Class of 2006: Ten Year Reunion Update

Still in School:

• • Daniel Chamberlain: Doing a MS in Computer Science at MIT working on building machine learning tools to diagnose pulmonary disease. Previously worked at MITRE in the Complex Systems Modeling group.

  • Shwetadwip Chowdhury: Finished undergraduate and graduate (PhD) education at Duke University. Will be moving to start a postdoc at Berkeley University in January.

  • Eric Esch: I went to Duke for undergrad studies in mechanical engineering and economics, then worked for the engineering consulting firm MPR in Alexandria, VA for three years. Then I enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania for graduate studies in Bioengineering. I have completed my coursework, and am taking two gap years before I will return for my dissertation.

  • Dominique Franson: After high school, I studied bioengineering at the University of Maryland, College Park and then worked for a few years at the NIH. I am currently living in Cleveland, OH while working toward a PhD in biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University. I recently married my long-time boyfriend, and we are the happy parents of a very friendly cat.

• Jeremy Goodman: I just moved to LA to start a job as a philosophy professor at USC. I was studying at NYU for three years before that, and at Oxford for three years before that.

  • Greg Howard: I attended UNC-Chapel Hill, worked at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in D.C., and am working on my PhD in economics at MIT.

  • Rachel Kirsch: I am working on a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Nebraska.

  • Ryan Ly: I graduated from Johns Hopkins with degrees in neuroscience and computer science. Now I'm finishing up a PhD in neuroscience at Princeton studying how brain areas communicate during visual attention.

  • Samir Paul: After graduating from Harvard, I joined Teach for America and taught math and computer science in Washington, DC. I then worked as a field organizer for the 2012 Obama Campaign and then went to work at IBM. When Ms. Dvorsky retired in 2014, I took the opportunity to return to the Magnet as a Computer Science teacher. (Read more from Silver Quest 2015)

  • Sarah Peitzmeier: I got my MSPH and am working on my PhD in public health, hoping to graduate summer 2017! My research is around violence against women, HIV, and LGBT health.

  • John Silberholz: Sarah Peitzmeier and I starting dating soon after graduating from Blair, got married in 2012, and have happily lived together in Baltimore and Boston since. I got a BS in math and computer science from the University of Maryland and afterward spent a year co-founding Enertaq, a smart-grid startup, with magnet classmate Max Epstein. I then got a PhD in operations research from MIT and I'm now a lecturer at MIT Sloan. I will be applying for business school assistant professor positions in the coming months.

• Eddie Wang: After Blair, I spent 4 years at Stanford getting a great education. After college, I went straight into grad school at Harvard for a PhD in biology, which I'm planning to finish up within the next year. After grad school I'm planning to stay in science and do a postdoc, probably somewhere on the west coast.

  • Chelsea Zhang: After graduating from Harvard, I lived in Seattle, Chicago, SF and DC while writing software for Amazon, the Obama campaign, and startups in solar and political tech. I got addicted to skiing, running and traveling. Now I'm in the second year of a statistics PhD at Berkeley.

Science & Engineering:

• Alex Alm: After leaving Blair and graduating from Vanderbilt I moved to the Philadelphia area and started working for Lockheed Martin. I graduated from Lockheed's leadership development program in 2013 and finished my Masters at Cornell that same year. I got married in the summer of 2014 to an amazing woman that I met at Vanderbilt and we live in downtown Philadelphia now. My wife is graduating with a PhD in Neuroscience next summer and then we'll be ready for the next chapter in our lives.

  • Pratik Bhandari: After graduating from Blair, I got my M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland. I have been working for the U.S Navy's Air Systems Command for the last three years and just started working for Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in September of this year.

  • Benjamin Green: For the first nine years after high school, I lived in State College, PA, going to Penn State studying meteorology (including a 2-week stint at Wallops Island for a field campaign). In May of 2015, I completed my PhD in meteorology and moved out to Colorado to work as a research scientist for the University of Colorado and NOAA. And in August of 2016, I got engaged!

  • Jordy Goldstein: After Blair, I went to Duke University and graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering. Immediately after graduation, I moved to San Diego and served as an officer in the US Navy for two years. I then worked as a facilities engineer for a natural gas company (Chesapeake Midstream) for 18-months in Ohio before attending Cambridge University on a Gates scholarship. I received a masters in engineering, and for the past 18 months have been working as a test engineer for SpaceX, in Los Angeles.

Software & IT:

• Varun Gulati: After graduating from Columbia University, I applied to Teach for America and taught high school geometry in New Orleans. I then worked for Google before co-founding an education technology company called UClass, which was recently acquired by Renaissance Learning. (Read more)

• Sean O'Brien: After graduating from the University of Maryland with a Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering, I worked as a design engineer for a few years, and then went back to school for a Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering. I married Julia in 2014 and my son Rowan was born in March 2016. I'll be moving to California in December 2016 to work for Google.

  • Anita Quabili: In the 10 years since graduating from Blair Magnet, I have gotten Bachelor's degrees in Electrical Engineering and Economics from the University of Maryland, and have been a DoD technical consultant for several years. I am currently a Project Manager for a federal health IT system.

Doctors:

• Pria Anand: After Blair, I left Maryland for 9 years to finish college, medical school, and intern year. After a stint in California, I'm super excited to be back in the other (Chesapeake) Bay Area, where I'm living in Baltimore and working as a third-year resident in neurology.

  • Kristi Chakrabarti: I went to the University of Pennsylvania and got a BSE in Bioengineering. I then took a year off to do research at UPenn. After that I started in the MD/PhD program at the University of Maryland in the Medical Scientist Training Program. I received my PhD in 2016 doing work in breast cancer research. I am now back in medical school to complete my MD and will graduate in the spring of 2018.

  • Debbie Cheng: I graduated from University of Pennsylvania with an undergraduate degree in bioengineering. I then took a year off and went back to the DC area to complete research at NIH with the National Eye Institute. During this year, I also applied for medical school and ended up attending University of Michigan and deciding to pursue residency in Internal Medicine. For over a year now I have been working as a resident at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center with the plan to apply for fellowship next year!

  • Pearl Horng: Went to medical school at Penn State, wrapping up my residency in emergency medicine at Christiana Hospital this year!

  • Adith Sekaran: I have lived in three different cities (including back in the DC area) trying to complete my medical training. I am currently in Boston in my last year of residency.

  • Margot Zarin-Pass: I just graduated from medical school and got married. Now my wife and I live with our two dogs in Minneapolis. I am a resident in Med-peds at the University of Minnesota.

Lawyers:

• • Rachel Bell: After graduating from the University of Chicago Law School in 2013, I have been working as a patent attorney. Currently, I am a patent litigation associate at Jenner & Block LLP's Chicago office.

  • Kiran Bhat: Went to college, went to law school, got married, worked as a lawyer at a big law firm in DC for two years, moved to Miami (my wife grew up here) and am now working for a judge until 2018.

  • Jeff Cao: After college at Northwestern, I stayed in Chicago while working as an economic consultant at Analysis Group. I finished law school at Harvard earlier this year, and currently serve as a law clerk to a federal judge in Pasadena, CA.

• Rohit Dewan: Over the past ten years I've been studying engineering as an undergraduate major, then law for my graduate studies, I've worked in the government for approximately 3 years at the patent office, and I now serve as a US patents adviser to a law firm in Japan.

Business & Finance:

• • Michael Arbit: After graduating from the Magnet, I earned a Bachelor of Science in Pure Math from the University of Michigan, plus secondary math teaching certification. I was assigned two random roommates my freshman year at U of M, and one of them introduced me to the woman I've now been married to for five years. Perhaps that's why I've grown increasingly fond of probability and statistics over the last several years. It also helped that, as a high school math teacher in Grand Blanc, MI, I got to teach statistics in every one of my nearly six years in the classroom. This past March, I started work as an actuarial analyst at AAA.

  • Kenneth Ettinger: I've been a professional online poker player; a world traveler who lived in Madrid for 2 years; a ski bum; a Brown undergrad and a Stanford MBA; a microfinancier supporting underserved US populations; and recently, I've become a husband. I've loved most every minute of it and have recently settled in San Francisco.

  • Dan Gillen: I graduated from the University of Maryland in 2010 with degrees in accounting and finance. I passed the CPA exam and went to work at Baker Tilly in Tysons where I am now a manager in the corporate tax group. I have continued practicing martial arts and in 2015 received my 4th degree black belt. I live in DC.

  • Alan Langworthy: I have an undergraduate degree in pure math from the university of Maryland, and a Masters degree in applied math from Columbia. I spent 4 years at a tech start up building websites and producing financial reports for small nonprofits while I was in school. I have been at E*Trade for the last 3 years. My title is quantitative risk analyst, which means I am involved in regulatory stress testing to measure exposure to adverse market conditions.

  • Stephanie Paul: After Blair I went to college at Washington University in St. Louis where I got majors in mathematics and business with a focus in organizational behavior & human resources. After college I took a job as a Business Analyst with Capital One in Richmond, Virginia. I've been there for the past six years, moving up to Northern Virginia for three of the years, and now back down to Richmond. I am now a Business Director in our credit card fraud and disputes group. I currently coach a high school varsity tennis team in Richmond, and love volunteering with a local performing arts group for kids.

  • David White: I've been working in quantitative trading, first in San Francisco, then New York, now back in SF. In between I've spent time traveling, reading, and watching a ton of movies.

• Yuning Zhang: After graduating from the University of Michigan, I worked in New York in sales & trading for a short stint before moving to San Francisco. I've been at Facebook since August 2012 and work in media partnerships, helping guide our content acquisition and global video strategy.

Earning a Michelin Star:

• • Alex Brown: After graduating from the University of Maryland, I worked for Chef Eric Ziebold at CityZen Restaurant until it closed in December of 2014. I spent the following year traveling as much as time and budget would allow before being part of the opening team at Kinship and Métier Restaurants in DC this past winter.

Contact Samir Paul (Samir_Paul@mcpsmd.org) if you want more information about the reunion or have an additional update to share.