1990's Alumni News
Class of 1990
Helen Rubin Avner
Email: Helen@helenrubin.com
Address: 14916 Joshua Tree Road
North Potomac, MD 20878
I'm delighted to report the addition of a son, Noam, to our family on October 14. He arrived too soon for me to enjoy the "luxury" maternity suites which the hospital will open in a few weeks, but in good time to make it into the physics newsletter. I guess we know something about his priorities! We're adjusting to life as a family of four; as of this writing Liana thinks her little brother is pretty fabulous, but we'll see how she feels by the time this comes out in print.
I'm currently on leave, but otherwise am still working as a sign language interpreter, specializing in bio-medical research settings. My physics degree only occasionally gives me an edge in actually understanding the material, but it does give me a certain comfort level with the science that is helpful. In the past year I've also gotten back into mentoring new interpreters, and I've provided training on the system for adjudicating grievances against interpreters for ethical violations.
Charles Bagley
Email: mcbagley@gmail.com
Address: 3015 13th Ave. S.
Seattle, WA 98144
And in the past year? Let’s see: Tanya and I moved into our first house on Beacon Hill in Seattle. She has returned to school and is dividing her time between her job at the Seattle Public Library and classes at North Seattle Community College. She is teaching me how much French I have forgotten. We went on a week-long canoe trip in the Quetico with my parents, Chuck and Nancy Bagley, this past August: it was Tanya’s first such trip and we had absolutely perfect weather with just one earsplitting thunderstorm on the final night for a complete boundary waters experience.
Amy (Bylsma) Engebretson
Email: adengebretson@sio.midco.net
Life is good in SD...but busy. Our three-ring circus keeps us hopping. Ariel, our oldest, started middle school this year! Both she and I have peeked into the teenage years and decided that we are not quite ready for that yet. I'm glad we agree :). Ben, age 9, is our inventor. This week's inventions involved a little motor, rubber bands, a thimble and a chopstick. Sam, our youngest, is in kindergarten where he is enjoying meeting letter friends and mastering competitive tetherball. I continue to enjoy teaching part time at Augustana College. I'm teaching and refining the physics for life sciences course for the third year in a row. Last year we added lab sections. This year we are calling the course "calc light" I'm using Knight's algebra based textbook, but mix some calculus into my lectures. It makes derivations more straightforward and allows students to continue onto upper level physics courses if they wish. My husband, Dan, continues to wear several hats professionally. He heads up a couple of programs at USD and has started his own research company developing genetic tests.
Sarah Van Orman
Email: svanorman@uhs.wisc.edu
Phone: 608-236-4235
Address: 1815 Capital Avenue
Madison, WI 53705-1212
The last two years have brought tremendous changes. My experiences with physics were quite personal last summer after a diagnosis of cancer. I pulled out old textbooks to understand my treatment plan - the physics of radiation therapy are impressive. After a full recovery, this spring I left the University of Chicago to accept a position as the Medical Director of the student health service at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I'm busy implementing an electronic health record, preparing to move to a new facility and spending a lot of time doing emergency planning. Dan is still teaching in Chicago and commuting, but we are enjoying life in Madison and even had a chance to have dinner with Bill Caplan-90 and his wife, Rachel, a few weeks ago.
Mick Veum
Email: mick.veum@uwsp.edu
I have nothing interesting to report, nothing. I’m still busy, busy, busy with familying, administrating, and researching. Nina, Edie, and Yena are thriving. Nina started working for the Central Wisconsin Children’s Museum. Edie started kindergarten. Yena is now fully ours, ours, ours. Nina and I will both turn 40 this year. Class of ’90, odds are you’ve more than doubled in age since you first darkened the steps of Olin. Happy Holidays! I had personally thought I’d be smarter by now. Then again, if I got smart all of a sudden, people might expect me to know stuff. I hope this finds all of y’all doing well.
Class of 1991
David FeldmanEmail: dave@hornacek.coa.edu
URL http://hornacek.coa.edu/dave
I'm now in my tenth year on the faculty at College of the Atlantic. I continue to enjoy the wide range of classes that I get to teach. As the only full-time faculty member in physics and math at a college of 300, there is plenty to keep me busy. Happily, I am no longer serving as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. I figured that after almost five years of doing the task it was somebody else's turn. It's been a nice change; I'm enjoying having more time for teaching and working with students. I continue to help run the Complex Systems Summer School, hosted in Beijing, China, and sponsored by the Santa Fe Institute and The Institute of Theoretical Physics (ITP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This summer will be my third year as co-director. Our collaboration with ITP has gotten stronger, and each year seems to go better than the last. I've enjoyed learning about China and exploring Beijing and beyond.
Dan Prince
Email: Dan.prince@alumni.carleton.edu
Address: 3329 Garfield Ave. S.
Minneapolis, MN 55408
I am still writing software for Integral7, Inc., in Minneapolis. My partner Laura and our kids Grace (6) and Theo ( 4.5) and I still enjoy living in South Minneapolis, within biking distance of work, school, the Lakes, and just about everything else! Laura is still director of Joyce Bilingual (Spanish/English) Preschool, and Theo is in his last year as a student there. Grace started kindergarten this fall and is really enjoying it. I was able to travel to Suzhou, China in June to work with software developers there. I really enjoyed it and am currently taking a class in Mandarin in hopes of going back again. We had an awesome time catching up with Andrea Lommen, Shannon Mullens Wallis, and their respective families in Maine this summer.
John Prineas
Email: John-prineas@uiowa.edu
Phone: 319-541-7797
Address: 419 Ferson Ave
Iowa City, IA 52246
This last year I received tenure in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Iowa. I rewarded myself by joining The Old Capitol Chorus, a men's choir in Iowa City that sings barbershop. I have never sung in a choir before, but have always wanted to try. It seemed like a good time to try something new. My daughter Maud is now 12, and my son Theo is 7. Both are well and growing fast. My wife Sarah Bing Prineas ('89) is also well, and excited about her recent three book deal with HarperCollins Childrens Books this last year. The first book, Magic Thief, is coming out in April, and is already available at Amazon. It is being translated into 8 other languages and will be sold worldwide. I recommend it to kids ages 9 and up.
In the last years, I researched slow light in semiconductor heterostructures for tunable optical delay lines or optical buffers. Good ones still do not exist. Also, I have ramped up my efforts in infrared optoelectronics for continuous optical glucose sensors in particular, but also optical molecular sensing generally. I became an officer in a local startup company, ASL Analytical.
Stuart Wagenius
Email: swagenius@chicagobotanic.org
Phone: 847-835-6978
Hi all, I am still conducting research on plant population dynamics at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Last winter I also started teaching at Northwestern University (two classes: Conservation Genetics & Statistics). Peace.
Class of 1992
Greg FichterEmail: gfichter@pico.etrix.com
I’m doing advanced postgraduate work: organizing Ann Arbor’s second ‘Beer and Photonics’ seminar. We will demonstrate how easily the world’s energy problems are solved in a relaxed evening using biology (yeast), chemistry (well, at least a chemistry professor), and physics: the mechanics of quaffing. Otherwise I’m trying to bring terahertz equipment to new applications. Perhaps I can diplomatically describe how this has been going by saying: we will look at anyone’s sample for a half-day for free. If you’re curious what your material looks like at a quadrillion cycles per second, contact me. I do optomechanical design, until I’m needed to write grant proposals, until I’m needed to write deconvolution algorithms. Best wishes to everyone, and I hope to hear from you next time you’re overcome by the allure of Detroit.
Larry Margulies and Jane OlsonEmail: Wholesome_olson@yahoo.com
margulie@esrf.fr
We weren't joking around in the last newsletter. We got married June 9 in Grenoble, France and the photographic evidence is still posted on http://picasaweb.google.com/wholesomeolson. In September we moved to Copenhagen, Denmark. Larry continues to work with the Risoe National Laboratory, and Jane teaches at the international school. Come visit!
Class of 1993
Marcia FranklinEmail: mrfranklin@etmeli.us
Address: 1092 Osceola Ave
St. Paul, MN 55105
Along with our twins' first birthday, this year included a move to a new house in a different part of St Paul. Steve changed jobs in January so he wouldn't have to travel so much, which has been great for the girls and me. Almost all my activities these days revolve around being a mom (more specifically, a MOM - mother of multiples), but now that there's some two-way communication with the girls, it feels a little easier to do. Call or drop me a line; looking forward to seeing some folks in June at Reunion!
Eric Granstrom
Email: egranstrom@comcast.net
Another Carleton update, another new job?! I’m now at Cima NanoTech, a startup in St. Paul, working with nanoparticles and related inks and coatings for electronics applications. Great new challenges, colleagues, and technology. It’s fun and terrifying to see so many applications for which we might have a home, and realize that to a large extent we are limited primarily by us.
At home, the family is great. Matthew and Leah are a joy and nonstop source of attention, amusement, etc. for Andrea and me. Through yet another job change, we’ve managed to stay put in the same house in Golden Valley. The kids are in a Spanish immersion program, and Andrea volunteers there regularly. Hope another passing year finds you all well.
Class of 1994
Richard GranThe main news from last year is the birth of our second son, Peter, on Valentines Day. If you want the recipe for the pasta dinner we had that night, it's in the Carleton Geology department's Coldigioco recipe collection. The whole family is doing well, and the two boys are keeping us very busy. We're still in Duluth, where I'm in my third year in the physics department teaching and working on two neutrino interaction experiments, MINOS and MINERvA. Activity on the latter experiment is heating up, and it just got construction approval from the Department of Energy. My first two M.S. students have already moved onto Ph.D. programs, and have just a little bit of editing to do to finish their M.S. projects, and three undergraduates are working on different projects now. Karen is hired on a two-year appointment at UMD, teaching Geomorphology right now, and additionally has a research project underway on the LeSeuer River in southern Minnesota.
Eric Hill
Email: Eric_Hill@redlands.edu
The highlights here in Redlands, California are that my soon-to-be 3-year old is discovering the power of “no”, but he’s still using it sparingly, that my wife’s happily landed a job at the only software company that isn’t a So. Cal.-worthy commute away, and that I’ve been tenured.
Martine Kalke
Email: Martine.kalke@gmail.com
Our big news from last year is that our family has expanded! Our daughter, Cassidy
Leslie Kalke was born on 9/20/2006. It was a long wait (and a long pregnancy), but Cassidy was well worth it. She is now just over a year old, walking and talking (well we understand her). She is very aware of everything around her and has been since she was just a few months old. A good reminder to be careful what you do and say around kids – this one is clearly paying attention. And as turnabout is fair play, I love to watch her explore and learn about the world - it is fascinating.
Mike and I still enjoy what we are doing and where we are living (a close suburb of Boston). I have now been at MIT Lincoln Laboratory for five and a half years. Almost a year ago just after returning from maternity leave, I took over sole management of our team that tests Ballistic Missile Defense algorithms. It has been a fun but challenging change. Overall, I'm still working on a number of projects, giving lots of presentations, and in general enjoying my job and the people I work with! My husband (Mike) is still a professor at Boston College, working on many different projects, and he just submitted his tenure portfolio.
Class of 1995
Kareem KazkazEmail: kkazkaz@comcast.net
Greetings once again from the Bay area! I have recently started my second year as a postdoc here at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and I'm still loving it. I'm deeply embroiled in a couple neutrino experiments, a dark matter experiment, and work with a gamma ray imaging group. It's a busy time, but that's the way I like it. My work regularly takes me to the mountains northeast of Rome, and will over the next few years also bring me to the Black Hills in South Dakota.
Here's another fun development: I've gone back to school! I'm enrolled in a graduate certificate course at Stanford in International Security, to aid me in understanding how the technology I'm helping to develop can actually be used on a global scale in the interest of nuclear nonproliferation. Helene, my wife, calls this the Protecting America with Science class, and I repeatedly point out this work is intended to protect everyone, not just America. Now she says it just to get my goat. And I keep falling for it.
As for California, this place is amazing. Northfield moms tell their kids bedtime stories of magical lands where it doesn't snow in the winter and there are no mosquitoes. That's exactly what we have here. Don't get me wrong...there are tradeoffs. Oakland moms tell their kids bedtime stories of affordable housing and fifteen-minute commutes. My wife and I don't know how long we're going to be in the Bay area, or how long we would like to stay in the end. For now, though, we're really enjoying it. So if you're in the area, and if you feel inclined to hang out, drop me a line.
Susan (Thysell) Rodgers
Email: susanerodgers@yahoo.com
Address: 2405 Kenmore Court
Schaumburg, Il 60193
All is well here in Schaumburg, IL, and we wish the happiest of holidays to all of you. I think our biggest news from the past year is that Alex started preschool. We managed to potty-train him over the summer, and he was able to start the 3-year-old class in September. He is enjoying it, and we have fun hearing the new songs that he learns at school. As a stay-at-home mom, I feel like I have "graduated" to being the mom of a preschooler -- hooray! Scott continues to work from home for IBM. He was promoted to business area manager last January, which means he's in charge of more people, projects, money, and problems. Although it sometimes means longer hours for him, we are pleased with this great step in his career. In addition to keeping up with Alex, I am volunteering as the playgroup coordinator for my local Moms Club and co-leader of the Moms Group at my church. It may not sound like much, but I do need the critical-thinking and personal interaction skills I learned at Carleton. I also hope to return to singing with the church choir in the near future.
Class of 1996
Kirk DammanEmail: kdamman@mindspring.com
Wow, another year has past. It's been a busy one. I'm still working as a patent attorney here in Saint Louis, however in February I was made a member (partner) in the firm, which seems to have resulted in a dramatic increase in my workload. I have also begun teaching as an adjunct professor of patent law at Webster University here in Saint Louis, which has been fun, if a bit stressful (I'm starting to have a increased appreciation for all my profs and just how hard they worked). My teaching at Webster has also opened up the opportunity for me to teach patent Examiners (those who decide if things are entitled to be patented) at the Patent Office in Washington DC. I have only had the opportunity to do it once so far, but it was a great experience and I have been told I've been invited back in 2008 and I am looking forward to getting to return. On the further academic side, I was able to get a book published (as a co-author) this year. "Patent Law: Client Strategies" by Aspatore Press. Not exactly thrilling reading unless you are looking to study patenting strategy. As always, if anybody wants to talk about using a physics major outside the lab, I am more than willing to discuss patent law. Also, feel free to look me up on LinkedIn so I can keep up with where everyone is.
Nate Hultman
Email: Neh3@georgtown.edu
We spent last academic year (2006-2007) at Oxford University. It was great fun, and I've now learned that one is supposed to pass the port to the left, but very importantly one must stop passing the port after it has gone around twice. Now we're back in the District of Columbia where at least the weather is milder and less rainy.
Merlin Meyer-Mitchell
Email: merlinmm@fastmail.fm
Address: 17 Garner Street
Norwalk, CT 06854
My daughter Nina is 18 months old and is a delight. She loves to read and count. We are expecting our second – a boy – in February 2008. I recently took a new position at RBS Greenwich Capital in Stamford, CT, which is much closer to home – 15 minutes! We visited with Mark Dieterich ’96 and Karen Griffith-Dieterich ’97 and their bubbly offspring over the summer.
Karl Volmers
Email: karl.vollmers@iris.mavt.ethz.ch
We are still living in Zurich Switzerland. I say we because my wife just finished nursing school in Duluth MN and moved back to support me as I work on finishing my thesis. I know I've been saying it for years, but the end is really in sight this time. My research project was morphed into an entry into premier of the Nanogram league at Robocup 2007 ( http://www.iris.ethz.ch/msrl/
research/special/nanogram/ for more info) and really went well. It was kind of interesting to be representing Switzerland on a team of 9 people and only 3 of them were Swiss. That being said, I've got to get back to writing. Hello to everyone out there!
Class of 1997
Craig HeinkeEmail: Craig.heinke@gmail.com
Phone: 434-760-3509
Life is treating me pretty well. I left Chicagoland with a wonderful woman named Rachel, who has several times more books than me. I'm currently doing a one-year postdoc in Virginia, after which I will start a tenure-track position in the physics dept. (astrophysics group) of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
Class of 1998
Amanda BabsonEmail: babsona@gmail.com
Hi everyone, I'm having an adventuresome year. This spring and summer I kayaked the Inside Passage from Seattle to Glacier Bay, Alaska! It was incredible; I highly recommend taking off 4 months to do something you've always dreamed of doing. I'm working on a trip web site, which I don't have ready to share yet, but maybe by the time this comes out. In September I moved to Washington DC to start a AAAS Science Policy Fellowship which so far is great. I'm working in an EPA office that does climate change adaptation planning.
Nick Larsen
Email: Larsen@crystal.harvard.edu
Phone: 617-792-4184
Address: 31 Hammond Pond Parkway, #4
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
I am still a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School. It is the hunting season - not deer hunting, but job hunting. I think perhaps shooting a deer would be easier, however. 2007 was not a bad year, as years go. I co-authored a Nature paper with Carleton classmate Michi Taga. Good times. But will it get me a job? Looking forward to reunion - anyone else?
Jeremy Wahl
Email: Jawahl17@gmail.com
I have been gainfully employed at Spansion here in Silicon Valley since the beginning of this year. I am a senior device technology engineer, which sounds more important than it really is. I am a process integration engineer for the next, next technology node for NOR flash memory. NOR flash is what you find in cars and cell phones as opposed to NAND flash which is what you find in flash drives, solid state hard drives and MP3 players. I haven't been in our cleanroom at all and I'm not complaining. I set up experiments on Si that are fabbed and then interpret the results. I end up requesting a lot of TEM.
The weather here is great. Sunnyvale has never had a 100 deg day and it's usually in the 50's and 60's during the winter. It rains during the winter, but I grew up in Oregon so I'm not worried about that. I don't think you've ever seen housing sticker shock until you've looked for places out here. A mobile home out here will run at least $500k and it'll take nearly $1M to buy a "decent" house. Crazy. Yvonne and I will probably get married later this year, but I'm not sure. We'll have a simple ceremony at a courthouse or something like that. She's working hard in her interior design program at UC-Berkeley Extension in SF and should finish up with a professional certificate (equivalent to a master's) in less than two years. I don't think that I'll make it to my 10th reunion next year because of work.
Class of 1999
Greg StinsonEmail: stinson@physics.mcmaster.ca
This was the big move year for me. They kicked me out of Seattle with doctorate in hand and I have started my first post doc at McMaster University in Hamilton, ON, CA. It's about an hour from Toronto and has quite a few computers for me to run simulations on.
My parents are quite excited about the move, as I'm not only 2.5 hours away from their home in Rochester, NY. As I made the road trip from Seattle to Hamilton, I kept a bit of a journal that I put online. You can find it at http://www.physics.mcmaster.ca/~stinson/roadtrip. Things aren't so different up here in Canada. Of course, the currency cooperated very nicely, so I effectively got an unexpected 10% pay raise. If you happen by the Toronto/Niagara Falls area, do drop a line.
John Weiss
Email: weissj@ciclops.org
Where did the year go?! Things have been pretty consistent around here: I'm still working at CICLOPS in Boulder doing a mix of science and mission planning (the latter tasked made immensely easier thanks to the skills and patience of Emily Baker ('01)). We're well into planning Cassini's extended mission, so I've had to learn a lot about the mechanics of the process as well as become something of the go-to person for finding observation times. It's both exciting and frustrating. Exciting because I get to help plan observations that will be used for decades to come, frustrating because of politics. Such is life, I suppose. Science-wise, I'm still studying rings. I landed my first big-kid grant a couple of weeks ago, although thanks to NASA budget limbo I have no idea how much money it involves. I'm a co-author in a paper that will appear in science shortly; it was a really neat bit of work that pulled both dynamicists and satellite people together. A couple more papers are in various points in process, which is always healthy. In other news, I got to go to Greece in June for work. It was really neat to see the Acropolis in Athens and to visit Mycene, although the food wasn't as good as we had anticipated. Also, I now share my home with a cat, Kisha Delain's ('96) Christmas gift to me last year. I suppose it has changed my life a bit: I never used to wake up at 4 AM with a looming, fuzzy mass above my face. (Seriously, she's a sweet, wonderful cat and I spoil her silly.) To top it off, I had a few friends from Carleton visit this past year, so I got to play tour guide around Boulder. My rates are cheap and tours are good, so feel free to sign up if you'll be in the area!