Harvey Mudd College Magazine, summer 2017 by Harvey Mudd College

SUMMER 2017

Coastal engineer Donya Frank ’06 tracks individual grains of sand that impact more than just tourism. | 28

WHAT’S GOING ON (AT MUDD)

FROM SCIENCE FICTION TO MEDICAL REALITY

THE CLIMATE WILL CHANGE

SPACE STUDY

3 6

1 5

Parasite Campsite The Schulz Biology Lab The tiny Trypanosoma brucei parasites in Professor Danae Schulz’s biology lab at Harvey Mudd are invisible to the naked eye, but visitors to the lab are immediately aware of their presence. Signs along the west wall of the lab warn that the windows “must remain unopened.” “It’s a safety precaution,” Schulz says, explaining that, as unlikely as the scenario might be, if a parasite made it out an open window and ended up in the bloodstream of a local cow, things wouldn’t end well for the animal. T. brucei is an African protozoan parasite that, when transmitted to the bloodstream of a mammal through the bite of a tsetse fly, causes sleeping sickness in

humans and nagana in cattle. Fortunately for Schulz and her students, humans are resistant to the particular parasites housed in the lab. The Schulz Lab is studying how the trypanosomes are able to reprogram themselves to adapt as they move between the differing environments of the fly midgut and the mammalian bloodstream, with an eye toward trying to manipulate these adaptations to generate new therapies. Researchers in the lab divide work into two categories: Matty Walsh ’20 and Ellie Naudzius ’20 gather data at the bench, and Moira Dillon ’18 and Jingwen Liao SCR ’18 analyze data computationally.

1 Dillon and Liao analyze gigabytes of sequenced data. They seek to understand the role for a particular type of protein as the parasite cells change from one version, which exists in the mammalian bloodstream, to another version, which lives in the insect. “They want to know where the protein sits on a chromosome and are asking that question computationally,” Schulz explains. The students are using an existing algorithm, but there is the possibility of writing a new one if they decide they need something more specialized. “We’re really lucky at Harvey Mudd that the students have a broad skillset so we can capitalize on that,” Schulz says. 2 M icrobes are cultured in the orbital shaker, which provides the ideal environment for growing bacteria. 3 When working with chemicals like formaldehyde and phenol chloroform, researchers use the chemical fume hood to protect themselves from noxious fumes. Chemicals are stored in drawers below the hood and are used for various procedures, including isolating DNA. 4 All the non-toxic work of DNA isolation is done at the bench. DNA manipulation requires careful labeling of all the tubes because the researchers can’t actually see what they’re doing; they only know if they’ve done it correctly after a few hours when the DNA construct is measured on the spectrophotometer. Schulz (left) oversees the work of Walsh and Naudzius as they build a DNA construct that will act as a reporter when cells

are tested to determine which type they are (the blood version or the insect version). When the students add the DNA construct into a cell, the cell may change color, depending on which version it is: one that exists in blood or one that exists in the insect. The researchers seek to learn whether the protein moves from one place on a chromosome to another as the cells become insect stage cells. Other equipment on the bench includes a centrifuge, PCR machine and waystations for measuring chemicals. 5 Used pipettes go into this decontamination bucket to soak in chlorine. Everything that touches the parasites must be thoroughly decontaminated via an autoclave in another lab. 6 E verything needed to prepare parasite food, including tools like a vortexer for mixing components together, is found in this section of the lab. Drawers hold supplies such as unused pipettes and PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tubes. PCR is a technique used to amplify a segment of DNA across several orders of magnitude to generate copies of a particular DNA sequence. 7 A small room at the back of the lab houses the tissue culture hood, a biological safety cabinet that prevents cross contamination. Schulz feeds the T. brucei “parasite food” by pipetting it into a dish where she’ll grow parasites. The food is made up of components from cow blood combined with sugars and amino acids. The parasites must be fed every two days.

FROM THE

PRESIDENT

SUMMER 2017 | VOLUME 15, NO. 3

Lend Me Your Ear

Director of Communications, Senior Editor Stephanie L. Graham

LOSS MANIFESTS ITSELF IN MYRIAD WAYS. AT

Harvey Mudd College, the loss of classmates Tristan Witte ’18 and Willie Zuniga ’17 in rapid succession (summer and the following spring) was a blow to our small community. Both students were respected campus leaders: Witte a talented athlete, musician and scholar; Zuniga a dedicated physics researcher, mentor and dorm leader. We’re honored to have known them. In remarks about both students, friends mentioned how they were incredible listeners (“Tristan always looked people in the eye and really listened…”; “one of [Willie’s] strongest skills was being a good listener.”). During this especially difficult time in the life of our College, I think we can learn from these two young men. The recent events that have tested our tight community—a divisive political climate, the publishing of a confidential report containing inflammatory remarks, a staff member being placed on leave—remind me just how important listening can be. I’ve been doing a lot of it this year, and recent decisions, made in consultation with all parties involved, have taken many community members’ thoughts and concerns into consideration. I listened as faculty members expressed a desire to cancel classes for two days this past spring. This meant students missed one lecture in a course. After hearing from faculty and seeing the overwhelming support (80 percent voted for the two-day break), I agreed. I’m truly glad that we did this as it allowed the stress levels to recede, especially among our students.

The Harvey Mudd College Magazine is produced three times per year by the Office of Communications and Marketing.

I listened as students shared their concerns and described what they felt the faculty and administration could do about them. Although we had always planned to involve students and alumni in the review process, we are committing to even greater transparency in the Core review, as well as in progress and budgets for departments that directly impact student life, in actions to address prejudice against marginalized students and in greater involvement in the hiring process by the associate deans for institutional diversity. I expect more community-wide conversations to exchange updates and information. Students expressed a desire for timely action and prompt reports on these actions, something we will be working on in the coming academic year. A website to keep everyone accountable and informed has already been created (hmc.edu/ inclusive-excellence/), and an additional site will soon be added and linked to include more details about the work of the Core Review Planning Team. The article on page 6 details much of what has occurred as well as many of the actions the College plans to take. It’s been very difficult, but I’m confident we are already in a better place. We’ll continue seeking the best ways to create and maintain a campus climate that values and respects the rights of all community members. I am so proud our community. Even though we don’t always agree, we do listen, and we do try to do the best for the College.

Art Director Janice Gilson Graphic Designer Robert Vidaure Writer Sarah Barnes Contributing Writers Amy DerBedrosian, Ashley Festa, Becky Ham, Lia King, Elaine Regus Proofreaders Sarah Barnes, Kelly Lauer Contributing Photographers Seth Affoumado, Shannon Cottrell, Jeanine Hill, Anil Kapahi, Cheryl Ogden, Susan Poag, Joe Proudman, David Scavone, Deborah Tracey Vice President for Advancement Dan Macaluso Chief Communications Officer Timothy L. Hussey, APR

MAGAZINE.HMC.EDU The Harvey Mudd College Magazine (SSN 0276-0797) is published by Harvey Mudd College, Office of Communications and Marketing, 301 Platt Boulevard, Claremont, CA 91711. Nonprofit Organization Postage Paid at Claremont, CA 91711 Postmaster: Send address changes to Harvey Mudd College, Advancement Services, 301 Platt Boulevard, Claremont, CA 91711. Copyright © 2017—Harvey Mudd College. All rights reserved. Opinions expressed in the Harvey Mudd College Magazine are those of the individual authors and subjects and do not necessarily reflect the views of the College administration, faculty or students. No portion of this magazine may be reproduced without the express written consent of the editor.

Maria Klawe President, Harvey Mudd College

The Harvey Mudd College Magazine staff welcomes your input: communications@hmc.edu or Harvey Mudd College Magazine Harvey Mudd College, 301 Platt Boulevard, Claremont, CA 91711 The Harvey Mudd College Facebook page has nearly 9,000 fans. Join the conversation.

CONTENTS

Features

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

From Science Fiction to Medical Reality

Robert Freitas ’74 envisions the future benefits of nanorobotics, an emerging area of nanotechnology. Written by Amy DerBedrosian

Shifting Sands

Research tracks sediment movement to predict the coast’s ever-changing landscape. Written by Ashley Festa

The Climate Will Change

Joseph Majkut ’06 challenges our nation’s leaders to consider what climate change might mean and what can done about it.

Opinions about the content of Harvey Mudd College Magazine are welcome. Letters for publication must be signed and may be edited for clarity and brevity.

Dear Editor, I am pretty certain that your “A History of Guessing Right” leaves out earlier winners from HMC such as 1988 student Carrie O'Donnell on Jeopardy! (not College Jepoardy!). If my memory serves, there were a few articles in older HMC magazines about her usage of math to wager the strategic amount on her final question. Which reminds me: I think that Carrie was among a string of HMC students who used game theory to target ideal wagering on the final question. – Jeff Edison ’88

Dear Editor, The very nice article about the alum working on solar panels [“A Bright Light in Renewable Energy”] makes a very common error when it states: “However, in reality photovoltaic (PV) cells that convert sunlight directly into power for residences, commercial properties and utility-scale solar fields generate just one percent of all electricity in the United States.” That number is just the PV electricity from utility-scale PVs and doesn't include rooftop solar. Unfortunately, that’s the number in the energy data from DOE and you need to see a footnote which states that they omit rooftop (see the footnote in eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/ sec7_5.pdf). The SEIA (Solar Energy Institute of America) data include rooftop and get a figure of 1.8 percent. That's still way smaller than it should be, but nearly twice as big as the number for just the utility-sized facilities. – Sam Tanenbaum, professor of life sciences and engineering and dean emeritus

Interview by Becky Ham

HEARD ONLINE

C O N V E R S AT IO N S O N H A RV E Y M U DD S O C IA L M E DIA

Departments 01

SPACE STUDY

CLINIC PROGRAM

COLLEGE NEWS

MUDDERINGS

FACULTY NEWS

CLASS NOTES

STUDENT NEWS

STUDENT RESEARCH

ALUMNI PROFILE: RENEE GITTINS ’12 ALUMNI WEEKEND REUNION CLASS PHOTOS

Not even finding West Dorm covered in avocado and lemon pulp can faze longtime building attendant Teresa Nunez. She is the recipient of the 2017 Binder Prize which honors support staff who combine a record of exceptional service with a truly helpful and friendly attitude. We look forward to recognizing Teresa during the College's End-of-the-Year Luncheon today.

Facebook, May 15, 2016: Our post about longtime building attendant and 2017 Binder Prize winner Teresa Nunez was further proof of how deserving of the award she is. See article on page 8. “She literally brightens my mornings after all-nighters spent in Sontag lounge. <3 Teresa.” Jenny Lee ’19

“Yes! Thank you Teresa! Your smiles and conversation have given me cheer on many occasions.” Hannah Zosman ’17 “I hope she's not finding West Dorm in that state often...? Congrats!” Kelly Lee

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Flowing and Growing THERE THEY GO! THE CLASS OF 2017, 84 WOMEN AND

99 men, are off to make their way in the world. Here are some highlights from the 59th commencement ceremony, May 14. Richard Tapia, a leading researcher in the computational and mathematical sciences and a national leader in diversity education and outreach, gave the keynote address and received an honorary doctorate along with former vice chair of the board of trustees Barbara Patocka P00. Tapia directs Rice University’s Center for Excellence and Equity in Education, with a mission to empower underrepresented students who are passionate about STEM education. “Your challenge is to handle adversity. Prosperity is quite easy to handle,” said Tapia. “Realize that tragedy and failure are as much a part of life as are triumph and success. Failure is a part of every successful person’s life. You must learn to grow from your failures and to develop compassion and sensitivity from your tragedies. At each stage of your life and career, continue to dream and work to make your dreams come true, but learn to cope and still enjoy life if they do not all come true.” Student keynote speaker Dylan Baker ’17, who pursued an individual program of studies in computational data science and art, described the Mudd experience with the saying, “you can’t step twice in the same river.” The College and its students are constantly influencing and changing each other, Baker explained. “We’ve watched dorm communities shift. We’ve watched core class curricula get written and re-written. And we started FemUnion. We helped build Black Lives at Mudd and the LLC (livinglearning community). Baker said that as the College has seen more people from underrepresented groups on campus arrive, the graduating seniors have pushed Harvey Mudd to grow, “…because the old Mudd just doesn’t fit any more.” Baker thanked faculty and students who impacted the life of the institution and individual lives, and recalled a conversation with fellow senior Willie Zuniga ’17, who passed away during the year and whose family accepted his diploma at the ceremony. “[Willie] reminded me that this degree isn’t just an accomplishment, but a gift and privilege of insight into the world,” Baker said. “It’s … a tool that we can use to educate and do work that means something and help lift up the people around us.”

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE

Where graduates are headed

62%

28%

WORKFORCE

GRADUATE SCHOOL

10% OTHER (volunteer work, travel, internship, startup)

The family of Willie Zuniga ’17

Sarah Anderson ’17 and Alana Chapko ’17

Student affairs administrators Leslie Hughes and Sumun Pendakur capture the moment.

Radical Changes RECOGNIZING THE IMPERATIVE OF

dramatically updating the safety, capacity and functionality of its chemistry labs, the College has made extensive renovations to these spaces. •G eneral Chemistry Laboratory, in which students begin to study molecular structure, intermolecular forces, acid-base chemistry and synthesis •P hysical Chemistry Laboratory, where students study applications of thermodynamics, kinetics and phase transitions •A dvanced Chemistry Laboratory (SuperLab), used for instruction in upper-level courses in the various branches of chemistry (e.g., organic, inorganic, analytical)

This fall, students, faculty and staff will benefit from safer, more-functional modern laboratories, which also showcase the many equipment and instrumentation upgrades that have been made recently. More functional workspaces have been created, and older fume hoods were replaced with modern, see-through hoods, improving sightlines within the labs. Space within the labs was opened up to improve access to instrumentation and to allow for small-group lecture and lab write-up areas to be integrated within the laboratories. Naming opportunities are available, including the opportunity to “claim an element.” See bit.ly/2r6tVIp.

The project began with the need to raise $1.6 million toward the total $4.6 million cost of the planned renovations in both Jacobs and Keck halls. Generous donors, including the Rose Hills Foundation, allowed the College to reach the $1.6 million goal.

Strauss Plaza The campus community was delighted to welcome back HMC’s fourth president and first lady to dedicate the Jon C. and Jean A.S. Strauss Plaza. Jon was president of the College from 1997 to 2006.

Henry T. Mudd Prize The prize: Awarded each year at Commencement to a member of the Harvey Mudd community whose service to the College and its mission is deemed exemplary. Henry T. Mudd (1913–1990), the son of Harvey S. Mudd, served as a founding trustee and chair of the board for 23 years. Awardees receive $6,000, $3,000 of which is designated for use within the College at the discretion of the recipient. Benjamin directed his award toward improvements to Shanahan B445 (Perpall Room), to provide another space for student-faculty interaction. The recipient: Arthur Benjamin, both a mathematician and a magician, is the Smallwood Family Professor of Mathematics. He joined the Harvey Mudd faculty in 1989. As a magician, Benjamin performs a mixture of math and magic to audiences all over the world, including the Magic Castle in Hollywood. He has demonstrated and explained his calculating talents in his book and DVD course, Secrets of Mental Math, and on numerous television programs. He has been featured in many national newspapers and magazines and has given three TED talks, which have been viewed over 12 million times. Princeton Review recently profiled him in the book, The Best 300 Professors. Reader’s Digest calls Benjamin “America’s Best Math Whiz.” Other awards he’s received include the Haimo Award for Distinguished Teaching from the Mathematical Association of America (2000) and the JPBM Communications Award for Public Outreach (2017). Benjamin says: “I started teaching at HMC in 1989 when I was 28 years old, and I have just finished my 28th year, so I have been with the College for half my life. As an aside, mathematicians call 28 a perfect number, since it is the sum of its proper divisions: 28 = 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14. The first four perfect numbers are 6, 28, 496 and 8128, so they are pretty rare. All in all, the award came as a perfect surprise.”

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What’s Going On DISCUSSIONS ABOUT STUDENT HEALTH AND

well-being, academic excellence and rigor, diversity and inclusion dominated during spring 2017. Activities on campus included peaceful student protests and demands, something other colleges across the country—even the other Claremont Colleges—also experienced. Events, both internal and external, combined to make this an especially stressful year for Harvey Mudd students, faculty and staff. The deaths of several students (Tristan Witte ’18, Willie Zuniga ’17, Tatissa Zunguze SCR ’17), a divisive political climate, the publishing of the confidential Wabash Report that included frank and harsh remarks by faculty and students, a staff member being placed on leave—all created an atmosphere that was at times tense and confrontational. Community members dug deeply into the issues that arose from these events, often leading to difficult conversations. Faculty members voted overwhelmingly to cancel classes for two days and found ways to reduce student workload for the remaining few weeks of the semester. During the brief hiatus, staff and faculty engaged in activities to reconnect with students and support the health and wellbeing of the student body. The Office of Institutional Diversity led a series of workshops for faculty on microaggressions, stereotype threat, LGBTQ+ identities and allyship. At the close of the term, faculty and staff attended a two-day forum

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE

“Beyond Diversity: A Workshop for Faculty and Administrators,” and academic departments, led by professors Dagan Karp, Darryl Yong ’96 and Dean Sumi Pendakur, participated in an assessment process using a diversity inclusion and equity rubric. Goals, set forth for each department, will be worked on throughout the academic year. Following this short but necessary two-day break, additional funding for program staffing and student groups was put in place for the 2017–2018 academic year. The one-time budget additions include: • $20,000 to support student access to additional mental health resources • A new, one-year counselor in the Office of Health and Wellness hired in partnership with the Monsour Counseling and Psychological Services to focus on supporting HMC students and on strengthening ties with services offered through the consortium • Three graduate OID interns with increased hours • $1,500 from the President’s Discretionary Fund and $500 from an endowed fund for Student Affairs for a total of $2,000 each to support six student affinity organizations (BLAM, SPLS, APISPAM, THEY/THEM, FEMunion and PRISM)

• A $6,000 fund open to any student group that wants to support wellness and/or diversity efforts on campus All of these allocations will be reviewed following the school year to determine which programs are effective and worthy of ongoing and/or permanent support. In addition, there are continuing programs. The three-year old course Social Justice and Equity: STEM and Beyond is being offered again in spring 2018. There are now year-round programs focusing on international students (Project 196+) and first generation and/or low-income students (Project Decode). HMC continues to build its campus-based health and wellness support, high on students’ list of priorities. Faculty, trustees students, alumni and staff will be working together to ensure that the College achieves and improves outcomes in academic excellence, while also achieving the broader goals of diversity and inclusion as part of a comprehensive review of the Core Curriculum this year. The most recent Core revision (seven years ago) resulted in a 10 percent increase in the number of faculty, accomplished over several years with help from donations made to The Campaign for Harvey Mudd College. The College recognizes that rigor is essential to the Harvey Mudd experience and brand, but at the same time, the faculty wants to ensure that the curriculum is not unmanageable. Considering

“ As the faculty re-evaluates the Core, we will, as we always have done, attempt to optimize the academic program to balance competing objectives.

”

– L ISA SULLIVAN, VICE PRESIDENT FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS AND DEAN OF THE FACULTY

workload in relation to the curriculum is part of the normal review process. “As the faculty re-evaluates the Core, we will, as we always have done, attempt to optimize the academic program to balance competing objectives,” says Lisa Sullivan, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty. “We want our students to embrace challenges as they acquire information and skills, but we also want them to leave us as passionate and energized lifelong learners with a flexible toolkit that will serve them in the future.” There is already success in courses, such as CS5—and more recently E79 (formerly E59 or “Stems”)—where the faculty made adjustments to the curriculum to make instruction more engaging and effective for all learners. In email surveys distributed this summer to alumni and in early fall to faculty, students and staff, participants may provide input about their experiences at Harvey

Mudd. This feedback will inform conversations about revisions to the Core Curriculum and student workload as well as the self-study being created for the external review. The Core Review Planning Team is organizing a strategic planning session that will take place early in the spring of 2018 and include all College constituencies. The new academic year begins with even stronger support for students’ health and wellbeing, and new programs will be tested. As community members move thoughtfully and deliberately to achieve long-term strategies, all are mindful of the need to engage all community members in order to be successful.

hmc.edu/inclusive-excellence

Reimagining the Core Experience Human-centered design (HCD) is an approach that places users at the core of the process. This summer, Angelica Virrueta ’18 and Lily Yang SCR ’18 worked with Fred Leichter, professor of engineering and director of the Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity (the Hive), and Pat Little, chair of the faculty and J. Stanley and Mary Wig Johnson Professor of Engineering, on an HCD project to “Reimagine Student Experience in the Core.” Sponsored by the Hive, the project builds upon skills learned in the course Human-centered Design. Using design thinking as their methodology/tool, the researchers are studying empathetic listening then unpacking user interviews to define the need space, generating ideas, and developing and testing prototypes. “We are committed to the larger community having the central role in ideation, prototyping and testing,” said Little. “This project is essentially about problem finding more than problem solving. Our goal is to uncover narratives that express the emotional resonance people experience in the Core. Ultimately, we hope that these narratives and expressions will help us to understand how the Core impacts students, and to frame useful questions about how the Core might better meet the needs and wants of students.” The intent is not to focus on statistically based samples, nor to follow formal surveys. Rather, researchers hope to add voices and points of view to the discussion, especially the personal and emotional responses of those interviewed. The product of the project will be expression of those voices, along with some questions that arise from this feedback. The researchers will share results during summer and fall.

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TRUSTEE UPDATE

Binder Prize Surprise

Appointments announced at the May board of trustees meetings.

Written by Sarah Barnes IN HER 18 YEARS WORKING AS A BUILDING

attendant at Harvey Mudd College, Teresa Nunez has seen a lot. She can recall her worst day (arriving one morning to find West Dorm covered in avocado and lemon pulp) and a lot of good days (“Every day in Sontag,” she says, laughing). She’s opened dorm rooms to find oddly rearranged furniture, students huddled around school projects, and a variety of pets, including rabbits, a cat and a snake. But Nunez’s most recent surprise came when she was told she’d won the Mary G. Binder Prize, which honors a member of HMC’s support staff who combines a record of exceptional service with a truly helpful and friendly attitude toward students, faculty and fellow staff members across the College. When Custodial Services Manager Lino Galaviz delivered the news to Nunez, he asked her to guess who was getting the award. “I thought it had to be someone else,” Nunez says. “I was so surprised, I cried.” Nunez may be the only person who was surprised by the news. According to her nominators, she more than deserves the award, which includes a $750 cash prize. “The first time we met, I could instantly feel her warmth and friendliness,” a student nominator commented. “She consistently goes beyond the call of duty, making sure that we’re living in a comfortable environment and interacting with us whenever we’re around.” Having worked in each of the Harvey Mudd dorms, Nunez has formed bonds with many students, past and present, and it’s not unusual for alumni—she calls them “kids"—to seek her out when they return to campus. “I always have a good time with the kids because they are nice, and they like to laugh with me,” she says. “They come back to see me, and they’re not kids anymore!” Nunez, who lists “talking too much” as one of her hobbies, came to Harvey Mudd 18 years ago as a temp worker. After two years, she was hired as an employee of the College, and in the years since, she has shared a lot of memorable moments with students. “One day I came to work, and the kids in West Dorm had brought in a big Christmas tree and real snow. I was scared because I thought, ‘oh no, I have to clean this?’ But it was OK. The kids cleaned it up.” Another time, Nunez joined a group of students

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE

Trustees emeriti Ray Grainger ’88 Dylan Hixon Barbara Patocka P00

Barbara Patocka P00 received an honorary doctor of engineering, science, and humane letters degree at this year’s Commencement.

Advisory trustees working on a robotics project. “I took an electronics class, so I knew what they were doing,” she says, laughing. “They were surprised.” Just as the dorms become home to students, they also feel like a second home to Nunez, who has made enchiladas for dorm residents and shared her recipe for pozole. Students have made an impact on Nunez’s life as well. “When my daughter was in high school, a student here tutored her in math,” Nunez remembers, noting also that another benefit of working at the College is a scholarship program for dependents. “Harvey Mudd helped me pay for my daughter’s college. Now she works in finance,” she says. Though Nunez is small in stature (she stands about 5 feet tall), her contagious smile and friendly personality make her stand out, especially among the students. “She engages with us in conversation, interested in hearing about our days and what’s on the schedule for the weekend,” a nominator says. During her time off, Nunez enjoys bicycling and dancing, and every Christmas, she vacations in her home state of Colima, Mexico, where she plans to retire. “I’m going to relax on the beach,” she says with a smile.

John Benediktsson ’01 Michael Blasgen ’63

From Young Alumnus Trustee to regular board member Michael Schubmehl ’02, quantitative researcher, Jump Trading

New to the board Matthew Ferri, partner and portfolio manager, PDT Partners Laura Larson P20, cofounder, Zeno Deborah Quazzo, founder and managing partner, GSV Acceleration Fund Teresa Pineda ’06, cost engineer, Nike Inc. (Young Alumna Trustee)

In Memoriam Robert Funkhouser, a trustee from 1990 to 2000, died in June 2016. J.C. Schwarzenbach passed away in January. A generous HMC donor, he served on the board from 1983 to 2003, after which he served as an emeritus trustee until his death.

In Memoriam Alumni Relations Pioneer Nancy Gamer, a Harvey Mudd College Honorary Alumna and former director of alumni relations, passed away on April 26. She was 80 years old. Gamer arrived at Harvey Mudd in 1977 as a temporary worker and then was hired as alumni secretary. She was promoted into fundraising then to director of alumni relations. She advocated for those who worked for her; her kitchen for many years was a kind of social and professional hub. During her 11-year tenure, the annual fund increased 1,000 percent. On her retirement, her position was divided into three, a testimony to her drive and abilities, and the HMC Alumni Association Board of Governors named her an Honorary Alumna. She is still remembered for the pivotal role she played as the College came into its own. Upon leaving HMC, Gamer went back to her passion and vocation, teaching writing at Claremont McKenna College’s Writing Center. She retired in 2007, eventually moving to Portland in 2015 to be near her son, Jeff, who, along with another son and two brothers, survive her.

Joint Music Mentor Paul Bishop, an accomplished pianist, organist, and harpsichordist, who relished collaborating with students, passed away in his sleep in June. Bishop was staff performance accompanist for the Scripps College music department and the Joint Music Program of Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer and Scripps Colleges since 1975. In the course of his 42 years of accompanying voice lessons and choirs, he played for over 3,000 students in countless recitals and concerts. The directors of the choirs all relied on him to lead sectionals and play in concerts, while the voice faculty valued his expertise in repertoire spanning four centuries.

The Future of Engineering Design The Clive L. Dym Mudd Design Workshop X: Design and the Future of the Engineer of 2020 was held June 1–3. Workshop participants, representing 32 institutions, enjoyed sessions covering Engineering Identity, Innovation and Ideation, Communication, Capstone/ Reflection Learning, Specialized Skills in Engineering, and Engineering in a Social Context. Keynote speaker Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster based in Silicon Valley and a consulting professor in the school of engineering at Stanford University, encouraged attendees to consider the timescale over which change happens—from fast changes like those in fashion to slower changes like those in nature. This is an intuitively easy concept to understand, along with the way that the pace of change at interfaces can result in turbulence, he said. His further point was that this is the typical pattern of change but that disruptive change can shock through many layers suddenly. He encouraged participants to understand an historical timeline at least twice as long as the future period they want to predict. In particular, he considered the impact of chemistry and physics as well as the impact of the rapidly developing field of biology. He challenged the audience to increase aspects of engineering education to address which problems engineers should undertake and how to consider unintended consequences of their solutions. In one thought-provoking, humorous and controversial session, participants discussed attributes of the engineer of 2020 then participated in a design exercise variant of Mad Libs that sought to identify what skills future engineers will need and why. Design Workshop committee chair and Fletcher Jones Professor of Engineering Design Gordon Krauss said these discussions

Design workshop participants considered what attributes future engineers will need.

were “all things that Clive (Dym) would have appreciated. “Clive’s legacy to the design education community cannot be overstated,” he says. “Nor can his support of those within the community. One participant recalled the resistance she faced in design education to which Clive responded, ‘if it was easy, it would have been done already’—a good lesson for any worthwhile endeavor. “The enthusiastic outpouring of support for the workshop by those involved as organizers or participants is a reflection of Clive’s impact and collegiality.”

Class of 2021 Facts Total Applications: 4,078 Total Admits: 629 Total fall 2017 enrollment: 227 Female: 52% Male: 48% 32 states plus DC and Guam 16 non-U.S. countries

First-Generation: 10% Top 10% of high school class (of those with percentile rank): 91% Public/Charter School: 56% Private School: 43% Homeschool: 1%

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Faculty Leadership Eugene Hotchkiss 1963–1968

Jacob B. Frankel 1968–1974

J. Arthur Campbell 1974–1975

Sam Tanenbaum 1975–1993

Farewell for now The Office of the Dean of the Faculty helps oversee the academic program, supports the faculty in their teaching and research, administers existing academic programs and explores new teaching and learning initiatives. Jeff Groves has led this charge—with his staff of 25—for the past five years. At the conclusion of the 2017 academic year, Groves stepped down from the position to begin his transition back to teaching. The board of trustees approved a resolution in his honor, noting his accomplishments. During Groves’ tenure, the College established the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair in Leadership and hired two dozen faculty, including the first Annenberg Professor of Leadership and the Hixon Professor of Sustainable Environmental Design. The resolution praised Groves’ ability to build highly collaborative relationships, his talent in leadership, his thoughtful counsel and his commitment to the mission of the College. The trustees thanked him for his “tireless service and dedication as an exceptional humanist.” Needless to say, Groves is looking forward to having a little more free time now that his tenure as dean is over. “There are a number of things I enjoy doing that I haven’t had much time for as dean,” says Groves, who is on sabbatical for 2017–2018. In addition to gardening, woodworking, hiking and

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fly-fishing, Groves plans to spend time with his wife, Teresa, and their families. “I will miss collaborating with my staff, department chairs, associate deans, faculty members, staff in other areas and counterparts at the other colleges,” he says. Lisa Sullivan assumed the role of dean of the faculty July 1. Stay tuned for more about Sullivan in the fall/winter issue.

Sheldon Wettack 1993–2004

Tom Helliwell 2004–2005

Danny Goroff 2005–2007

Bob Cave 2007–2012

Jeff Groves 2012–2017

Lisa Sullivan 2017–2022 Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts department colleagues Jeff Groves and Lisa Sullivan, former dean of the faculty and current dean, respectively

Retirement Planning We asked recent Harvey Mudd retirees (one who served for 44 years) about their plans and what they’ll miss.

Don Remer

Cynthia Beckwith

Kathy Morrison

Annie Atiyeh

Dick Haskell

Oliver C. Field Professor of Engineering Economics (faculty member since 1975)

Assistant Vice President for Human Resources (hired in 2008)

Department of Physics Administrative Assistant (hired in 1974)

Departent of Physics Stockroom Manager (hired in 1973)

Burton G. Bettingen Professor of Physics (faculty member since 1980)

Looking ahead My wife, Louise, and I have traveled to 50 countries, and there are about 200 countries in the world, so we still have a few more to visit. I plan to spend more time with my wife, three children and their spouses, and our eight grandchildren. Professionally, I plan to continue doing research at HMC and present short courses at places like UCLA and the Sandia National Laboratory.

Looking ahead I’ll visit some of my favorite places in Southern California when I want to (gardens, San Diego Zoo, museums).

Looking ahead Now that I'm retired, I'll finally have time to: sleep in, paint more, read more, travel more, garden more, visit friends more often and hopefully do some volunteer work.

Looking ahead I plan to spend more time with my family and read more books.

Looking ahead I will immerse myself in full-time research! I'll be focusing on an ongoing Sandia Clinic project aimed at exploring barium titanate nanoparticles as a candidate material for the next generation of high-energydensity capacitors which in turn will allow full utilization of renewable energy sources.

Looking back What I’ll miss most is interacting with students in class, in labs, in research and in the hallways. Also, interacting with my colleagues at HMC.

Looking back I’ll miss walking across campus and greeting and stopping to chat briefly with faculty and staff.

Looking back It isn't day-to-day stuff I'll miss, it's everything; the students, the people I've worked with across the campus (especially the people in the physics department). I'll miss the great food. I'll miss the campus itself, which is always kept so nice. It's been a wonderful place to spend most of my working life.

Looking back I will miss the day-to-day routine and the wonderful people at the physics department.

Looking back I will miss consulting with students in lab courses and in the research lab.

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Layers Upon Layers PROFESSOR OF ART KEN FANDELL HELD A SOLO ART

exhibition at Traywick Contemporary in Berkeley, California. Blowouts Bricks Lines, Fandell’s fifth solo show at the Traywick, was a collection of nine works comprising three series of Fandell’s photographs, in which he layers multiple images of ordinary objects to produce unexpected results. Coming off of a year’s sabbatical, Fandell returns to teach photography in the fall, hoping to approach the subject in a new way. “I want it to be more about how to make good art with the technology the students have and know (i.e., camera phones),” he says. Fandell will also teach Undisciplined Art, a conceptual art class that uses Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 work Fountain as the jumping off point for art of the last 100 years.

B lowout 487, 505, 555, 583, 589, 617, 647, 657, 722, 759, 793, 796, 2017

ricks (110, 124, 151, 182, 203, 209, 224, 257, 253, 273, 254, B 190, 170, 137, 143, 183, 204, 212), 2017

Palm Lines 2,4 and Palm Lines 3, 2, 1, 2017

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Scientist Scholars Recent publications by Harvey Mudd faculty and students cover topics ranging from octocorals to E. coli research to the magic of mathematics.

“Co-estimation of gene trees and reconciliations under a duplication-loss-coalescence model” by math major Bo Zhang ’17 and Professor of Computer Science Yi-Chieh (Jessica) Wu; accepted to the International Symposium on Bioinformatics Research and Applications.

“ User-guided synthesis of interactive diagrams,” by Noah Marcus ’17, Jasmine Zhu ’19, Odaris Barios-Arciga SCR ’18, UC San Diego graduate student John Sarracino ’14, HMC Professor Ben Wiedermann and UCSD Professor Sorin Lerner; accepted to the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

“ Reconciliation feasibility in the presence of gene duplication, loss, and coalescence with multiple individuals per species” by Professor Jessica Wu and colleagues; published by BioMed Central.

“ Genome-Wide Transcriptional Response to Varying RpoS Levels in Escherichia coli K-12,” by Associate Professor of Biology Dan Stoebel and his colleagues, including Associate Professor of Biology Eliot Bush and Garrett Wong ’14, Alicia Schep ’11, Suzannah Beeler ’15, Lauren Shull ’14, Lakshmi Batachari ’18, Moira Dillon ’18 and Carla Becker ’18; in the American Society for Microbiology’s Journal of Bacteriology.

The Magic of Math: Solving for x and Figuring out Why, by Professor Art Benjamin; released in paperback this year and was a New York Times Bestseller for Education. Another book, The Fascinating World of Graph Theory, was chosen as an Outstanding Academic Title by the American Library Association.

ome Applications of Geometric Thinking and Moving Things Around co-authored S by Darryl Yong; published by AMS.

Catherine McFadden, Vivian and D. Kenneth Baker Professor in the Life Sciences, is co-author of several published articles related to her research on octocorals: “Search for mesophotic octocorals (Cnidaria, Anthozoa) and their phylogeny: I. A new sclerite-free genus from Eilat, northern Red Sea” in ZooKeys (May 23, 2017) with Yehuda Benayahu and Erez Shoham; “Search for mesophotic octocorals (Cnidaria, Anthozoa) and their phylogeny. II. A new zooxanthellate species from Eilat, northern Red Sea” in ZooKeys (June 14, 2017) with Yehuda Benayahu, Erez Shoham and Leen P. van Ofwegen; and “Species boundaries in the absence of morphological, ecological or geographical differentiation in the Red Sea octocoral genus Ovabunda (Alcyonacea: Xeniidae) in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution (April 30, 2017) with Roxanne Haverkort-Yeh, Alexandra M. Reynolds, Anna Halász, Andrea M. Quattrini, Zac H. Forsman, Yehuda Benayahu and Robert J. Toonen.

uthors of the article “How Writing Contributes A to Learning: New Findings from a National Study and Their Local Application” in the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Peer Review include Harvey Mudd administrators: Director of Learning Programs Wendy Menefee-Libey and Director of Institutional Research and Effectiveness Laura Palucki Blake. They helped prepare the article and shared information about the College’s Writ 1 course, part of a campus-wide effort to develop students’ writing and critical inquiry skills.

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New Faculty Meet the College’s newest teacher/scholars Katherine Breeden

Nicholas Breznay ’02

Assistant Professor of Computer Science

Assistant Professor of Physics

Uses eye tracking to investigate the human side of computer graphics; also researches applied geometry and advanced sampling methods.

Researches iridium-oxide magnetic materials and high-magnetic-field transport experiments in thin-film cuprates as well as crystalline and amorphous phase-change materials.

Fun fact: As an undergrad, Breeden ran in the same athletic conference (SCIAC) as Harvey Mudd. She looks forward to meeting Harvey Mudd athletes.

Fun fact: Breznay enjoys trail running, crosswords, kites and strawberry donuts.

Ambereen Dadabhoy Assistant Professor of Literature

Leah Mendelson

Assistant Professor of Engineering General research interests are biological and bioinspired fluid dynamics and imaging techniques for fluid flow measurement. Mendelson’s dissertation focused on how archer fish propel themselves out of the water to feed.

Studies the exchange inherent in contact zones—geographic or imaginative spaces—and the strategies and mechanisms through which different cultures encounter, accommodate and conflict with each other. Interested in uncovering culturally fraught representations of difference, which include gender, race, and religion. Fun fact: Dadabhoy can speak varying degrees of five languages.

David Seitz

Assistant Professor of Human Geography Fun fact: Mendelson enjoys swimming, running and hiking.

George Montañez

Assistant Professor of Computer Science (fall 2018) Research explores why machine learning works from a search and dependence perspective and identifies information constraints on general search processes. Montañez will work at Microsoft for a year before joining the HMC faculty. Fun fact: Montañez is a Fleetwood Mac fan.

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Research investigates the affective dynamics of intimacies and solidarities across race, gender, and nation in a large, predominantly LGBTQ church in Toronto, Canada. Other research topics include citizenship, difference and affect. Fun fact: David is working on a book that examines how the Star Trek franchise reflects the geographies of race, capitalism and colonialism.

Brian Shuve

Assistant Professor of Physics Shuve was hired last year, but he deferred his start date to fall 2017 in order to work as a research associate at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford. Fun fact: Shuve is a trivia buff whose team once competed on Canadian TV.

emains of the World War II-era Fairey Swordfish R discovered off the coast of Malta.

The HMC Board of Trustees unanimously approved Lelia Hawkins for tenure and promotion to associate professor of chemistry. Hawkins conducts research in the field of atmospheric chemistry. She studies how atmospheric particles in urban settings (like smog) are transformed as they age, specifically in fog and cloud water. These particles impact the temperature of the earth. Her work is largely concerned with organic compounds in atmospheric particles which (in Los Angeles) come primarily from fossil fuel combustion. She actively collects particle samples in her lab, which can be transported to Claremont from all areas of the Los Angeles basin and can be formed from cars, industrial processes, wildfires or wave breaking. Using analytical techniques like absorption spectroscopy and mass spectrometry, she characterizes how particles evolve in the atmosphere.

Promotions The Educational Planning Committee (EPC) of the board approved seven faculty members for promotion to full professor: Anna Ahn, biology; Marianne de Laet, humanities, social sciences and the arts (HSA); Ken Fandell, HSA; Susan Martonosi, mathematics; Debra Mashek, HSA; Vatche Sahakian, physics; and David Vosburg, chemistry.

Reappointments The EPC approved reappointments for Jason Gallicchio (physics), Jessica Wu and Jim Boerkoel (computer Science) and Mohamed Omar (mathematics).

PHOTO BY J. WOOD

Tenure

What (F)lies Beneath DURING THEIR MONTHLONG SUMMER RESEARCH

project to map marine archaeological sites off the Malta coast, Harvey Mudd student researchers and their colleagues were excited to discover the remains of an airplane that crashed and sank during World War II. Three students (Jeff Rutledge ’19, Jane Wu ’18 and Wentao Yuan POM ’17) from Harvey Mudd’s Lab for Autonomous and Intelligent Robotics (LAIR) and three students from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (Amy Lewis ’18, Roslyn PatrickSunnes ’17 and Sam Freed ’17), collaborated to plan Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) missions to search for sites, collect and process data and generate 3-D reconstructions of the sites. Harvey Mudd Professor Chris Clark from LAIR and Professor Zoe Wood from Cal Poly SLO guided the research process along with Professor Timmy Gambin, a collaborating archaeologist from the University of Malta. This is the second year of this project. On June 19, during a side-scan sonar survey of the seafloor using the Iver3 AUV, the team discovered, among other targets, an object resembling a plane in one of the low-frequency sonar scans. Prominent features from the scan include hints of the plane’s wings and tail, as well as a tall shadow from the propeller. The team then gathered high-frequency sonar scans and video footage of the wreckage; the presence of a plane was later confirmed by Gambin and a team of divers.

The Fairey Swordfish, a biplane torpedo bomber, was used by the Royal Navy in the 1930s and during WWII. These rare planes were an important part of WWII efforts in the Mediterranean waters around Malta. “The International Computer Engineering Program (ICEX) team is overjoyed to have helped discover a site of a historically significant plane, and we are truly honored to be a part of the ongoing quest to understand the rich aviation history buried in Malta’s waters as well as assisting in the development of new intelligent search and mapping algorithms for AUVs,” says Clark, HMC professor of engineering and assoicate department chair. Gambin says the year 2017 has turned out to be a crucial one for the ICEX. “Through the use of the new AUV and the development of innovative approaches to offshore surveys, we have achieved some important results culminating in the discovery of this historic plane. I must say that, as always, it has been great working with [Harvey Mudd] and CP faculty and students who, together, have contributed to adding an important piece of Malta’s complex historic puzzle.” Clark created ICEX with co-founder Christine Victorino (now at UC Riverside) to give students an opportunity to apply their technical knowledge in an international context, to further their research education and to increase global citizenship across campus.

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Emily Beese ’17

David Tenorio ’17

Kathleen Kohl ’17

Learning Leadership to a T WHAT IF YOU COULD HELP PEOPLE SEE HOW THEIR

behavior affects others? What if you could create systems that take people’s needs and feelings seriously? These are just two of the goals of T-groups. An innovation of the National Training Laboratories Institute in 1947, T-groups were widely used in church training programs during the 1960s through the 1980s and have become the basis for many team-building efforts. Werner Zorman, associate professor of leadership and holder of the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair in Leadership, employed the use of T-groups in his Interpersonal Dynamics course, designed to help participants explore and understand their impact on each other. Three of Zorman’s students, Emily Beese ’17 (engineering), Kathleen Kohl ’17 (physics) and David Tenorio ’17 (engineering)—all campus leaders in various capacities—describe how the class impacted them.

What were some of the most important lessons learned from the class? Beese: I learned that my words and actions have

power. If I express myself clearly, I can actually help others gain an understanding of their behavior in a positive way. I also learned that asking people how

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they feel is a great way to learn what positive things they have to contribute, even if I disagree with them or don’t like how they come across. Tenorio: The importance of communication. I learned

about the types of responses our actions produce. I enjoyed the readings about understanding other people and not assuming intent. There’s a difference between intent and impact and how we often only see the impact and assume intent when we shouldn’t. Kohl: The class dealt a lot with giving and receiving

feedback about your interactions. In particular, the Situation-Behavior-Impact method is so important in any interaction: telling someone if something affected you, describing the situation and giving the context, describing the behavior without judgment and describing the impact it had on you. This feels like a real workplace-y thing to do, but it’s actually helpful even in a friendship because it takes away any judgment and lets people know how their behavior affects you. Being mindful about the way you interact and engage with people goes a long way. You have to be intentional about it.

In what ways have you applied what you’ve learned? Beese: I choose to believe people act under their

own set of good intentions and that their actions are not meant to hurt. This gives me the freedom to ask people how they actually feel when they hurt me. T-group gave me confidence to speak my mind, even if it’s not “correct.” I learned to take risks with people. To make guesses and ask if I’m right. I’m much less afraid to ask people for feedback. I did this with my Clinic team, and it was helpful! Tenorio: In my personal life, it’s helping enrich my

relationships with friends and family by being able to communicate about things that matter to me, about emotions and about the responses I have that, before, I might not have been as open about, but now I have the language and tools to do so. In a professional sense, it’s important to be precise with language and help others improve on a team. Kohl: I am the type of person who’s always looking

for feedback in my interactions. The class gave me an excuse to practice this intensely every week.

Are leaders born or made? It’s unanimous: Made.

Off to Study Math Culture and Contests Thomas J. Watson Fellowship recipient Dina Sinclair ’17 will travel the world observing math contests and studying why they appeal to certain groups of students. She is one of 40 Watson Fellows selected from 149 finalists nominated by 40 participating institutions. This year’s class of Fellows comes from 21 states and six countries and will spend their $30,000 stipends traversing 67 countries and exploring a variety of topics. First stop: The mathematics major and 2016 Goldwater Scholarship recipient began her fellowship research in Brazil in July at the International Math Olympiad. She looked at math culture in different countries, using high school math contests as a gauge. “I’m curious what kinds of cultural and logistical choices communities can make while hosting math contests that make those contests more accessible to a wide group of students, especially women.” Other potential stops: Argentina, Senegal, China, Japan, Finland and Romania. “These places have a really wide variety of math cultures and histories and a wide range of female participation in math contests. I’m really excited to see what differences between these countries I’ll find.”

Her inspiration: “I did a lot of math contests in high school. In some, I was the only girl around, while in others I was part of an all-girl team. I could never quite put my finger on why some contests attracted girls while others didn’t, and it’s something I’ve kept thinking about throughout college.” Prior international experience: “Traveling to Korea with mathematics professor Rachel Levy to teach an engineering math course was a great way to see math education in a different culture, and helping local teachers teach math modeling instilled my desire to think not only about the content we teach in the classroom but the culture and norms behind that content that foster or inhibit learning.” The year ahead: “It’ll be hard sometimes to find connections and a place to live in countries where I don’t speak the language, but I’m looking forward to that challenge. I’m really excited to learn from math communities across the world and better understand how high school math culture impacts students. Hopefully, I’ll be able to bring some of that knowledge home with me and implement positive change within my own mathematics communities.”

Dina Sinclair ’17

Grants for Graduate Research Two recent graduates are recipients of National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships, which recognize outstanding students pursuing advanced degrees in science and engineering. Physics major Jonas Kaufman ’17 (studying materials research/ materials theory) will pursue a PhD at UC Santa Barbara, where he will conduct computational materials science research. Colin Okasaki ’17 (mathematical sciences/mathematical biology)

will attend the University of Washington to get a master’s/PhD in quantitative ecology and resource management. Three meritorious HMC applicants received NSF honorable mention: Nathaniel Leslie ’17 (physics and astronomy/theoretical physics), Calvin Leung ’17 (physics and astronomy/ atomic, molecular and optical physics) and Micah Pedrick ’17 (mathematical sciences/ applied mathematics).

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A Goldwater Opportunity

Digging for Data Zach Evans ’18, a chemistry major studying metal remediation, was curious about the subject of biogeochemistry. He sought to develop a project that would help him decide if a career in this field would allow him to combine his passion for environmental issues with chemistry research. When he realized that the undergraduate Claremont colleges lacked a professor whose focus was biogeochemistry, Evans turned to HMC’s Rasmussen Research Fund for support and to Honnold Library for information. Not only did he glean valuable information for his project, he also received The Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award ($500), honoring students who demonstrate exemplary original research and scholarship. Advised by chemistry Professor Hal Van Ryswyk, environmental analysis Professor Marc Los Huertos (POM) and Hixon Center director Tanja Srebotnjak, Evans began studying the fate of metals after they are introduced into the bioswale, for example, how tightly they bind to soil, how far they infiltrate and how effectively they are absorbed by native plants. “For my summer research, I relied upon literature I found using the library’s databases and the feedback of my advisors to generate my project, shape my research questions and design my experimental procedures,” Evans says. “I could not have done this project without access to the journals provided by the library, the ability to acquire papers through ILLiad and access to ArcMap in the library’s Digital Toolshed.” In addition to the library award, Evans received Outstanding Presentation honors at the recent ACS National Conference for his poster, “Spatial Distribution of Sequestered Metals in an Arid Southern California Bioswale,” the result of his work in the library.

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Barry Goldwater Scholarship recipient Daniel Johnson ’18 uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to solve complex problems. A joint computer science and math major, Johnson conducted research with engineering Professor David Harris on open-core processor design verification and with computer science Professor Robert Keller on designing a neural network-based system to improvise jazz melodies. He is working on a neural network model he developed that can manipulate graphical states, which he hopes will allow neural networks to reason abstractly

about the structures in data. This summer, Johnson interned at Cruise Automation in San Francisco where he used machine learning techniques to program self-driving cars. Rachael Kretsch ’18, a joint chemistry/biology major and legal studies major (Scripps), received a Goldwater Honorable Mention. She spent this summer at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, where she studied biological and chemical weapons nonproliferation.

Daniel Johnson ’18

Does Compute “My poster focuses on recreating the MgSc binary phase diagram at a variety of temperatures. This is difficult because exactly solving for crystal energies is only easily possible at absolute zero. For the poster, I applied probabilistic computational methods, called Monte Carlo algorithms, which can extend our knowledge of crystal energies to non-zero temperatures. The work is ongoing, and I’m now trying to create the MgScY ternary phase diagram using a similar method.” –Adam Shaw ’18, an individual program of studies major (physics and inorganic/physical chemistry) who won a Best Student Poster prize at the 2017 Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS) Annual Meeting. Other contributors to this research poster included engineering professor Lori Bassman, alumni Gregory Pomrehn ’04 of The Boeing Company and Aurora Pribram-Jones ’09 of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as well as Patrick Conway, Michael Ferry and Kevin Laws of the University of New South Wales in Australia, where Shaw spent last summer doing research. Adam Shaw ’18

On Top Again

EcoHacks Advertised as “a collaborative, sustainability-minded blast of an evening,” EcoHacks: 7C Sustainability Hackathon was an ESW/MOSS-sponsored spring event that attracted small groups of students to work on a software-related sustainability project. Free food (of course) and a T-shirt were provided, and from the eight contenders, three winning apps were selected. First place: Leftovers by Elijah Whitsett ’18 and Christina Zhu ’18. Allows people to describe leftover food they wish to share in order to reduce waste.

Second place: Fit for Green by Lee Norgaard ’18 and Sally Cheng ’18. The duo modified the Android app, which controls an exercise bike that creates and pushes energy into the power grid. Their work helps summarize users’ efforts. Third place: Finding Water by Kayla Yamada’19. Helps the thirsty locate water fountains and water bottle stations around campus.

Harvey Mudd College was the top-scoring undergraduate institution in the 2017 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, a prestigious university-level mathematics competition. Thirty-three HMC students took this notoriously difficult six-hour exam, which requires a unique blend of cleverness and problem-solving skills. The median score for the Dec. 3 competition, in which 4,164 students from the U.S. and Canada participated, was 1 out of a possible 120. The median score for Harvey Mudd students was 15. In team competition, Adam Busis ’19, Jordan Haack ’19 and Abram Sanderson ’17 placed eighth out of 568 institutions. In the individual category, Busis ranked 65th in the nation and ZiYang Zhang ’19 ranked 79th; both received honorable mentions. Four other Harvey Mudd students, Shyan Akmal ’19, Haack, Sanderson and Natchanon Suaysom ’18, scored in the top 200.

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I See Eminence ALL HARVEY MUDD TEAMS IN BOTH THE RECENT

Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) and the Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (ICM) placed in the top 50 percent or above. One of the ICM teams received the highest designation, Outstanding Winner, earned by the top 1 percent: only 14 teams. Also quite impressive is that this Outstanding team consists of sophomores. Rachel Perley ’19, Anna Goetter ’19 and Nina Brown ’19 tackled an urban planning problem related to smart growth and sustainable cities, wrote a paper about it and impressed judges with their scientific and mathematical accuracy, clarity of exposition, insight and creativity. Their problem involved understanding and modeling the principles of modern urban planning to improve city operation. They tested their systems on two cities of their choosing, searched for pertinent data and grappled with how phenomena internal and external to the system under study needed to be considered. The work of the Outstanding Winners will be featured in The UMAP Journal. Here, Perley and her teammates, describe what made their ICM entry stand apart.

What was your strategy for tackling the problem? The problem involved finding and analyzing a lot of data about two cities’ levels of sustainable growth. We didn’t really start developing our metric to rate city sustainability until we knew what data we had to work with, and then based our model on the data available.

Did you each have a certain task? What was it? We split up the sections of the project and each worked on separate sections of the report initially. The sections built on each other as we progressed through the report, so we collaborated significantly once we had enough background to develop a solution.

What do you think made your solution stand apart? Our solution was less overtly mathematical than we anticipated going into the contest. I think we found a lot of data, used that data well and didn’t try to reach far beyond the data we had access to. We were honest about

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Rachel Perley ’19, Nina Brown ’19 and Anna Goetter ’19

what parts of our model were subjective and about where we could make improvements. We also worked to make the subjective parts as mathematically consistent as possible, so that others who used our model could determine numbers that were reasonable.

What are each of you interested in pursuing after graduation? Brown: I plan to pursue a PhD in physics or

materials science. Perley: I plan to enter industry in industrial engineering or electrical engineering. Goetter: I’m not sure yet. Maybe go to grad school for math, maybe enter industry in computer science.

Any thoughts in general about the MCM/ICM? It was interesting and fun to apply mathematical concepts and our own research to a problem that we could see in the real world. The MCM/ICM put some of our classroom subjects in better context.

Exemplary Leadership

Some of the awards presented at the College’s annual Leadership Awards ceremony Outstanding Student Organization– Engineers for a Sustainable World/Mudders Organizing for Sustainability Solutions (ESW/ MOSS) for making a positive impact and demonstrating integrity, leadership and teamwork. ESW/MOSS works with local community groups to advance sustainability and provides opportunities for students to understand the impact of their daily choices on the environment. Outstanding Emerging Leader Award– David Olumese ’19. The award recognizes a first-year student or sophomore who exhibits great potential as a campus and/ or community leader. Olumese is a grader/ tutor for the Computer Science Department, an Experimental Engineering team leader, co-president of the Class of 2019, a Black Lives at Mudd (BLAM) member, Mudders Mentoring Mudders and Building Bridges participant, an organizer of the HMC Student Philanthropy Campaign, phonathon manager and caller, and an InterVarsity member.

What’s Happening on Instagram? Thanks to juniors Ramita Kondepudi, Kim Tran and Teal Stannard who contributed to the College’s Instagram feed and helped the world get to know Harvey Mudd even better. We encourage you to check out more posts at instagram.com/harvey_mudd or at harvey_mudd on Instagram.

“ Pro tip: say hi to the koi fish in Galileo courtyard #galileoisback”

“It's a beautiful, peaceful spring day at Mudd!”

“ No alumni weekend is complete without your Sunday #inandout fix” ft. @cleo.dizzle ’15 and @sarahhelens ’15

Dorman Student Altruism Prize– Emily Beese ’17 (engineering). Peers select a graduating senior student whom they consider to be most supportive. Outstanding Mudder Award– Physics majors Maya Martirossyan ’17 and Willie Zuniga ’17 for contributing to the community and demonstrating creativity, leadership, teamwork, ethics, inclusion, community engagement, wellness and communication. Martirossyan, a musician, mentor, proctor and volunteer helped create a community engagement opportunity for those wishing to teach in local prisons. Zuniga, who passed away Feb. 2, 2017, was a campus leader known for his giving personality. ead about all awardees at R bit.ly/leadAwards17.

(at LACMA) “How many Mudders does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

Student Co-authors Alex Ozdemir ’17 traveled to Portugal in June to present “Clustering the space of maximum parsimony reconciliations in the duplication-transfer-loss model” at the Conference on Algorithms for Computational Biology. The paper is the result of several years of research and is co-authored by Michael Sheely ’17, Daniel Bork ’16, Ricson Cheng ’19 (Carnegie Mellon University), Reyna Hulett ’16, Jean Sung ’16, Jincheng Wang ’17 and computer science Professor Ran Libeskind-Hadas.

A paper by Bork, Sung, Wang, Cheng and Libeskind-Hadas has been accepted to the journal Algorithms for Molecular Biology. Titled “On the computational complexity of the maximum parsimony reconciliation problem in the duplication-loss-coalescence model,” this work examines another phylogenetic tree reconciliation problem that was first studied by Wu and her collaborators at MIT.

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STUDENT RESEARCH

PRESENTATION DAYS 25TH ANNIVERSARY

Studying the Human Condition IT BEGINS WITH CURIOSITY, PERHAPS ABOUT A TOPIC IN A PREVIOUSLY UNCONSIDERED

field. After many months of discovery, learning, experimenting, failure and more experimenting, seniors find themselves at the front of a room, sharing the results of their investigation during Presentation Days. Throughout the process, they’ve been working alongside faculty experts, grappling with real-world problems, delving into complex issues. This year, there were a number of projects related to human health that captured the interest of senior researchers. 2

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1. Modeling the Emergence of Antibiotic Resistance

2. Toric Ideals of Inductively Pierced Neural Codes

3. Antibacterial Chitosan Nanoparticles for a Tissue-Engineered Brain Patch

Student: Colin Okasaki Advisor: Jon Jacobsen, mathematics

Student: Caitlin Lienkaemper Advisor: Mohamed Omar, mathematics

Student: Sakshi Shah Advisors: Tom Donnelly, physics; Liz Orwin ’95, engineering

Antibiotic resistance is a growing international concern, in part due to the rapid emergence of new resistances due to concentrated antibiotic use in environments such as hospitals. Such high use creates a strong selective pressure for pathogens to evolve resistance. Okasaki analyzed strategies hospitals can use to slow the evolution of resistance and built a compartmental ODE model to estimate the length of the delay between evolution and outbreak of resistance. His work supports calls by scientists to decrease the volume of antibiotic use and shows an effective way to delay outbreak.

How does the brain encode the spatial structure of the external world? Place fields were discovered when researchers observed the activity of single neurons in rodents and found that some neurons fired only when the animal was in a specific region of space. Hippocampal neurons, called place cells, become associated to convex regions of space, known as their place fields. When an animal is in the place field of a given place cell, that place cell will fire. A neural code describes the set of firing patterns observed in a set of neurons in terms of which subsets fire together and which do not. Toric ideals are algebraic structures used to study neural codes, and Lienkaemper investigated the extent to which place cell structure can be seen through these toric ideals.

HMC researchers seek to produce chitosan nanoparticles, whose antibacterial properties are essential for the Orwin Lab’s “brain patch,” a tissue-engineered treatment for traumatic brain injury. The patch is made of malleable collagen gel and infused with chitosan nanoparticles. Chitosan, a derivative of chitin, is harvested from shrimp shells and may exhibit anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties. Shah worked on producing chitosan nanoparticles using an apparatus made by Professor Donnelly’s lab in the Department of Physics.

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE

uper-resolution image of huntingtin aggregates: S aggregation occurs on the nanoscale producing globular species and fibers.

4. Characterization of the Huntingtin Aggregation Pathway via Singlemolecule and Super-resolution Fluorescence Microscopy Student: Rebecca C. Harman Advisor: Whitney Duim ’05, chemistry Using a custom, two-dimensional, high-resolution microscope, Harman studied the aggregation of the protein involved in Huntington’s disease, a progressive, neurodegenerative disease that is fatal and for which there is no cure. She sought to characterize the aggregation pathway to better understand the disease and identify potential therapeutic targets. Work involved studying how the aggregates grow, their structure and how sensitive they are to the environment in which they form.

5. Incorporating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Into Vaccine Pricing Models Student: Dina Sinclair Advisor: Susan Martonosi, mathematics The American vaccine pricing market is a complex system to model that includes vaccine manufacturers as well as the U.S. government, which buys over half of vaccines produced. Sinclair’s work introduces the government into vaccine pricing models to better recommend pricing strategies to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

6. Physiology and Emotional Engagement: To What Extent Can Physiological Measures Predict Behavior? Student: Raunak Pednekar Advisor: Paul Zak, director, Center for Neuroeconomics Studies, Claremont Graduate University To study if changes in emotional state are accompanied by physiological changes, Pednekar collected heart rate variability (HRV), galvanic skin response (GSR) and electroencephalogram (EEG) data while 74 participants watched movie trailers. After viewing the trailers, he used cluster analysis to analyze the value of the physiological data (HRV, GSV, EEG) in predicting the likelihood of the participants’ recommending the movie to a friend. The multi-method approach allowed Pednekar to study the relationship between different physiological measures by gathering converging evidence from various methodologies.

SUMMER 2017

CLINIC PROGRAM

Seeking Solutions THE 54TH PROJECTS DAY WAS DISTINGUISHED BY 16 FIRST-TIME COMPANY

participants, one huge milestone (85 projects for Northrop Grumman), 44 projects and 122 liaisons seeking solutions to unsolved problems. Eager to help were 44 Clinic teams made up of 225 student participants. Here are details about a few of the projects.

M ATHEMATICS C L I N I C

EN G I N EER I N G CLI N I C

EN GIN E E R IN G C L IN IC

Document Mining

Secure State Estimation

Laparoscopic Surgery

EDR Inc. Liaisons: Paul Schiffer, Richard White, Azch Fisk Advisor: Professor Weiqing Gu Team: Vinh The Hoang ’17, Abram Sanderson ’17, Annaliese Johnson ’17, Matthew Bae ’17, Johan Hoeger ’18

Northrop Grumman Liaisons: Stephanie Tsuei, Ron Smith ’83, Ken Dreshfield ’80, Ian Jimenez ’11 Advisor: Professor Chris Clark Team: Aishvarya Korde ’17, Paige Rinnert ’17, Robert Cyprus ’17, Zayra Lobo ’18, Austin Chun ’18, Jesus Villegas ’18

City of Hope Liaisons: Dr. Kurt Melstrom, Dr. Yanghee Woo, Dr. Yuman Fong, Dr. Mustafa Raoof Advisor: Professor Qimin Yang Team: Kathryn Jones ’17, Erica Martelly ’17, Leonardo Huerta ’17, Richard Liu ’18, Sean Nguyen ’18, Arthur Reyes ’19, Robin Bendiak ’17

Finding important information quickly can be cumbersome. EDR Inc. charged students with tagging key information in state and federal government environmental materials. The team explored classification and search techniques for images and text in order to analyze and tag documents.

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE

Autonomous vehicle control requires estimating vehicle states from on-board sensor readings. If some sensors are compromised, estimates may not be accurate. Students implemented a secure state estimator (SSE) in simulation and validated it in hardware on a low-cost quadrotor. The team showed that the addition of the SSE to the control loop reduces the real-time tracking error of a quadrotor when using measurements from compromised onboard sensors.

Minimally invasive (laparoscopic) surgeries use a tethered, expensive system that relies on a single, hot, limited-range incandescent light attached to a lone camera. The City of Hope team designed a set of cost-effective, self-sufficient systems using modern lighting and camera systems that provide improved visibility for surgeons.

Northrop Grumman Clinic Milestone

E NGINEERING C LI NI C

CO M P U TER SCI EN CE CLI N I C

RF Drones

Chromium Tabs

AT&T Liaisons: Terence Wu, Chuck Palaganas Advisors: Professors Albert Dato and Ruye Wang Team: Patrick McKeen ’17, Siyi Hu ’17, Jesse Joseph ’17, Ramy Elminyawi ’17, Austin Shin ’18, Charles Van Eijk ’18

Google Inc. Liaisons: Aaron Gable ’12, Chris Palmer Advisor: Professor Beth Trushkowsky Team: Julien Chien CMC ’17, Zoab Kapoor ’17, Thomas Le ’17, Yi Yang ’17

One way to collect over-the-air digital television systems data—with regard to signal strength, clarity and orientation across location and altitude—is with a drone. The students’ drone-based system includes easy-to-use operation and visualization software, drone selection and onboard hardware.

Google’s Chrome browser, based on the open-source project Chromium, is one of the most widely used browsers in the world. Team members researched and implemented strategies for serializing the full state of a tab in Chromium to suspend and restore it with minimal user-visible disruption. Their strategy also helps prevent loss of information during memory-constrained situations.

Clinic Program co-founder and Professor of Engineering Emeritus Jack Alford aptly said, “Engineering is like dancing, you don’t learn it in a lecture hall, you have to get out on the floor and step on people’s toes.” He would probably agree that whether you are dancing or solving engineering problems, it is very helpful to have a good partner. Harvey Mudd College is very fortunate to have found such a partner in Northrop Grumman Corporation (NGC). Since 1973, NGC (including acquisitions) has sponsored 85 Clinic projects, far and away the most of any Clinic sponsor. This achievement was recognized with a Milestone Award during the 2017 Projects Day program. Director of Corporate Relations and Clinic Coordinator Barry Olsan credits NGC for its consistency and for bringing in many important and challenging projects. Ron Smith ’83, Northrop Grumman Fellow for digital aerospace technologies, first worked with NGC on a Clinic project during his senior year. He now acts as a champion, fostering collaborations between NGC and HMC, including a project relating to selfdriving car technology (see No. 2, left). Smith says, “At NGC we take great pride in working on projects that have never been done before, like the James Webb Space Telescope, which are at the core of our mission to preserve freedom and advance human discovery. Harvey Mudd graduates, with their preparation for innovative problem solving, are a perfect match for our most challenging projects.” Smith notes that there are more than 50 Mudders working just in NGC’s Aerospace Systems in nearby Redondo Beach and Azusa, so the motivation to continue Clinics is very strong.

Review all 2017 projects at bit.ly/Clinic17.

SUMMER 2017

From Science Fiction to Medical Reality Written by Amy DerBedrosian | Photo by Joe Proudman

Robert Freitas ’74 envisions the future benefits of nanorobotics, an emerging area of nanotechnology

Robert Freitas ’74 holds a 3-D-printed model of a simple mechanical component called a “hydrocarbon bearing” with an inner ring that moves smoothly inside the outer sleeve. At 8 cm in diameter, the scale is roughly 20,000,000:1. He says the real hydrocarbon bearing would be about four nanometers in diameter, consisting of 1,120 precisely placed carbon (gray) and hydrogen (white) atoms. Freitas is determining how to manufacture this and other molecular machines.

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE

MAGINE DOCTORS SENDING BILLIONS OF MICROSCALE

robots into the human body to survey and map the entire vascular system, identifying any lesions or cancers along the way. Using this information, other nanorobots target and repair specific cells, one by one, while causing no side effects or harm to neighboring cells. These nanorobots enter the body via an injection or swallowed pill, complete their mission, and exit. “Conceptually, nanorobots are the ultimate ‘big hammer’ in the 21st century medical toolkit, and medicine may be the single most important application of nanotechnology,” says Robert Freitas ’74, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing and Harvey Mudd physics graduate. “Nanomedicine not only could vastly improve human comfort, safety and pleasure, but also dramatically extend the human lifespan and greatly expand the possibilities of the human form.” Though this may seem like science fiction, it is what Freitas has been seeking for years to make a reality. He first set out a vision for nanorobots and their conceptual design in the 1999 book Nanomedicine and explains, “Mature nanomedicine requires the ability to build medical nanorobots,

curiosity, were already in evidence by the time Freitas arrived at HMC. Coming to the College had been his goal since seventh grade, when the headmaster of his Phoenix school told the self-described “class nerd” that it would be perfect for him. Freitas ultimately reached the same conclusion, noting, “The three most important things I learned at HMC were how to lead, how to learn and the value of an excellent professor. My favorite was physics professor Thomas Helliwell, who took the time to indulge and encourage my intellectual fascination with the details of many ‘impossible’ things in physics.” His professor also indulged his desire to write a science fiction novel in place of the traditional senior research in physics. Freitas then continued on an unconventional path, first earning a law degree and then searching for extraterrestrial intelligence at several astronomical observatories, studying self-replicating lunar factories at NASA, and publishing a financial newsletter featuring an econometric value-forecasting model before settling on nanotechnology. “At first glance, my path appears to be a mix of overlapping unrelated activities, but in hindsight, each of the activities provided valuable experience essential to my current success,” explains Freitas. “What unites them is an abiding

“ At first glance, my path appears to be a mix of overlapping

unrelated activities, but in hindsight, each of the activities provided valuable experience essential to my current success.

”

—ROBERT FREITAS ’74

using nanofactories. That’s why I’ve spent the last decade pursuing molecular manufacturing technologies.” His efforts have led to 10 U.S. patents in the fields of molecular manufacturing and medical nanorobotics— including the first for diamond mechanosynthesis, a method for building a tool to fabricate atomically precise physical structures—and the 2009 Feynman Prize in nanotechnology for excellence in theory. Currently writing two new volumes in the Nanomedicine book series, Freitas has also published works about using molecular manufacturing and nanorobotics to address climate change, food production, and Alzheimer’s disease, the last of which he describes as the “Mount Everest of medical challenges that will require mature nanotechnology to surmount.” “I’m certainly not smarter than everyone else, but I have an almost instinctual eagerness to seriously consider the impossible,” says Freitas. “The other personal characteristic that I think matters is raw persistence. In my experience, if you want something badly enough and are willing to persist for years or even decades, you can probably attain it.” Those and related qualities, including considerable

interest in the future, my curiosity about the unknown, my eagerness to consider some of the deepest questions confronting humankind, and my willingness to actively indulge these interests in the limited time available in a lifespan. It helps that I hold the view that this ‘limited time’ will become significantly less limited if I’m successful in my projects.” Now, Freitas has what he considers a laser-like focus on nanomedicine. Unlike many researchers, he is looking for big leaps in science and technology, not incremental advances. And he believes his vision of manufacturing nanorobots equipped with the sensors, manipulators, onboard computers and mechanisms for communication and navigation that would enable new medical therapies is more feasible and closer to reality than ever before. “My collaborators and I want to get to that place as fast as possible,” says Freitas. “Molecular manufacturing has far-reaching consequences for the future of society: Nanomedicine could allow humans to survive long enough to participate directly in the distant future. What could be more exciting than that?”

SUMMER 2017

Research tracks sediment movement to predict the coast’s ever-changing landscape Written by Ashley Festa | Photos by Susan Poag

EW PEOPLE OTHER THAN COASTAL ENGINEERS like

Donya Frank ’06 would realize the movement of a tiny grain of sand could affect the entire industry of seaside tourism—for beach dwellers and beachgoers alike. The movement of those individual grains of sand adds up, and when too many of them are swept away by waves, the beach must be “nourished,” or restocked with sediment. As part of Frank’s postdoctoral research in the Sediment Dynamics Laboratory based at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Mississippi, it’s her specialty to figure out where—and how quickly—the sand is going. “When beaches are eroded, tourists won’t want to go there,” says Frank, a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow who studied engineering at Harvey Mudd. “No tourists means no money, and the economies of many coastal states depend heavily on the billions of dollars that tourism brings in each year. If you spent a lot of money to go on vacation in Florida, for instance, and the beach is closed for nourishment, that would be very disappointing.”

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE

SUMMER 2017

hat very situation happened to her in early May, when she booked a room in Miami. “I was looking forward to playing in the waves, but when we got there, we found tractors and workers all over the beach,” she says. “Being a coastal engineer, I was intrigued to watch the activities, but anyone else would probably have been frustrated.” The problem is particularly relevant for Frank’s home country of Jamaica, a small island in the Caribbean where tourism is big and coastal erosion is a serious concern. Her research informs more than just the tourism industry—the military, fishing industry, oil and gas, marine habitats, coastal infrastructure, meteorology, even insurance and telecommunications are all affected by sediment transport and coastal processes. As part of her doctoral research, Frank collaborated with electrical and computer engineers to design a “smart sand grain” by embedding accelerometers into plastic spheres to get better measurements about how sediment moves. Now for her post-doc, Frank tracks individual grains of sand using high-speed cameras and a powerful green laser in a small-oscillatory flow tunnel. Her experiments use fluorescent hollow glass microspheres, about 10 micrometers in diameter, that behave like fluid particles. They re-emit light at a higher wavelength than the laser light, so two cameras with optical filters can differentiate the movement of the microspheres from the sand grains. A third camera tracks the sand grains. The measurements provide information about how fluid and sand movement are affected by waves. These small-scale processes help scientists understand larger-scale events, such as beach erosion and sandbar migration in shipping channels and ports. There are other applications, too, such as keeping people safe. For example, unexploded military munitions have been lost on the seafloor, and they could wash ashore and explode. Frank’s findings provide data to help the U.S. Navy manage the problem. She and the research team in the Sediment Dynamics Laboratory installed sensors in so-called “smart” munitions to track their motions during storms. In March, the team deployed three of these smart munitions off the coast of Virginia to measure their response to real storm waves. The Navy will eventually use the data to estimate the motions of real munitions in hopes of preventing injuries.

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE

Sediment transport also affects building regulations for coastal infrastructure because sediment makeup affects how much energy waves have when they hit bridge piers and buildings. And to keep navigational pathways clear, dredging must occur every few years. By accurately predicting how much sand will migrate back into channels and ports, cities will know how often to dredge so ships don’t get stuck on sandbars. A lot of food is still imported on ships, so this could also affect the nation’s food supply. One of the most surprising applications of coastal engineering research, in Frank’s opinion, is that of the insurance industry. After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and much of Mississippi, about 90,000 square miles along the Gulf Coast—including more than 300 miles inland—were declared federal disaster areas. Insurance companies were scrambling to assess the damage and plan future policies. “Insurance agents had to get a better understanding of the impact of natural disasters and coastal erosion on insurance policies,” Frank says. “Now they’re using data from coastal engineering research, particularly from storm surge and inundation modeling, in their risk analyses to determine insurance premium pricing. It’s an unexpected use for these data.” Frank plans to finish her post-doc this November then she’ll continue her research while working with graduate students, potentially as a professor at a research university or at a research laboratory. As much as she loves her current research, Frank is considering moving to larger-scale projects that have a more direct and visible human impact. Frank says she feels prepared for wherever the future takes her. She credits the interdisciplinary nature of Harvey Mudd’s engineering program, which encouraged undergraduate research very early in her career and also gave her experience with electronics, project management, global environmental policy and lots and lots of math. “Many other engineering programs don’t require as much math, but I didn’t fully appreciate that until later in graduate school,” Frank says with a laugh. “Harvey Mudd is rigorous. Almost any challenge after that is manageable.”

Frank’s research informs more than just the tourism industry—the military, fishing industry, oil and gas, marine habitats, coastal infrastructure, meteorology, even insurance and telecommunications are all affected by sediment transport and coastal processes.

A high-speed camera captures a grain less than 1 mm in size just as it is lifted off the sand bed. The image is part of a study of sand transport by waves. “Understanding the fluid forces that move the grains can help improve our prediction of beach erosion,” Frank says.

SUMMER 2017

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE

The Climate Will Change

Joseph Majkut ’06 challenges our nation’s leaders to consider what climate change might mean and what can be done about it. Interview by Becky Ham | Photos by David Scavone

OSEPH MAJKUT ’06 IS THE DIRECTOR OF CLIMATE

policy at the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank in Washington D.C., where he leads the center’s efforts to engage with national legislative and executive policymakers on climate change. After graduating from Harvey Mudd (mathematics), he received his M.S. in applied mathematics from the Technical University of Delft and his PhD in atmospheric and oceanic sciences from Princeton University. He then spent a year serving as a congressional fellow in the office of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D) of Rhode Island, in a program administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

SUMMER 2017

Your degree from Mudd is in mathematics. How did that lead to your work on climate science?

I was always interested in applied problems, and Mudd provided the flexibility for me to pursue that passion. Professor [Andrew] Bernoff, who was my thesis advisor, really encouraged me to focus on the applications of mathematics. That and other coursework from people like professors Jon Jacobsen and Lesley Ward convinced me to move toward problems in applied mathematics. Before I left Mudd, I knew I wanted to work at the intersection of risk analysis and earth science.

Do you think people who don’t accept the research about human-caused climate change don’t fully understand the science, or do they have other reasons for not accepting it?

Frankly, people on either side of this issue don’t fully understand the science. At most you can expect them to accept it. The people who are hesitant to embrace the scientific findings around climate change are usually more afraid of the implications of climate science, rather than concerned about the legitimacy of the science itself. In American politics, unfortunately, belief or concern about anthropogenic climate change has become more of a political position than one argued from first principles.

And that interest in applications led to science policy work?

I’d always been interested in seeing the fruits of scientific labor being put to use by society as a whole. Trying to understand the intersection of science and technology with the broader public sphere is an intellectual challenge.

Was there any part of that change that was difficult for you, switching from science to policy?

It’s a totally different culture. I learned that it’s not sufficient to just lay out the science, make the best argument and move on to new problems. I firmly believe that bringing sound science into the conversation will lead to better policy outcomes, but it’s not the only consideration. Policymakers face political and economic constraints and are responsible for making deeply moral decisions. Science is one ingredient in a complex stew. After working on Capitol Hill, I believe that scientists engaging policymakers should be aware of, understand and appreciate these other considerations. Politics and policy cannot be approached like a problem set.

What kinds of climate change questions do you get most often in your job?

We get a lot of questions about the basics, like how scientists concluded that the warming we see is human-caused, not natural, and that it isn’t part of some natural oscillation wholly unrelated to human activity. We get a lot of questions about the future, like the expected pace of climate change over the next century and what kind of risks that creates. And we get a lot of questions about what we can do about it, like how feasible it is to reduce CO2 emissions dramatically, how quickly can we do that and how much will it cost, and what do we think are the right ways to do it.

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE

How do you change that?

At the Niskanen, we try to fight that entrenchment. Our headline message is that there’s nothing about your political identity that should inform how you feel about atmospheric physics or the chemistry of the oceans. The real power of science—and this extends beyond climate change—is that compelling evidence dislodges you from your prior beliefs. Climate science gives us plenty of evidence that we should be paying attention. It’s important to note that the messenger matters. The rejection of climate science is mostly evident in the Republican party. I work at an institute that has deep policy roots on the right of center. It makes a big difference when it is us, compared to somebody from the left or an environmental organization, talking to Republican policymakers. And that’s because we understand their concerns about the economic disturbance associated with cutting carbon emissions and the increasing scope of government that climate policy might demand. We show that you can be happy with the fruits of capitalism, believe markets do good, embrace new technologies and still regard climate risks as worthy of our attention.

Do you think your work is having an impact in Washington?

We have a directly measurable one. Before the Niskanen Center and some of our allies entered the conversation, the popular understanding of the GOP as a wall of climate denial was fixed. As a result of our work, a lot of members of Congress have started to look carefully at what climate change might mean and what they might do about it.

Do you expect that change to continue under the Trump Administration?

Now that Washington is a Republican town, falling back on political messaging that climate policy is the agenda of the previous administration—and we don’t want anything to do with it—is no longer sufficient. With Republicans in charge of both Houses of Congress and the presidency, they are taking a lot of actions to try and undo what the previous administration did on climate, and they are getting a lot of questions about what they plan to instead. Some of them will want to come up with answers.

Will your Center encourage the president to reverse his decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement?

I think returning to the Paris Agreement would be a good for our international relationships and our position as a global leader, but I’m not sure we are in that place yet. Until we can make a credible case that the United States will contribute to achieving the agreement’s goal—holding off the worst of climate change—and we have policies in place to reduce our own emissions, any U.S. participation will be paper. We’ll have to credibly buy our way back in with serious intentions.

R egardless of my mood, the climate will change. So I try to find opportunity and routes forward instead of roadblocks. I actually think that a lot of what we see is positive. — JOSEPH MAJKUT ’06

How do you stay optimistic about facing that challenge?

Regardless of my mood, the climate will change. So I try to find opportunity and routes forward instead of roadblocks. I actually think that a lot of what we see is positive. The falling costs of clean energy have been spectacular. The march toward climate action in the states and globally—Washington, D.C., at this time notwithstanding—show that the world is looking for and finding solutions. Climate change is a long-term problem that needs long-term management, and my belief is that it always will look more daunting than it will turn out to be.

Read Majkut's June 30, 2017 Niskanen Center article, “Can a Red Team Excercise Exorcise the Climate Debate?” at bit.ly/Majkut730.

SUMMER 2017

MUDDERINGS

Alumni Association Awards THERE’S SOMETHING SPECIAL ABOUT

receiving an award from one’s peers. After all, who knows better what makes outstanding alumni than the alumni themselves? The Harvey Mudd College Alumni Association Board of Governors Selections Committee reviewed nominations from peers and determined the recipients of the 2017 honors, which recognize significant contributions to science, impact on Harvey Mudd College and service to society. The Board of Governors selected seven alumni to receive the 2017 Outstanding Alumni Award, recognizing sustained and effective commitment to improving society while exemplifying the HMC mission. Awardees are higher education leader James Bean ’77, winemaker Fred Brander ’73, film and imaging engineer Tom Brentnall ’72, Bates Aeronautics Program participant and astronaut Stan Love ’87, urologist and professor Craig Niederberger ’82, 3-D imaging software developer Clifford Stein ’92 and combustion modeling pioneer Charlie Westbrook ’67. Longtime staff member Kathy Morrison and alumna Mala Arthur ’82 received Lifetime Recognition Awards for their outstanding dedication to the College. Morrison, administrative assistant in the Department of Physics, celebrated her 30th work anniversary in May. Arthur has been a longtime champion for fellow alumni, serving on the AABOG for many years. The Alumni Association also recognized Honorary Alumni, lonstanding friends of the College community. The awardees are physics professor Richard Haskell, longtime trustee Barbara Patocka P00, engineering Professor Donald Remer and board of trustees chairman emeritus and generous donor Michael Shanahan.

onald Remer, D Honorary Alumnus

athy Morrison, K Lifetime Recognition Award

ichard Haskell, R Honorary Alumnus

Mala Arthur ’82, Lifetime Recognition Award

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE

Outstanding Outtakes Harvey Mudd alumni represent a range of talent and expertise. Each year, Outstanding Alumni Award recipients remind us of what’s possible. Here’s a look at some of their achievements.

Stan Love ’87 is one of two astronauts from Harvey Mudd. He is best known for being a mission specialist on Space Shuttle flight STS-122 (2008) during which he operated the robotic arms on both the Shuttle and International Space Station and logged over 306 hours in space, including over 15 hours in two spacewalks. Love and fellow astronaut Ed Lu co-invented the gravity tractor, a novel method to controllably modify the orbits of hazardous asteroids.

James Bean has been in higher education since 1980 and has held academic leadership positions at the University of Michigan, the University of Oregon and now at Northeastern University, where he is provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. He is a widely published scholar interested in genetic algorithms, integer programming and infinite horizon optimization. Since 2011, he has been a member of the HMC Board of Trustees.

Tom Brentnall ’72 has had a long and illustrious career in film and imaging, including spending 25 years at Walt Disney Imagineering, working his way from the electronics department to senior principal imaging engineer. Brentnall has been named in 10 patents or patent applications, including a 3-D projection system that does not require viewers to wear special headgear.

Fred Brander ’73 is owner and general manager of the Brander Vineyard in Los Olivos, California. The first vintage of Brander Sauvignon Blanc arrived in 1977 and won a gold medal at the L.A. County Fair in 1978, becoming the first Santa Barbara wine to do so.

Clifford Stein ’92, one of HMC’s first computer science graduates, works for Sony Pictures Imageworks where he is a developer on the Arnold Renderer software program. During the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Scientific and Technical Awards presentation in February, Stein and his colleagues were honored with a Scientific and Engineering Award for influencing the advancement of the motion picture industry.

Craig Niederberger ’82, M.D., is the Clarence C. Saelhof Professor and Head of the Department of Urology at the University of Illinois at Chicago; he also holds a joint appointment as professor in the Department of Bioengineering in the College of Engineering at UIC. He is a co-founder of the surgical device company NexHand and co-editor in chief of Fertility and Sterility.

Charlie Westbrook ’67, a 40-year employee of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is widely regarded as one of the pioneers in combustion modeling. In 2014, Thomson Reuters named him one of The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds.

SUMMER 2017

MUDDERINGS

Volunteers Promote Connections—and Fun Staying connected to Harvey Mudd is easy and fun thanks in part to volunteers. During 2016–2017, events catering to a variety of interests (pottery, finance, camping, architecture, music and more) were held throughout the U.S. Volunteers welcome those new to their area, host impromptu gatherings or serve as a resource for HMC alumni or prospective students and parents. Interested? If you have suggestions for events or if you would like to volunteer to plan activities for alumni in your area, contact the Events Committee of the Alumni Association Board of Governors (aabog-events-l@g.hmc.edu) or email the Office of Alumni and Parent Relations at alumni@hmc.edu. Zoo Excursion in San Diego Alumni, parents, family and friends headed to the San Diego Zoo June 3 for a tour and exclusive exhibit experience. They were joined by Professor of Biology and Department Chair Stephen Adolph, who provided an update on current events at the College.

B read making in San Francisco Kacyn Fujii ’13 and Winnie Ding ’12 hosted a bread making class in San Francisco during which participants got a hands-on lesson about using and maintaining a wild-yeast, naturally fermented sourdough starter. The budding bakers made a loaf of classic San Francisco sourdough bread and took starter home for future bread making.

Pottery in Seattle Anne Clark ’13 hosted a private, three-hour pottery workshop in Seattle in June at Pottery Northwest. Guests were able to fire and finish their creations.

Calling Future Physicians An endowed scholarship, established in April, honors accomplished physician, patient advocate and mentor Elise Brown ’95 (biology). Classmates, family and friends remember Brown as an astute clinician known for her dedication to medical education and for sharing her knowledge with nurses, medical students and fellow colleagues. Brown passed away from complications of a bleeding cerebral aneurysm in June 2016. In tribute to Elise, several of her Mudd classmates rallied to raise funds to establish the endowed Elise C. Brown ’95 Memorial Scholarship. Along with family and friends, they were able to contribute $63,450 to fund the

scholarship, exceeding the original goal of $50,000. Beginning in fall 2017, the Elise C. Brown ’95 Memorial Endowed Scholarship will annually support a Harvey Mudd student, preferably female, who intends to pursue a career in medicine. Future gifts to the Brown Memorial Scholarship will increase the value of the fund and, thus, the amount of award funding that can be provided each year. To add your support to this scholarship, contact Dan Macaluso (dmacaluso@hmc.edu, 909.607.7069) or Christine Harrison (charrison@hmc.edu, 909.621.8335).

#HMCAlumniWknd Alumni Weekend 2017

Alumni Weekend images: bit.ly/AWpics2017

Alumni Weekend video: bit.ly/AWvideo2017

Save the date: 38

April 27–29, 2018 HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE

CLASS NOTES

1962

in vaccine development. He can be found in the Champions of Change category: https://themedicinemaker.com/power-list/2017/.

1980 Ron Lloyd (engineering), in collaboration with the

Accompanied by friends, family and Mudders, Bill Hartman (engineering) and Karen Taggart ’77 (mathematics) were married on June 3 on the train from Carson City to Virginia City, Nevada.

1964 An interview with Russ Merris (engineering), “Luck, location, and leaves of absence,” appeared in the spring 2017 issue of the Bulletin of the International Linear Algebra Society. See ilasic.org/IMAGE/IMAGES/image58.pdf.

1970 Cancer research pioneer Jack Cuzick (mathematics), who was honored by Queen Elizabeth II (2017) and by HMC (2010 Outstanding Alumnus), gave the keynote address at the 90th Commencement ceremony of Claremont Graduate University.

1975 Andrew Lees (chemistry),

founder and scientific director at Fina BioSolutions was again named to the PowerList of Medicine Makers magazine. The list recognizes 100 individuals involved in bettering the pharma industry and bringing life-changing medicines to market. Andrew, named an Outstanding Alumnus in 2015, is an esteemed research scientist and world-recognized leader

HMC Alumni Association Board of Governors, led a tour of Point Lobos State Natural Reserve in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, June 16. Often called the crown jewel of the state park system, Point Lobos is home to rare plant communities, unique geological formations and rich flora and fauna. It is also a great location to spot migrating gray whales. In addition to the tour, participants enjoyed a picnic lunch, and some joined Randall Spangler ’92 for some scuba diving.

1981 University of New Hampshire physics professor Lynn Kistler P15 (physics) has been named a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), whose membership is reserved for those who have made exceptional scientific contributions and attained acknowledged eminence in their particular discipline. Lynn is the director of the Space Science Center at UNH’s Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, where her work focuses on understanding the impacts of heavy ions on the dynamics of the magnetosphere, the magnetic shield that protects Earth from solar and cosmic radiation, both through data analysis and the development of mass spectrometers to make the required measurements. She has also been involved in the design and testing of instruments for six NASA missions. She is a co-investigator designing the heavy-ion sensor instrument for the Solar Orbiter mission, scheduled to launch in 2018.

1989 CodeGeek, a Fort Collins, Colorado-based website design and development company founded by Ron Zasadzinski (physics) celebrates its 15th anniversary this year. The company has grown from four to 10 employees in the last two years, enjoys repeat business from over 90 percent of its clients and serves over 120 clients worldwide. The company

supports the Fort Collins community by working with local organizations, such as Colorado State University, the Bohemian Foundation’s Music District and Center for Fine Art Photography. Ron graduated with a minor in music (tuba performance) and went on to apply his physics knowledge, become a flight instructor and start CodeGeek (among many other things).

1991 Kenji Hashimoto (physics)

has been named senior vice president of finance and corporate development at American Airlines. In this new and expanded role, Kenji will have oversight of Treasury and Risk Management. Kenji oversees all regional flight services operating under the American Eagle brand, including the company’s three wholly owned carriers, Envoy, Piedmont and PSA, as well as seven regional affiliates. He previously served as president of cargo and was responsible for the airline’s worldwide cargo business. Prior to that, he served as vice president of strategic alliances, leading the company’s efforts to grow and strengthen oneworld® and American’s bilateral airline relationships. Kenji previously held other leadership positions, including serving as managing director of finance for the Europe and Pacific region. He earned an MBA in finance from Northwestern University. Michelle Kimura (engineering), along with her parents

Carol and Mike Kimura P91, hosted alumni, parents and students, for brunch in Honolulu June 25. The event served as a welcome for incoming students and families, and Jon Jacobsen, vice president for student affairs and dean of students, provided a campus update.

1994 When Ben Weiss (mathematics) visited campus in April, he spoke to Professor Art Benjamin’s class about his app and his career in computer graphics, including working at Apple and Google, where he is a software developer. Ben is the creator of Frax, an iPhone app fractal explorer that orchestrates algorithms between CPU and GPU. Immersive in real time, the user can zoom into more than a trillion-to-one depth range of the classic Mandelbrot—

SUMMER 2017

CLASS NOTES

an early step to visualize the mathematics of complexity—and the more self-similar Julia sets can be zoomed infinitely. Ben is a veteran of the computer graphics industry and holder of numerous software patents and awards. Based in Southern California, he is an accomplished free diver, with a seven-minute breath-hold, competing for Team USA on the international stage. An avid environmentalist, he drives a Tesla electric sedan powered exclusively by solar panels.

1997 Kathy French (engineering), a vice president at LS

Power, received the Engineer of the Year award from the St. Louis Chapter of the Missouri Society of Professional Engineers for her leadership in the Chapter during challenging times for professional societies, mentoring of the next generation of PE’s, and experience at LS Power in the very demanding field of environmental permitting and compliance at power plants.

2002 Daniel Pennington (biology), M.D., PhD, completed

his radiation oncology residency at UCLA, where he served as chief resident. He joined Radiation Oncology Associates of Richmond, Virginia. He and his wife, Elizabeth, have two daughters: June, 5, and Lucy, 1.

2005 Tommy Leung (engineering) and his partner, Nathan

Perkins, have built a protest tracker, Count Love, to keep an historical record of protests that have occurred since Jan. 20. Tommy says, “We currently crawl a few thousand news sites and add new events daily; we also developed an iOS submission app that allows users to privately submit information about new protests. We’re doing this completely on a volunteer basis. Our hope is that journalists and voters will find this data useful as historical context and that it may help change the minds and votes of some local representatives.” A May 2017 article in Data Driven Journalism features Count Love (bit.ly/ CountLoveTL), and Tommy and Nathan were invited to speak at this year’s Personal Democracy Forum (listen to their talk at bit.ly/LeungCountLv17). The protest tracker is live at countlove.org.

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE

What You Make Possible Thanks to the tremendous support of many loyal donors to Harvey Mudd College, Annual Mudd Fundd gifts during the 2016–2017 academic year totaled nearly $4 million. This achievement provides invaluable resources that enable the College to continue pursuing its mission of educating academically well-rounded students who understand and appreciate the impact of their work on society. The College is grateful to all who joined this major effort.

ALUM N I P R O F IL E

The Proof is in the Potion

A programmer battles bias and creates space for women in the gaming industry Written by Lia King Photo by Anil Kapahi

LUNA, THE PROTAGONIST OF THE VIDEO GAME THAT

Renee Gittins ’12 is developing at Stumbling Cat, the Seattle-based indie game studio she founded two years ago, is spunky and awkward, a preteen witch trying to find her place in the world. She bears a not-coincidental resemblance to Gittins’ younger self. “She’s relearning what respect is,” Gittins says. “Redefining it. She realizes that not everything is as it appears, that respect is earned, not granted. The antagonist of the game is Prince Charming, who throws around the weight of his royal upbringing but has no substance behind it.” Potions: A Curious Tale follows Luna as she employs tricks, charms and ingenuity to solve puzzles and work her way toward master potion brewing. Gittins, a passionate gamer from an early age, had long been frustrated with the way games tended to encourage combat even when it was detrimental, so she wanted to create a game that rewarded its players for picking their fights carefully and finding alternative ways to interact. Gittins’s love for video games is rooted in memories of sitting beside her father, watching him play. It’s also an extension of her love of logic and solving puzzles. She majored in engineering at Harvey Mudd, but a few years after graduation she found her way—via working on concussion management software at her biotech job and studying programming in her spare time—to the game industry. “What Harvey Mudd does really well is it encourages self-teaching. Clinic in particular. It’s an invaluable tool, especially in the tech industry. I’m always learning.” She felt respected at Mudd, where no one questioned her skillset, so the rush of assumptions and generalizations she met with when she entered the game industry was disconcerting. She is responsible for all of the programming, design, business development and management for Potions: A Curious

Tale, but often people assume she’s an artist, not the CEO of a game studio. Gittins attributes this squarely to her gender. “I was talking to someone at a party about Stumbling Cat, and after I introduced myself and every member of my 10-member team, the person I was talking to said, ‘So who does the programming?’” Only 23 percent of professionals in the game industry identify as female. Gittins thinks there are many reasons for this. “Video games have often been considered a male pastime,” she says, “and gaming, especially online gaming, has had difficulties with sexism and harassment. Studio cultures can also be unwelcoming to new and diverse hires, resulting in many women leaving the industry within a year or two of entering it.” But Gittins is intrepid about sharing her passion for gaming with other women and girls. As a board member of the International Game Developers Association, she plans events to support local developers and mentors students in programming and game development. One of IGDA’s current initiatives is to double the number of women in the game industry. Sometimes her presence alone plants these seeds. At the 2015 GeekGirlCon in Seattle, a gathering that “celebrates the female geek,” she set up a booth among the tabletop and card games,

A scene from Potions: A Curious Tale, Gittins’ video game.

“without another video game in sight,” and girls streamed to her table. She saw how they identified with Luna and how excited they were to learn that she had created the game herself. Potions is a year out from its debut, and Gittins already has plans for a virtual reality game. “I hope that my presence within the development community helps empower other women and girls,” she says.

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CLASS NOTES

2008

2013 Meredith Rawls (physics) was

one of the Top 10 competitors in the Science Communication Contest held as part of Science Talk Northwest in Portland, Oregon, during January. Contestants had three minutes to present their research for a broad, non-scientific audience. Meredith’s talk presented a brief overview of the scale, scope and software behind the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). The conference brought together a variety of scientists, science communicators, journalists and students to learn about and practice effective science communication. Meredith is a postdoctoral research associate in the LSST Data Management group at the University of Washington. See her presentation at bit.ly/RawlsLSST17.

Colin Bundschu (computer

science) is author of Super Herpes: A nerd’s harrowing story of dating, debauchery, and disillusionment in Silicon Valley (http://a.co/3ORnYwY). Colin is a graduate student at Cornell University where he is studying nanostructured materials. Anne Clark (mathematical and computational

biology) hosted a private pottery class for alumni and other guests in Seattle June 3 at Pottery Northwest. The three-hour workshop included tools, materials and the guidance to fire and finish a one-of-a-kind creation. The event was sponsored by the HMC Alumni Association Board of Governors.

2009 Sarah Fletcher (mathematics) is in Atlanta working

for Applerouth, a tutoring company with branches in several cities as well as an online presence. Sarah was recently interviewed about her time at Mudd for the company blog, applerouth.com/ blog/2017/05/31/a-tale-of-two-stem-schools/.

Your News Matters Have you changed jobs? Retired? Celebrated a milestone? We want your news! We also compile information from a variety of public sources: campus event notices, newspaper and magazine articles, press releases and Google alerts. Please submit updates to alumni@hmc.edu.

AABOG Leaders Members of the Alumni Association Board of Governors are leadership representatives of the alumni body who partner with staff, faculty and students to strengthen ties and increase alumni support of the College.

Elected to three-year term Grace Credo ’96 Pennie Gordon ’87 Ron Roth ’69

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE

Re-elected to three-year term Matthew Dharm ’98, treasurer Bob Herling ’67 David Sonner ’80, P18, president Dee West ’65, P92/93, vice president Full AABOG roster at alumni.hmc.edu/BOGmembers.

In Memoriam Stephen Garfield ’66 (engineering)

passed away on Oct. 22, 2016. In his response to the College’s 50th Anniversary Alumni Survey in 2005, Stephen wrote: “I’ve worked as a traditional engineer, a sales engineer, founded and ran a manufacturers’ representative company for 30 years, as a licensed pastor for the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel for 15 years, serving as administrative and executive pastor at large churches and as an administrator at a Pre-K–12 school. From performing bearing-life calculations on an old Monroe mechanical calculator to counseling grief-stricken congregants and performing marriages, I think my career/ life can be considered interdisciplinary (and that’s not considering 37 years as a member of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association, staging the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl [he was named an Honorary Life Member, complete with Rose Bowl tickets for life]; six years (four as chairman) as a member of the Environmental and Public Utilities Commission of Redondo Beach … terms of service as a Homeowners’ Association president; and membership on the Redondo Beach Safer Cities Commission. I’ve been able to accomplish most anything I wanted to, and I credit my time at HMC and The Claremont Colleges for a lot of that.”

CLASS REUNIONS

A LU M N I WE E KE ND 20 17

1 962 | 55th Reunion

1967 | 50th Reunion

Robert Styerwalt P89, Walt Whipple

Barrett, Robert Herling, Brian Dorman, Kenneth Brown, Shirley Sandoz

Hal Harris, Fredric Gey, Joseph Barrera P86, Dick Olson, Wayne Schmus, Sandra Guldman,

Front Row: Paul Rudolph, David Bock, Steven Bonkowski, Brian Boyle, Penny Second Row: Stephen Quilici, Emmett Curran, Paul Kollar, Charles Johnson, Allen Iseri, Spencer Nelson, Gordon Mattis, George McNulty, Wilson Hoffman Back Row: George Robinson, Stephen Smith, Hugh Saurenman, James Treadway, Gary Schantz, Andrew Van Horn, Harry Simrin, Peter Walstrom, Gary Smith, Charles Westbrook, Jon Williams

1 972

Front Row: John Sawka, Douglas Zody, Andrew Wehrenberg, George Clary, Martin Bigos, Richard Jones P98, Thomas Brentnall, Sally Siemak, Lance Lissner, Don Rodriguez Back Row: Brian Baxley, Lloyd Green, Tim Revak ’71, Richard Greer, Terry Chappell,

1977

Karl Rudnick, Michael Brossart, Floyd Spencer, John Sell, James Hager, Fred Brander ’73

Front Row: Mark Von Hendy, James Bean, Clifford Pang, Karen Taggart, Bruce Harris, John Bradfute, Peggy Anschutz, Jennifer Rihn, Lucia Mikasa, Steve Hayes, Michael Osborne Back Row: Brian Williams: Chris Marble, Frank Festini P06, P09, Jeffrey Brown, Thomas Taylor, Louise Johnson, Craig Wylie, Michael Pappas, Robert Powell, Jerry Goedicke

1982

Front Row: James Hamada, Jill Hamada, Louisa Mak, Leticia Kurashige, John Shockley, Ronald Tharp P20 Back Row: Keith Smith, Mala Arthur, Mark Eisenhardt, Mark Anderson, Mark Rauscher, Steven Tome

SUMMER 2017

CLASS REUNIONS

A LU M N I WE E KE ND 20 17

1 987

Kenneth Chon, Karen Lewey, Kim Wagner, Adam Fedor

Derek Liebertz, Roy Hom, Gregory Furumoto, Mark Faust, Kathy Wakisaka

Second Row: David Somers, Robert Gould, Jose Rios, Gregory McDonald, Daniel Hanesworth,

Second Row: Corin Andrade, Gregory Levin, Gordon Hogenson, Kent Burr, Scott West,

James Corrigan, Richard Brown, Sylvia Block, Andrew Firth, Roger Klemm, Kathryn Kubasak,

Theodore Sjodin, Shirley Monroe, Katherine Footracer, Daniel Wright, Chris Douty,

Theodore Kubasak

Ruth Fink-Winter, Steve Wakisaka

Back Row: Steven Swedberg, Michael Stark, William Carpenter, Mark Moeglein, Karl Meyer,

Back Row: Richard McHugh, Jeffrey Jensen, David Williams, Dan Crevier,

David Rossman, Thomas Jedrzejewicz, David Graser, Eric Ryba, Matthew Elliott,

Matthew Plunkett P21, Christopher Jeffery, Randall Spangler, Bryan Reed, Jeffrey

Bardia Pezeshki P21, Stephen Cobb, Kevin Moore

Wilkinson, Michael Dederian

1 997

Vivian Kammler, Stephen Granite, Kristine Nowak, Evan Goer, Anna Prestezog

Noah Levin

Second Row: Tod Semple, Chase Tsang, Wendy Panero, Marta Hansen, Katy Wong, Wendy Hein,

Back Row: Shane Markstrum, Alexander Mandel, Nicholas Breznay, David Cooke,

Kathy French, April Frazier-Schaller, Sonia Minassian, Elizabeth Leonard, Christopher Sloan

Daniel Pennington, Jason DeCamp

Front Row: Patricia Priest, Suzanne Gruber, Linda Tam, Gary Carino, Kim Tsujimoto, Eric Danielson,

Front Row: Matthew Hammer, Brad Hyslop, Brian Carnes, Kenneth Gimpelson, Elizabeth Stoltzfus,

Back Row: Nicholas Carroll, Kevin Sours, Frank Schmitt, Robert Prestezog, Eric Jones, Noel D’Angelo, Todd Clements, Anthony Selim, Seth Hanson, Kyle Myers, Dinesh Martien

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE

1992

Front Row: Clifford Stein, Gene Van Nostern, Becky Karlmann, Ann Sjodin, Justin Stege,

2002

Front Row: Shamik Maitra, Austin Brown, Sarah Stuck, Lisa Wice ’04, Amanda Malone,

2 007

Front Row: Diego Gonzales â&#x20AC;&#x2122;08, Stephen Jones, Emily Roberts, Stephen Brawner, Jason Santiago, Holly Johnsen, Alex Wright, Cassie Chou, Tracy Bartholomew, Allison Hutchings, Nathan Chenette, Heather Chenette, Herbie Huff, Corwin Cole, Alice Izsak Second Row: Jamie Brugnano, Craig Weidert, Dane Lindblad, Kyle Roberts, Badier Velji, Jacques Favreau, Mikel Grenzner, Amy Jarvis, Caitlin Vierra, Elijah Kwitman, Ronn Gruer, Christopher Woodruff, Andrea Heald, Michael Hansen, Kapambwe Kangombe, Adam Field, Victor Wang Back Row: Nicholas Evans, Chris Alvino, James Egan, Michael Pugh, Daniel Turner, Maxwell Smoot, Mark Emanuel, Matthew Reed, William Schulze, John Hankinson, Frances Hocutt, Kevin Bergemann, Jonathan Beall, Amir Adibi, Peter Hillegas

2 012

Front Row: Leon Liu, Gwen (Groover) Corcoran, Emily Putnam, Mira De Avila-Shin, Sarah Ferraro, Sara Sholes, Alyssa Paulson, Kirby Haraguchi, Lilian de Greef, Sung Woo Koh, Joyce Lin, Keiko Hiranaka, Nick Hill, Mary Van Vieet, Craig Burkhart, Kali Allison, Kathleen Bennett, Susanna Todaro, Kristen Warren, Winnie Ding, Brian Soe, Karen Heinselman, Vincent Pai, Alexa Noxon Second Row: Leif Gaebler, Cameron Gaebler, Susan Tan, August Guang, Meera Punjiya, Evann Gonzales, Dalar Nazarian, Beatrice Metitiri, Maximillian Gonzalez, Elissa Leonard, Chelsea Fischbach, Johnson Qu, Shaun Pacheco, Vincent Shieh, Maia Valcarce, Stephanos Matsumoto, Heather Williams, Jessica Kurata, Andrew Ho, Edward Wang, Emily (Myers-Stanhope) Normoyle, Kathryn Lingel, Alexa Keizur, Lindsay Hall, Craig Levin, Maksym Taran Third Row: Margaret Brier, Samuel Ettinger, Alexander Hall, Wylie Rosenthal, Emma Taborsky, Anne Jensen, Rochelle Bartholomew, Malous Kossarian, Ryan Brewster, James Parks, Adam Novak, Theo DuBose, Hayden Hatch, Kevin Black, Paul Hobbs, Julien Devin, Camille Marvin, Eric Mullen, John Grasel, Benson Khau, John Bremseth, (Jeep) Veerasak Srisuknimit Back Row: Brianna Blanchard, Gregory Fong, Richard Truong, Lowell Reade, Philip Aelion-Moss, Adam Cozzette, Harry Lenahan, Matthew Davis, Scott Ogilvie, Richard Porczak, Jackson Newhouse, Renee Gittins, Aaron Gable, Spencer Tung, Benjamin Jones, Mark Ellis, William Grabill, Andrew Jennings, David Golay SUMMER 2017

Harvey Mudd College 301 Platt Boulevard | Claremont, CA 91711

Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Claremont, CA Permit No. 35

hmc.edu/magazine

Sudoku on the Torus Kira Wyld ’17 has always loved logic puzzles. “When I was about 10 or so my dad started programming software to generate sudoku in particular. Because of that, I’m especially comfortable with their format and will seek them out over other puzzles!” For her senior research thesis, she studied how Sudoku puzzles and their variants operate as mathematical objects. She created this hexagonal variant for a Sudoku puzzle especially for the magazine. Her advisors were Francis Su, Benediktsson-Karwa Professor of Mathematics, and Kenji Kozai ’08, visiting assistant professor of mathematics. For more senior projects (research and Clinic), see stories beginning on page 22. Rules: Each triangle bound by bold lines must have the numbers 1-6 once and only once. Sets of parallel lines form bands, via neighboring parallel lines. These bands must have the numbers 1 through 6 twice and only twice. Find the answer online at magazine.hmc.edu/summer-2017.

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