Class of 1990

David Allaway

Hello! I am happily employed as a policy analyst at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. One of my projects is an evaluation of the energy requirements and pollutant emissions over the entire life cycle of a variety of packaging materials. (When evaluating a plastic resin, for example, we include the petroleum and natural gas used as monomer feedstocks, energy for fuel extraction, transportation, refining, resin production, etc. plus the various pollutants produced in each process step.) A consultant is doing much of the work but I’m managing the project, contributing modules and verifying as much as I have time for. Transparency and replicability are very important, so it is reminiscent of a very big problem set! The project is already yielding some surprising results that run contrary to some popular perceptions of the relative environmental burdens of different materials. A nice honor this fall was receiving an award for “most practical presentation” at a conference on life cycle analysis co-sponsored by the U.N. Environmental Programme. My other work involves hazardous waste plans, program evaluation, and some interesting business outreach projects. Outside of work, I finally bought a piano and am enjoying playing on a somewhat regular basis again.

Mary Anne McLeod

Email: mamcleod@mindspring.com

Address: 215 N. Comanche St., Flagstaff, AZ 86001

I'm still in sunny Flagstaff, and I am still doing biology. For the past year I've been studying willow flycatchers along the lower Colorado River and tributaries. This involves spending May—August in places where temps regularly push or exceed 120F and the tangled vegetation requires belly-crawling on "trails" made by feral pigs. You can imagine what else is on the trail besides piggy footprints. But, doing research beats the heck out of sitting behind the computer writing NEPA documents!

Brian Risch

Email: brian.g.risch@hp.com

Address: 5638 NW Fair Oaks Dr., Corvallis, OR 97330

2003 has been a big year for my family and me. Holly and I had such a good time on our trip to the Northwest in April 2002 that we decided to look for jobs out there. We decided if we found the right kind of job in the right town, we would consider a move, especially with the uncertain future of the Telecom industry. In November 2002 Holly found an R&D opening with HP. I applied and was given an offer for a plant trip and interview. I figured...a free trip to Oregon?...cool. We came to Corvallis (a college town of about 50 000 and home of the OSU Beavers) on homecoming weekend. We had a great time and even drove down to the Pacific Ocean on the interview weekend. The interview with HP was the toughest I have ever had, but I got an offer right away. My wife went with me on the interview and found two nursing openings for herself in Corvallis, as well. We were faced with a big decision: stay in Hickory, a place where we had been happy for seven years or uproot to a new and exciting place.

Moving to Corvallis was too good to pass up. I love college towns and Corvallis is the perfect size. We all love it out here. The kids had reservations at first, but they have made new friends and love it in Oregon. The work at HP is exciting; I had to learn a new industry (inkjet printing) and a new corporate culture. I feel I am fully integrated at this point. HP has great analytical labs with about any tool you can imagine. I have moved away from doing the more academic research for the time being, but I am hoping to re-establish some connections to continue in this area. My family made several little adventures around Oregon. I have gone skiing a few times in the Cascades with Nathan, we took a family vacation to a ranch and rode horses (this year we didn't get rained on), and we went camping in central Oregon during the big forest fires this summer. Oregon is such a beautiful place and there is so much to see, I am glad that we are here. We have even managed to go see a Beaver's football game. They wouldn't let me play however (even though I have stayed in shape) apparently my eligibility has expired years ago. I don't feel that old.

Class 1991

Neeraj Chepuri

Email: nchepuri@yahoo.com

Phone: (612) 920-0186

Address: 2833 Sunset Boulevard, Minneapolis, MN 55416

Hi all! The past year has brought another addition to our growing flock. Carolyn and I happily welcomed Sujit Chepuri into the world on March 30, 2003. He's kept us busy, but he's a great kid. His big brother Ravi Chepuri is very proud and is almost 4 years old!

We live in Minneapolis and I am working as a Neuroradiologist at Abbott-Northwestern Hospital. It's very interesting work. We are currently tweaking up our latest diagnostic tool—a 3 tesla magnet with functional MR, spectroscopy and brain perfusion capabilities. I actually am using my physics background! I hope you all have happy holidays and best wishes for 2004.

John Evans

Email: jevans@siwaterworks.com

URL: http://www.siwaterworks.com

Phone: (571) 218-4524

Greetings all. This year finds Elizabeth and I in DC with our 2-year-old daughter Olivia, and our 3-month-old son Jack. Of course one shouldn't forget our furry canine family members, Mimi and Bear. We moved from LA to DC last November so I could take a position as a Program Manager with the Defense Advanced Projects Management Agency (DARPA). I work with the Microsystem Technology Office (MTO), and the Virtual Space Office (VSO) on projects related to Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS). I also finally finished my MBA last March at Duke—thank you to the Lofgren Fellowship for footing most of the bill. In addition to near-full-time child-raising, Elizabeth is cranking on her dissertation through USC in City and Regional Planning. Too much going on. We are enjoying Arlington immensely, both for the child-friendly environment and all the local hiking opportunities. We are looking forward to the opportunity to stay put for at least 3 more years. A bit snowed now with the new baby, but looking forward to connecting with all the DC-area Carls in the years to come.

David Feldman

Email: dave@hornacek.coa.edu

URL: http://hornacek.coa.edu/dave

I'm still living in Bar Harbor, Maine and teaching math and physics at the College of the Atlantic. This year I've also taken on the job of Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Among other things, my new duties include chairing the faculty meeting and college's academic affairs committee. There are some un-fun parts of the job, like proofreading the course catalog and dealing with budgets. But there are also some very satisfying aspects, such as talking with prospective students and their parents and helping faculty find resources for cool classes and research. The biggest downside of my administrative work is that I have somewhat less time for teaching and research. All in all, things are good. My wife, Doreen Stabinsky, and I continue to enjoy living in Maine in our chilly old farmhouse with our two cats.

Andrea N. Lommen

Email: andrea.lommen@fandm.edu

Steve and I continue to enjoy our lives in Lancaster, PA. Steve is teaching 7th and 8th grade at a Montessori school and I'm at Franklin and Marshall College in the Physics and Astronomy Department. We just started taking a pottery class at a community studio. Its so challenging!! And the strengths of the Lommen/Carlson family fall pretty much as you'd expect them to: I make the cylindrically symmetrical pots and Steve makes the funky off-axis things that don't follow any rules.

John McCormack

Dear fellow alums, faculty, and students, I'm still at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, studying the photochemical and dynamical processes that govern the distribution of stratospheric ozone. I have been looking in particular at the effects of both long-term and short-term variability in solar UV on the stratosphere. The highlight of my year was spending 2 weeks last January at the Arena Arctica in Kiruna, Sweden supporting the NASA SOLVE II mission. This was a field campaign to study ozone depletion in the Arctic using a variety of instruments on board a DC-8 aircraft. My group provided stratospheric "weather" forecast support for flight planning. For more information, see uap-www.nrl.navy.mil/dynamics/html/dynamics.html.

Jennifer McWilliams

Email: jen_mcwilliams@sbcglobal.net

The new news for me this year is that we had another baby: Julien, born on August 24th. He is doing well, adjusting to his new environment. Helena is also doing well in adjusting to her new baby brother. She has stopped hitting him, although just the other day I caught her putting her finger in his mouth. I am still working at Lawrence Berkeley Lab doing research on energy loss from buildings, although I'm on maternity leave for a few months. I'll go back part time in January. We moved to Albany (CA) a year ago, and we are really enjoying the neighborhood. There are more trees and more children here than in our old neighborhood in San Francisco. Best wishes to everyone for the New Year!

Shannon (Mullens) Wallis

Email: shannon.m.wallis@valley.net

Phone: (802) 649-1242

Address: 3399 Beaver Meadow Road, Sharon, VT 05065

I am currently home with my two kids, Avery 4 1/2 and Amelia 1 1/2, and am a Creative Memories Consultant. That means I own my own business, teach people how to safely preserve their photos and memories, and have scrapbooks and stickers to sell. I just love both of my jobs! It's so much fun to see the kids grow up and interact. While I don't relish it every single moment, I appreciate the fact that I am able to stay home with them. My Creative Memories job is going to be the job I "go back to" once my kids are grown. I currently have six people on my team and have made some amazing friendships. Through Creative Memories, I have also had the chance to travel. In May, I went on an all-expenses paid trip to Florida, talk about a vacation! My husband, Jeremy, came with me and it was almost like a honeymoon, only better, because we knew what a luxury to is to be without the kids. In November, I traveled to Atlanta for a conference. I'm hoping to get back to Minnesota in August for Creative Memories' national convention. I still keep in touch with a bunch of physics folks from the class of '91 (ones who are actually using their physics degrees) and will most likely get together with them in April. Cheers!

Scott Nagle

Email: snagle@stanford.edu

URL: http://www.naglenowlan.net/

It has been an eventful year with us this year. I finished my general internship at MacNeal Hospital, a community hospital just outside of Chicago, moved to California to start a residency in radiology at Stanford, and became a father! Kenton Merrill Nagle was born on October 11, which makes him exactly one month old as I write this. It has, needless to say, been a busy and tiring month, but he is adorable and has begun to sleep 4 hours at a stretch at night, for which Jean and I are immensely grateful.

Radiology residency is draining, but exciting. I'm not having the time I had hoped for relighting some research projects, but there are still 3+ years before residency is finished. Actually, I'm still exploring whether my path will lead to private practice or academic radiology. Anyone know of any good radiology practices in the Minneapolis area? (Neeraj?) ;-)

Chris Skluzacek

Email: csklu@yahoo.com

After six years I'm still enjoying living in The Hague, Holland. For better or worse I have yet to meet anyone from Carleton here. I started my own small software company a few years ago developing (visual) simulation software for ESA, Dutch Space, and the Dutch Aerospace Labs among others. Business is starting to pick up and I am looking for some good software engineers to help out, anyone interested? Cheers,

Stuart Wagenius

Email: swagenius@chicagobotanic.org

I work at the Chicago Botanic Garden. I do research on the conservation of native prairie plants (focusing on Echinacea angustifolia, purple coneflower). Most of my field research takes place in Minnesota. Peace!

Kris Wedding

Email: kwedding@carleton.edu

It's been a busy year. Jeff and I bought a small house on the east bay last December. I had been teaching at Cal State Hayward, but my adjunct position was eliminated in June. Conveniently, Carleton was looking for someone to fill in just as I was looking for my next teaching gig. Jeff continues to love his position at Sandia National Lab, and we both still teach Impact classes (full-force self defense) when we can. While in Minnesota, I've been living with my Dad, Stepmom and 17-year-old brother, and it's been really great spending time with them. I've also enjoyed seeing many physics alums, in California, Minnesota and also at the AAPT meeting in Madison this summer. Cheers, all!

Greg Fichter

I took a break from industry last year, and I'm now a second year grad student at U. of Michigan, researching the optical properties of lithium niobate. It is hard to get excited about doing computer simulations in November in Michigan.

Larry Margulies

Email: margulie@esrf.fr

Figure it's about time I updated my fellow alums (and Jane you can stop complaining about the fact you're the only 92'er who contributes). I've been living in Grenoble France for the past 4+ years. I've a permanent scientist position at the National Lab of Denmark (Risoe), although I've never lived in Denmark. I'm stationed at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. Check out this site: http://www.esrf.fr/UsersAndScience/Experiments/MaterialsScience/ID11/. We have a pretty extraordinary source of x-rays, and each week a new group arrives to perform experiments as diverse as examining the paint on Egyptian artifacts to recreating the effect of supernovas on cosmic dust to measuring phase transformations in steel. It keeps things interesting. Grenoble's a great place to live, just at the foot of the Alps, great hiking and skiing and wine. I haven't decided whether I'll be a permanent ex-pat yet, but "old Europe" suits me just fine so far. Feel free to contact me if anyone is ever in the area. I'll take you out for a meal that will leave you dizzy with pleasure.

Jane Olson

Email: wholesome_olson@yahoo.com

I’m still teaching middle school in Boulder, CO. This summer I bought a sunny 1 Bedroom condo right next to the mountains and I love it!

Dan Revelle

Email: jello@revelle.net

I'm still in Colorado and still writing software at the same small engineering company in Boulder although now my commute is a little longer because Laura and I live in Denver. Some things have changed though, as we just had a little girl (Ella Leigh Curtis-Revelle) in October. More diaper changing and less frisbee for us.

Robbie C. Dohm-Palmer

Email: rdpalmer@comcast.net

I'm in my first year of voluntary unemployment. That's not to say I no longer work. With my son (Ethan, 6) and daughter (Celeste, 1), and a house, I am plenty busy. My family has been living in Eagan for just over a year now. We are VERY glad to be back in Minnesota. Although, I must say it was a little weird coming back to the political climate that Minnesota has developed. This is not the state I remembered, and it both saddens and disturbs me. The people seem the same though, so I can only hope the electorate comes to its senses next cycle. My wife is very busy in her OB/GYN career; lots of people still having babies. Well, that's all my daughter will tolerate. I wish everyone well.

Marcia Franklin

Email: mrfranklin@etmeli.us

Address: 1037 Arundel Street St., Paul, MN 55117

This year has been fairly innocuous. Steve and I are still in the Cities, and I am still Librarian at Academy College in Bloomington. We haven't finalized anything yet, but we may be heading back to Tasmania for a fourth time next June/July. If anyone is interested in joining us for a wine and natural history tour there for a couple weeks, let us know—our rates are reasonable! :)

Harold Parks

Email: shparks@wanadoo.fr

Address: 67 Cunningham Road, Cornwall Bridge, CT 06754-1708

I'll be finishing up my second postdoc in December. This one measuring G at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures in Sevres, France. I'll miss living in Paris, but now I have to go back and figure out what I want to do when I grow up. I'll be back at JILA in Boulder for six months while I think about it. My wife Sarah (Swarthmore '93) and my son Noah, now three, are both having a great time here and will miss it as well. We just adopted a daughter, Anna Juilette born in June. My love to everyone at Carleton.

Scott Thacher

Email: thatcher@truman.edu

Phone: (660) 665-2883

Address: 2602 Beverly Lane, Kirksville, MO 63501

Dear physics faculty and alums, the biggest news in my life this year is that I got married over the summer, surviving a stranded best man, forgotten tuxes, and a honeymoon that ended at the Carleton Reunion. It's been a busy semester this fall. I didn't quite understand why, until one of my married colleagues asked, "you don't want to work every evening any more, do you?" And I realized it was true. It's been nice to come home every night and cook dinner with vegetables. And today I put up shelves. Best wishes to all of you!

Rik Gran

Email: gran@phys.washington.edu

URL: www.phys.washington.edu/~gran

Well, our son Alex is three months old as I write this and sleeping just right now. Interested persons should find their way to my website to catch a multitude of photos. All else are minor details compared to that. We spent 3.5 months in Japan where I was working at KEK and SuperK on neutrino interactions and oscillations. Otherwise we still live in Seattle. You might be interested in my new line of science oriented diaper covers. Models include Lil' Thunder, P-waves, and Supernova!

Martine Kalke

Email: Martine.Kalke@alumni.carleton.edu

Phone: (781) 899-6071

Address: 91 Robbins St., Waltham, MA 02453

I have been working for MIT Lincoln Laboratory for a year and a half now, and I am enjoying it more than ever. I’ve been learning a lot, working on some interesting projects, and just gave a talk to approximately 200 people (my largest audience to date). If anyone wants to know more, please contact me (I love talking about why Lincoln is an amazing place to work). My husband, Mike, is at Boston College where he is a professor in the Teacher Education department. He is having a blast with all the research projects he is doing including a number with the Boston Public School System. Our house is in a lot better shape than last year (we spent many summer weekends working on it), and we still love living in Waltham (a suburb of Boston). We even have two fully functional guest bedrooms so family and friends have been able to visit with ease.

Becky Lien (Roy)

Email: beckylien@msn.com

Phone: (651)-487-2261

Address: 1159 Hoyt Avenue West, St. Paul MN 55108

Hello! I'm closing in on two years at The Center for Victims of Torture in Minneapolis. I continue to work with the Research and Technology departments supporting data and application needs. I have also started to work with other torture treatment centers in the U.S. and abroad, as many are understaffed in these areas. My newest role is on a project at CVT that compiles human rights tactics from all over the world and then disseminates the information to human rights activists. The tactics are communicated in institutes, workbooks, and on our web site. This project, specifically, has proven to be very exciting and ambitious.

Mike Fleming ('94) and I spent a weekend at Carleton in August with other '94 alums in preparation for planning the 10-year gift. I'm looking forward to seeing each and every physics alum from '94 at the 10-year reunion this summer. Maybe we can commandeer Goodsell for an hour one evening

Tom Pearl

Phone: (919) 469-4918

Address: 102 E. Carnaby Court, Cary, NC 27513

My family and I recently moved to the Raleigh, North Carolina area where I am now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at North Carolina State University. My wife, Cori ('94), our daughter Eliada (4 yrs), and our son Nathaniel (9 months) are feeling like we have found a place to sink our roots after moving from Chicago, IL and State College, PA. I am very excited about my new position and I look forward to returning to Carleton next summer for our 10th yr. reunion!

Class of 1995

Doug Caldwell

I have been a software engineer in the Twin Cities for almost 4 years now. Also after grad school, I resumed playing my French horn and now enjoy being in orchestra again. As for my news of the year, my partner and I bought a house in June—a first, and definitely a character building experience.

Susan (Thysell) Rodgers

Email: susanerodgers@yahoo.com

Phone: (847) 352-4654

Address: 2405 Kenmore Court, Schaumburg, IL 60193

Hello everyone! I hope this newsletter finds you all happy and healthy. Scott and I are still enjoying life back in the Midwest, being closer to family and seeing all four seasons. I am taking a break from civil engineering and am working part-time at the Lands’ End outlet store—it’s really fun! We recently visited Doug Caldwell ’95 and saw his beautiful new house in Eagan, MN.

Best wishes to all in the New Year!

Class of 1996

Chris Cooper

Email: cooper13@comcast.net

Hello all! I have lots of very good news to share this year—I've been remiss not writing in the past couple. I (finally) defended my Ph.D. in planetary geology in September. What a relief! I have really enjoyed Brown and highly recommend it for graduate school to current students. I believe we just got two new geology students this fall from Carleton too.

Following the defense, I started a job in the Boston area, passing up the post-doc that I had arranged at Arizona State. Mary and I like New England a lot and were loathe to leave it. Also, I wanted out of the academic post-doc, tenure-chasing, nomadic track and instead find a position that I could settle into. So I am now doing a lot of physics working with infrared sensors for satellites. I am using a lot of my remote sensing background from graduate school and more general physics and astronomy from Carleton. In fact, I worked with a number of infrared star catalogs as my first project. In general we do calibration and analysis of sensors for a variety of projects.

Even bigger news though is that Mary and I are now proud parents of Charlotte Jordan Cooper. She was born on Oct. 2, 2003. What a bundle of joy! We are extremely happy and loving our expanded family. We will be quite excited to show her off at our next reunions('06 for me, '07 for Mary). We will be moving from the RI/Mass area to north of Boston at the end of the year. Hopefully I'll keep this Email address as we'll have the same cable company. If anyone wants to see pictures, Email me and I'll send you a URL. I hope everyone is having lots of luck in all of their endeavors.

Kisha Delain

Email: kdelain@astro.umn.edu

Hi all, I'm still here at the U of Minnesota in the astro department doing my Ph.D. work with Larry Rudnick. We've got several projects going at once—as seems usual for research—all on extragalactic clusters and galaxies. Our general goal is to figure out what the cycle is between AGN and cluster "cooling flows" (they are visible in X-ray, so not too cool!). Working with radio data is more or less new to me (what I learned with Cindy way back has long been forgotten).

Of course there is other exciting news besides school and work—last February Charles Schmidt '97 and I got engaged. Our wedding will be next June, at Carleton and we are working slowly toward figuring out all the details that go into the event. In addition, we have just bought a house in Fridley. We're very excited to move out of our too-small apartment and into enough space for all our stuff and projects. Look for the updated address in the alumni directory at the beginning of December.

John Everett

Email: everett@cita.utoronto.ca

URL: http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~everett/

Phone: (416) 769-4734

Home Address: 66 Pacific Avenue, Apt #615, Toronto, ON M6P 2P4, Canada

This past summer, I got my Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and moved to Toronto, Ontario to work at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Toronto. I've only been in Toronto for a couple of months, but I'm really enjoying it so far: the city is really diverse and lively, people here are incredibly friendly and polite, and there's a lot of very interesting people to talk with here at the University. Of course, I'm wondering what winters are like, but it can't be that much colder than Northfield, right? :) Hope you all are doing well!

Nate Hultman

Email neh3@georgetown.edu

URL: www.georgetown.edu/faculty/neh3

Address: 2356 40th St. NW, Apt 208, Washington DC 20007

Last year in this forum I promised that I would soon have something more substantial to report. Well, my friends, I am excited to report the birth of our daughter, Linnea Catherine Hultman, on April 10. Ellen had a smooth labor and Linnea has throughout been robust and happy. She has a big smile and very large cheeks among other endearing traits that I refrain from listing here. Also, I turned in my dissertation in May and in July we moved from Berkeley to Washington, DC. I have started a job at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, where I am teaching in the department of Science, Technology, and International Affairs. My teaching is fairly broad but includes energy science and policy and climate change. For my research I will keep working on international climate change policy and the carbon market. Ellen has most of her dissertation done now and will be graduating this year. She is on the job market as well (in History) so we may have another move in store in the near future. Until then, though, please let us know if you think you will be in town, as we would love to get together!

Kristin Poduska

Email: kris@physics.mun.ca

URL: http://www.physics.mun.ca/~kris

Phone: (709) 737-8890

Hi all, I feel very fortunate to have found an exact solution to the two-body problem: Erika and I have each started tenure-track positions at Memorial University of Newfoundland, the largest university in Atlantic Canada. We couldn't be happier (or much busier)! My research program focused on substrate-supported magnetic materials (prepared electrochemically) is getting off the ground, and I'm also teaching solid-state physics this term. It's a change to be spending so much more time in an office than in a lab, but it helps that I have great crew of students working with me.

Newfoundland is a strikingly beautiful place, and we've only just begun to explore the hundreds of kilometers of hiking trails along the coasts of the island. To get a sense for what life is like here, you really have to come see it for yourself...but if that's not possible, a reasonable substitute is to surf over to photos we've put on the web http://www.chem.mun.ca/~erika/photos.html, also butterpot.html and view them while downing a big glass of rum, listening to Great Big Sea, and sitting next to a powerful fan. (They don't issue wind warnings here unless it exceeds 100 km/h—biking to work is brutal some days!)

Karl Vollmers

Email: karl.vollmers@iris.mavt.ethz.ch

Hello Carleton Physics folks! I don't remember what I wrote last year but right now I find myself sitting in my office at ETH Zürich, Switzerland with a beautiful view out over the city. I'm a research staff member of the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (www.iris.mavt.ethz.ch) where I'm pursuing my interest in Magnetic MEMS and methods of producing magnets for micro magnetic actuation. I've been here since January and plan to be here for another year and a half. When I'm not working I can usually be found playing out side with my wife (we were married last summer in Minneapolis). We had a wonderful sunny summer (i.e. dry, much to the consternation of local farmers and fire fighters) that made for fabulous hiking in the mountains. But, like all things, seasons change and we am now looking forward to a wonderful winter of skiing, skating and other winter activities. If any of you find yourself in the area feel to stop by we enjoy having company and are full of recommendations for fun things to do in the area.

Neal Weiner

So we get older, we grow up. After wrestling with the idea of living in the Big City I accepted an assistant professor position at NYU beginning fall, 2004 in the center for cosmology and particle physics. Technically the offer was for fall 2003, but I deferred a year to stay in Seattle and extend my postdoc one more year (lots of reasons, some personal, some professional, but who really wants to start on committee work so quickly?) Weird to be all grown up and start having my own graduate students and postdocs. I've stayed looking at the interface of particle physics and cosmology. Recently, I've been spending my time trying to find ways that neutrinos can tell us about the physics of the mysterious dark energy which has caused the universe to begin accelerating. It's a really wide-open field and lots to think about! Don't know how I'm going to find New York, but I figure if I'm going to live there ever, it should be when I can still stay up late!

Peter Czoschke

Email: czoschke@mrl.uiuc.edu

I'm still living in Champaign, IL where I'm working on my PhD. My research in surface x-ray diffraction studies of quantum well systems is moving along well. I passed my preliminary exam last year so "all" I have left to do is my thesis and final exam. I expect to graduate in the next year or two (or so...). My wife, Becky, and I are enjoying our little house here in rural Illinois and are expecting to add another family member to it soon—our first baby is due the end of January! We decided to surprise ourselves with the gender, so you'll have to wait until the next newsletter to find out what it is. We're very excited, of course, as are the grandparents. That, along with my sister getting married next year will make for an exciting time for the family. I hope everyone else is doing well.

Karen Griffith Dieterich

Email: kmgd@cox.net

Shortly before receiving last year's newsletter, Mark and I found out I was pregnant. After a healthy pregnancy, at 2:43 a.m. on Sunday, August 10, Nathan James Griffith Dieterich was born. (Yes, it's a long name, but better than the proposed Dedrick Griffin Griffith Dieterich.) He was 6 lbs 5.6 oz. and 18 3/4 inches long at birth, and he grew fast, gaining 3 lbs and growing almost 3 inches in his first month! We did a quick estimate of how big he would be at our age if he continued that growth rate. It was rather amusing! Now, I am enjoying a 6-month leave-of-absence from my job at BBN Technologies. It's fascinating to watch the changes in Nathan and see him learning new things. Nathan has found his hands and is exploring the world of computers. He sent his first email message at the tender age of 1 month (with his foot). We're proud to say that his physics education appears to be progressing as well. He has been experimenting with fluid dynamics, and we're confident that he will be testing gravity and projectile motion soon.

Erika Hansen

Email: Erika_L_Hansen@msn.com

Phone: (530) 753-4299

Address: 1527 E. Eighth St. Apt 7, Davis, CA 95616

I think I wrote in two years ago to say that I was on my way to grad school. Well, I finally made it. I've started my M.S. in Civil Engineering at UC Davis, and I am absolutely loving it. (Who would have thought designing concrete beams could be so much fun?) I'll probably be here for two years, and after that, who knows...? I'm sharing an apartment with my sister, who is a third-year grad student here; after three months, we're still getting along, so that's good. I'm spending my non-school time playing volleyball (I have a pretty good shot at the IM championship t-shirt that eluded me at Carleton), throwing pots in the ceramics lab (I feel like I'm 8 years old again when I have clay under my fingernails—it's wonderful!), and studying Italian in preparation for my trip in December. On the whole, I'd have to say things are going swimmingly.

Craig Heinke

Email: cheinke@cfa.harvard.edu

Phone: (617) 495-2536

Address: 31 Varnum St., #2, Arlington, MA 02474

Hello all, I'm in my fourth year of my astronomy Ph.D. program, and plan to finish up next summer. So in addition to trying to finish several projects of various sizes, I'm also applying for postdoctoral positions, which is keeping me busy. I hope the department is holding up well.

Zoe Malka Leinhardt

Email: zoe@astro.umd.edu

Office Phone: (301) 405-0226

I am a year away from finishing my thesis on terrestrial planet formation in the Astronomy Department at the University of Maryland. I got married to Andrew James Young (a Welsh X-ray astronomer) on Oct 11th. Unfortunately his new postdoc is at MIT so we have been doing a bit of commuting. If anyone is ever in the Washington DC or Boston area drop me a line.

James McCullagh

Email: jjmccullagh@chartermi.net.

Hello, I’m presently working in Rochester Minnesota. Rochester is only about a 45-minute drive from Carleton, so I feel right at home in southern MN. I was easily able to go to reunion this year. I was disappointed to only see three other physics majors from my class there. I hope to see more five years from now!

I’ve had an eventful career working as an electrical engineer for three different companies here in Rochester MN. About 2 years ago I graduated with my Masters in Electrical Engineering from Purdue, and I took a job with IBM in Rochester MN. I had a short 7-month career with IBM. With the troubled economy IBM sold the fiber optics unit, in which I was working, to another company called JDS Uniphase. JDS Uniphase is a fiber optics company that hasn’t done well in the past few years. Two years ago they had 29,000 employees and the now have about 5000 employees. About five months ago I became another one of the 24,000 people they laid off. Two weeks after I got laid off, I got an offer with Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, which make Hard Disk Drives. This company was created at the beginning of the year when IBM sold their Hard Disk Drive Business to Hitachi, which merged it with Hitachi’s own Hard Disk Drive Business. Sometimes I really miss school! I do really enjoy my job as an Electrical Engineer. At the three companies, I’ve worked as an Analog Integrated Circuit Designer. It makes good use of both my physics and electrical engineering backgrounds. If I didn’t enjoy what I was doing, I wouldn’t do it. I’m still single, so I can think like this.

When I got out of Purdue, I was really amazed at how much free time I had. In the past couple of years I earned my 2nd degree Black Belt in Taekwondo, taken up golf, and taken vacations to Maine, Hawaii, Boston, and St. Thomas Island in the Caribbean. I have enough time that I can actually get a life. I’ve thought about going back to school, but I probably wouldn’t want to go back full time. I’ve thought about doing a part-time MBA program. We’ll see! If any of my fellow classmates are in town, Email me.

Ryan Retzlaff

Email: rretzlaff@otpco.com

Phone: (218) 739-6239

Address: 1312 Foothill Court, Fergus Falls, MN 56537

Hello Carleton. I haven't been a very active participant in the newsletter over the years, so I wanted to make sure I got a quick update in this time around. I am currently working/living in my hometown of Fergus Falls, MN. I work for Otter Tail Power Company as a Transmission Planning Engineer. I have been at my current position for 4.5 years. This summer I finished up my Master of Science degree in electrical engineering, focusing in power systems. I earned the degree in Fargo, ND at North Dakota State University. Once spring semester rolls around, I am planning to begin an MBA program at NDSU. Best wishes to all.

Jeremy Wahl

Email: jwahl@ece.cornell.edu

I'm still at Cornell, chuggin' away at my Ph.D. in applied physics. Things are coming together and I hope to graduate sometime early next summer. A tentative dissertation title is "Silicon-compatible optoelectronics for biological detection." Yeah, it's that exciting. After I defend, I'm not so sure what's going to happen. The job market is not exactly overflowing so I'll probably stay here and do a post-doc. My only personal news is that I've become addicted to Friendster and I now own all of the high scores in Tetris on our group's Game Boy.

Alisa I. Walz-Flannigan

Email: alisaiw@umich.edu

Phone: (734) 214-0023

Address: 1102 Prospect Ave. #2, Ann Arbor, MI 48104

I forgot to write-in last year. I'm planning to defend by April or May of this next year. Whatever happens I'm going to start writing my thesis in January, I am soooooo ready to be done. Pretty much this goal has been occupying my life and there’s little else to report. It's not so bad though. My project has been interesting and my research group is a lot of fun, and I was able to go to Sweden this summer to present some work; so it's not without its perks. I got to meet some relatives (albeit distant) and traveled some around Sweden and Norway. I've started looking around and applying for post-doc positions. The trick is to find a place where both Chris (I got married in 2002) and I can find work, not so easy. I'm really hoping to diversify my research experience and am trying to find a position in biomedical optics, if anyone knows of anybody looking for a postdoc in this area let me know. It'd be great if we could stay in Ann Arbor, I really like it here. We found a cheap place close to campus, actually we moved in after one of my Carleton roommates moved out. It's funny, I've now lived in Ann Arbor longer than I've lived in any town in my entire life. Hope everyone's well. If anyone's stopping by Ann Arbor, give me a call/email.

Ryan M Hennessy

Email: hennessy@metis.uchicago.edu

URL: http://astro.uchicago.edu/sza/

Phone: (773) 288-8886

Hello everyone, I hope the last year has treated you well. My life as a graduate student continues at the University of Chicago, where I doggedly refine my impersonation of scholarship. I'm part of a group that is building an array of eight 3.5m microwave telescopes designed to observe clusters of galaxies using the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect. It has been great fun to be a part of the actual construction of the telescopes out in the Owens Valley, where they will be set up. Back in my Carleton days, I never would have guessed I would have gotten into hardcore instrumentation, certainly not as one of those weird radio-astronomy types, but here I am. In the past year I have also continued playing rugby with the University of Chicago team, which has been great form of occupational therapy, as well as an opportunity to try my hand at coaching. Please drop me a line on your way through Chicago, and I'd be happy to talk to current students about the joys of grad school. Happy holidays to all.

Tim McMurry

Email: tmcmurry@math.ucsd.edu

Address, 3935 B Miramar Street, La Jolla, CA 92037

I’m just beginning what I hope will be my last year as a math graduate student here at UCSD. California’s O.K., but I’m looking forward to finding somewhere to live where it snows.

John Weiss (The Cheshire Cat)

Email: weissj@colorado.edu

URL: http://origins.colorado.edu/~weissj/

Phone: (303) 492-7902

It's been another fun year for me. I'm (yes, still) in graduate school pursuing a degree in astrophysical and planetary sciences. My research moves forward slowly, but surely. I'm actually to the point where I can project when I'll start writing my thesis, much to my own surprise.

Meanwhile, I am in my second year as my department's Lead Graduate Teacher. It's a fun job to hold and I suspect that I'm learning more than I'm teaching. I also was given a chance to teach my own class this past summer. The schedule is to teach an entire semester's worth of material in four and a half weeks. (I personally think that the person who designed the summer schedule needs to go to the Regents and explain the joke to them.) It was intense, but lots of fun and I was given a lot of room to experiment on my students. While there were some failures, overall I think I did quite well by the students and most of the experiments worked wonderfully.

CU continues to give me a whole host of other interesting opportunities. For example, the Jupiter book is finally in to Cambridge University Press. Hopefully, this means that my data appendix is done. (If Scott Sheppard discovers any more moons or if the IAU names any more, I'm not updating it anymore!) If there's any numbers for the Jovian system that you want, just ask. If I don't have 'em, I can probably find them fairly quickly. And for the third edition for "The Cosmic Perspective" (Bennett, Donahue, Schneider, and Voit) I was asked to find scales for every planetary image in the textbook as well as locations for all Venus and Mars images. Thankfully, NASA has put an enormous fraction of their images online. The downside to this is that the databases are, well, enormous. And not easily searchable, I might add.

Unrelated to the above, I'm now sharing my apartment with a small herd of guinea pigs. Originally, I'd planned on just having two sows, but the pet store, in their infinite wisdom, put the second one in with some boars for several days. The result of this move is predictable and suffice it to say that I have three four-legged friends now.