Magnet Alumni News: Summer 2020

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Appointments, Promotions, Awards, and Degrees:

Jeff Hostetler '93 started a new position at the Migratory Bird Program at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland (@jeffhostecology)
Jacob Lurie '96 joined the faculty at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study.
Cynthia Chang '01 was awarded tenure at the University of Washington, Bothell (@drcynthiacchang)
Hao Ye '02 joined the University of Florida as Reproducibility Librarian (@Hao_and_Y)
Nathan Blustein '06 defended his Ph.D. Dissertation in Music Theory at Indiana University (@rhapsodyinblu)
Purnima Balakrishnan '09 defended her Ph.D. Dissertation in Physics at Stanford; she will be a Post-Doc at NIST in Gaithersburg.
Samantha Xiao Cody '13 won the Master's Review Winter Short Story Award for New Writers for her story, The Driver.
Neil Davey '14 won the Worshipful Company of Marketors’ 2019 Award for Outstanding Performance in Marketing for a case study he co-authored on Azuri Technologies: A Novel Distribution Strategy for Solar Solutions in Emerging Markets.
Across the country, members of the the Class of 2016 were elected to Phi Beta Kappa and recognized at (virtual) commencement: Alexandra Melinchok and Lucy Wen (UMD); Noah Levine and Zachary Williams (U.Chicago); Arnold Mong (Princeton); Ari Goldbloom-Helzner (Brown); Gabriele Pleitez-Gomez (Denison)
Ryan Handel '18 was named Sports Editor for the Brown Daily Herald.

Research Publications:

P. Haidet and Wendy Madigosky '91, Towards an evolution of interprofessional practice: Lessons learned from two jazz piano trios (Patient Education and Counseling)
Amir Caspi '93 et al., A new facility for airborne solar astronomy: NASA's WB-57 at the 2017 total solar eclipse (The Astrophysical Journal)
Joshua Weitz '93 et al., Modeling shield immunity to reduce COVID-19 epidemic spread (Nature Medicine)
Alenda Chang '94, Rambunctious Games: A Manifesto for Environmental Game Design (Art Journal)
M. Lovett-Barron et al., incl. Aaron Andalman '95, Multiple convergent hypothalamus–brainstem circuits drive defensive behavior (Nature Neuroscience)
Jonah Berger '98, How to Persuade People to Change Their Behavior (Harvard Business Review)
C.T. Moody, S. Palvai, and Yevgeny Brudno '00, Click cross-linking improves retention and targeting of refillable alginate depots (Acta Biomaterialia)
Alex Berger '04 et al., Anchor versus Suture for Attachment of Vaginal Mesh in Robotic-Assisted Sacrocolpopexy: A Randomized Clinical Trial (American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology)
Nick Stone '04 et al., Rates of Stellar Tidal Disruption (Space Science Reviews)
R.G. Luthy, Jordyn Wolfand '07, and J.L. Bradshaw, Urban Water Revolution: Sustainable Water Futures for California Cities (Journal of Environmental Engineering)
V. Rai, Dan Quang '08, et al., Single-cell ATAC-Seq in human pancreatic islets and deep learning upscaling of rare cells reveals cell-specific type 2 diabetes regulatory signatures (Molecular Metabolism)
Yifan Li '10, et al., Electrochemically scrambled nanocrystals are catalytically active for CO2-to-multicarbons (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science)
Arec Jamgochian '12 and M.J. Kochenderfer, Stochastic Model Predictive Control for Scheduling Charging of Electric Vehicle Fleets with Market Power (IEEE International Conference on Connected Vehicles and Expo)
Jared Duker Lichtman '14, Almost primes and the Banks–Martin conjecture (Journal of Number Theory)
M. Attia, S. Kripalani, Isha Darbari '15, and R. Sheppard Nickel, Parents of Children with Sickle Cell Disease Are Interested in Preimplantation Genetic Testing (The Journal of Pediatrics)
Daniel Schäffer '19, et al., Functional Innovation in the Evolution of the Calcium-Dependent System of the Eukaryotic Endoplasmic Reticulum (Frontiers in Genetics)

The COVID-19 Pandemic:

Joshua Weitz '93 modeled the use of serological testing to foster "shield immunity" to reduce transmission.
Cory Choy '03 is a producer of the Mobilize podcast, which recently featured episodes discussing the COVID-19 pandemic:

Kristin Mink '03 talked about the the Masks 4 America Initiative.
Stanley Liu '00 was interviewed as one of three medical workers on the frontlines of the pandemic.

Erica Hartmann '05 answered questions in the Chicago Tribune about assessing your COVID-19 risk at restaurants, gyms, the office and more.
Jonathan Gootenberg '09 and his collaborators at MIT developed a CRISPR-based test for COVID-19, as reported in The New York Times.

Black Lives Matter:

Rosamond King '92 wrote Two Poems on Liberation published in Hyperallergic. She also wrote "Words, Race, and the Pandemic," published in The Progressive.
Jason Rubenstein '00 offered advice for non-Black Jews: First – listen. Then – entertain heresy.
Elizabeth Green '02 shared Chalkbeat’s pledge to readers.
Samantha Xiao Cody '13 reflected on her experience in Magnet Programs, Segregation, and the Anti-Blackness of the Asian Model Minority Myth.

Science and Technology:

Lorrie Cranor '89 shared tips for using a password manager in Wired.
David Weinstock '90 was interviewed by Silver Quest about his cancer research.
David Hu '97 was interviewed in Chemistry World: In situ with David Hu
Greg Novick '99 was interviewed by Silver Quest about his work developing the Apple iPhone.
Abigail Fraeman '05 shared an update on the Curiosity rover attempting to climb a slippery slope on Mars.
Anna Barth '17 created a video on Entropy & The Origin of Life.

Politics and Activism:

Aaron Klein '94 wrote in Politico: The Small Business Relief Program Is Still Broken
Gautam Mukunda '97 wrote in The American Prospect: Unsanitized: Republicans, Predators and the Pandemic
Alex Berengaut '99 was among the attorneys representing the University of California at the U.S. Supreme Court in their successful effort to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy (pdf).
Sarah Oh '00 filed comments with the FCC regarding the 5G Fund for Rural America (pdf)
The efforts of Erik Agard '11 to bring diversity to the crossword puzzle community were recognized in The Atlantic: The Hidden Bigotry of Crosswords
Kaden Sukachevin '16 started the Sunrise Movement at Walla Walla University.