Class of 1981

Tom Carroll
thomas.l.carroll@nrl.navy.mil
US Naval Research Laboratory
Code 6341
Washington, DC 20375-5000
Another year and I’m still doing chaos. I have had to take on some more practical projects for some unnamed people in our lab, but the work is still interesting. With the economic problems and the change in administration, the future at NRL is unpredictable, but I think the outlook here is probably better than it is for a lot of other people.

On the good side, Physical Review Letters declared a paper from 1990 on which I was a coauthor a “Milestone Letter”. It’s not recent work, but it’s nice to know that something I did years ago is still considered important. It also means that chaos is now considered “real physics”; when I started, I was told that it was just a passing fad.

I’m still working on renovating old cabins with the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club. One of the cabins, an 1850 log cabin, may be done in a year; the other, a 1917 farmhouse, probably still has a while to go.

I did get a call from another Carleton alum, Rick Hunter ‘81. He’s bringing his family down from upstate New York in January to see the Obama inauguration.

Class of 1982

Paul Erdman
paul.erdman@uwc.edu
740 McCagg Street
Peshtigo, WI 54157
I’m still at Ice Station Marinette in northeast Wisconsin keeping myself warm with paperwork and teaching duties. Actually this year has been better than most in that I have been able to sneak a bit of research in when no one was looking.

Dan McCreary
dan@danmccreary.com
http:/danmccready.com
(952) 931-9198
I have had a year very reflective of our tumultuous economy. I started the year very successively building metadata registries as a contractor for Thrivent Financial in Minneapolis. These registries record the semantics or meaning of all the data that flows through the networks of large financial institutions. The software systems I create are now being created with a new web application architecture I have called XRX. XRX has been getting some positive reviews in the press. In September our entire project was canceled and the entire team was let go. I am now working at a new semantic web text mining company in Minneapolis and we are looking for venture funding. My older daughter Laura (18) is considering her own adventures at Carleton next year and my other daughter Mary (15) just returned from a trip to Japan. My wife (Ann Kelly) and I are living happily in St. Louis Park. Visitors are always welcome!

Class of 1983

David Wiesler
davewiesler@gmail.com
28 Blue Jay Drive
Newark, DE 19713
(302) 369-3218
In March Julie and I had a baby boy, Nathan, and I’m now seriously ensconced in domesticity, as the father of two little guys. I get out once or twice a month to go off and play some music, but mostly I’m a stay-home dad. So far no mini-van, but the writing’s on the wall!

Class of 1985

Tom Albrecht
ctalbrecht@yahoo.com
6469 Oberlin Way
San Jose, CA 95123
I’m still leading Hitachi’s efforts in patterned media, which is moving closer to being ready for products. This year we (some of the members of our patterned media team, in collaboration with colleagues at Univ. Wisconsin) had some very nice results in using self-assembly to create patterns with smaller features and better quality than we can make by e-beam lithography. This was published in the August 15 edition of Science.

Some more good news is that our company (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, 3rd largest maker of hard disk drives) is back to profitability. Last year I honestly wasn’t sure the company would survive. Now let’s see what the future brings, given the current economic turmoil.

My wife Catherine and our girls (ages 6, 7, and 8) are all doing very well. On vacation last year in Minnesota we stopped by the Carleton campus briefly. Nice to see things again, and to sneak in a little time on the pipe organ in the M&D center (I was happy to note that doors to things like this are still open these days).

Merry Christmas to you and all the best in 2009!

Jamie White
whitej@juniata.edu
9892 Old Hawn Road
Huntingdon, PA 16652
(814) 667-3736
Wishing all of you a great New Year. Laura, Sara (12), Joanna (10) and I continue to be happily settled in Huntingdon, PA. Having been here for over ten year is certainly making it feel like this is our final destination. My students and I at Juniata College are having fun working with diode lasers and Rb and Cs spectroscopy. (Bruce Thomas sent me some extra vapor tubes. Thank you.)

Class of 1986

Brian Potter
bpotter@fs.fed.us
I got my alumni newsletter request, and as I sit down to prepare my submission, I keep thinking about the Kolenkow/Reitz fund mentioned in the newsletter. My research team is always looking for sharp students to work with us on fire weather and air quality problems, usually heavy on computer skills. The physics aspects are easily picked up by a student who’s had basic thermodynamics and classical mechanics. Some of the problems we’ve had students work with in the past include:
* testing or writing simple computer models of airflow in or around fires
* analyzing observed lightning strike data and relating it to fire occurrence
* heat transport in tree stems
Possible projects right now include
* using basic energy arguments to bound fire behavior models
* comparing modeled to observed fire growth for cost/acre saved estimates
* wind modeling for fire growth predictions

I’d be interested in talking more about what might be do-able through the fund & Carleton students. Normally if I want to hire an intern, because we’re a federal agency, we have to be very careful about competition and awards, but I believe much of that would be moot if the position were funded by an endowment like this.

John Robinson
jorobinso@gmail.com
The semiconductor industry continues its breakneck pace of progress, but the economy and technological hurdles are taking a big toll, not to mention that most of the action is in the Pacific rim or at least not in Texas. For the first time I’m seriously considering (gasp) something else: energy, startups, academia, etc. Meanwhile Andrea (‘86) is doing well as a freelance writer, daughters Anna (14) and Sydney (12) are keeping me challenged by their homework questions. I’ve recently contacted physics alumni Mike G. and David B. via LinkedIn. It would be great for others to “link in” as well.

Class of 1987

Christopher Carlson
ccarlson@fs.fed.us
13825 Bison Court
Silver Spring, MD 20906
I continue to work on ground water policy and management issues for the US Forest Service in the Washington HQs. In late spring 2007, the Forest Service published its Technical Guide to Managing Ground Water Resources (available at http://www.fs.fed.us/publications/). This document provides the agency’s first ever guidance regarding managing ground water resources on the national forests and grasslands. Thus far, it has been well received both inside and outside the agency. I have been working to get a draft of the agency’s first national ground water management policy published in the Federal Register this year for public comment. When final, this would be the first comprehensive policy for managing ground water on the 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands. With the Transition in administrations underway, that may not be possible until sometime well into the next calendar year.

My wife, Martha Anderson (also physics ‘87), is doing well in her research position with the Agricultural Research Service using remote sensing to estimate evapotraspiration and evaluate drought status on continental scales. We are having a great time trying to see the world through the eyes of our now nearly 3 year-old son, Niklas.

Best wishes to all. If you are going to be in the DC area, look us up.

Randy Ellingson
randy.ellingson@utoledo.edu
Big news all around -- we welcomed a second daughter to our family August 19, 2008: Charlotte Verna Ellingson. Charlotte, and her big sister Anna (turning 3 in January 2009) are both thriving, and Anna has recently started school and is off to a great start. One day before Charlotte was born marked my official first day as an Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Toledo (Ohio). After 14 years in research at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, CO, I decided to transition to academia and to another environment where photovoltaics and other clean-energy research was already a priority. I join another former NREL colleague and friend, Michael Heben, who began the same day as a full professor. UT has a new Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization, and we are shoring up their basic research effort as part of a full value chain. My UT colleagues and I are dedicated to developing an even stronger graduate studies program in PV science and technology, so please send students for a look. My wife Maria continues to work with the Alliance to Save Energy, a DC-based nonprofit focused on energy efficiency and conservation. Any Carleton physics alums in the Toledo area?

Jeremy White
jwhite@codeweavers.com
1868 Pinehurst Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55116
(651) 699-3198
Life here in St. Paul continues well. I remain ensconced in the computer world. The only use I get now of my physics background is shouting “F=ma” as I pass Ben, my 13 year old, on the downhills on our bike rides together. My 10-year-old son David enjoys going around and quoting Ernest Rutherford: “All science is either physics or stamp collecting.” I fear he’ll be beaten bloody by angry chem majors in a dark alley some day.

I recently ran into James Flaten at the U of M science fair, where he proudly explained why *his* hover car was so much better than the one used by the Physics Force team (which, by the way, is wicked cool; if you have kids in the Minneapolis area, the Physics Force is not to be missed).

Class of 1989

Eve Fillenbaum
fillenbaum@earthlink.net
Alas, I am still working for Oracle (mostly doing applications DBA stuff), after several unsuccessful attempts to change jobs (the last of which ended with a letter thanking me for interviewing with the team “in Juno Beach” (FL) when the interview had actually been in St. Paul!)

Amethyst is now in kindergarten and is very proud of that. Eleanor (almost 2 1/2) is running around and talking lots. They get along pretty well whenever they are not fighting over the prized toy of the moment. We visited some relatives in Idaho at the end of summer and squeezed in a day at Yellowstone--so I got to see geysers at long last. They are amazing.

I’m still playing flute and dancing (not nearly enough of the latter, but hoping to get to this weekend’s contra

dance, which will be called by Carol Ormand ‘89, who was my freshman year roommate)

Paul Grossi
pgrossi@aol.com
5002 Calle De Escuela
Santa Clara, CA 95054-1431
(408) 727-4227
It has been an interesting year of both challenge and change. Shortly after I submitted my newsletter entry last year, doctors discovered a small, walnut-sized mass in my right parietal lobe when trying to diagnose some minor neurological symptoms I had been exhibiting. I had an awake craniotomy (an interesting story for another time) on Dec 11th to have the mass removed, and was very lucky to learn that it was not a tumor, but a developmental abnormality called a cortical dysplasia. Evidently, these things develop in utero and can lie latent for your whole life, or start causing symptoms at any point. No further treatment was necessary, although the recovery from surgery took some time. Never one to do things in small measure, I decided that it was a good time to change jobs right about then, and so accepted a position at Stanford University as the Associate Director of the Office of Science Outreach, leaving the education non-profit where I had worked for the last 7 years. It was a difficult decision to leave an organization and group of people I loved, but the opportunity to work at a place like Stanford and to be exposed to the fulgent intellectual climate there was too much to pass up. I run a research internship program for minority high school students as well as a research fellowship program for science teachers as a piece of helping the faculty there meet their “Broader Impacts” requirement of National Science Foundation funding. My daughter just turned 10, and not a day goes by that I don’t have a new appreciation for the opportunity to be part of her life. As a friend once said to me, celebrate the present, because that is exactly what it is...a gift.

Bryan Miller

bmiller@gemini.edu

It's a bit hard to believe that I've now been in Chile and working for Gemini Observatory for over eight years. The time has flown. I obtained tenure last year and I still enjoy it so we may be here for a while. My main responsibility now is coordinating science operations development, especially our tools for proposal preparation and observation planning and execution. Also, I'm continuing some projects on dwarf galaxies and star clusters.

I've been married for four years now. We enjoy traveling, playing poker with friends, and while we don't have kids, yet, we enjoy caring for dogs. My wife is the president of the local equivalent of the SPCA and so our house sometimes contains up to twelve dogs (in addition to our two) who are being prepared for adoption. It's always fun and a good cause. I still like to play Ultimate or frisbee golf when we can get a game together. It's always great to see Carls at various astronomy meetings.