allow a cruise in Europe and the Caribbean.”

Fred Kern: “My wife, Anne, and I have lived in a retirement home on Hutchinson Island, FL, for five years. It was a wonderful spot to be ‘in place’ for covid-19, with a 160-foot-long dock and seawall and a 42-foot Catana catamaran.

Usually we sail the boat north for the summer, but this year it was difficult to get crew so we sheltered in place here. Visitors welcome; we have lots of bedrooms, and the Fort Pierce area has many attractions including the National Navy SEAL Museum. Stay well!”

Tom King: “After graduating in Course 8, I attended the University of Colorado for a PhD in nuclear physics.

In Boulder I learned to ski and took up fly-fishing and alpine mountaineering, activities I still enjoy (although rock climbing is out nowadays). After my PhD, I did my postdoc at the University of Victoria and worked on instrumentation for the external beam lines. I then went to the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility and stayed on at the Los Alamos Scientific Lab (now ‘National Lab’) as a staff member in the Vulnerability, Lethality, and Effects group. My wife and I were married in Los Alamos, and our two children were born there. I left at the end of 1987 to work for Boeing on projects involving what is now called AI and VR, and on a project for the Navy.

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I was divorced in 1993 and went to the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) in Albuquerque as a National Academy of Sciences senior research associate, then I joined Ball Aerospace, where I was their program chief scientist for AFRL programs in Albuquerque.

“I retired from Ball in 2011 and moved to Bellingham, WA. My children live in the Seattle area. I visit them frequently and enjoy watching my grandchildren grow. I enjoy exploring the North Cascades, fly-fishing (mostly in BC), and traveling. My partner (girlfriend) lives in Vancouver, BC, and is fluent in French and German as well as English; we enjoy visiting Germany and Provence.

A year or two ago I reconnected with my undergraduate roommate, Steve Hayashi ’66, and we took a pleasant cruise in Portugal. The border closures are making life much less enjoyable. I can’t even visit my friend in Amity, OR, to exchange puns and enjoy the contents of his cellar.”

Karen Anne Kolling: “Almost 18 years ago, I moved back to Rhode Island to my late mom’s house, at the edge of a cove and built on land my grandfather bought a hundred years ago.

The previous house was badly damaged by the 1938 and 1954 hurricanes. It’s only a matter of time before a hurricane or rising sea level takes this house out, hopefully not before I croak. I’ve hired out a lot of chores as I get creakier, but I still enjoy gardening and bird-watching.

I plan to convert more of the yard to wildlife-friendly plantings. At last count, I had about 1,500 e-books, all of them actually read. I’m looking to help with a volunteer project involving astronomy or geology; contact KarenAnneKolling@ gmail.com.”

Richard Charles Larson: “I’m retired as professor, post-tenure, but still active on MIT projects, like MIT BLOSSOMS (www.blossoms.mit.edu) and new open-source lessons via project-based learning: ‘New Turnkey Project-Based Learning Resources for High School STEM Teachers.’”

Michael Levine: “I published a trade book (accessible to nonspecialists) about visual perception: Believing Is Seeing, Your Visual System: Perceiving and Misperceiving Objects and Scenes.

I cover basic physiology and a brief history of perception, some optical illusions (especially in everyday scenes), perception in the recovery of sight, use of perceptual illusions in art, and some speculation about the role of noise in

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perceptual processing. The book is available directly from iUniverse.com or on Amazon.com. Search: Michael W. Levine.”

Henry Lichstein: “I keep busy but cannot keep track of what day it is.

I shorten my biography every time I review it, because the distinctions I felt necessary in the past have less and less importance. We don’t travel; Janine and I are ‘quaranteaming’ with our son’s family, who live two blocks away. We see our grandson often; fortunately, he had his bar mitzvah a few months before the pandemic hit. And we got a dog, which has been great. We are blessed with good health but at the cost of social isolation.

We do stay in touch with classmates. I call this ‘news’ even though it won’t be printed for months, since I see no reason to hope our isolation will have been lifted. Janine and I funded a mental health counseling position at MIT, which gave us much satisfaction. I urge you to find something you want MIT to do for which they lack funds, and fund it. It’s a pleasant way to manage your assets.”

Steve Lipner: “I’m sure that life has slowed down for many. It has for us.

The week after the reunion, Anne and I had to cancel a combined business and vacation trip to Norway and Ireland, returning to Seattle for a couple of days, and then flying to Washington for a government advisory board meeting. I enjoyed the virtual class reunion; it was fun to hear classmates’ stories. We’ve alternated between our house in Seattle and our cabin on Camano Island, and have had socially distanced visits with kids and grandkids. Our cabin is great: We have a long stretch of beach where we can walk and watch the local bird life without crowds. It’s a Pacific Northwest beach with cold water, rocks, and logs to complement the sand. My part-time and pro bono work were largely remote even before covid-19 so I’m used to calls and video meetings, but we both miss dining out or traveling somewhere new.

I look forward to seeing folks in person at the reunion in 2025!”

–Cliff Weinstein, 26 Sherburne Rd., Lexington, MA 02421; email: CJW@ ll.mit.edu; fax: 781-981-0186; tel: 781862-2751 home, 781-981-7521 work.

1966

55th Reunion

From Paul Rudovsky: “It’s been too many moons since I sent news. My bride, Pat, and I look forward to a normal, virus-free 55th reunion in 2021, but

who knows at this point. I’m in touch with Rick Lentz and David Mundel, as well as Steve Disman, Ted Kaplan, Stu Nemser, John Schwartz, and Alan Steinman. One of the most memorable MIT experiences in the past 54 years was organizing a Sigma Alpha Mu reunion in Cambridge in September 2011. It was attended by 66 Sammies (mostly from classes ’59 to ’69) and 56 wives, significant others, sons, and daughters … and it included nine of our classmates.

“Pat and I met at a mutual friend’s memorial service in 2006 and married in 2008. I lived full-time in Pinehurst, NC, and she was in Milton, MA. Since 2008 we’ve split our time between the two locations. We spend much time (especially summer and holidays) with our eight grandchildren (ages 2 to 10).

Shortly after our wedding I retired for good (having flunked retirement six years earlier), but that soon morphed into ‘work’ on panels to compile lists of top golf courses for Golf Digest and Golf Magazine. We travel the US and the world playing and evaluating the best courses, voting biannually to create lists of 100 top US and 100 top world courses.

To date I’ve played 1,219 courses, which is only 3.2% of the world’s estimated 38,000 courses. Since Pat and I love golf, this ‘job’ cannot be beaten … plus it keeps me ‘off the streets.’ Health issues occasionally dominate our time.

I had triple bypass surgery at Duke University Hospital. In May my recovery gained momentum, and I am back on the golf course.”

From Sam Wagstaff: “After 37 years as a computer science professor at Purdue University, I have finally retired.

Last summer, my fortune-teller said I would have to teach classes remotely from home after spring break in 2020. I didn’t want to, so I retired at the end of December. With no classes to teach or committees to meet, I have more time for research. After a five-mile hike each morning, I sit at my kitchen table and prove theorem after theorem. Of course, this is what I like most to do. As of June, I’ve written four papers since I retired.

The only downside of the pandemic for me is that I can’t play with my triplet granddaughters, who live 100 miles away. Stay safe.”

From Bill Schnicke: “My lovely wife, Naima, and I celebrated our 55th anniversary last month in a modest manner due to the covid-19 pandemic.

I met Naima in sophomore year at a Baker House mixer and was hooked

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MIT News

“Last summer, my fortune-teller said I would have to teach classes remotely from home after spring break in 2020. I didn’t want to, so I retired at the end of December. After a five-mile hike each morning, I sit at my kitchen table and prove theorem after theorem.” —Sam Wagstaff ’66 from that moment. We married while I was still in school and lived a life of poverty for many years, as we started our family young. Our three daughters are doing well—catching up with us on age. Five years ago, we enjoyed our 50th anniversary with a fantastic meal at Musso & Frank Grill in Hollywood, sitting in Marilyn Monroe’s booth (they probably say that to all newbies). We are both well but getting on in age. I had been golfing three times a week yearround here in Los Angeles but stopped due to the virus. Computers and reading partly fill the void.

“MIT’s letter outlining the fall term saddened me. I can’t imagine NOT attending classes in person at our beloved Cambridge campus. Weekly problem sets were a fantastic way to learn—you didn’t learn facts, you learned to solve problems, a lifelong asset. I’m saddened by the rioting and unemployment due to the pandemic.

It affects everyone. Before covid-19, homelessness was already an issue in L.A., but it is now magnified. Crime is up and we debate moving to a ‘safer’ place outside of L.A. and even California.

Weather is much worse outside of Southern California, and moving at our age is a big deal. One further note, I used to look at the math puzzles posted

by Allan Gottlieb ’67 in Tech Review and have to admit that most of the time I was rendered helpless by the problems.

Am I alone?”

Jerome J. McDonald, 75, of Brookeville, MD, passed away on May 7. He is survived by his wife and his three brothers.

From Matt Fichtenbaum: “No exciting adventures to report in this time of hunkering down. At an age when sensible people retire, I’ve been too dependent on engineering’s interesting technical problems and brilliant colleagues, so I’ve been working part-time for the last dozen years (highly recommended). We all work from home these days, and the company has implemented it well: good access to colleagues, some folks on-site to set up equipment, and good video

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communication. So the engineering part of my life is the most normal aspect.

Judy and I typically take an international trip or two most years. Not this year.

The prospect of spending four weeks to travel somewhere, with two weeks in quarantine and two more weeks on return, just doesn’t appeal. But ‘taking a year off’ has its advantages.

Our daughter and her spouse live nearby, and friends are just a video call away, so in spirit we’re spared serious isolation. Here’s hoping that classmates, community, and everybody else make it through this with only minor discomforts and distractions.”

–Jeff Kenton, secretary, email: jeffrey.kenton@comcast.net.

1967 Bruce Twickler in Florida reports on a pandemic-era Zoom meeting of “seven esteemed members” of our class: “Doug McCraith in Massachusetts was the host and opined that the Zoom interface must have been written by liberal arts majors.

Also on the call were Travis Gamble in Arizona, Ken Follansbee in Texas, Tom Tennison in North Carolina, Bill Flor in New Mexico, and Kim Thurston in Massachusetts. Several profound observations were made, but I have forgotten what they were. It’s okay because we are scheduled to meet again this Thursday and I can ask someone to summarize the last meeting for me.

Respectfully submitted, Bruce Twickler, Class of 1967, the last class MIT admitted solely on the basis of good looks.”

Donald Mattes of Boston left this life on May 4 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. A wonderful Zoom remembrance of Don on May 24 was attended by friends, family, and associates from around the world, including many of Don’s ’67 classmates, several of us in our red blazers. Don came to MIT from Peabody High School in Pittsburgh, PA, lived in Baker House, and earned his SB and SM in electrical engineering. His early career was in GPS and solar energy, followed by more than 30 years with Andover Controls,

Andover, MA, including as managing director of Andover Controls Europe.

He also was president and CEO of two other companies.

For many years, Don was an active member of our ’67 reunion committee.

A happy man and good friend, he was much loved for his engaging smile and wonderful sense of humor. With his wife, Glenda, he traveled the world, visiting six continents, often by bicycle or skis, occasionally by boat. He loved experiencing cultural differences. This love expanded with his involvement with MIT’s Host to International Students Program. Over 20 years, he and Glenda built a family of international students who remain part of Glenda’s life.

As Don began to recognize his decline due to Alzheimer’s, he became involved with the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. Glenda writes, “May those who follow us never know the debilitating horrors of this disease.

Don loved life; those of us left behind can best honor him by continuing to live in the style he loved.”

I received notice from MIT that Donald Weldon died on February 14.

His last known home address was in Washington state. Don grew up in Lexington, MA, and graduated from Lexington High School. As a commuter to MIT, he was a member of the Non-Resident Student Association (NRSA). He was president of the Young Republican Club and graduated in mechanical engineering. Early in his career he worked at General Electric in Lynn, MA, while living in nearby Boxford. If you have additional information about Donald, please email me, and I’ll include it in a future column.

Serendipitously, while reflecting on the passing of Donald Weldon and his time in NRSA, I came across a delightful Slice of MIT guest blog post by class president Bob Ferrara about a unique NRSA reunion at Tech Reunions 2010.

Although NRSA had disbanded 25 years earlier due to declining commuter enrollment, about 40 NRSA alums attended the event, including the Magliozzi brothers, Tom ’58 and Ray ’72, of NPR’s Car Talk fame. They grew up near MIT in East Cambridge.

Alumni from the ’60s may remember that NRSA was headquartered in a row house at 318 Memorial Drive next to McCormick Hall, and that it moved to 311 Memorial Drive to make way for the McCormick Hall expansion (the East Tower, completed in 1967). Bob writes,

“NRSA was the commuters’ ‘fraternity,’ a thriving bunch known not only for their great intramural hockey teams but also for their excellent parties.” When a predecessor group to NRSA was first organized in the early 1930s, almost a third of MIT students commuted from home. Alumni from the 1950s and before knew this group as the 5:15 Club, from the departure time of an important train from North Station.

Edie and Chuck Hottinger have lived on Bainbridge Island, WA, since 2013, after spending most of their years since graduation in California.

In retirement, Chuck got involved with a local men’s group of retired professionals on the island known as the Oatmeal Club, after their eponymous breakfast every Thursday morning.

Established over 30 years ago, the group now numbers over 140 (with a threeyear waiting list). Members come from varied backgrounds, including law, business, medicine, politics, academia, and engineering. After chatting over breakfast, the group has a guest speaker on any of a variety of subjects, such as cryptography (including a demonstration of a WWII German Enigma machine), natural and political history, and current events. Speakers have included University of Washington faculty, Washington State Supreme Court justices, the local US congressman, research scientists, authors, and analysts from the oil and gas industry.

Serving on the program committee for the last five years, Chuck actively recruits speakers for each week. This is no mean feat, especially since the program starts at the ungodly hour of 7:00 a.m. (requiring a speaker from Seattle to catch the 6:10 a.m. ferry).

Given that the speaker’s honorarium is only a bowl of oatmeal, Chuck is used to rejection. To ease the pain of early-morning travel, some presenters are invited for dinner the prior evening and put up in a nearby B&B. While the original stricture of the Oatmeal Club was to “avoid religion and politics,” the latter is hard to avoid these days, so presentations and discussions are increasingly lively. Since early March the meetings have become online Zoom presentations (starting at a more civilized 8:00 a.m.). This makes it easier to recruit speakers, and members who decamp to warmer climates for the winter can dial in. Also, in this time of political polarization, the club can recruit more “controver-

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Class notes

sial” speakers, since there is no longer the chance of “cereal bowls being thrown” if arguments get out of hand.

This makes for livelier programs and easier cleanups.

So after a career in medical instrument design and regulation (and organizing uncounted meetings and presentations on technical and legal topics), Chuck is back to meeting organization but on a wider range of topics. And since travel to visit daughters and their families in New York City, Scottsdale, AZ, and the San Francisco Bay Area is on hold, Edie and Chuck are hunkered down on the island but keeping in touch with the world outside.

–Jim Swanson, secretary, 15302 29th Dr. SE, Mill Creek, WA 98012; email: jswanson@alum.mit.edu.

1968 Greetings again from the banks of the Potomac amid the covid-19 pandemic.

We hope everyone is keeping safe. To date we have not heard of any classmates impacted by covid-19. We hope that remains the case.

Margie (Eikrem) Keller and Rob Keller (Course 8), PhD ’70, are doing well in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, and their family is fine. Although daughter Karen has seen many covid-19 patients at Prince George’s Hospital Center in Maryland, she and her family are well.

Margie is doing two things she always planned to return to in retirement: relearning Spanish on Duolingo and playing piano. She enjoys both but was always too busy before coronavirus. Rob is getting into ham radio, and they are doing more exercise.

She enjoys medical conferences from the hospital via Zoom. The pediatric infectious disease division discusses all the patients weekly. Grand rounds are also on Zoom. “It helps bring a touch of normality to life.”

Last November, Margie received the Legends award from the Lundquist Institute for her work on using noninvasive tools to detect the harmful effects of HIV in perinatally infected children as they mature to adulthood.

Earlier detection of HIV brain damage is critical in minimizing harm to these youth. She applied several new MRI techniques, enabling more-sensitive detection of the harmful effects. She also successfully investigated the best way to prevent transmission of HIV from mother to fetus.

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Rick Lufkin and his wife, Ruth, have been in Ohio since mid-March on full-time grandparenting duty. Three young grandsons keep them busy while number two son and his wife work out of their home offices. Rick and Ruth find the experience great for their agility. Rick is in his second year as chair of MIT’s Cardinal and Gray Society, for MIT alums out 50-plus years. The Society traditionally holds luncheons in the Boston area and around the country. Since the group is practicing social distancing, they are going virtual.

Stay tuned for an event as near as your computer. Rick would love to see you at these events, which combine a taste of the fire hose with some serious socialization. And remember, only three years till our 55th reunion. Otherwise, he reports that all is well, albeit always a tad frenetic.

After retiring from electronics consulting in 2018, Walt Morrey and his wife moved from Lyon, France, after nine years to Bénodet, Finistère, France, last fall. They enjoy it there. Walt still does massage to reduce chronic pain and help people with fibromyalgia. He has two videos on YouTube and a longer video for the untrained to start to help friends or family in a constructive way.

We are saddened to report the death of Bill Volkman, who passed away peacefully on May 27 in Lebanon, NH, at the Jack Byrne Center for Palliative and Hospice Care.

Bill was born in Buffalo, NY, to William and Dorothy Volkman. He was active in Boy Scouts, attaining Eagle rank at 13. In 1960, he represented New Hampshire at the Report to the Nation in Washington, DC, where 50 scouts from the 50 states gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Scouting in the US. He attended high school at Phillips Exeter Academy and graduated from MIT with an SB in mathematics. Bill spent his career in computers as a programmer analyst, mostly as an independent consultant to companies such as Reuters, Telnetex, Kerygma, Spectrum Communications, Standard and Poor’s Comstock, and Interactive Data. An avid Juice Newton fan, he traveled to over a hundred of her concerts. He toured 49 states, missing only Hawaii, and was interested in coins and stamps.

Bill retired in 2012, moving to Taylor Community in Laconia, NH. In 2016, he had a successful kidney transplant and owed his additional four years to

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Margie (Eikrem) Keller ’68 received the Legends award from the Lundquist Institute for her work on using noninvasive tools to detect the harmful effects of HIV in perinatally infected children as they mature to adulthood. the wonderful Dartmouth-Hitchcock transplant center.

Bill was especially gifted and a generous person with a passionate appreciation for family, friends, coworkers, and caretakers. A graveside service is planned sometime in 2021 at the Riverside Cemetery in Milford, NH. Our sincere condolences to Bill’s friends and family.

That’s all for now. We look forward to hearing from you. Please keep safe!

– Gail a n d Michael Marcus, cosecretaries, 8026 Cypress Grove Ln., Cabin John, MD 20818; emails: ghmarcus@alum.mit.edu, mjmarcus@ alum.mit.edu.

1969 Dean Lycas checks in, “I’ve reverted to the interests of my college days: playing bridge in the wee hours; listening to music (mainly jazz now, versus rock); still sampling every alcoholic beverage available. My walls are covered in art.

Have a girlfriend from Wellesley. All much better without the distraction of classes. Art and food are the impetuses to travel, which I’m afraid will be slow to restart. My focus is sharing with friends and the financial health of my extended family.”

Jim Kornberg says, “I am humbled to have been selected as the medical advisor to the national American C o n fe r e n c e o f G o v e r n m e n t a l Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) Bioaerosol Committee that formulates recommendations for exposure control and personal protective equipment (PPE) strategies for every conceivable pathogenic biological agent, including covid-19, pathogenic bacteria, molds, and other viruses. The ACGIH also promulgates the widely known TLVs (threshold limit values) for hundreds of toxic chemical agents.

“I’m working with the best industrial hygienists, environmental engineers, microbiologists, toxicologists, and epidemiologists in the world to rewrite a major ACGIH tome on this subject.

We began the work before covid-19 but

now have turned our attention to this pandemic menace.”

Fr o m M i c h a e l M a n n , “ I ’ m sheltering in place in St. Augustine, FL, helping to keep two nonprofits functioning, a concert band and a performing arts center steering committee. I’ve been in touch with classmates Steve Nord, Scott Rhodes, and Bob Stern.

“What could be a more appropriate song for our times than the Tom Lehrer classic ‘I Got it from Agnes’? Listen to the original at www.youtube/6WHSVOVLmNY or find a modern cover version.”

Carol Scott-Conner is professor emeritus of surgery at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine.

“I retired from clinical practice (and administrative work) in October 2015.

I teach first-year medical students and serve on our institutional review board (the committee that reviews clinical trials). I’m also busy writing, and last year I enrolled in a creative writing and narrative medicine graduate program via distance learning. I still give talks and review manuscripts nationally.

“The covid-19 pandemic has affected clinical care in teaching hospitals all over the country; it’s been well covered by the media. How it has affected clinical teaching and clinical and basic science research is less obvious.

“As an over-70 retired physician, I’m neither needed nor wanted as a frontline soldier in this fight. My age group is considered vulnerable, and if we get sick, we just add to the burden. So we are told to stay away.

Fortunately, locally we’ve had success (so far) in blunting the surge’s peak and are starting to cautiously expand clinical service. This makes it a bit easier to stand by and watch. My heart aches for my colleagues in NYC, Detroit, Chicago, and other big cities and hot spots.

“I left my little office after my last ‘physical’ meeting with my students and the IRB on March 12 and have not returned. After spring break, I

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MIT News

“They say that when a hawk has gone through a period of famine, a scar (a ‘famine trace’) runs across the feathers at the corresponding point in time. Our students and residents will bear this ‘famine trace’ for the rest of their lives. I believe they will make excellent physicians, but the anxiety is palpable.” —Carol Scott-Conner ’69 resumed my weekly sessions with firstyear students, but not in person. All my outside activities have continued via computer rather than face-to-face.

“Our students’ educational experience has definitely been affected.

It’s relatively easy to continue first-year medical education remotely, but by the middle of the second year, students start clinical training and are on the wards.

For safety and to conserve PPEs, these activities were curtailed. For example, it would be normal and expected for a third-year medical student to scrub in the OR on operations, but US hospitals drastically cut their surgical volume by postponing elective surgery (we are just starting to ramp it up again). And students haven’t scrubbed on the few urgent cases unless the senior surgeon could justify them as ‘necessary.’

“As for surgical residents, the decrease in elective surgery means they may be short the cases they need to finish training. We anticipate that our national accrediting agencies will make allowances, but it is a source of anxiety. This anxiety adds to residents’ stress about potential exposure to covid19 and risk to their families, as well as their large medical school debt.

“Libraries of video instructional material are available, and simulators will fill some gaps, but we are adjusting to a new clinical/educational environment. They say that when a hawk has gone through a period of famine, a scar (a ‘famine trace’) runs across the feathers at the corresponding point in time. Our students and residents will bear this ‘famine trace’ for the rest of their lives. I believe they will make excellent physicians, but the anxiety is palpable. The best I can do is try to guide them in ways to ameliorate the effects.”

From Danny Beaudry: “In early March, I visited my sister in Paarl, South Africa, arriving at the end of the grape harvest. Her family operates Black Pearl Wines. (Both the Oro and Mischief Maker are highly recommended for red wine enthusiasts.) We attended a performance of Ein deutsches Requiem,

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one of my favorite Brahms compositions, at Stellenbosch University, near Cape Town. My friends from California joined us for several days. Then ... my flights home were canceled, rescheduled, and canceled again. President Ramaphosa announced a national lockdown. The South African response to the pandemic was timely, very restrictive (only food and medicines could be sold), and well communicated—a marked contrast to the political bickering that characterized the US response.

“With the borders closed, we hunkered down on the family farm, six Americans and five South African residents enjoying our family time and the beautiful sunsets. I tutored my nieces in precalculus. Citizens of Brazil were the first to be flown home, followed by Canadians, Europeans, and UK citizens. Their governments arranged charter flights. But the US efforts lagged behind as Washington, DC, staff ‘hiccuped.’ Finally, the US ambassador took charge and arranged repatriation flights on Ethiopian Airlines. After a long flight on a new 787, it was great to get to a deserted Dulles International via a fuel stop in Togo. A near-empty flight to Boston got me home. “[At writing,] I’m near the end of my 14-day quarantine. I used some of my ‘alone’ time sewing face masks with cloth remnants from my quilting.

“I hope you are all well and stay safe.

And, most important, wash your hands.”

–Carl Everett, email: ceverett@ alum.mit.edu.

1970 A strange year. We are writing in July and hope that by publication there will be a viable vaccine in sight. Here are some tales from “Life Goes On During a Pandemic.”

Debbie Trice was elected president of the Rosemary District Association in Sarasota, FL, a district created in the 1880s as Overtown, the then-segregated city’s African-American neighborhood.

Newly revitalized after decades of neglect, the 24-block area adjacent to downtown is experiencing the push-pull of gentrification: rising land values and new multimillion-dollar condos versus a legacy of social service agencies, low-income housing, and the county’s only homeless shelter. The association represents not just residents but also businesses, not-for-profits, and property owners. Debbie said that thanks to a previous association president, Howard W. Davis (MCP ’80), the association partners with the city government to demonstrate how “new urbanism” can work.

Tom Hafer has coached First Lego League teams for several years. A few years ago, a woman wanted a team for her daughter and four friends. They did well and kept going this year after the season ended in December. (See Tom’s reunion book page.) When their online schooling was bungled, Tom made up a dozen or so modules to teach the girls how to use Excel and how to write macros. “They did well. I had to hustle to stay ahead of them. After I had taken them as far as I thought profitable for fifth-graders, I began posing Two-Minute Mysteries, with a Hangout meeting every week to discuss them. I call them The Number One Girls’ Detective Agency. We have started number puzzles. If you have ideas for skills I can teach online, let me know.

They are bored to tears.”

In February, Bob Jones bought a house on 10 acres, about five miles outside Ravenshoe, Queensland, Australia. He then flew to Canada and drove to Washington State to attend four writers’ conferences “to hustle my novels to literary agents and to help a friend who had lost both parents in two weeks. My plan was to play enough gigs to defray the cost of the trip and the conference registrations. But I arrived just in time for lockdown, with all performance venues closed and all conferences canceled.

Lacking the foresight and/or good sense to make a run for it immediately, I am sheltering in place on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. I wish I were back in Australia or New Zealand. All my gigs there were canceled, too, but I’m getting requests for new ones. I’m scrambling to see how/when I can get home and hoping for sooner rather than later. So frustrating to be in the US and not be able to (a) travel to Cambridge or (b) attend a reunion! I never expected I’d be in North America at graduation, but it looked like I might make it. Then the

pandemic turned everything upside down. At least I have a safe, peaceful, quiet place to remain locked down as long as necessary and a wonderful friend (since the early ’80s) with whom to share the bubble. During the lockdown, I’ve finished some short stories and almost completed a fifth novel. Also, I’ve had several more stories picked up by literary journals. One, under my pen name Cora Tate, won the Fair Australia Prize last year, and one of my novellas was selected for a major anthology.”

Ron Beatty and his wife, Cynthia, continue to crisscross the country by motorcycle. They don’t own a house or car. Ron writes, “I am 72 and getting younger every year, thanks to daily morning exercises, limited dietary choices (no meat, no fat, no oil, no butter, no cheese, and no salt—right, no ice cream for the former ice-cream-aholic), a wonderful wife, and lots of activity. Life is grand. I’m still enjoying-to-the-extreme my marriage with Cynthia; we were married on my 64th birthday.” In midJune, they were preparing to leave the Grand Canyon for Santa Fe. Before that, they visited Cynthia’s kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids in Texas and did computer and genealogy projects, followed by 10 weeks in Sedona, AZ: “a wonderful place to sit out the coronavirus pandemic.” He and Cynthia hiked four to eight miles daily for 10 weeks. “The wildflowers were spectacular, and we enjoyed the absence of the usual crowds of people.” The Grand Canyon was similar. “It is amazing to have the Grand Canyon all to ourselves without the usual crushing crowds of sightseers.”

In the spring semester of 1970, Tim Gilmore was given a “pass” for all his classes: he did not need to attend any more. He said, “Hallelujah!” and expanded his work hours in the geology department machine shop, attended some fun classes like art and music history, and planned a European trip with his brother, mother, and close friends. “I was in Ireland while some of my peers attended a modified graduation ceremony.” He thought he would be drafted and was uncomfortable with civil disobedience, so he applied for alternative service with the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and enrolled in a one-year master’s program in environmental engineering.

But that was unnecessary; his draft number in the first lottery was 207 and the selective service stopped at 195. “Did I feel fortunate? You bet, I had taken

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Class notes

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David Rapoport ’70

The science and technology of sound sleep

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Pandemic worries have kept many of us awake this year. But David Rapoport ’70 has long known a thing or two about not getting a good night’s sleep.

Rapoport is a leading expert in sleep medicine and the physiology of sleep-disordered breathing (sleep apnea and snoring). An estimated 10% to 15% of US adults have moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, when soft tissues in the upper airways repeatedly collapse, blocking breathing; waking up is the only relief. The cause is unknown, but it can lead to excessive fatigue, neurocognitive impairment, and cardiovascular problems, among other issues.

The most effective treatment is one co-developed

by Rapoport: CPAP, short for “continuous positive airway pressure,” which delivers air pressure through a hose and mask to keep breathing passages open during sleep. After an Australian physician invented

advantage of the civil unrest to avoid classes I did not like, earned some money, had a great time in Europe, then had a great year in grad school, followed by a fantastic job and marriage to a wonderful woman. Did I feel a bit guilty? You bet.

Some of my peers were injured or killed in Vietnam while I traveled and drank beer. I support public service but did not participate other than working for a state government, which was a form of public service, I guess. Once again there is a ‘call to arms’ (for those in the medical profession), and I, as an engineer-turneddoctor, considered returning to work.

However, my age and a spouse with autoimmune issues have convinced me that is not the most prudent course. I’ve volunteered for some nonclinical duties with the public health reserve corps.

I look forward to the ‘golden years.’ I hope the country can turn from the divisiveness of the present to a more cooperative and productive structure.”

Stay safe.

– Karen a n d Greg Arenson, secretaries; email: karenson@alum. mit.edu; gregory@alum.mit.edu.

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1971

CPAP in 1980, Rapoport improved the circuitry and showed it worked for sleep apnea nearly 100% of the time. Yet patients who find CPAP cumbersome often opt for less effective treatments. Rapoport’s research now focuses on making the device more comfortable and effective, determining whom to treat, and improving patient training on how to wear it.

“The balance between how well a therapy works and patients’ willingness to use it continues to dominate research efforts,” says Rapoport, founder and president of the Foundation for Research in Sleep Disorders. He is a professor at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine in New York City and its Sleep Medicine Research Program director.

Rapoport also served as an investigator with the 1995–2005 Sleep Heart Health Study, the largest epidemiological study of its kind. Researchers linked

50th Reunion

Edward I. Kohn, MD, died June 12, beloved husband of Sandra Kohn; loving father of Benjamin Kohn and stepfather of Jonah Weiss and Robert and Richard Tucker; dear brother of Martin (Lisa) Kohn, MD; and devoted nephew of Judith Goldberg.

I looked to find a positive dimension to the pandemic and lockdown, so here’s my Class Survey question: “What did you do during the pandemic that you’ve never done before?” (Hopefully something positive and uplifting.)

Jim Mannoia: “The ‘positive and uplifting’ thing I did was gain 10 pounds!

Increasing the number of pounds seems ‘positive,’ and when I lie down and see my stomach, it has surely been ‘uplifted’!”

David M. Russinoff: “Two months into the pandemic, I bought a pair of jeans, the usual Wrangler regular-cut size 33x32, and couldn’t fit into them.”

Leslie Rahl: “We Zoomed and did custom family puzzles for the first time.”

sleep-disordered breathing to an increased risk of high blood pressure, heart failure, and stroke.

Most recently, his work with New Zealand’s Fisher & Paykel Healthcare led to CPAP changes such as the ability to detect awakenings from breathing patterns and automatically relieve pressure. Early in the covid-19 pandemic, Rapoport also co-developed a Mount Sinai protocol for converting bilevel CPAPs into makeshift ventilators for less severely ill patients, if needed.

The strategy of reducing problems to manageable parts lies at the heart of all research, Rapoport says. He recalls a physics assignment to estimate the number of blades of grass in Killian Court. “That lesson is emblematic of the things that I learned at MIT,” he says. “The absolute beauty of what you can do on the back of an envelope, and then how to turn an idea into an experiment or an invention.” —Pamela Ferdinand

N. Laura Middleton: “Gardening.

And watching reruns of Criminal Minds.

I’ve also done some Great Courses: Geology (good, but did not make up for the [canceled] geologic trip to Italy in March) and Theoretical Particle Physics, the non-math version. Unfortunately, if I ask Ed a question (like, Is m3 the mass of the tau neutrino?), he starts talking and doesn’t stop until my eyes glaze over and I wander away. I have a stack of about 12 courses. I buy them faster than I can watch them. Vermont is pretty careful about requiring masks and distancing. We’ll hopefully spend a week on the Cape later this summer, renting a house with a private beach on the bay side. So far we are all well!”

John Veranth: “Since distancing and isolation started, I’ve sheltered in Boulder, UT, a tiny community surrounded by mountains and desert lands. Instead of something I’ve ‘never done before’ I’ve done more of what I did at MIT but never had time for during my career years. I started hiking with the MIT Outing Club and now hike every day. I’m doing projects in my

wood/metal/electronics hobby shop and support the local ham radio group.

I’ve reread books from my high school and undergraduate days and considered how my perspective has changed over the decades.”

Jonathan Sachs: “In general my life as a semiretired freelance graphic artist has hardly been affected by covid-19. But the pandemic got me to write, perform, and make videos of some covid-related songs, which you can listen to with my others at www.unclejonsongs.com.

“I only started writing and recording songs approaching 70 years in age. I had to wait 50 years for Dylan’s hold over me to subside before I had the nerve to write my own songs.”

Andrew Sabak: “I started translating family letters from Eastern Europe to show relatives who might never have heard how bad it was during and after WWII. Also started a small independent publishing company with several imprints and already published four academic books. Although I translated several books, I knew nothing about the follow-up process. I discovered a Russian

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MIT News

Janice Perlman, PhD ’71

Bringing the margin to the center Today, one in every six people on Earth lives in an informal urban or squatter settlement. United Nations analysts estimate that number will rise to one in three by 2050.

“Traditionally, policymakers see these people as a problem,” says Janice Perlman, PhD ’71. “I believe they’re part of the solution.”

Perlman’s landmark 1976 book The Myth of Marginality invited readers to look at squatter settlements and shantytowns as potential assets, and at the people who inhabit them as a source of renewal for cities. “The goal is not simply improving living conditions in squatter settlements,” she says. “The goal is integrating the incredible energy and intelligence of the people living there in a way that benefits the entire city.”

Raised in New York in Queens and later Long Island, Perlman spent three months traveling South America with an American musical revue the summer after her freshman year at Cornell. The following summer she did fieldwork in fishing and agricultural villages in Bahia, Brazil. After she arrived at MIT in 1965 to pursue a PhD in political science, her dissertation research took her back to Brazil, where she and her team interviewed 750 subjects in three separate favelas—or shantytowns—in and around Rio de Janeiro. “I studied the impact of the urban experience on migrants who arrive from villages where they haven’t even seen a staircase,” says Perlman. Her research—which would eventually evolve into The Myth of Marginality—attracted the attention of Brazil’s military government; she says she was accused of being an “international agent of subversion” and had to flee the country to avoid arrest.

Perlman joined the faculty of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1973 and received tenure five years later. She left in 1985, and two years later, in New York, she founded the Mega-Cities Project—a global nonprofit designed to shorten the lag time between ideas and implementation in urban problemsolving. “I don’t like the term ‘knowledge transfer,’” says Perlman, who soon created fieldwork teams in 18 cities, including Tokyo, Mexico City, London, Calcutta, and Lagos. “Knowledge transfer can work between high-level consultants or in academia. But no knowledge transfer can help you comprehend and collaborate with a person you

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Five decades of research in Brazil: Janice Perlman in 2020 and in 1973 at Rio de Janeiro’s Conjunto de Quitungo Housing Project.

see as the other. This is a transfer of know-how. A network of cities sharing common problems who collaborate to overcome obstacles, navigate government, and speed up changes in policy and practice.”

Know-how flowed freely as the Mega-Cities Project got off the ground. Developing regions shared solutions with developed regions and vice versa. New York tested aspects of a surface metro bus system from Curitiba, Brazil.

Collaborators in Manila and Mumbai adapted a program invented in Cairo where workers sorted through refuse for materials they could convert into sellable art and craft objects. And São Paulo adopted New York’s City Harvest, which picks up unused food from restaurants and markets and distributes it to soup kitchens.

While Mega-Cities still exists, much of its funding and personnel were absorbed by the UN in 1999. But Perlman has been anything but idle. In 2010, she won a Guggenheim Award for her book Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro. She is currently at work on a third book, about the displacement and dispersal Rio’s favela population suffered during that city’s 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Olympics. Last year, she received a Fulbright US Scholar Award to return to subsistence fishing villages outside the Brazilian city of Recife where she had organized a US-Brazil student project in the summer of 1965.

Perlman says she never had a “conventional job” after leaving Berkeley. “But it was a good decision that opened the door to a wonderful career that was much more satisfying than the one I’d have had if I’d stayed in academia,” she reflects. “I have no regrets.” —Ken Shulman

author widely known a century ago but forgotten for various political reasons; I am translating some of his works about authentic pre-Revolutionary Russia. The lockdown has facilitated concentration on several projects!”

Kate Baker: “I sewed cloth face masks for myself, my lawn service guys, and various family and friends. Most were double-thickness 100% cotton batik, with or without an insert slot for a coffee filter. Number four coffee filters work fine, as do certain varieties of Halyard cloth for the insert. I later learned batik was a fabric of choice for Parisian masks in the summer, displacing basic black. Who knew?”

Oljan Repic: “We used to travel several months a year but had to cancel all trips. Instead, we are binge-watching 30 seasons of The Amazing Race. Thus, we travel vicariously and appreciate where we have been and what we still want to see.”

Jeff Murray: “Never before did I count turtles (now over 200) on bike rides along the canals and rivers of Illinois and Iowa. I learned to tell cooters from sliders from soft shells from snappers (and got a lot of pictures).”

Carey Probst: “I work from home, so I really didn’t have that much extra time except for the 10 minutes of daily commute. Small towns have their advantages, sure better than my two-hour commute each way when I lived outside NYC. I learned to make custom decals for my model railroad, designing and printing them myself.

It took time to get comfortable with Corel PaintShop Pro because I’ve always been the database guy, never the artist, but they turned out quite well. I have a couple dozen cars to decal that I built since working at home. See them on the s-scale@groups.io list site. Yes, S scale, 3/16-inch to the foot or 1/64 size.”

R. Hal Moorman: “My oldest son, daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren came to live with us. He works in DC, and they live in Northern Virginia. They are off to camp and then back with us until school starts. My son works remotely in an upstairs office. My wife taught the children to catch, bridle, saddle, ride, and unsaddle a horse.

They are all great at it. They learned to hitch up our mini pony and drive a cart. It’s been quite a while since I’ve heard someone crying almost every day! My youngest grandchild could be a great negotiator. He comes up with a set of demands, and when met with ‘no’

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Class notes

comes up with many, many alternative demands. Because they live so far from us, this is a great opportunity to really get to know and enjoy our grandchildren.”

Avi Ornstein: “I finally retired after 46-plus years of teaching. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Alfred Solish, MD: “As a specialist physician, I’ve continued to see patients during the pandemic. Since March, we have practiced distancing in the office as much as possible, wiping down the office between patients and the waiting room periodically, and insisting on masks. Not one of us has tested positive nor have any of our patients. I can’t help but think that if everyone followed the simple guidelines, the US would not lead the world in infections.”

–Dr. George W. Gawrys, e-mail: ggawrys@alum.mit.edu.

1972 As usual, our longer online notes have more news and greater details. For example, they tell what is on the table for Cyrus Nourani in writing and publishing: “Better news than the viral crisis. Please also announce that I was only a teenager in love when graduating :-).” Josh Goldman, who lived in Senior House, got me with his first line: “Been an exciting few months: have been to dance and music festivals, traveled, and spent lots of time with friends— actually not.” Instead, he’s still working from home, virtually doing tech writing work for InterSystems, which makes a database widely used in healthcare.

Like most of us, he’s trying to keep socially distant and see his grandkids.

Covid-19 made him cancel plans to go to Argentina in December for the total solar eclipse. He read A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker, about a future dystopia where terrorism and plagues have made everyone isolated and fearful of physical contact, while telling himself “it’s not that bad (yet).”

Covid-19 has impacted many of us in diverse ways; fortunately, I haven’t heard of any classmates getting terribly ill, and I hope no news is indeed good news in that regard. Phyllis Lantos got stuck away from home, having flown to Florida on March 2 for two to three weeks. Covid-19 changed that. Four months later, she and George returned home to New York, joining their son and his family, who fled the city. All are healthy, but George and Phyllis had to quarantine per the governor’s orders.

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They flew back, with George piloting their single-prop airplane, thereby avoiding a commercial flight.

Donald Layton just missed being stuck in Florida. He sent an update of the year since he retired from fulltime work as CEO of Freddie Mac. He’s on the boards of three nonprofits, actively chairing various committees; most importantly, he became a senior industry fellow at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS). The remote position, not in Cambridge, lets him play a role in housing finance by writing articles (over 20 so far) and giving the occasional speech or interview. Sandy ’74 and Don returned to NYC in early March from a long winter visit to Vero Beach, FL. About 10 days later, they fled to their country house in Pound Ridge, which has had the lowest number of covid-19 cases of any town in Westchester County. It’s been a great location to shelter in place, especially after the weather turned warm. Their two sons, now 29 and 26, have stayed in their apartments (one in Manhattan, one outside Philadelphia). Plans of retirement travel to foreign locations have been shelved. Instead, Don has been playing golf twice a week, one of the few permitted ways to get out and see friends. Like many of us, he and Sandy are alternating cooking dinners.

Ah, for the day with the good news that outdoor restaurant dining can start, and we can consider eating out again (this is written in June). I wonder how many other classmates got stuck away from their homes for a long time. Hopefully, none of us are experiencing the food insecurity that hits people both here in Eagle County and in NYC, where 75% of the public school students qualified for free or reduced-price breakfast, lunch, and after-school meals, before the city made it free for all students starting with the 2017–18 year.

Dave deBronkart remarked on July 4—as he noted, the whole world might be very different in November—that as we celebrated our nation’s birth, Trump was president, and there were 52,942 new covid-19 cases in one day and 129,393 total deaths. (I can add that one week later, the United States had 3,302,665 confirmed cases, 135,176 deaths, and an increasing curve, with 62,918 new cases in a day!) Since Dave’s business speaking at conferences has gone virtual, he is experiencing the frustration many feel when they speak without eye contact or audible response.

New HHS regulations, finalized March 9, mean all your health data in electronic medical records must be available to you by API, specifically the FHIR standard Dave’s written about—a “health data spigot” he’s called for, at long last enabling an ecosystem of health management apps. Congrats to Dave on what he thinks is a great new gig: chief patient officer for PocketHealth in Toronto, which delivers your radiology images via cloud, not CD. Totally in his wheelhouse.

Bonny Kellermann safely got away for a pre–July 4 holiday, as she and Steve drove down to North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Before she left, she wrote that many of us are just starting to emerge from sheltering in place. She hopes the coronavirus cases will continue to decline. We’ve had some Zoom calls with members of the class. As those who attend reunions note, our class is full of fascinating people. Although the calls began while we were socially isolated, they’ve been great, so we plan to continue. “If you have not yet joined in, I hope that you will in the future,” she says. I second her invitation. I imagine we will start planning our 50th reunion in 2022, and hopefully, we’ll be able to safely gather without needing to worry about social distancing as we greet friends old and new. I also hope we will march at graduation; we were lucky to be one of the few classes marching at our 25th.

David Shpilberg sent some pictures meant for a different Wendy for a 50th-anniversary book, but no news of him and Anica, nor identification of the people in the old pics. I spoke with Samer Khanachet recently. He was doing well, isolating at home in Kuwait, but his wife Fahrus is in Turkey, watching over her aged father, and their children are isolating all over the world.

I was still in Vail for the Fourth. There was a stationary parade that I skipped, wanting to avoid crowds, but I did get out for the 10 minutes of evening fireworks, since I could view them without being in a mob of people, unlike when I see them in NYC. Vail was a hot spot in the US, but hopefully the reopenings, which have brought some increase in new cases, will not cost us much of the ground we have gained back here. The big question in town: Will there be a ski season, and if so, what will it be like? To all, stay well and have the courtesy to wear a mask—it is a courtesy to protect others, not a political statement.

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–Wendy Elaine Erb, 1819 Meadow Ridge Rd, #G, Vail, CO 81657; email: wee@alum.mit.edu; Bill Roberts, 305 E. North St., Worthington, OH 43085; email: whroberts@alum.mit.edu.

1973 As this is written, we’re heading into month seven of the pandemic, and life is going on in its own curious way as we move slowly back toward normalcy. Ed Weinberger sent a note: “At a recent MIT job fair. I said to the host that MIT really needs to teach about failure. And, according to him, they are having a discussion about it!” Ed also passed along some interesting content he wrote when pursuing a job teaching financial engineering at another elite university, regarding the distinction between “knowledge” and “wisdom.”

Space prevents its full publication here, but I encourage you to reach out to Ed (if possible, I’ll include it in the online version).

“Architect turned art-tile maker” ChaRie Tang writes, “I’ve had tremendous success in the last few years. Since my home is my studio, and I work alone doing what I love, the lockdown has not affected my style. In fact, last month’s income is double my usual! I was ready with my tools and materials, and I outfitted my daughter’s studio with her own set. I take the work I want from the internet and give the overflow to her.

I don’t need much for overhead, and I don’t compare myself to peers who own big companies or make large salaries.

I’m happy doing my art. I guess you can call that resilience.”

Jim Weihe passed away May 18 after a long battle with heart disease. He was living in Hawaii. I received a note from Eric Barklis: “This is sad news. I remember Jim for his endearing smile and Georgia accent. As a southerner, he took it upon himself to introduce me to the sloe gin fizz. At one of the parties on Fifth East—it must have been winter or spring 1971—Jim, heading down the hall with a sloe gin fizz in hand, encountered a crowd of us and gently parted us with a ‘Beep, beep, I’m a submarine.’ We made space, and I watched as he meandered down the hall through the noise in his affable way. Thanks, Jim.” Richard Hill reports from Geneva, Switzerland, that his family is fortunate to live in a large house with garden, so they didn’t suffer too much from the voluntary confinement to mitigate the

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covid-19 pandemic. But his younger daughter, Laurie, who got her first job as a performing artist on a cruise ship in the Canary Islands, was confined for a month after the passengers disembarked. Her contract was cut short, and she eventually got off the ship in the UK and flew back home, where she is setting up an internet site and looking for work.

From Phil Sadler: “I taught a new class this spring in the Harvard General Education program called ‘Experiments that Changed Our World.’ Students carried out 12 seminal, yet simple, experiments outside the classroom (dovetailing nicely with the second half of the semester being online). I used much of what I learned from my MIT professors Jerrold Zacharias, Philip Morrison, John King, Margaret MacVicar, and William Walton. So many of these experiments will be familiar to students of my generation: pendulum isochronicity (Galileo), measuring the circumference of Earth (Eratosthenes), creating a spectrum with a prism (Newton), burning metals (Lavoisier), double slit interference (Young), x-ray diffraction of DNA (Franklin), studying the mass of plants (van Helmont), killing bacteria with mold (Fleming), and magnetism and electricity (Gilbert), as well as the construction and use of a telescope (Galileo and Kepler), microscope (van Leeuwenhoek), loudspeaker (Morse, Bell, von Siemens), and DC motor (Faraday and Davenport).

“We explored the prior theories and cognitive challenges faced by each scientist, their education and development, and read and analyzed their groundbreaking papers. Carrying out these experiments developed students’ tacit knowledge, exposed them to issues in the history and philosophy of science, and challenged them to explore economic and ethical implications.

Students found the class engaging and enlightening. Final projects were stupendous, each building on one of the 12 experiments. I learned a lot from student work! I look forward to teaching it again this fall.”

Alan Zabel shares his pandemic tale. “My wife, Cheryl, and I had a tour scheduled for Peru (Lima, Machu Picchu, Cusco) and the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador scheduled for March 1–17, 2020. All seemed fine when we left Los Angeles. However, due to the emerging pandemic, we left Guayaquil, Ecuador, for the US on literally the last American

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Airlines flight before the entire country shut down.

“We were supposed to leave Guayaquil Tuesday night, March 17.

But Saturday afternoon, on a small ship in the middle of the Galapagos, I got a notification and email from American Airlines that our return flight was canceled. It turned out that everyone on the tour was in the same boat [Ed. – pun conceded]. Ecuador, to protect themselves from the coronavirus, decided to close all their airports at midnight, March 15! But Tauck, our tour company, scrambled and got everyone out. The ship went at max speed to make the airport at Baltra in the Galapagos early that morning. Tauck chartered a flight from there to get us all to Guayaquil on the mainland.

“We got to stay in the hotel in day rooms for about six hours (Guayaquil was eerily almost a ghost town then, compared to the active metropolis of a week earlier. I think the hotel was preparing to shut down). Tauck got us all tickets on the flight leaving for Miami at 11:00 p.m. We left for the airport at 7:00. It was a total zoo, as everyone was trying to get out. We had three hours of standing in lines: one hour each for check-in, passport control, and security, and no social distancing. The plane left a little late, but I was never so happy to be on a plane bound for the US. We landed in Miami, and a few hours later were on our connecting flight to LA. California was locked down two days later!”

That’s it from here; Ruth and I are mixing golf, pool time, reading, and the like in the current absence of consulting work, but the inquiries for said work are now being fielded, and I expect to be back grinding out proposals shortly.

It’s not quite semi-retirement, but we’re getting there.

Stay safe, everyone. Write soon!

–Robert M. O. Sutton Sr., 3025 Beachcomber Dr., St. James, NC 28461; email: bsutton@alum.mit.edu.

1974 After getting his master’s in architecture at MIT, Roger Goldstein spent two years working in small suburban Boston firms.

Then he took a job at Goody Clancy, where he has spent his entire career.

He became a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, president of the Boston Society of Architects (1997), and a principal in the firm. Since 1989, he has worked on projects on the MIT campus,

including Koch Biology Building, Brain & Cognitive Sciences, New House residence hall, and the renovation of Dreyfus Chemistry. Roger has led tours of his completed projects for our class reunions. Goody Clancy has also worked on over 50 campuses across the country; one of their current projects is designing the renovation of Burton-Conner, which they had previously renovated in 1970– 71, when we were freshmen! Roger is leading seven major phased renovations of mid-20th-century science buildings.

Last year, he and Cindy celebrated their 43rd anniversary. Their sons, Todd and Jordan, live in Oregon and Massachusetts, respectively. In August, they were hoping to vacation on Mount Desert Island, ME, as they have for several years, but the pandemic made that uncertain. Both Roger and Cindy are committed cyclists in the Pan-Mass Challenge (along with Linda and Barry Nelson and Mike Filosa), the world’s most successful athletic fundraiser.

All the funds they raise go to support cancer research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Before the covid lockdown, Jon Tepper and his wife Ruth hosted Ed Montes and his wife Ruth at their Tucson, AZ, home (the Monteses live a four-hour drive away in Las Cruces, NM). Ed was Jon’s floormate in Senior House on Atkinson 1. Fellow Senior House alum Dan King lives only a few blocks from Ed. Jon and Ed toured Tucson and reminisced about their days at the ’Tute.

Forrest Milder is a tax partner at Nixon Peabody LLP. Before the pandemic, he worked out of their Boston office. Now he’s in the Needham, MA office, with ready access to home cooking and the ability to take long (three miles or so, twice a day) suburban walks. Forrest and his wife, Sara (Wellesley ’75) started dating in 1971 and recently celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary. Their daughter is a doctor in nearby Medford, MA, and they see her regularly. Unfortunately, their other child is a professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, where he lives with his wife and two children.

Not only did Forrest and Sara miss their granddaughter Rosalie’s second birthday (for which they already had plane tickets and a hotel), but they missed their grandson Henry’s fourth.

At least they get to FaceTime.

Miriam and Chuck Rosenblatt were supposed to spend a month in

Paris, where he was to teach a study abroad course on French science and technology; then to Israel, to see their son’s family and visit friends; and finally to Lisbon, for a physics conference.

All canceled.

Bev Wilson hadn’t planned any excursions this summer, since they decided to renovate their house so they can “age in place.” They’ve been thinking about it since they bought the house in 1987. With the various engineers and reviewers working from home, it took a little longer than usual for the town to review the permit application, but demolition finally started, and they’ve been vastly entertained by all of the activity right outside their windows—a big change from the quiet of the previous three months. The interior work has all been sealed off behind plastic drapes, originally intended to provide dust containment and now also ensuring social distancing from the builders.

The Wilsons wondered how they would accommodate houseguests during the renovation, but now, that’s not a problem.

Joe De Angelo went back to his roots in graduate school and returned to work on single-cell protein. He launched a startup a year ago on genetically engineered yeast for animal feed and human food. Seven months later, with no operational labs and no financing, he became an expert in bootstrapping a virtual company with the help of old friends and contract labs. He got reinterested in the concept because of the dire predictions for the looming massive protein deficiency in the human food supply. Covid has reinforced his view that the supply chain is highly vulnerable, and that food defense and sustainability should be a focus of technology. In the current environment, he joined a couple of covid projects because of his background in vaccine development and intensive care/sepsis research.

In 2007, Kate Mink retired from Cornell and moved to Kauai, HI. She taught high school science (13 different subjects) for eight years, retired again, and is now doing part-time paralegal work for her sister, an estate planning attorney. Kate’s daughter works for an IT company and got married two years ago.

They all share a big house with a garden with hundreds of fruit and flower plants, including orchids, vanilla, citrus, mango, roses, water lilies, and lotus. Other than work and weeding, Kate has been 3D

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printing face-shield parts with the Kauai Makers group, sewing cloth masks, rearranging her apartment, and scuba diving whenever she can. She did make it to the Great Barrier Reef before the fires and plague. Now she’s hunkering down, saving the pennies, waiting for a vaccine, and then, hopefully, Fiji.

Dallas Abbott was going to a conference on Crete, his first visit to the island. Instead, he became familiar with his local riverside park. There are many side trails with few hikers, but abundant flowers, birds, and frogs. He goes out early in the morning, walking up the hill on the long path and then walking a different route back. The round trip is about four miles. After this early morning walk, it’s easier to stay inside for most of the day.

Alan Ritter was supposed to take a cruise from Dubai to Athens in April, but it was canceled. Also canceled was the Highpointers Club’s summer convention in Nevada/California, changing Alan’s plans to climb Boundary Peak (to finish the lower 48 states), lead his son up “their” mountain (Mt. Ritter, west of Mammoth Lakes, CA), and spend some time wandering around southern Utah.

Alan moved out of his house of 38 years and into an apartment in Aberdeen Heights, a retirement community. He consults for Bausch & Lomb and does much of his work from home, although he goes to the office regularly, since they’ve been doing verification testing on some of his designs.

Beth and Marty Davidoff live in New Jersey; therefore, it is tough to see six of their nine grandchildren, who are in Montana, Arizona, and Colorado. They celebrate big events with family through Zoom. Marty works full-time as a tax attorney and CPA. He had minor back surgery in July to repair a herniated disc.

Hopefully, he’ll soon be back to playing basketball and pickleball regularly. Marty reports that our Class of ’74 treasury is earning outrageously high interest at 1.5 percent. LOL. –Barry N. Nelson, secretary, e-mail: BarryNelson@alum.mit.edu.

1975 Dear classmates: I hope all are well and safe as the pandemic swirls around us.

First, I want to thank Miles Fidelman for graciously allowing me to delay his note one issue. We had a lot of responses in May, too many for the published edition. Miles writes, “Sheltering in

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place here in Acton, MA. Not much different for me—semi-retired (between ventures), working from home, taking long walks in the condo complex and the adjacent town forest, going out to shop—missing restaurants and travel, but otherwise, the same old, same old.

My wife is teaching from home and will be retiring at the end of the school year. One of our sons is staying with us.

Meanwhile, this has all given me a push to get moving on finishing up my book on the Sanders campaign and getting to work on a regional initiative to plan the next new normal for Nashoba Valley and get there through civic enterprise and investment.”

Janet Johnston writes, “Not much to report from me. I’ve been working out of my home since March 12 and expect to be doing so for many months to come.

Always said I wanted to spend a summer at home on Plum Island, but this is not what I had in mind! My husky is happy.

She thinks my main function is to throw her ball 24/7. Hope you are all well.”

Jerry Rudisin writes, “Aside from devoting time to my software startup, I’ve had the chance for two wonderful hiking trips to southern Utah in May and June. I finally got to hike The Wave, a magnificent hike in the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument. To preserve the formations, only 20 people each day are allowed in, and I got lucky in the March 1 internet lottery for permits. It was stunning.”

Stephen Bookbinder writes, “I’ve been in the private practice of rheumatology for the last 36 years in Ocala, FL. I am also an assistant clinical professor at University of Central Florida. I teach residents in multiple fields in my office. Lately, because of the pandemic, I’ve been doing mostly telemedicine, as I have many patients on immunosuppressive medication.

I’ve pondered retirement and cut my schedule, but I just can’t get myself to do it. I tend a large rose garden of over 150 rose bushes, and I enjoy fishing, golfing, and target shooting. I wish the best to all my fellow MIT alumni and much respect for the variety of ways they have helped the world and the people in it.”

P. Michael Jung writes, “Through the miracle of Zoom, the MacGregor G31 suite held a virtual reunion this week. Organized by Jim Short ’73, the gathering also included John Cooper ’74, Dave Breuer ’74, Andy Hawryluk ’76, Bob van der Kloot ’77,

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and myself. We had a great time sharing reminiscences from our time at MIT and updates on people’s lives over the last 45 years. We’ve decided to make this a periodic event.”

Al Czerwinski writes, “It is HOT here in Texas; I hope you are staying cool, safe, and healthy! My prostate has not been looking normal on MRI, and my PSA has been rising. So I launched into researching all the treatment options, as any MIT grad might do. There is a surprising amount of information that the average urologist might never mention, and a few things that they might not know anything about. This week, I had an unconventional outpatient procedure on my prostate, performed by an interventional radiologist, utilizing a laser. I am happy to share what I have learned with anyone who is interested.”

–Peter Dinhofer, 1620 Ditmas Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11226; tel: 718-219-9576; email: pdinhofer@alum.mit.edu. Skype, Google, Whatsapp: pdinhofer.

1976

45th Reunion

In response to my question about favorite reunion events, David Littleboy writes: “I’ve been very happy with all the events/things we’ve done. More of the same, please. Two ideas that are really too specific to me to be all that much interest, but if they’re out there, maybe they’ll fly. If there are other ’76ers who juggle, maybe a juggling event. If there are others who play standard jazz (I’m learning swing, bebop, hard bop guitar), we could hire some ringers from Berklee to fill out the band, and do a brief set of nerd-themed jazz; tunes such as ‘Spaceman Twist,’ ‘Anthropology,’ ‘Take the “A” Train’ (dedicated to TMRC), and the like. (Yes, there really is jazz tune called ‘Spaceman Twist,’ and it’s perfectly serious, albeit wildly up-tempo, blues.) If there were (in addition to my guitar) at least one jazz bass, piano, sax, or drum player in our class, we could argue that two members of a quartet are a definitional quorum.”

In sadder news, we received notice of the passing of a dedicated member of our class, Irene Yim-Fun Chan. Irene was an active member of the Alumni community and did much to help the next generation of students.

Here is her obituary (source: Irenechanmemorial.wpcomstaging. com): “On May 26, 2020, Irene ended her four-year-long fight with ovarian cancer at the age of 66. Irene emigrated

with her family from Hong Kong to Boston in 1969. She graduated from Brighton High School. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in biology and master’s degree in chemical engineering (’78) from MIT. She finished her postgraduate work at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Irene always valued education. Through the years, she encouraged and mentored many students on their path to college. She established scholarships at Brighton High School and MIT. As her continued commitment to higher education, Irene set up an endowment to ensure that these scholarships would continue.

“Irene worked for the defense and commercial manufacturing industries.

Her most recent workplaces included General Electric Aviation, Gillette, and Procter & Gamble as a quality engineer before she retired at Keurig.

“Irene doted on her many nieces and nephews. Every year in September, her house was full of school supplies for the youngsters. She loved to travel and went on many trips to Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Irene enjoyed applying her education and analytical ability to the stock market. She always knew what she wanted.

“Irene was predeceased by her parents Ying Yee Chan and Ngan Siu Yee, sister Yim Chin, and brother Bryan.

She is survived by her three sisters and two brothers: Katharina (Steven); Elise; Angela (Michael); Allen (Jocelyn); and David. She also is survived by many dear cousins, nieces, nephews, grandnieces, and grand-nephews. She is missed by many dear friends, especially Ilda Indrade, Johanna Webster, and Regina Casey.”

As for your secretary, I have been busy the last few months reorienting on several fronts. For the first time since 2003, I will not be able to do an Ironman, because they have been canceled. This left an odd void in my life, as I’ve needed to find a new source of inspiration to stay in shape. Professionally, my personal training and Ironman coaching business has stopped completely under the new directives from the governor of California. My business law course at UC Santa Cruz was flipped to Zoom, which has been a challenge, but at least the students still felt they learned a lot. On the recruiting front, I’ve been active helping to build the US executive team for a German toy company, Tonies.

Their cube-shaped smart speaker and physical toy is designed for three-year-

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olds to listen to songs and stories in a screen-free environment where the child controls the entire listening experience!

The toy even has an app so that distant grandparents can read stories; when the child puts the ‘grandparent’ toy on the box, the grandparents’ voices come floating out of the speaker. Helping build the US launch team for a product that will change the parenting experience of a generation is a lot of fun. As you read this, I hope you are all enjoying family time once again!

–Reynold H. Lewke, secretary, Reynoldlewke.com, 100 Pecora Way, Portola Valley, CA 94028; tel: +1-650444-8038; email: lewke@alum.mit.edu.

1977 Not as much news this time, covid or other (and who knows where we’ll be when you read this in late October).

Ian Wilson, who works for the Sony Pictures legal department, reports from LA: “The studio did not lay off any of the support staff, although the lot itself has been closed. I’ve been able to work remotely without interruption. My wife is teaching Zoom acupuncture classes, and I’ve been using her treatment room as my office. With uncertainty about theaters reopening, the studio has been continuously rejiggering its release schedule, which changes the work I need to do, sometimes daily. They have sold several films to streaming services, which we had to rush to complete. I think the difficulty is the isolation. I can go six hours or more without speaking to another human.

“I try to maintain a regimen. I get up at the same time as always. I write fiction and poetry before I go to work. I maintain an exercise schedule, although now I work out in the living room with resistance bands, some dumbbells, kettlebell, and weight bench. We have accumulated an interesting assortment of masks of different materials and filtration systems. Initially, I did some panic buying. We have 60 hamburger patties in the freezer and a couple of industrial-size boxes of trash bags. We’ve had to repurpose one of the bedrooms as a pantry to accommodate the rest that I purchased. I’ve been reading nonfiction about the 1918 flu epidemic, and if this current one has any parallels, we may be in for a long haul before it goes away.”

Beth Ganister, who with husband Will Fields form Ganister Fields Architects, considers them fortunate

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to have work during the covid shutdown, “though it certainly is a different way of working.” She says, “We had projects in construction shut down well before finishing. They are slowly starting up again, with contractors learning how to work with much smaller work crews, and all of us learning new protocols for visiting job sites. It’s a learning curve for everyone. On the home front, I’m learning to embrace my ‘covid corona’ hair. Shouldn’t need to say more about that … Our gardens haven’t looked this good ever. Our oldest daughter was a visiting Fulbright scholar in Arctic studies in Iceland last year. We were able to visit her for Thanksgiving. What a beautiful country! Our more recent planned visits to Seattle to see our son, and our third child in Vermont, are on hold for now. Stay well, everyone, and let’s all hope for a vaccine soon!”

Rick Stern reported that his wife, Rosanne Wyleczuk ’78 (Baker House), died peacefully June 3: “She has had various medical problems for years, but this last episode was just too much. My daughter, Rosanne’s sister, and I were all able to be with her at the end, even with covid-19 restrictions. We had a Zoom memorial on the 12th, and some of our MIT friends were able to attend.

I’m sure some of our classmates, who lived in Baker, remember her.” (More on Rosanne in the Class of 1978 notes.)

Rick, who initially worked at HP, says he’s “been at a handful of companies, some multiple times.” He continues, “I’m now working at Dell and currently don’t plan to retire for at least a few more years. But I do think about it. Besides my daughter Elizabeth (26), who lives with me, I have a son, Daniel (29), who lives in DC and is also in tech.”

I was recently informed of the death of Jonathan Horn on Nov. 29, 2019. Jonathan owned his own tax practice in New York for more than 20 years, renowned as an expert on individual and self-employed taxes, before joining the American Institute of CPAs in Washington, DC. There, he was a senior manager on the tax policy and advocacy team and managed the partnership tax technical resource panel and international tax technical resource panel. He was also renowned for his boundless energy, not only for taxes (he served on a USA Today tax-help panel), but also travel, casinos, sports, concerts, and politics. He was 63.

Elizabeth Pusey’s d a u g h te r Alysse (Alesandra) was accepted to

the Class of 2024. She is interested in bioengineering, says her mom, “but with all the exciting fields she will be exposed to at MIT, who knows?”

Last issue’s notes were so crammed full of your news that I deferred mine.

But besides the passing of my mom at age 90 on March 28 in Seattle (not covid-related), I’ve been spending our sheltering as support staff and loving it. I’ve watered and helped dig holes and spread dirt, but I haven’t killed any of the plants in Debbie’s 200-squarefoot raised-bed garden or the two dozen containers on the fence line or the eight baskets, dozen pots (most of her elaborate mosaic design), and three hanging baskets on the deck. I’m marveling at her progress on a nine-byfour-foot mosaic piece that will serve as the entrance for an outdoor children’s story trail in nearby Jeffersonville.

I’m producing the newsletter for her photo club, where she’s still a star.

And conducting Zoom meetings on all kinds of topics. (As for Mom, we haven’t gotten to Seattle yet, but my sister there has it under control. We will have to travel to Venice—her favorite city—someday to scatter some of her ashes in the Grand Canal. Yes, it’s in her will.)

Despite the reason, that will be a happy day, because it will mean we’ve regained some level of normalcy. Hope you’re all faring as well as possible, and please keep in touch so I don’t have to harass you as much!

–Glenn Brownstein, 1819 Emerald Ct., Clarksville, IN 47129; email: scoopcat@alum.mit.edu.

1978 As I write this, mid-July, covid-19 cases are rising in most states, Trump is ordering federal forces—uninvited— into our cities, and the good hygiene practice of wearing a mask has become a political statement. As you read this, we will know whether we have four more years of this, or if our nation has chosen a different path.

Gary Cote updates from Radford, VA: “Long time since I’ve written.

Teaching biology at a small teaching university takes up a lot of time. I am now officially retired. I was supposed to teach advanced cell biology this fall but backed out because of covid. Because I have a hearing impairment, there is no way I can teach masked students or on Zoom. So I spend my days trying to get

my yard whipped into shape. Biggest project is a long-neglected rosebush, more a hedge now. Also taking lots of pictures and maintaining Radford’s Wildwood Park web page. New project is to dispose of or sell many of the books that have piled up over the years so my husband and I can move back to Connecticut when he retires in 2022.

We already have a house there. I’ve made it to Tech for two reunions in my entire life. Maybe I’ll do another when I’m living closer. Have to say it made me proud when MIT sued the admin over their ill-conceived plan to deport any foreign student studying online.”

Ed Michelson has his hands full: “I haven’t been home; working on the front lines of covid in West Texas.

I’m chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine here at Texas Tech and chief of the Emergency Department (ED) at University Medical Center, the county hospital. We are seeing a big rise in cases. I helped design our ED response, including three tents outside to screen and work up symptomatic patients. I’m also on several planning groups dealing with logistics at the community level. My MIT-learned skills are very much coming into play. I’ve had some media presence, including local TV and MSNBC appearances. Can’t wait for this pandemic to be over so we can start on the next one!”

Dave Levens has had his practice affected by covid: “We reopened our plastic surgery office in mid-May after a seven-week shutdown, doing all the covid protocol. Things have been going as well as can be expected. Florida is now a headline, with rising case numbers and positivity rates, facing possible shutdowns again. Sadly, what’s missing is unified national and statewide leadership.”

Kimberly-Ann Francis writes: “News around Providence, RI, is pretty low-key. I’ve enjoyed pre-retirement practice by being furloughed by Acushnet in March, and then went to full retirement in May. After 40 years of working (20 at Acushnet), this is really nice. Still waiting on our new addition to the family, a 39-foot catamaran. If we can get through the paperwork remotely, the plan is to pick up by the end of July.

We’re spending time with local family and have done a drive to DC to see the grandkids. Have stayed involved with BAMIT, MIT Alumni Golf, and working with www.oursistersschool.org to teach Scratch and robotics. Unfortunately,

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mostly remote, but there is hope for limited physical interaction before the weather gets too cold. I really appreciate the communications from President Reif and the MITAA. I share them with my school as a way to systematically approach the question of what the next school year will look like.”

Timothy Gawne has been keeping busy. “As the covid-19 madness continues, I’m mostly working from home and getting a lot done in my dual research interests of systems neuroscience applied to schizophrenia and using the tree shrew as a model for the development of myopia. My wife is now the interim chair of psychiatry and does a lot of home Zoom meetings, and when something breaks, I get to fix it, because ‘I went to MIT.’ On a lighter note, my son and his wife just gave me a grandson, and all are happy and healthy.”

Hassan Alam gives us a bullet-point status update from San Jose: “My news: 1. Sold my company in the nick of time on February 28. 2. Currently in transition to hand over company. 3. Trying to come up to speed on Machine Learning to see what I do next. Hobbies have been pared down to: 1. Rowing, 2. Walking, 3. Netflix, 4. Amazon Prime Video, 5.

PBS, 6. Zoom meetings with friends.

Covid-19 is taking a toll. Some friends and relatives are contracting it, and most are recovering. The few that leave us makes us feel the edginess of current life. Hope all are well.”

Some sad news: as reported in the Class of ’77 column, Rosanne Wyleczuk passed away June 3 after suffering various medical problems for years.

Her husband, Rick Stern ’77, writes, “I’m sure some of our classmates who lived in Baker remember her. Rosanne followed me out to California in 1980. We both initially worked at HP. She worked there over 25 years before going on disability.

Besides my daughter Elizabeth (26), who lives with me, I have a son, Daniel (29), who lives in DC and is also in tech.”

Our sympathies to Rick, Elizabeth, and Daniel.

Shannon Maher passed away suddenly in March. Shannon grew up in Watertown, MA, and attended the University of Colorado Boulder in addition to the ’Tute. He worked at Sierra Geophysics, Tegic, AOL, Google, and The Guardian. Formerly married to Cindy Bellomy for 27 years, Shannon is survived by their children Erin and Jamie. Our condolences to Cindy, Erin, and Jamie.

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Your class secretary has been very busy with the residential real estate market here in Central Ohio, where demand far exceeds supply despite covid’s effects on the economy.

Contributing to the shortage: the median stay in a home in the US, historically five to six years, is now 11 to 12. Covid’s acceleration of the work-at-home phenomenon means many home buyers are now seeking a defined workspace in their home. (A new question to buyers: “Can you see yourself being quarantined in this home?”) More families now house elderly parents or offspring waiting for regular employment opportunities to resume.

By some accounts, 25% of households are now multi-generational—also a trend accelerated by covid.

Send us your news!

–Jim Bidigare, 9095 North St. NW, Newark, OH 43055; mobile: 740-5872000; email: bidigare@alum.mit.edu.

1979 Greetings, class; we have a lot of updates from people. For the full content, please see the online column.

Christopher Rose, SM ’81, PhD ’85, was named associate provost for STEM Initiatives at Brown University on July 1, 2020. His responsibilities include increasing URM (underrepresented minorities) representation on the STEM faculty and facilitating a technically collaborative interdisciplinary and impactful community of URM STEM scholars.

Will Siegfried writes: “On March 21, the day before our state of New York locked down, I made the 14-hour round trip to NYC to ‘rescue’ my daughter. She benefited from being in a less densely populated area, where she could go outside without a mask and exercise freely. On July 1, I’m taking her back, and she can start working again.

“My life hasn’t changed that much, since my work was already at home, including our vegetable garden, which is having a good year. I can still carry my canoe down the back steps and drop it in the river to train. But no canoe races, at least so far, so who knows if I’m really in good shape, and my social life is practically nonexistent, which begins to take a toll.

“We’ve been to a couple of Black Lives Matter marches and our local Juneteenth celebration. On the governor’s advice, I had a covid-19 test after the second

march, which came back as undetected.

So we’re doing pretty well here in Potsdam, NY, but I wish the library would reopen.”

Jim Papadopoulos writes: “For the first time, I’ve initiated a big project, in concert with Northeastern University colleague Andy Myers: designing a wind turbine that could potentially decarbonize most of the US grid. Wind turbines are now proven technology, but the embodiments that touch offshore wind are extremely expensive and dependent on highinvestment manufacturing. By rethinking the support of a standard rotor on a floating platform, we see a way to provide hundreds of gigawatts of relatively steady and economical electricity, using existing fabrication shops and boatyards to quickly and cheaply produce and launch thousands per year. See www.northeastern. edu/atm/floating. Since the world is turning to the task of decarbonizing, we are slowly creating a company and developing a plan to demonstrate and commercialize, including looking for grants from Sloan, Google X, the Department of Energy , or various states, prior to chasing investment.

We are also participating in the Cleantech Open. Anyone who finds this interesting is welcome to reach out, learn more, or perhaps participate!”

Christine Peterson writes: “We had a great online reunion for Class of ’79 residents of Senior House, including two former tutors. We all agreed that we were fortunate to find a great support system for unusual students in that living group, and we mourned that the current administration chose to shut it down. Even those of us who struggled academically, or took longer than four years to graduate, went on to successful careers in academia, industry, business, the professions, and the arts. It’s a shame that these unusual students— low income, first in family to attend college, LGBTQ, etc.—who may need extra help are now scattered, rather than in one living group, where they could more easily bond and help one another.

I learned more from Senior House residents than from my professors, who were focused more on research than on teaching.”

Beth Marcus writes: “My 16-year-old is taking college chemistry, complete with labs and Bunsen burners, and making friends with the local wildlife on breaks.

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“I am working from home until October; developing new technology is challenging that way. I just finished eight seasons of Call the Midwife on Netflix and was very disappointed not to find season nine anywhere. Now I’m watching Land Girls as my unwind time before bed.” Beth sent pictures, which are in the online column.

Aldo Spandoni writes: “I’m pleased to announce that I’ve been elected president of the International Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA). As such, I’m also the new chairman of the IAAA Board of Trustees.

I am humbled by this honor. My four-year term began on July 1. I congratulate my colleagues, who have also been elected to a two-year term on the board. It’s been a privilege to work with these great people over the years, and I look forward to continuing to do that in my new role. What a great team!”

David Dill writes: “I retired from the computer science faculty at Stanford in September 2017; now I’m a professor emeritus. After some time in the wilderness finding out things I didn’t want to do, I started a job at Novi in October 2018. Novi is the subsidiary of Facebook that is developing the Libra blockchain, where I’m working on formal verification of smart contracts (remotely, from home in the Bay Area).”

Kevin Wade writes: “I’m still married to Sheila Luster ’78; we celebrated our 41st anniversary on June 30.

“My work at Delta Air Lines has taken a huge hit from the pandemic, as air travel is down almost 90% from a year ago. My position as international captain is secure, but the flying is very spotty and will remain so until international travel picks up again. We are supplementing with cargo flights. I’ve been traveling to Europe from Chicago lately. We’ll see what the future brings—speaking of which, I am within the group being offered an early retirement package. I have much to consider over the next few weeks.

“We’ve built our retirement home in the Canyon Lake area of Texas hill country, just north of San Antonio.

Austin and San Antonio travelers, give us a call!”

Marla Eglowstein reports that 2019 and 2020 have brought a lot of changes: “Because of parental needs, I began traveling between my home in Albany and where I grew up in Buffalo. Last summer, through an online dating site, I met an Israeli-American from Syracuse,

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MIT News

and we were married in January. I’ve moved to Syracuse, where Amir and I have four dogs, and with the pandemic, we stay close to home. However, wanting to do something to fight the virus, I’ve begun working from home part-time as a contact tracer. Although all in-person musical activities are on hold, I’ve helped make a recording with the Keyna Hora Klezmer Band of Syracuse, and have been part of the Covid Cello Project, which can be seen on YouTube. Hoping that everyone is staying safe out there!”

Charles Wampler writes: “I was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for work in robotics, numerical algebraic geometry, and modeling batteries for electric vehicles. My younger daughter started doctoral work at Stanford in chemistry last fall where, before the pandemic hit, she enjoyed meeting up with Elaine (Sears) Miller and her family, who live in the Bay Area. I hope everyone in our class is staying safe and faring well during these tumultuous times.”

–Edward Hunter, email: edh@alum. mit.edu.

1980 Please send news for this column to Joanne Tobias Baker, president, Joelinks.com; email: jbaker1628@ alum.mit.edu.

1981

40th Reunion

We received word of the passing of our classmate Walter Roy Crosby. “Walter passed away Apr. 17, 2020. He had been in failing health for several months, and although heroic procedures were tried, and he fought until the end, he could not regain his health. We are relieved that he is no longer in pain, and we are comforted by his wonderful kindness and the memories we shared with him through the years. We thank the medical staff and all who helped him each day in Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Cambridge.

“Walter was born on Nov. 22, 1958.

He attended Lakeville Elementary Schools and Apponequet High School in Lakeville, MA. He then attended the Rochester Institute of Technology and MIT. In 1978, Walter became one of the founding members of the MIT football team. He has remained an avid fan ever since, attending most of the seasons’ home and away games

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every year. Outside of football, Walt’s other big passion was sailing. He was immensely generous and loved to give anyone interested in sailing the opportunity to learn on his beautiful boat Yoroshiku, whose name means ‘Pleased to meet you’ in Japanese. Walt enjoyed working for the past 10 years as the head of fund management systems at Arrowstreet Capital.

“Walter was the son of Walter and Gerel (Washburn) Crosby. He leaves his mother Gerel Crosby; his son Ted Crosby, and daughter Anna Crosby; his sister Geri Young, and her four children David, Steven, Andrew, and Sarah; his wife Beth Weinberg, and her children Alyssa and Julie; along with many dear in-laws, nieces, nephews, cousins, and long-time friends. He was predeceased by his wife of 25 years, Barbara Condon Crosby, who passed away in 2015. Walter was well-loved and will be hugely missed.

“We thank you for the kind thoughts and prayers you have expressed to us all during these difficult months. Due to the covid-19 pandemic, we will hold a memorial service at a later date. In lieu of flowers, please send any donations to the American Kidney Fund in Walt’s honor.”

–Dean Samos, Los Altos, CA, email: deansamos@alum.mit.edu.

1982 The covid-19 pandemic continues, and classmates have found assorted ways to cope with, and help out with, the pandemic. This column was written in mid-July, so the state of world when it’s published in October is a mystery.

Susan Koppel wins the prize for the most interesting pandemic activity: “I ditched engineering about 10 years ago when I retired. Since then, I’ve been working as a zookeeper, photographer, and social-media director for a wildlife sanctuary in Reno, NV. Since March, I’ve had the awesome experience of raising three cheetah cubs! The boys are with us to be ambassadors for conservation and education and are being brought up by humans. It’s quite a time-consuming challenge, so no, I have not been bored, or in quarantine.”

Lucinda Linde went back to school starting in 2018 to get a master’s in analytics at Northeastern. She just finished her degree, which meant transitioning from in-person to online classes for the last part of her program.

She missed the interaction with her

“I ditched engineering about 10 years ago when I retired. Since then, I’ve been working as a zookeeper, photographer, and social-media director for a wildlife sanctuary in Reno, NV. Since March, I’ve had the awesome experience of raising three cheetah cubs!” —Susan Koppel ’82 classmates and project teammates.

She plans to become a “data translator,” someone who can understand and direct the analytics and translate them into business decisions and actions.

Philip Greenspun hadn’t thought that life in suburban Lincoln, “Maskachusetts,” could get any more boring or antisocial, but coronapanic proved him wrong. He and his wife, Olga, were surprised to find that the kids (four, six, and 10) don’t miss school at all.

Philip’s flight school reopened on June 8, and he’s been busy teaching helicopter students and Cirrus airplane students.

People want to learn to fly, even when there is nowhere to go! With Harvard and MIT closing their dorms, Boston and Cambridge are now being overrun with students who want to rent twobedroom apartments and stuff in six undergrads. Since classes are online only, and full tuition is being charged, Philip says Harvard should change its name to the “Con Academy.”

Michael Collins works at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, doing research on sound propagation and inverse problems in the ocean. A challenge is that the scale is typically huge relative to a wavelength, and the medium is highly heterogeneous (which rules out applying analytical solutions).

During the pandemic, he and his wife Jean have been teleworking from their second home in Radford, VA, which has had only a handful of covid-19 cases. It works well for Jean to teach her online classes at Appalachian State University, and Michael has always felt more productive when working from home. They’ve done some fixing up around the house, including installing a new metal roof. And they have spoiled their mixed-breed husky with constant attention during the pandemic.

Michelle Gabriel has a new pandemic hobby: photographing flowers on her walks around her Oakland, CA, neighborhood and posting them on Instagram (oakland_flowers_quarantine).

She’s also been doing work with feeding the poor: “At our first attempt, my husband Jon and I were helping food

distribution in a neighborhood in East Oakland, where we scored hazmat suits and leftover Impossible Burgers. They had more volunteers than they needed, so we quit that. Now I help bag up meals with Great Plates, the FEMA-funded effort where restaurants are paid to make meals, and these are distributed to the needy. Also, I dispatch drivers in other restaurants feeding the needy in Berkeley called HelpBerkeley—a private effort where customers pay a minimal amount for a standard meal and get to choose from a list of participating restaurants.”

Jennifer Bertan Muroff lives in downtown Manhattan, where she moved right after 9/11. She has 13-year-old twin daughters. She has developed health and fitness products for the last 13 years. Her company, SmartThingz, recently developed a collagen protein peptide powder called Collagen MOJO, as she could not find anything on the market that accomplished what she wanted as far as fueling, aiding in weight loss, helping with joint pain, and improving hair, skin, and nails. She has been distance running for the last three years and ran the 2019 NYC Marathon.

“I love working in the health and fitness industry and love working on anti-aging products,” she says. “My husband and I are both working from home and trying to navigate covid-19 life.”

Miguel Mitchell continues to paint and exhibit his work in virtual art shows through the Montgomery Art Association. He has also invented a card game to teach a part of organic chemistry found in biochemistry and on the MCAT—to ready the game for launch, he will beta test it with people unfamiliar with organic chemistry.

Lina Janavicius Morales i s moving to Jenkintown, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia, after living in the Boston area for many years.

John Lucassen is happy that Boy Scout activities in his home area in the Hudson Valley have been allowed to resume. He’s looking forward to hiking and Eagle Scout projects.

Matthew Kallis reports that 2020 has been difficult, with the deaths of

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Class notes

his mother, aunt, and brother-in-law Brett Lapin (none covid-19 related).

Matthew and Brett knew each other preMIT, because their respective parents were cofounders of IHOP (International House of Pancakes). From Brett Lapin’s obituary: “Brett was born in Los Angeles and moved to Australia when he was six years old. After MIT, he earned a PhD in electrical engineering at Georgia Tech.

He spent his career at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory as principal scientist since 2009. He worked in data analytics, data fusion, machine learning, pattern analysis and anomaly detection, and unmanned autonomous systems. He published many articles and was awarded two patents for his work.

One of his patents was inspired by the DC sniper attacks in 2002 and was licensed to Shot Spotter (https://www. shotspotter.com/), a gunshot detection and location technology. Brett also was a mentor for multiple high school FIRST Robotics teams, dedicating months every year preparing and coaching them to meet the challenge of building industrial-size robots to play difficult field games in alliance with other teams.

Through teaching and mentorship, he touched many lives. His four years at MIT were some of his best ever. He loved being a Burton Third Floor Bomber and made lifelong friends. Brett passed away on June 3, leaving his wife, three children, and three grandchildren.”

Take care, hang in there, and be well.

–Eve Ahlers, secretary, email: eve.ahlers@gmail.com.

1983 Susanne von Rosenberg writes, “I initiated a Me and White Supremacy (using the book) study group at the Center for Spiritual Living here in Napa, CA. The group is led by an awesome facilitator, Lorna Barker, an African-American woman (look her up on Facebook or contact me if you’re interested in starting a group of your own). I’ve been interested in social justice for quite a while and have realized that ‘equal opportunity’ is a complete myth. However, it’s only in the past two years or so that I’ve come to read and learn enough to realize just how blind I’ve been to what life is really like for people of color, my own subconscious bias, and how my ignorance and inaction help perpetuate systemic racism. So in my own small way, I’m trying to contribute to positive change. One

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statement that I read has stayed with me: If you are not of Native American origin, and you own property in this country, you own stolen property. I’ve changed my will to leave my property to the local intertribal council after I die.”

Bryan Nevins writes: “We live in Wilton, CT. I work at ASML, on the test rig for the next-generation Top Mini Machine. (The Top is the part that moves the reticles to pattern the wafers for the cell phones that monitor our every movement.) Our daughter is in first grade, now being taught at home, a big responsibility for my wife.

Upsides: the local public school was not teaching penmanship at all. I get to read Aesop’s fables to her. Connecticut is lifting restrictions May 20, and we are considering social gatherings with another family with a first-grade girl.”

A couple of classmates took up the challenge of writing a covid haiku.

Wendy Rowe wrote: “Family safe home, No pandemic martial arts.

Nice to be with Pace.

(If you want more of an explanation: When the emergency was declared, I stopped teaching martial arts near where we raised our kids in the suburbs.

I’ve been staying home in Cambridge since, with husband Pace Willisson, who works from home. Both our kids are fine at their Somerville homes, Eric still working for Google, and Alex ’14 for Amazon on their Alexa team. We’re very lucky.)”

An anonymous classmate submitted this one: “I Zoom from a chair That’s as wide as my butt is becoming daily.”

David Hashim writes: “Life goes on, despite what some virus intended.

Our eldest son graduated from Lewis & Clark sans a commencement ceremony to mark it. Our number two son just finished freshman year at Boston University, by spending most of the semester at home here in Kuala Lumpur, and our two youngest ones are finishing years four and seven online. What a strange year for academia!

“Meanwhile, I continue to navigate our army of 350 employees at VERITAS across these strange tides, but I recently got involved in an unusual project: the design and fabrication of a N95 maskdisinfection appliance. About the size of a microwave, it uses UV radiation at 200- to 300-nanometer wavelength to irradiate contaminated N95s so

they can be reused by health-care professionals during this pandemic. The idea was mooted and conceptualized by a business associate and personal friend, and I’m funding the fabrication and testing of the prototype unit in the field in collaboration with the University of Malaya Medical Centre. If it proves successful, as we expect it will, it will revolutionize the way masks are used in the battle against this and future pandemics.”

Ke n K r u g l e r w r i t e s : “ T h e ‘Documentary Night’ (https://kenblog.krugler.org/) group that I helped start back in 2014 continues to meet weekly during covid, with many MIT members: 23 at last count, including Brian Jacobs, Chris Schneider, Randy Schweikart, Jono Goldstein, Kinta Foss, Mike Santullo, Ed Cluss ’77, Mark Szara ’82, Mark Farley ’84, Bill LaPoint ’84, Bob Polutchko ’84, Mike Cassidy ’85, Bill Lundberg ’85, Chris Zannetos ’85, Glen Stump ’85, Marc Rudoltz ’85, Han Huang ’86, Kevin Pryzbocki ’86, Bob Vokes ’87, Evan Pratt ’87, and Chris Neil ’88.

“My wife and I successfully completed Extreme Downsizing™, going from 2,800 to 520 square feet; we’re temporarily living in our new guest house, while we wait for permits and annexation and planet alignment so we can begin building the new main house. To keep sane, I escaped to the southern Sierras for a climbing trip with Chris ‘Schmed’ Schneider and my daughter, where we bagged a few peaks and enjoyed intentional solitude and beautiful vistas.” [Pictures in the online column] Finally, both Hyun-A Park and I (Jono Goldstein) are spending our summer working on the Chris Zannetos ’85 campaign for US Congress (MA district four). Chris is a three-time entrepreneur. He is running for the seat being vacated by Joe Kennedy in a nineperson winner-take-all congressional Democratic primary race. While many of our classmates (including Hyun-A and I) live in other districts, whoever is in Congress affects all of us. We are both glad Chris is running; he would bring the unique experience of actually having created jobs to Congress. I made a video with Chris, located here: https://youtu. be/ywJQB16TFa8. More info: www.

ChrisZforMA.com Please keep the emails coming!

–Jono Goldstein, secretary, email: jg@ta.com.

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1984 We hope that you and your families are safe and healthy.

Wean Khing Wong leads the global Chinese Alumni of MIT. “We include Chinese from anywhere in the Universe :) We also welcome nonChinese MIT alumni, students, and staff members.” The group hosts twicea-week videoconferences, and members Zoom in from the US, Asia, and Europe.

After receiving her SB in biology, Wean Khing completed a law degree.

She says, “I also have an MA in counseling psychology and completed two years of a psychotherapy internship that included crisis intervention. I’m an attorney, mediator, speaker, and trainer.”

Please contact Wean Khing at winking@ alum.mit.edu for more information about the group.

Dale S. Rothman has accepted a position in the department of computational and data sciences at George Mason University. Due to covid19, he was able to remain in Denver for the fall semester and teach online, thus avoiding a sweaty summer in the DC area.

Wayne Switzer relocated back to Grapevine, TX, working in outsourcing design work for the Army Corps, Fort Worth District: “We’re slammed right now, but being busy is a very good thing.

I’m thoroughly enjoying reconnecting with my ‘lifestyle entrepreneurship’ group of mostly MIT types—we’ll be back to face-to-face meetings when conditions permit. Any entrepreneur, or anyone else for that matter, is welcome, and the organization is small and informal. In other news, my youngest aged out of health care, built a tiny house / conversion of a small utility trailer, and officially joined the nomadic lifestyle, with a permanent address through an RV club. My grandson, age six (gift from my middle daughter), and I still think the world of each other. I highly recommend grandkids, folks; he’s the biggest gift I did nothing to earn—except, of course, I didn’t kill his mother when she was a teen. Oldest is part of an insurance agency startup in Richmond that’s officially passed the watershed five-year survival mark for new small businesses. Yay! Incredibly, both parents are still alive and fully functioning. Dad, 90 this year, actually began a new full-time job with the VA hospital in Sheridan, WY. He’s worked

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full-time continuously since preteen years. Granddad used to comment that all his friends who retired were dead within a year, and Dad’s taken that to heart. I coached him through the first 60 days (for new federal employees) and signup for medical retirement life insurance as a seasoned fed helping out a newbie who happens to be my father.

That there’s Reader’s Digest material, for sure, when I get around to writing a piece on it. Mom is recently retired from teaching English at 80 years young, and I owe her a great debt of gratitude for passing on her knowledge of grammar (overlook my ‘that there’ colloquialism, please, Mom).”

Bill Eichen writes, “All is well in Silicon Valley, regardless of covid-19.

Our portfolio companies are flourishing during this period at Pie Capital in several vertical markets. I hope to visit Baker House and MIT soon, and may open an office there, as well.”

Van-Duc Nguyen writes, “If you have some free time, I would like to invite you to visit WeInvest.Live to see my attempt to help people invest, by measuring the risk and then finding efficiency plus value from price and volume data. The recent market crash reminds me how futile my effort is. But someone must do this, because we all need to extract useful information from data to help us compound our savings for retirement.

Someone must revisit old problems to solve them with new formulae and new tools to then serve the masses. The crash makes me refocus on risk from extreme drops, on extracting useful correlations from past market corrections, and then predict months into the future for buyand-hold investors.”

–Pam Gannon, email: pmgannon@ alum.mit.edu; Jean Tom, email: jeantom@alum.mit.edu.

1985 I (Diane Hess Brush) am in New York, compiling this column in July. Next month, my triplet sons will embark on their college journey, which will be quite different from ours. I wish all students a productive year during these uncertain times.

Kim Saxton, clinical professor of marketing at Kelley School of Business, shares: “I was so sorry to not have the 35th reunion live, but we enjoyed our virtual TIMtalk. Fun to catch up with everyone. With my husband, Todd Saxton, I published a book on startup

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MIT News

mistakes to avoid called The Titanic Effect: Successfully Navigating the Uncertainties that Sink Most Startups.

In the last year, we’ve done more than 15 talks and two dozen podcasts to share ideas from the book. We are wishing the best to everyone in this pandemic.

So glad that we started teaching in the online format 15 years ago!”

Deborah Rennie-Walker writes: “I have exciting news. My oldest son, Justin, graduated from high school. Our family is forever a part of this unique experience for the class of 2020. He’ll be attending Cornell University School of Engineering in the fall. I guess engineering runs in the family. I live in Brooklyn, where I’ve been managing my multifamily real estate investments for the past 20 years.”

Jack Pai shares: “Some architects are late bloomers. I led the architectural design team for Warner Vieshow entertainment center in Hualien, Taiwan, as design manager/architect at Taiwan Land Development Corporation.

Since opening, this project has done amazingly well, despite two strong earthquakes and covid-19.”

Oliver Patterson sends his regards from the San Francisco Bay Area. “I never thought we’d move out here (due to cost and traffic), but here we are. I joined ASML, the leading provider of lithography solutions for the semiconductor industry, as principal technologist of the E-beam inspection and metrology division. It actually works out well, as son number two is studying at UC Berkeley, and son number one just graduated with a degree in computer science, and the Bay Area is a good place to look for a job. We are enjoying the sunshine, dry air, and beautiful places to hike.”

Linda Sheehan started a new job Aug. 1 as executive director of Environment Now, a California-based foundation that works to advance healthy waterways and forests.

Nick Panayotopoulos (npan@ lalum.mit.edu) is in Athens, Greece. In 2017, he worked for Dropbox, leaving at the end of that year to troubleshoot property issues in Greece. He has also worked in Brussels, as a lobbyist for industry and employers, and as a body man for the British country manager of Rothmans, Troas Makri, and Haris Makri (in many countries in Europe).

Chris Schaffner is still CEO of The Green Engineer, a green building consulting firm based in Concord, MA. The firm just celebrated its 15th

anniversary. He says, “I’m also parttime faculty at Northeastern University, teaching sustainable building systems.

Like everyone else, I’m adapting to remote work and teaching. Both of my sons have moved back in with us temporarily during the pandemic, which has been nice. My youngest starts a master’s program at Harvard in the fall. Waiting to see details on that. I had planned a long hike on the Oregon coast this fall with fellow PKS classmates, including Ken Sinansky ’87 and Satish Rao ’87, but that seems very much in doubt at the moment.”

We were recently alerted to the death of two classmates. On May 10, 2008, Dr. Ahamindra Jain died. He lived in Lexington, MA, with his wife Richa (Modi) and children Divya and Amartya.

Ahamindra was a chemistry professor at Harvard. Although Amindra began his studies at MIT with our class, he graduated a year early with a degree in chemistry. He subsequently earned a PhD in chemistry from Harvard.

Juichi Obata shares the following about our deceased classmate Ralf Leszinski. Ralf was born in 1964 in Switzerland. He earned a bachelor’s in Course 2 and a master’s in Course 15. He lived at Next House while at MIT. “Ralf, Keita Ito, and I shared an apartment in Brookline in our graduate year (1985–86.) After MIT, Ralf worked as a consultant for many years in Europe and the US, becoming a partner at McKinsey. He then worked on several ventures before deciding to retire and move to Merida, Mexico in 2005. There, he founded Yucatán Polo Club with his wife Yvonne. Ralf passed away in November 2019. Not sure of the exact circumstances, but he may have had an acute asthma attack. He was just 55 years old. RIP.” To read our class notes online and see photos submitted by classmates, visit: alum.mit.edu/communities/ class-notes-and-sites.

If you have contact information for the following “lost” alumni, please contact mitalum@mit.edu with info: Chieko Aoki (Next House), Luigi Ciriello (Next House), Terence F. Galati (MacGregor House), Augustine Kim (Next House), Mark Edward Millman (Alumni House), John Peter Nicol (Kappa Sigma), Patrick Jonathan Peters (Next House), and Paul Andrew Skyers (Phi Delta Theta).

Thank you to those who shared their news. Please keep the contributions coming, and be well.

–Lisa Steffens, cosecretary, email: lmsteffens@gmail.com; Diane Hess Brush, cosecretary, email: dmhess@ alum.mit.edu.

1986

35th Reunion

Hello, classmates! Huge election in the US—remember to vote, or don’t complain about the outcome. Not much to report since last issue, as life has been in covid-induced stasis. As I write, we’re awaiting our school’s reopening plans for next semester. Meanwhile, our kids are swimming and reading their way through the summer.

Lee Newburg writes, “I began a new position at Kitware in early April.

As of writing this in early July, I’ve not been to my office at the nearby Clifton Park, NY, location, because of the pandemic. The job is familiar in many ways, because it involves C++, Python, algorithms, large data sets, biology, and medicine, but it is different in that I’m doing software for biomedical image processing and analysis rather than software for data analysis of highthroughput experiments, such as DNAseq, RNA-seq, and mass spectrometry.

I’ve enjoyed our recent, virtual, off-year reunions, but am hoping that we can do our 35th in person.”

Warren Katz writes, “After three years and three cohorts as managing director of the Air Force Accelerator Powered by Techstars, I’m going back to retirement. The experiment to connect the Air Force to early-stage startups with product the Air Force could use—but don’t want to learn the bureaucracy of Department of Defense contracting— was a smash success. The Air Force’s innovation office, AFWERX, has become the shining example of how to do business with commercial innovators throughout the DoD, and the Air Force’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program has been remolded by this effort. The number of startups that have never done business with the Air Force but are now engaging has leaped by about 20-fold (2000-plus percent).

I’ll be spending my time managing my startup portfolio, continuing to tinker with home renovation projects in our Boston and Newport, MA, homes, woodworking, boating, and several little inventions I’ve been gnawing on over the years.”

Howard Loree writes, “I’m thankful that our family living in the Boston area has stayed well through the covid-19

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Class notes

pandemic. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my position as vice president of research and development at an earlystage startup medical-device company, which was eliminated due to a merger in late May. I am actively looking for full-time work, serving as a consultant, and training for triathlon. My wife, Ann, keeps very busy as the health agent for the town of Westminster, MA. My daughter, Sophie, will be a freshman at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, studying biology and biotechnology this fall. Stay well!”

–Robert Lenoil, secretary, email: lenoil@alum.mit.edu.

1987 Greetings. This is a “lost column,” written in mid-March, barely into the covid-19 disruptions in the US. Most news included here is from just before that time frame.

Alex Charney Cohen writes: “I’ve spent three quarters of my time in South Africa since October 2019, building out a new factory for my company’s product, intended for the African market.

We (H2PowerTech.com) make backup power systems for the telecom industry (cell towers), which is pretty important for the South African market right now, as there has been load shedding due to the mismanagement of the electrical grid for the past 10 years. It has been a great project, a professional accomplishment, and something I’ve wanted to do since I started out as a manufacturing engineer after MIT. Our youngest child has spent the last six months applying to colleges, and we’re starting to get responses.

He’s been rejected from a couple (who shall remain nameless), but he has been accepted to Loyola Marymount in LA, which will put him near his siblings and the industry (show business) he intends to pursue as a career.”

Patrick Kim, now living in central Germany, has launched into his fourth year of activity as a coach and consultant and has no regrets about leaving corporate life. He’s also made progress on his study of art and neuroscience and is doing research with a goal of earning a master’s soon. He’s plowing through the nearly 800 articles and books he’s amassed on the subject and is also painting to test some of his ideas.

Patrick’s wife (Estelle) is working as a natural health practitioner, and based on the online reviews, has some very satisfied patients!

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Achal Aggarwal and Geeta Khare Aggarwal ’88 celebrated their 30th anniversary in July. Achal has been a pediatrician for the past 25 years, while Geeta is director of product management at Imprivata, a health-care technology company. The couple resides in central Massachusetts; they have two young adult children, Neena and Ashok. Neena does international development work in DC, and Ashok is an engineer at Exxon Mobil in Baton Rouge, LA. In their spare time, Geeta and Achal enjoy spending time with each other, their family, and their close-knit group of friends. Despite their busy work schedules, they are always there during the best and worst of times for those they love.

As for me, my partner, Carr, and I returned from a spring break trip to the Vidanta Resort in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico, in mid-March, just before quarantine began. I think the two of us were much more fascinated by and engaged with the infrastructure and logistics of the place than we were by the beach and multiple swimming pools.

Probably reflective of our respective careers (architect and engineer)!

Finally, an update to Oren Helbok’s entry from the September/October column: the Spring 2020 CRPA (Center for Railroad Photography and Art) took place virtually, and Oren and his friend Greg Hiotis produced a 27-minute video about their adventures on the road at prior conferences, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the CRPA.” For a virtual tour of the railroading show and a link to the videos of “Two Viewfinders” and “A Funny Thing,” as well as many other photos and Oren’s essays about his experiences, visit WhereSteamLives.net.

–Jack Leifer, 3 Chatsworth Way, San Antonio, TX 78209; email: leifer@ alum.mit.edu.

1988 Achal Aggarwal ’87 and Geeta Khare Aggarwal celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary in July 2020. Please see their full update in the 1987 column above.

–Paul Laporte, email: plaporte@ alum.mit.edu.

1989 Hi, 1989ers! This month, I reached out to Southern California. It’s now mid-July, and we are all deep in the pandemic.

There was good news this morning about progress of vaccine trials, and

hopefully, when this is published in November, we will be near a vaccine.

We have some updates, so here we go!

Gloria Clark (née Gloria Wen-yi Su) writes, “My husband is Dr. Robert Clark, a pediatric eye surgeon in Long Beach. We’ve been able to keep the office open, serving patients throughout the pandemic. We live in Palos Verdes.

“I visited MIT last fall, since my daughter’s boyfriend is currently a Course 10 PhD candidate. My daughter is pursuing her master’s at Tufts, and they live in Kendall Square (which has transformed into a hip, biotech, foodie area!). My younger daughter is in transaction advisory services at EY-Parthenon and has been working from home. I hope you and your loved ones are healthy and safe!”

Joe Tang offers “an Insta-centric update”: “Wifey: Nicole @nicoletangmb / Kids: Jared ’02, Lindsay ’05, and Tyler ’05 / Manhattan Beach, CA / Work: @ BizHaus / MIT Bro @jamietang74 / MIT Buds @cslee234, @williekim / Golf / Beach VB / Want more? @jtango777” Andy Pease writes, “My husband Frank and I moved to San Luis Obispo in 1997. We have two daughters, whom we are delighted to have home for a few months, one working remotely and one in college. I was Course 4 at MIT and have been in architecture or construction ever since. About 12 years ago, I started a firm with a friend to provide green building consulting. It’s great—a dream job, really. There are seven of us in the firm, and we do work all over California.

“The most surprising news for me is that I ran for local office in 2016 and serve as a council member for the City of San Luis Obispo. I do that half-time and green building half-time. The council work is challenging, empowering, and humbling, and I feel honored to serve. As a community, we are working deeply in climate action and economic justice, plus quality of life and financial sustainability in the era of covid-19.

“A shout-out to my friends from Senior House! It was sobering to hear about the academic challenges there and the subsequent closure of the dorm for undergraduates. I cherish my memories from that time, and I recognize that we were maybe an unusual bunch; I hope current and future undergrads are all able to find their place to fit in, even if the building is no longer that magnet.”

Luis Ramon Mireles writes, “I’ve resided in San Diego for 21 years, and I grew up in Downey, CA (in LA

55

County). My parents still live in our Downey home, and my immediate family can make the two-hour drive up the 5 to visit. My wife, Genoveva, and I moved here from Los Angeles shortly after we were married. We transferred here for promotional and advancement opportunities; I’m with the State of California OSHA Plan (the Division of Occupational Health), and Genoveva with local San Diego hospitals, in their mental health and psychiatry departments. She is in her 18th year at Kaiser Permanente. I’ve completed my 27th year with Cal-OSHA. “After grad school at UC Berkeley, I received my master’s in public health (MPH) in environmental health sciences and industrial hygiene. I began working at UCLA, before joining Cal-OSHA in 1993. With the covid-19 pandemic, we’ve been increasingly challenged, as our agency works together with the CA Department of Public Health (CDPH) and other counties to prevent the spread of covid-19 and to investigate cases and outbreaks.

“When we’re not working, Genoveva and I are blessed to witness the growth and development of our two middle school boys, Pablo (14) and Diego (12).

We can hardly believe that Pablo will start his high school journey this fall, and his plans to have several days of instruction in person, and only one day of distance learning. Diego will also start a more hybrid schedule in seventh grade.

“My hobbies and activities are tied to the boys’ interests: I’ve served as an assistant scoutmaster with the Scouts BSA. We’ve completed some serious hikes, recently, here in Southern California. I’ve become a ‘soccer dad’ and Genoveva a ‘soccer mom.’ It’s been nice to share some skills, since I played at MIT, but teaching your kids to play is so different than playing competitive soccer. Other pastimes include spending time with my extended family; recently, we have all been drawing and doing crafts at home more.

“I’ve been in contact with Josh Wachman ’90; Phil Koebel ’87; my cousins, Jose Ernesto Lopez ’91 and Salvador Lopez Cordova ’93; and Penn Loh ’90, Zeeky Bukhala ’87, and Joe Pappalia ’87, when they have visited California. This past year, I was in touch with Jeff Applebaum, Steve Channin, and Jeff Traub from my fraternity. I’ve been active on Zoom with Belinda de la Libertad ’94, Jacob Rael ’90, Frances Pinedo ’94, and

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Rene Gonzalez. Benigno Salazar ’90 and I have worked with the Avanza Network, which has existed for 10 years and was started by several MexicanAmerican MIT alums, reaching out to tens of thousands of Latino high school students to help them prepare for applying to universities.”

Finally, I am sorry to pass along the news of the untimely death of Tony Schinella. His obituary is a testament to the important influence MIT had on him; it begins: “Tony Ming Schinella, 52, passed away unexpectedly on 14 June 2020, rendering the world a smaller, bleaker place and complicating the work of US leaders grappling with this nation’s thorniest national security problems. Tony was a double major at MIT with degrees in computer science and history. He also obtained a master’s in public policy (MPP) degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He possessed a towering intellect. A college friend once remarked even his MIT classmates envied him his brains, and he could easily have gone on to a life of extraordinary success in the information technology business world where he started his career. In an act that speaks to his bone-deep patriotism, he chose instead to apply his energy and ability at the CIA. Rather than the plaudits and financial rewards that surely would have been his in a more public life, he led a highly distinguished—if largely hidden—career in the world of intelligence. Outside of public view across some 30 years, he achieved high rank, earned the respect of senior government officials with whom he worked, and garnered numerous awards for his work here and abroad.

Without question, he was among the finest officers of his generation at the CIA.” The rest of the obituary is available at https://www.everlycommunity.com/ tributes/Tony-Schinella.

–David Goldstone, secretary, email: goldstone@alum.mit.edu.

1990 Vandita Malviya Wilson just received her MBA (with concentrations in marketing and strategy & innovation) from Brandeis University. She starts this fall at the Heller School for Social Policy, also part of Brandeis, to complete her master’s of public policy by 2022, when she hopes to have an actual graduation ceremony and, perhaps, light party.

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MIT News

At Brandeis, she writes op-eds for her school paper, The Justice. Here are links to her articles: https://www.thejustice. org/search?o=date&a=1&s=vandita, https://www.thejustice.org/search?a =1&o=date&au=vandita+wilson, and https://www.thejustice.org/search?a=1& o=date&au=vandita+malviya+wilson. In her spare time, Vandita has challenged herself to walk 22,000 steps a day in 2020. She continues to enjoy living in Cambridge and being in school again!

We love hearing from you! Please submit your updates and news.

–Vandita Malviya Wilson, secretary, email: vandita@alum.mit.edu.

1991

30th Reunion

Greetings, everyone! By now, we are likely all used to the “new normal” and have adjusted our work and personal lives accordingly. It’s crazy when I think back to New Year’s Eve and how none of us had any idea of what was on the horizon. Perhaps another vote for taking life one day at a time and living in the present. We had a great visit from Jacquelyn OBryan, and her kids, Joshua and Jessica, in May! They were on a cross-country trip from Georgia and were able to stop for one night. It was so great to catch up and reconnect.

Morlie Lin Wang writes, “I’m in Illinois, and corona is getting better here. It is forcing me to be my own best friend. I’m taking this opportunity to explore literature on mindfulness.”

From Paul Antico: “I took the opportunity of the covid-19 shutdown to make my business temporarily obsolete (AllergyEats, a Yelp-like guide for foodallergy families dining out, obviously unnecessary when restaurants are closed) to change course permanently and go back to doing what I’ve always loved (and left 12 years ago)—professional investing.

I started up my family office in late March while I began entertaining offers to sell AllergyEats. I have yet to decide whether to start my own fund or keep doing this just for family, but the exhilaration of ‘going home again’ to what I love for the first time in many, many years is awesome. I hope it doesn’t sound callous to be appreciative of this opportunity to make a life ‘reset’ when there’s so much pain, anguish, and anger in the world around us, but sometimes times like this give us a chance to reconsider personal life priorities, and I’m grateful for that. I’m also appreciative that my wife and I have had four of our kids home for months

(two might disagree!), with two ready to go/return to BC. More family time and fewer structured activities for the kids have also been a blessing. Meanwhile, my oldest is off living his dream since he was four! After graduating Penn State last year, he earned a gig as a TV weatherman (cue jokes here). If anyone’s near Eau Claire, WI, enjoy him on WEAU. Lastly, God bless to everyone (all of us) dealing with individual struggles during these challenging times. We know that ‘this too shall pass,’ and we’ll find some form of a new normal, hopefully sooner rather than later (and likely led by brilliant MITtrained scientists).”

Mohanjit Jolly sends this update: “The last few months have been interesting, to say the least. I was lucky to be back home from my international travels through Middle East and India, just before the US went into lockdown.

Despite the headwinds, my fund, Iron Pillar, was able to raise a new pool of capital called Iron Pillar Top Up Fund.

The family (my wife and three teenagers, along with a 70-pound goldendoodle) is doing well, feeling fortunate, and we have embraced the concept of gratitude in the current environment. This is a minor first-world inconvenience compared to what a lot of people globally are going through. We are also staying sane by cooking, donating, and delivering groceries to those in need in the Bay Area. I have been Zooming with old MIT friends on a regular basis, trying to counter social distancing with a concept I call ‘virtual proximity.’ Be well, everyone!”

Jenn King writes: “Greetings from Bonaire, where my husband, Chris Ware, and I have been covid refugees since arriving by our sailboat on March 16.

After leaving our jobs in 2019 and moving out of our house in Manchester, MA, we planned to circumnavigate the globe over the next few years. We left Maine on September 15 and had a leisurely trip down the East Coast to Hampton, VA, to pick up some crew members and join the Salty Dawg Rally, a group of other boats headed to Antigua. We left Virginia and spent 14 days at sea, arriving in English Harbor, Antigua in mid-November. Our crew members returned home, and we carried on island-hopping southward, with stops in Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique, and St. Lucia. We met some like-minded UK sailors in Antigua, who wanted to join us through the Panama Canal to the South Pacific and, eventually, New Zealand. We picked them up in Martinique and traveled to Bequia, an

island south of St. Vincent. With the goal of transiting the Panama Canal by early April, we left Bequia and headed west on March 12. The winds were not favorable, so we decided to stop off in Bonaire for a couple of days of scuba diving before heading farther west. We arrived on March 16, and they closed the port on March 17. The good news is that we are safe and healthy, and the island has had only three cases of covid (all resolved), so we can move around freely.

Bonaire is south of the ‘hurricane belt,’ so we are relatively safe from tropical storms, and there is some world-class scuba diving. The bad news is our plan to make it through the Panama Canal to New Zealand this year has been scuttled, and we don’t know when we can get moving again with the pandemic raging through the world. Hopefully, I’ll have more news on the next update.”

–Lola Ball, secretary, email: lola@ alum.mit.edu.

1992 As we all settle into this very unsettling time, I am happy to be able to share some good news from the class of 1992!

Lerothodi Leeuw is joining the department of physics and astronomy at the University of the Western Cape: https://astro.uwc.ac.za/the-physicsand-astronomy-department-welcomesdr-lerothodi-leeuw-as-a-professor/.

Congratulations to him!

Reuven M. Lerner has made the most of the pandemic. His work revolves around teaching Python.

He notes, “I’m still doing corporate training for companies around the world, but now online, from my home office. Meanwhile, Manning published my latest book, Python Workout, with 50 exercises to improve Python programming fluency. This past spring, I decided to try an experiment, to give people stuck at home a chance to do something new: I offered a free, 15-hour ‘Python for non-programmers’ course, which ended up attracting more than 2,000 students. (The videos are still available, if anyone is interested.) I had a great time, and it was amazing to interact with people from all over the world, all locked down for the same reasons. I wish you all health and safety in this truly odd and troubling time.”

Finally, from Theresa Puckett, we also have a silver lining from our pandemic. She notes, “I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity that this

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Class notes

57

Gloria Ro Kolb ’94

New help for a health problem women don’t talk about In 2004, Gloria Ro Kolb ’94 was leading her first startup, Fossa Medical, which developed therapies for kidney stones, when she learned a startling statistic: one in three women over 30 deals with urinary incontinence. However, it wasn’t until Kolb had three kids that she began to understand the scope of the problem—and the need for a better solution.

“I looked into all the treatment options and thought, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s got to be something better,’” she recalls. So she took matters into her own hands by founding the medical-device company Elidah.

Traditional treatments for urinary incontinence in women have been limited to pelvic floor exercises, invasive devices, or—in extreme cases—surgery.

Moreover, many women are hesitant to discuss the issue with a doctor. “Women wait so long that it gets harder and harder for them to treat conservatively,

slowdown has offered, to focus solely on my mission. It’s taken a lifetime to discover what I would love to do all day every day … as well as my two teen boys to help me on my journey.

Last year, ‘Relational Parents’ was born (she is founder and a Certified Positive Discipline Parent Educator). Happy to be on a never-ending personal development journey that now includes working to understand, accept, and reduce systemic bias, as we endeavor to accept all the pieces of who we are. So much love to Suchi Sairm ’93 and Georgina Maldonado ’91, who are holding my hand on that second piece! Hugs to all!”

Hoping that we all continue to work together to keep ourselves and each other as safe and healthy as possible.

–Shari C. Fox, secretary, email: Shari.C.Fox@alum.mit.edu.

COURTESY PHOTO

1993 Paul and Gowri Grewal are enjoying life in California with their two children (Calvin, 19, and Sarina, 12). Paul was named chief legal officer at Coinbase in San Francisco and serves on Governor

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and it really does start to affect their quality of life,” Kolb explains.

With Kolb as CEO, the Connecticut-based company has developed Elitone, a noninvasive device composed of a small electrical controller connected to a gel pad.

The device, typically worn for 20 minutes four to five days a week, decreases bladder leaks by stimulating and strengthening a woman’s pelvic floor muscles— essentially doing Kegel exercises for her, but longer and stronger than she could, Kolb explains.

Elitone was cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2019 for both prescription and over-the-counter use. “Two-thirds of women won’t talk to their doctor about this—that’s how secret and private it is—so we wanted to reach out to the women directly,” Kolb says. “This is a new and growing category of direct-to-consumer medical devices.”

Gavin Newsom’s Judicial Selection Advisory Committee.

Your secretary, Diane (Hern) Anderson, has an update for this edition.

Many of you know that I’ve been in Austin, TX, since we graduated MIT. I moved here for graduate school at UT, worked for a Swiss medical device company for almost five years, and completed an MBA in 2003 from Stanford. After stepping out of the paid workforce for a significant number of years to focus on raising three children (Zach, 19; Leah, 16; and Brett, 13), I will head back to UT Austin again this fall. It’s possible that I’m the oldest person to enter this program!

I’ll wear that “maturity” with pride. In many ways, I’m much smarter than I was even 10 years ago. This time around, I’ll study public policy at the LBJ School.

I’ve been quite active as a volunteer in the non-profit sector and am ready to “take it to the next level!” This certainly is a ripe time to be entering the field.

I’m hopeful that we are on the verge of change for the better, and I figured I’d do my best to help.

–Diane (Hern) Anderson, secretary, email: dhern@alum.mit.edu.

While FDA approval is a big milestone, Kolb finds the most satisfaction in emails from women describing their return to daily activities like dancing or running.

“This is why we do what we do—because it helps,” she says. Now, the company is developing a version of Elitone for the related issue of overactive bladder.

It is also investigating whether a similar device can be developed for men.

“MIT is a good foundation for figuring out how to do things well and how to do them on your own,” says Kolb, who majored in mechanical engineering. At Elidah, she has taken on everything from designing and building prototypes to writing patents and regulatory documents. And she is eager for more opportunities to invent as she remains focused on her overarching goal: “Helping as many people as I can with the products that I make.” —Catherine Caruso, SM ’16

1994 At the time of this writing, we are all still deep in the coronavirus pandemic.

We sincerely hope that you and your families remain safe during this difficult time. Clearly, we all recognize the uncertainty that exists in response to covid-19 from a public and community health perspective.

M a ny m e m b e rs o f t h e M I T community have stepped up in the face of adversity and are engaged in the work of designing and delivering equipment to help our medical personnel on the front line. Our own Sanjay Vakil, whose day job is senior product manager at Google, founded MasksOn.org, which converts full-face snorkel masks into emergency personal protective equipment for medical providers. MasksOn.org has shipped over 25,000 free masks to more than 2,500 institutions in all 50 states, including hospitals, doctor groups, and hospices. The masks are to be used only in emergencies, when N95 masks and other PPE are not available. The organization has raised $2.3 million to

purchase, convert, and ship masks; no one draws a salary. MasksOn.org is a program under its fiscal sponsor, the Fab Foundation, based in Boston.

MasksOn.org is a family affair for Sanjay. His wife, Naoka Carey, helps with public relations and fundraising, and provides prospective on nonprofits from her work at a juvenile justice organization. His son Han, 18, is the courier manager, running a Slack channel of 35 volunteers, who make local deliveries after picking up boxes of masks from the Vakils’ porch. Even the youngest children are involved: Saoirse, 11, makes mask-wearing emojis, and Kieran, nine, donated $3 he received from the tooth fairy!

If you are interested in helping, please check out: https://maskson.org.

We hope you continue to practice good social distancing and remain healthy and safe. We have a Class of 1994 Facebook page—in case you haven’t done so, please join us so we can see your updates more frequently!

–Kim Cornwell, email: sylence@ alum.mit.edu; Christine Harada, email: chrismit@alum.mit.edu.

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MIT News

1995 Please send news for this column to Ranjini Srikantiah, email: ranjini@ alum.mit.edu

1996

25th Reunion

Please send news for these columns to Class Notes, MIT Technology Review, 1 Main St., Cambridge, MA 02142; email: classnotes@technologyreview.com.

1997 I posted a poll for this issue and received almost all possible answers. The question: Have you been working from home—yes or no? If yes, are you looking forward to returning to the office, or would you rather spend at least part of your work week at home? No one who answered is leaving the house to work; I am sure that our many classmates in the medical profession are still headed out every day and not necessarily staying on top of their email. Thank you all for your incredibly important work! Everyone who answered has been working from home. Scott Shrum is the only one who is looking forward to going back to the office full time, because he feels more efficient. Three people would like to eventually go to a hybrid schedule of spending part time in the office and part at home: Amy Hanlon Newell, Graham Warden, and Hussein Waljee.

Three others are interested in staying at home for work: Maria Shkolnik, Andy Ellis, and Georgiana PierreLouis (although she was working from home before covid-19 and wouldn’t mind going into an office eventually).

If this sample is any indication, the world of work may look very different after we come out of this!

Most respondents also sent along updates. Enjoy!

Maria Shkolnik taught AP Java from home this spring to her high school students in Acton, MA, cooking amazing dishes while her three kids tried to learn at home—two in high school, one in elementary. She thought about changing something for this fall, with maybe working completely from home, and getting more hands-on programming work. As a hobby, she painted with acrylics on all surfaces and made paracord bracelets. She went out for dinner with Hannah Jang-Condell before this started.

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Amy Hanlon Newell is grateful that her kids are teens, and that they have a pool and lots of outdoor space!

Andy Ellis just wrapped up his 20th year at Akamai.

Graham Warden bought a Tesla Solar Roof (and it is awesome). He is back in the US after spending eight years working in the military overseas, and unexpectedly, his current boss is an MIT grad. He is looking forward to more international travel in the future.

Hussein Waljee is thankful to be in British Columbia, where the outbreak has been largely contained due to early and consistent action and advice from public health officials. Thankfully, work eased up around the onset of the pandemic, so he had more space to take on homeschooling responsibilities, while his wife continued to be deployed as a community health nurse.

He decided to start a consulting outfit to help medium-sized businesses manage their technology portfolios more successfully and efficiently in the medium term. There needs to be consolidation on the demand side, so he is looking to help companies share a high-performing technology team and a best-of-breed portfolio of tools.

Wish him luck!

On the personal front, he has happily made Vancouver his home, his daughter recently started grade school, and the years are flying by. He is still connected to MIT as an educational counselor, and through the Club of BC, great friends on Facebook, and the occasional meetup.

Part of him still lives in Cambridge, and he hopes to either re-size his finger or his brass rat so he can wear it occasionally.

Until next time, –Emily (Wallace) Viehland, email: typhoon.emily@gmail.com.

1998 Please send news for this column to Elizabeth Hennings, email: lizyo@ alum.mit.edu.

1999 Please send news for this column t o Amy Laverdiere, e m a i l : amy.laverdiere@gmail.com.

2000 Please send news for this column to Heather C. Toews, secretary, Florida; email: hrcrooks@alum.mit.edu.

2001

20th Reunion

At the writing of this column in July, the US is at peak uncertainty, as school districts consider the upcoming fall, states diverge drastically on balancing public health and economic opportunity, cities examine their responsibilities to dismantle systemic racism, and a major election looms to elect the country’s president and other federal officials. By the time the printed column reaches you, many of these uncertainties will have been decided, but new ones will have replaced them. In times of uncertainty, we can minimize stress by focusing on what we can control and trusting our resourcefulness to adapt to any possible future. This issue’s notes are great examples of adapting our work and personal lives to new realities.

In March, AnnMarie Thomas was awarded the 2020 LEGO prize. While the 2020 LEGO Idea Conference was moved to a virtual format, AnnMarie was still able to travel to Billund, Denmark, to assist with the conference and receive the award. If you are looking for ways to entertain socially distanced kids, her research group, the University of St. Thomas’ Playful Learning Lab, has created free resources: The PLAYground (www.PLAYgroundCamp.org), with activities for kids in four languages, and OK Go Sandbox (a collaboration with the rock band OK Go): www.

OKGoSandbox.org.

STEM Gems founder and author Stephanie Espy ran a STEM-tastic virtual camp of hands-on activities, career exploration, and mindful conversations for rising fifth- through ninth-grade girls in June. The STEM Gems Summer Virtual Camp 2020 introduced girls across the country to a diversity of possible STEM careers like scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians.

Hands-on activities included DNA extractions, nature-made bionics, outdoor catapults, robot programming, cartoon animations, insect mapping, virtual reality, factor stacking, DIY filters, hidden alarm design, park design, sundial science, wave motion, and more! Campers used the STEM Gems book to connect the hands-on activities to real STEM careers.

Girls also virtually met a cell biology

research scientist, technologist from Google, a chemical engineer in direct air capture and mineralization, and an actuary in the healthcare industry, each of whom shared how their work changes the world and helps people.

Equally important, girls learned the benefits of a STEM career, how to overcome potential challenges, and gained valuable guidance and advice. For more information about the STEM Gems book, virtual camps, or other programs, please visit www.

STEMGemsBook.com or email Stephanie@STEMGemsBook.com.

While cabaret and theater have been shut down, Seth Bisen-Hersh took the opportunity to propose to his girlfriend (now fiancée) by choreographing a dance during their weekly Zumba videos. You can check out the series (SethEmiStreet … say it out loud to appreciate the clever name) and the proposal (Emi’s Birthday Surprise) at tinyurl.com/sethemistreetzumba.

Also, if you haven’t seen Seth’s SelfIsolation song cycle of a dozen songs chronologically about what it’s like to be stuck in your apartment for three months, check that out at tinyurl.com/ sethsongcycle.

–Andy Kostoulas, email: andyk@ alum.mit.edu, Angela Yu, email: wangela@alum.mit.edu.

2002 Please send news for this column to Leah Serrano, email: Leah2002@ alum.mit.edu; Roxanne Cahn, email: roxie@alum.mit.edu.

2003 I didn’t send a request for Class Notes this month. I meant to, but every time I saw Class Notes on my calendar, writing a light-hearted, funny request felt off. The deadline came and went, and I didn’t submit a column. I got an email from Linda at Technology Review, checking in with those who didn’t submit columns. She wanted to make sure we were okay. I am, and so I thought I should write something. I didn’t gather news, but I suspect we have similar stories to share. Some are carrying heavier burdens than others, and all are carrying a little more of the weight of the world. Hopefully, we all have moments of lightness and joy that make it all okay—not good, but good enough until we make it better.

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Daryl Fairweather ’10

Redfin chief economist sees the human side of the housing market How is it possible the housing market is as strong as it is, given that the overall economy is as weak as it is? Confronting questions like these, Daryl Fairweather ’10, chief economist of the real estate website and brokerage Redfin, seeks explanations based in complex human motivations. “When people make the decision to buy a home, so many factors are involved beyond whether they can afford it,” she says.

Fairweather first peeked into homeowners’ heads as a research assistant at the Federal Reserve of Boston, having studied mortgage data through the MIT Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). Interviewing individuals affected by the foreclosure crisis about life events, financial literacy, and risk aversion “got me interested in the intersection between behavioral economics and housing,” she says.

Her PhD mentor at the University of Chicago was

In May, my family left San Francisco to spend three weeks with my mom in Reno. Three weeks has turned into three months, and we don’t know what to do or where we should be, but here we are.

Last night, we drove out into the Nevada desert to try to see Comet Neowise, and we saw it! I was looking at the stars, listening to my four-year-old complain, regretting that I hadn’t changed my two-year-old’s diaper before we left, and seeing a comet that reminded me of my dad, who died right after we graduated from MIT and who took beautiful photographs of Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake when we were all in high school. I told my daughter how small humans are in the universe, and she said, “Yes, but we are big in our hearts.”

–Kristie A. Tappan, secretary, email: ktappan@alum.mit.edu.

COURTESY PHOTO

2004 Please send news for this column to Emily Chi, 10645 Wellworth Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90024; tel: 310-488-9303; email: emilychi@alum.mit.edu.

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Richard Thaler, who won a Nobel for his analysis of how human traits govern individual economic decisions. She worked for two years at Amazon, studying employee engagement, and joined Redfin in 2018.

Fairweather works with Redfin’s researchers and writers to brainstorm questions and then—her favorite part—design methodologies to answer them. They analyze Redfin’s sales data and search patterns, survey users, and tap into a nationwide network of brokers: “We track, for example, how many of our agents have been engaged in bidding wars,” she says. Faced with puzzling data, “I can call up an agent and they can explain to me what they’re seeing on the ground.”

Communicating with the public is a big part of her job. She gives frequent press interviews and writes blog posts with titles like “Homebuyers Flock to Four Cities for Affordable Land and Growing Salaries.” One

pandemic-driven trend she’s watching: roughly half of Redfin users recently polled have made an offer on a home in which they’d never set foot. Thanks to video tours and digital closings, she says, “you don’t have to leave your house to buy a house nowadays.”

A self-described board game geek and funk enthusiast, Fairweather feels an enduring connection to MIT—in part because she and husband Adam Jaramillo met as incoming students through the enrichment program Interphase EDGE. She says she was inspired to seek a strong technical education by her grandmother Norma Merrick Sklarek, who was the first licensed female African-American architect in both New York and California: “It’s good to have role models to show you that it might not be the easiest path, but if you stick with it, there is a path for you.” —Nicole Estvanik Taylor

2005

2007

Lindsay Hays and her family moved to the Northern Virginia area. In March, she started work in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA HQ. Suhaimi Ramly welcomed his family’s second child during the lockdown in May. Congratulations on your son!

Eitan Glinert has been spending the months in quarantine writing the next Broadway hit, “Titanic 2: Tragedy on Ice-takular.” He’s also glad that folks are finally protesting for Black Lives Matter and hopes we’ll all work together to make things better.

Keep your letters coming, and feel free to send updates at any time.

Stay safe, –Chia Berry, secretary, email: analucia@alum.mit.edu.

Helen Tsai Harlan is social distancing and wants to say hi to all who read this column!

Heather Pressler and her husband, Rob Barnett, welcomed a daughter, Marie Isabelle, on May 14, 2020.

Despite the birth happening during the quarantine, everyone is thrilled, especially big brother Ethan. Earlier this year, the family also adopted a sweet, 10-year-old diabetic schnoodle named Lucky, because one type 1 diabetic (Ethan) wasn’t enough!

Heather’s company, Capital Practice Consulting, celebrated four years of helping businesses with their digital marketing strategy. Heather is proud to continue to help businesses evolve in the tough economic climate.

Brendan Englot (SM ’09, PhD ’12) recently got tenure. After applying last December, Sherry Xia (BU JD ’12) recently found out she was selected to volunteer with the New York–based Parole Preparation Project, which

2006

15th Reunion

Please send news for this column to Anjum K. Sharma, secretary, email: anjum@alum.mit.edu.

addresses mass incarceration by working to transform the parole release process.

Brendan and Sherry live in New York with Moxie, a three-and-a-half-year-old longhaired German shepherd; she’s the winner in the family during this period of shelter in place, as it translated into more belly rubs and walks.

–Susan (Shin) Jang, secretary; email: susanjshin@alum.mit.edu.

2008 Please send news for this column to Allie Jacobs, secretary; email: fishie@ alum.mit.edu.

2009 Please send news forthis column to Zsuzsa Megyery, email: megyery.zsuzsa@ gmail.com.

2010 Please send news for this column to Victoria Lo, secretary; tel: 415-8454028; email: victorialo@alum.mit.edu.

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Stephanie Espy ’01 ran the STEM Gems Summer Virtual Camp 2020 for girls in June.

Hands-on projects included DNA extractions, nature-made bionics, outdoor catapults, robot programming, cartoon animations, insect mapping, virtual reality, factor stacking, DIY filters, hidden alarm design, park design, and sundial science.

2011

10th Reunion 2014

Jasmine Florentine is the co-manager and lead illustrator on an open-source, volunteer project to create a suite of illustrated guidance resources about covid-19. The resources include easyto-read visual reminders of proper PPE and hygiene habits for both healthcare workers and the public.

These are available for multicultural and multilingual settings and can be downloaded and used for free from the TeamOSVx website.

Leif Francel and his wife Laci have two wonderful daughters. Leif is a schoolteacher, and his eldest daughter attends preschool where he teaches. He feels blessed to have this opportunity to see his daughter every day at school!

–Arti Virkud, email: virkud@ alum.mit.edu; Grace Yao, email: graceyao@alum.mit.edu.

2012 Please send news for this column to Kimberly Li, secretary; email: kqli@ alum.mit.edu.

2013 Crystal Noel completed her PhD in applied science and technology at UC Berkeley in 2019 and is working as a postdoctoral fellow at University of Maryland, College Park, in the field of quantum computing. She is excited to start as an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and physics at the Duke Quantum Center in 2022.

We love hearing what you’re up to!

Please share updates whenever you have a chance.

–Henry Zhu, secretary, email: hxzhu@alum.mit.edu.

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Please send news for this column to Andrea Gutierrez Marty, email: andreagu@alum.mit.edu.

2015 Please send news for this column to Quynh Nguyen, tel: 714-260-5416; email: qpnguyen2307@gmail.com.

2016

5th Reunion

In this time of increasing community, Amelie Kharey would love to reconnect with other members of our class. Even if you’ve never talked, or merely seen each other in a hall, you can email her and chat! She’s still in Cambridge and ready to make more friends. Email: ameliek@alum.mit.edu.

Andrea Blankenship lives in Zurich, Switzerland. She has completed her master’s degree at ETH Zurich in chemical and bioengineering and will continue with her PhD studies there in the fall. She invites anyone passing through Switzerland to a pot of fondue or an Alpine adventure.

Andy Trattner shares that the postcollege journey has been a wild ride!

It’s also been interesting to watch friends and family at various stages of alumni-hood, career, etc. If you’re ever interested in following along or reconnecting with Andy, he posts reflective life updates at andytrattner. com and welcomes folks to reach out, whether it’s today or 10 years from now.

At the time of this writing, he’s living the dream as a customer success manager

with ReadMe. It’s a healthy, small, and growing business with an amazing culture that truly enables great work/ life harmony. See ReadMe.com/careers for current openings in engineering or customer-oriented roles!

–Rima Das, secretary, email: rimadas@alum.mit.edu.

2019 The Class of 2019 spent the weekend of August 8–9 participating in virtual reunion activities. Thanks to Alexandra Smerekanych, Jenny Xu, Nancy Hung, and Kelsey Becker for hosting the events, and to everyone who helped make them happen!

If you are interested in hosting your own event for our class, please reach out to the class council through our email addresses below. Also email if you have any news to share with the class, like a graduation, work achievement, or life event. We’d love to hear from you!

–Marianne Olsen, email: meolsen@ alum.mit.edu; Kelsey Becker, email: kelseyb@alum.mit.edu.

Please send news for this column to Hanna Pang, email: hpang@ alum.mit.edu.

2017 Please send news for this column to Vineel C. Adusumilli, email: vineel@ alum.mit.edu.

2018 Afika Nyati is working on a proof of concept for a “Microsoft Word for Voice,” a system that can bring the power of word processors to voice note-taking. He’d love to speak with anyone vaguely interested or curious about the premise! Email: afikanyati@ alum.mit.edu.

Daniel Mirny learned how to bake banana bread. It is mediocre.

Nitah Onsongo married Christopher Harmon ’17 this past May in Seattle. Their wedding was supposed to take place June 7, 2020, in beautiful Nairobi, Kenya; however, the pandemic brought a great deal of anxiety to their lives, and they decided to get married sooner and postponed the wedding celebration to 2021. Congratulations, Nitah and Christopher! See their beautiful wedding photo in the online notes.

Course news Course 2 Cristina Amon, SM ’85, ScD ’88, received a 2020 Gold Medal Award from Engineers Canada. The annual awards honor outstanding Canadian engineers, teams of engineers, engineering projects or achievements, and engineering students.

Amon is the alumni distinguished professor in bioengineering and dean emerita at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. She is a distinguished scholar in mechanical engineering, a devoted educator, and an innovative academic leader who helped establish the University of Toronto’s engineering program as a world leader in multi-

News and notes from alumni of graduate programs

disciplinary engineering research and education. During her time as dean, Amon strengthened partnerships with Canadian industries and developed leading-edge programs and institutes to foster collaborative research addressing the world’s most pressing challenges.

She diversified the curriculum and created opportunities for engineering students to develop the leadership, communication, entrepreneurship, and business competencies to become leaders in their fields. She also made incredible strides in increasing diversity and gender equity, increasing the firstyear engineering cohort from 20% women in 2006 to 42% in 2019.

Amon’s research pioneered the development of computational fluid dynamics for formulating and solving

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Frederick Goff, SM ’01

Combating record unemployment with the help of strangers In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Frederick Goff, SM ’01, and his teammates from a machinelearning-based hedge fund decided to apply their technology to job search engines, for which there was widespread demand. In 2015, they created a new platform, Jobcase, to help people “manage their own future of work with a set of open tools.”

The result: a social-media platform where strangers help strangers get jobs.

While Jobcase was built to be inclusive of all workers, Goff says its focus is on the 67% of people in the US without a four-year degree, who are likely to face such challenges as frequent job changes and displacement by automation. Free to all users, the site has no premium memberships or paywalls; Jobcase’s revenue comes from employers who pay to list jobs and hiring events.

thermal design challenges subject to multidisciplinary competing constraints.

Throughout her career, she has made contributions to concurrent thermal designs, innovations in electronics cooling, optimization algorithms for renewable energy, design of biomedical devices, and transient thermal management of electric vehicle batteries and fast chargers. These are areas that contribute to positive societal change in critical sectors like renewable energy, electrical cars, and healthcare. Her research is at the forefront of current innovation, driving engineering and business value.

COURTESY PHOTO

Course 3 Andre Theron Morkel, ScD ’60, was born Sept. 11, 1932, and died Nov. 20, 2019. He was the beloved husband of Barbara for 56 years. He leaves his sons Daniel, Andre, Phil, and Charl, their spouses, and eight grandchildren. He was a special man who always took the positive view of life. His last address was in Western Australia.

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Jobcase applies machine learning and search engine optimization to help users find jobs and explore career paths related to their current work. For instance, it might alert someone searching for cashier positions that medical billing specialists have an 80% overlap in talents and skills, then suggest related openings and additional skill-building opportunities.

But it’s the community that really sets the platform apart, says Goff. Its algorithms connect users to other users they can learn from—pulling from the more than 112 million registered Jobcasers. “We’re just a bunch of quants and computer and data scientists; we know we don’t have all the answers,” says Goff.

“We want the platform to provide the connective tissues so that people can help each other navigate.”

Goff gives the example of an early adopter with attention deficit disorder who had struggled to find

Course 4 Joel H. Goodman, MArch ’68, wrote the article “Building Interior Tubes and Nonimaging Reflectors (BITNR) Studies,” published in the Spring 2020 Journal of Green Building. The BITNR title changed from BIETR (Building Evacuated Tubes and Reflectors) to also include non-evacuated tubes that can be made and repaired locally and to more accurately describe the nonimaging reflectors.

Course 9 Artificial Whiteness: Politics and Ideology in Artificial Intelligence, by Yarden Katz, PhD ’19, will be published in November

by Columbia University Press. “Bringing together theories of whiteness and race in the humanities and social sciences with a deep understanding of the history and practice of science and computing, Artificial Whiteness is an incisive, urgent critique of the uses of AI as a political tool to uphold social hierarchies.” Katz

work. After joining Jobcase, she wrote about the experience of suddenly having a community of people assisting her search and even pointing her to companies with programs that could accommodate her needs.

With covid-19 pushing the US from a 3.5% unemployment average in February to 10.2% in July, Goff knows how urgently job seekers need support. Within two weeks of the pandemic’s start, Jobcase launched an unemployment resource microsite, including specifics on each state’s benefits and articles on topics such as the difference between furloughs and layoffs and managing personal finances while unemployed.

“We built Jobcase to try to minimize anxiety and maximize success,” says Goff. “When anxiety is at its absolute peak in our country, specifically with regard to work life, there’s no mission I’d rather be on right now.” —Julie Fox

is a fellow in the department of systems biology at Harvard Medical School.

Course 10 Robert Hanlon, SM ’83, ScD ’85, just published his first book, Block by Block: The Historical and Theoretical Foundations of Thermodynamics. He says, “It took a while, and I’m very pleased with the result.” The book offers an original perspective on thermodynamic science and history based on the three approaches of a practicing engineer, academician, and historian. It synthesizes and gathers into one accessible volume a strategic range of foundational topics involving the atomic theory, energy, entropy, and the laws of thermodynamics. It is available on Amazon and other platforms.

Course 15 Having had a delightful reunion in Singapore and Malacca in 2017, most of the same group of the Class of ’82 Sloan fellows took another trip in October

2019 to Honolulu and Kaua’i, HI. The trip was organized by Peg Janes, SM ’82, but was hugely assisted by Anne-Marie and Mike Applin’s daughter Kate during the trip. The sights were moving (the USS Arizona), historic (Iolani Palace, Bishop Museum), culturally educational (Polynesian Cultural Center, Kaua’i Hindu Monastery), and scenically gorgeous (National Topical Botanical Gardens, Na ’Aina Kai Botanical Gardens & Sculptures, Fern Grotto, Grand Canyon of the Pacific), with rainbow after rainbow daily. Some of the most entertaining times were when the sake was flowing for Elisabeth Zinser and Rieko and Take Suzuki! Another wonderful memory is the unique ocean view birthday cocktail party Lynda and Lauchlan McIntosh graciously hosted from their balcony room.

Robert Louis Hall, SM ’48, died peacefully on Apr. 9, 2020, at the Masonic Care Community, Utica, NY. Robert was born June 18, 1922, in Kansas City, MO. He received a BS in mechanical engineering in 1942 from the University of Kansas. During

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Christina Amon, SM ’85, ScD ’88, a bioengineering professor and dean emerita at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, received a 2020 Gold Medal Award from Engineers Canada. As dean, she developed programs and institutes to foster collaborative research addressing the world’s most pressing challenges and pushed for diversity and gender equity, increasing the percentage of women in the first-year engineering cohort from 20% in 2006 to 42% in 2019.

WWII, he served with the US Marine Corps. Robert married the love of his life, Catherine R. Borne, on Feb. 18, 1950. In 1951, he began his career with Remington Arms in Missouri. In 1955, he was transferred to the Ilion, NY, plant and moved his young family. He was appointed plant manager in 1973 and retired in 1983.

Robert became an Eagle Scout in 1940 and received the Distinguished Eagle Award in 1981 from the General Herkimer Council. He was scoutmaster of Troop 23. He had been a board member of Ilion High School and a director for Blue Cross Blue Shield, the Automobile Club of Utica, the Savings Bank of Utica, and the HCCC Foundation. He was also a member of the Marine Corp League, the Remington Arms 25-Year Club, the Conversation Club, and the Cedar Lake Golf Club.

He is survived by three daughters, Bette Jo Caldwell, Barbara Strife, and Mary Lane; three sons, Stephen, William, and Michael; 11 grandchildren; five great-grandchildren; and other family members. He was predeceased by his loving wife, Catherine.

Ahti E. Autio, SM ’58, passed at home, age 92, on Apr. 19, 2020, surrounded by loving family members.

Born in Friendship, ME, Ahti was the second-youngest son of a dairy farmer.

His parents were first-generation immigrants from Finland. He was the last of his generation and survived all his 10 siblings.

He valued being of service to his country by joining the Marine Corps.

He received his BS at University of New Hampshire. His career spanned working at General Electric, Mitre Corporation, and as a consultant to the state of Massachusetts in waste

management resource and recovery. He was active during his retirement years by participating on various boards in Knox County, ME, involving health care and finance. He served a six-year term as selectman in the town of Friendship.

One of his great pleasures was playing tennis; he was a cofounder of the Acton Indoor Tennis Association, where he was able to play year-round. A man of great Catholic faith, he was active as lector at his church. His faith provided him with great comfort until the end of his life. He leaves behind a loving immediate and extended family, who considered him one of their own.

Michael Robert Gauthier, SM ’82, of Lexington, MA, passed away Dec. 17, 2015 after battling cancer for several years. Mike was born March 17, 1956, in Pompton Plains, NJ. Mike is survived by his wife, Valerie Upham; his mother, Marie O’Brien; a sister, Denise Gauthier; a brother, Joseph; his sons, Nick and Marc; and his daughters, Catherine and Claire.

Mike was a graduate of Connecticut College before coming to the Sloan School of Management. He was the founder of PeerEngage, a digital marketing business. In his earlier career, Mike served as president of MGA Software and the founder of several startups.

Mike embraced life. He was a devoted father, a hardworking entrepreneur, and a loving husband. He enjoyed traveling, fishing and camping, good food, a good book, and most of all, spending time with his children. He was a brave and honest man with a great sense of humor.

There is now an empty space in all the lives he touched.

William Smith Selby, SM ’85, passed away peacefully on March 1,

2020. Born 66 years ago and raised in New York, Bill graduated from the Buckley School, Riverdale Country School, and Hampshire College (where he was a member of the first class).

Bill was creative and had a great sense of adventure; as a teenager, he refitted an old milk truck and drove to Mexico with a friend. After college, he worked as a broadcast journalist in Detroit, San Diego, and Boston before he came to MIT. In 1987 he joined Gabelli Institutional and Private Wealth Management, where he was a managing director and board member for 32 years. He loved playing golf and tennis, sailing, windsurfing, and most of all, spending time with his family.

He is survived by his wife, Yvette; two daughters, Alexandra and Christina; his mother, Cecily Cannan Selby; his brothers, Norman and Russell; and several nieces and nephews. He was laid to rest in Westhampton Beach, next to his father, Henry. He will be greatly missed by all.

Thomas Hungerland, SM ’92, was born Jan. 7, 1966, in Celle, Germany, and died Apr. 9, 2020, in Stuttgart. He spent his childhood in Germany and three years in New Jersey.

In high school, he was student representative and a sports swimmer.

In June 1986, he graduated from high school as the best of his year and gave the graduation speech on behalf of his class.

He completed his basic military service in the German Armed Forces as a radio operator.

From 1987 to 1989, Thomas studied business administration at the University of St. Gallen (HSG) in Switzerland. After passing his intermediate diploma, he transferred to the Sloan School of Management.

As an absolute car fanatic, he started his professional career at Mercedes-Benz/Daimler in Stuttgart.

There, he met his wife, Andrea, the mother of their children Carolin and Tiago. Several years later, he switched internally to Daimler Financial Services.

The Hungerland family never stayed long in one place. They lived in Milton Keynes, UK, as well as Paris, Stuttgart, and Singapore. Thomas and Andrea moved back to Stuttgart in summer 2019.

Course 17 Jeremy Pressman, PhD ’02, published a new book, The Sword Is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the Limits of Military Force (Manchester University Press, 2020). In the book, he challenges the common notion that military tools are the best way to achieve longterm security and other fundamental national goals.

TPP Dara Fisher, SM ’13, is proud to announce that the MIT Press published her first book, Education Crossing Borders, on Aug. 11. While the content is based on her doctoral dissertation research conducted at the Harvard School of Education, the core of the investigation stems from the research assistantship that she held with the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) as a TPP student.

Dara is currently the associate dean at the Hult International Business School in Cambridge, MA. Arthur Yip, SM ’14, started a new position as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO. After TPP, Arthur earned his PhD in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. At NREL, he will conduct analysis and research related to energy, transport, and engineering systems.

Attention

Alumni of all MIT graduate programs Please send your news for inclusion in Course news to: MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142 email: CourseNews@ technologyreview.com

MIT News is published bimonthly as a supplement to MIT Technology Review, 1 Main St., Suite 13, Cambridge, MA 02142-1517. Entire contents ©2020. The editors seek diverse views, and authors’ opinions do not represent the official policies of their institutions or those of MIT.

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Puzzle corner

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Send problems, solutions, and comments to Allan Gottlieb at New York University, 60 Fifth Ave., Room 316, New York, NY, 10011, or gottlieb@nyu.edu. For other solutions and back issues, visit the Puzzle Corner website at cs.nyu.edu/~gottlieb/tr.

I have two milestones to report: I just turned 75, and three days later I broke my arm for the first time.

Unfortunately, I am very much right-handed, and (of course) that is the arm I broke.

Please forgive any shortcuts I must use in this column.

Speed department

Problems

Solutions

N/D 1. Jorgen Harmse sent us the following, which is based on an actual deal.

The contract should have been 7 hearts (unless you were warned about the clubs), but you’re in 6 no-trump. West leads the jack of clubs, and you immediately win two club tricks. What are your chances of making the contract?

♠ ?? ♥ ?? ♦ ?? ♣ Jt532

♠ 52 ♥ A843 ♦ A9654 ♣ 86

♠ AKQ ♥ KQt6 ♦K ♣ AKQ94

♠ ?3 ♥ ?? ♦ ?? ♣7

N/D 2. David Mayhew has been given the task of evaluating the sequence 13 + 23 + 33 + … + n3 for large n and without computing hardware. A straightforward term-by-term calculation seems virtually impossible to accomplish in a lifetime. Prove that the formula c1 n + c2 n2 + c3 n3 + c4 n4 will evaluate the sequence for all n and find the coefficients that make it happen.

N/D 3. Richard J. Morgen offers a math problem that stems from a quiz show on TV in which three contestants get to spin a wheel.

Each contestant can choose to spin one or two times. The wheel has 20 equal-size segments, marked 5, 10, 15, 20, on up to 100.

Each contestant can decide, in turn, whether to stop after one spin or spin again. Anyone who goes over 100 is out. A tie (which could be two-way or three-way) results in a one-spin spinoff.

What is the best strategy? Specifically, what number should you stop on if you spin first? What if you spin second? (Obviously, if you are second, you take a second spin if your first spin does not match or exceed that achieved by the first spinner. But you need more strategy than that.) The third spinner only has to decide whether to stop if he or she ties someone.

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Ermanno Signorelli wonders what the following sets of numbers have in common: {13, 84, 85}, {15, 112, 113}, {28, 195, 197}, and {35, 612, 613}.

J/A1. Duffy O’Craven offers what I might call our first “tit for tat” chess problem. A few years ago, O’Craven submitted our only “helplessmate” problem. This time you are to find a legal chess position where the player-to-move is in check and this player’s only legal move is to deliver checkmate. The mating move must be neither a capture nor a discovered check.

The following solution is from Michael Branicky.

Black has just moved to Qf2+. The only legal move is Bg2#.

My approach requires at 8 least six pieces: 7 1. Both kings (B1 and W1) 2. A Black piece initiating 6 check (B2) 5 3. A White piece that can be 4 placed between B2 and W1 to both block the check and 3 2 force the mate (W2) 4. A White piece that pins B2 1 so that it cannot capture W2 A B C D E F G H after that block (W3) 5. A Black piece that pins W3 so that it can’t capture W2 to end the initial check (B3) 6. Other pieces as needed to force the mate on B1 and to force the move of W2 as the only legal move for White: that is, to cut out all moves of both kings.

J/A2. David Dewan’s cryptarithmetic problem, which John Ebert notes had previously appeared as 2017 M/J2, requires you to substitute a digit 0 to 9 for each letter in the equation HAPPY = NEW + YEAR Distinct letters get distinct digits, and if a letter appears multiple times, the same digit is substituted each time.

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As promised, I gave preference to solutions that were not computer searches of all the possibilities. Greg Muldowney offered the following.

The integer values of the set {A,E,H,N,P,R,W,Y} satisfy: (10H + A)110P+ Y = 1,000Y + 100E + 10A + R + 100N + 10E + W The right side is in the thousands, hence P must be 0—an exponent in the hundreds is too large unless H is 0 and A is 1, in which case the left side is 1. Further, Y = 1 as an exponent is too small, hence Y ≥ 2. Grouping terms containing Y, H, and A on the left gives: (HA)Y − (1,000Y + 10A)= 110E + 100N + (R +W) The extremes of the right side are 317 and 1,803, corresponding to {E,N,R,W} = {9,8,7,6} and {1,2,3,4} respectively. These extremes set bounds on HA for a chosen value of Y: 1,000Y + 317 +10A ≤ (HA)Y ≤ 1,000Y + 1,803 + 10A

Initially the 10A is neglected. For Y = 2, 2,317 ≤ (HA)2 < 3,803, hence HA is 49 to 61—omitting 50, 52, 55, and 60, which repeat a digit. For Y = 3, 3,317 ≤ (HA)3 ≤ 4,803, hence HA is 15 or 16.

Updating the bounds with 10A moves the minimum at Y = 2 to 51; all else is unchanged. For Y ≥ 4, HA < 10, which would imply H = 0, duplicating P. Thus there are only 10 (Y, HA) cases to evaluate, eight for Y = 2 and two for Y = 3. Each is pursued by seeking to match [(HA)Y – (1,000Y +10A)] with (110E + 100N + R + W) using four of the six remaining digits. The lower-bound cases (2, 51) and (3, 15) are infeasible because 0, 1, and either 2 or 3 are assigned, forcing N to be at least 4. Of the other eight cases, only one solves the problem: 16003 = 829 + 3,267 both sides being 4,096. A trivial variant is obtained by swapping R and W, i.e., the 7 and 9.

J/A3. Burgess Rhodes notes that all lines intersecting at a fixed point in R3 fill R3. No two of these lines are parallel. Also, all lines parallel to a fixed line in R3 fill R3. No two of these lines intersect.

The question is whether R3 can be filled with lines no two of which are parallel and no two of which intersect.

Dale Worley submitted the following solution: It’s geometrically obvious that R3 can be partitioned into a set of nested one-sheet hyperboloids of revolution, plus the z axis.

There are probably a lot of different ways to construct such sets of hyperboloids. And it’s well known that one-sheet hyperboloids can be “ruled,” or partitioned into a set of lines (in two ways!).

In this case, the important thing is that all the lines on a particular hyperboloid of revolution have the same slope relative to the xy plane, and so we need to arrange that the lines on each hyperboloid have a different slope from the lines on every other hyperboloid. Using the Wikipedia page on hyperboloid as a

ND20_MIT-puzzle.indd 64

reference, we set the equation of the (symmetric) hyperboloid as x 2 /a 2 + y 2 /a 2 − z 2 /c 2 = 1 and parameterize the lines on it with the vector equation (a cos α, b sin α, 0) + t (−a sin α, b cos α, c) where α parameterizes where on the hyperboloid the line is and t parameterizes the points along the line.

To see the slope of a line relative to the xy plane, we choose a line of constant y, which forces alpha = π/2. The line is parameterized (0, b, 0) + t (−a, 0, c) which shows that the slope of the line in the xz plane is −a/c.

So we need to assemble nested hyperboloids that each have distinct values of a/c. This can be done by choosing the family with c = 1, which means that every point (without x = y = 0) is on the hyperboloid in the family with a=

(x2 + y2)/(1 + z2)

Every point is on exactly one of these hyperboloids, or the z axis, so they partition R3. All the lines on a hyperboloid have a different slope relative to the xy plane than the lines on any other hyperboloid, so two lines on different hyperboloids are not parallel. All of the lines on one hyperboloid are skew to each other.

Better late than never M/A1. David Patrick and Michael Branicky independently discovered the same flaw in our solution. Patrick writes: “I believe that the solution to M/A1 in the recent July/August issue of MIT News has a subtle but significant error. In particular, in the given explanation of why the White king cannot have moved last, the claim ‘There is no previous Black move that could have put the White king into check’ is incorrect. A Black bishop could have been on b8 and moved to c7, discovering a check from the Black queen, and then the White king could have captured that bishop on c7.” Patrick’s full response is on the Puzzle Corner website.

Other responders Y. Aliyev, Anonymous, S. Berkenblit, G. Chan, J. Chandler, J. Ebert, A. Jakobčič, T. Johnson, J. Kingsnorth, P. Kramer, J. Larsen, T. Maloney, T. Mita, B. Rhodes, and Y. Zussman

Solution to speed problem Remove one digit from each number and you get Pythagorean triplets. {3, 4, 5}, {5, 12, 13}, {8, 15, 17} and {5, 12, 13}.

9/14/20 5:16 PM

Profiles in generosity

Sally Yu ’00 and Jeff Shen San Francisco, California

Sally Yu became an MIT volunteer almost immediately after graduating. “It’s like I never left!” she says. “For the little volunteering I do, I gain so much in knowledge, friendships, and personal growth.” She and her spouse, Jeff Shen, recently continued their support of the Institute by creating the Yu Endowed Scholarship Fund for undergraduates as Yu’s 20th-reunion gift.

Supporting economic mobility. Yu received financial aid and held multiple jobs as a student. “Attending MIT was a transformative experience for me,” she says. As chief investment officer of the endowment that supports the contemporary dance company ODC/Dance, she combines her passion for the arts—discovered through MIT’s ballroom dance team— and her technical skills in investing. “I’m a prime example of the economic mobility that so many MIT graduates have because of scholarship support,” she says. Shen also received financial support from his alma maters. “As I’ve gotten to

ND20_MIT_donor.indd 3

know the Institute, I’ve been very much inspired by its mission and purpose,” he says. As co-chief investment officer of the systematic active equity division at BlackRock, he has also found himself recruiting MIT graduates who have essential knowledge in machine learning and data-driven analysis.

A precedent for problem-solving. The couple cites MIT’s rapid response in tackling “the big issues” as one reason they continue to stay involved. “We made the gift right before covid-19 hit, and now the pandemic is affecting the student body in different ways,” Yu says. “We hope the fund will inspire others about the importance of philanthropy to the lives of MIT students, now and in the future.”

Help MIT build a better world.

For information, contact Amy Goldman 617.253.4082; goldmana@mit.edu giving.mit.edu/planned-giving

9/18/20 12:09 PM

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