Magnet Alumni News: Fall 2024

Several alumni won awards and recognition:

• Aaron Klein '94 was named one of Washingtonian's 500 Most Influential People of 2024.

• Chris Williams '01 graduated from NASA astronaut training. (MIT)

• Eric Hysen '07 won WashingtonExec’s 2024 Chief Officer Award for Chief AI Officer in the Government.

• Khushboo Rathore '20 won a Roy W. Howard Fellowship to work as a reporter at Wisconsin Watch.

Biology research:

• T. Hagen, et al., and Samie Jaffrey '89, Engineering acyclovir-induced RNA nanodevices for reversible and tunable control of aptamer function (Cell Chemical Biology)

• L. Carvalho, Dan Bergstralh '93, et al., Non-cadherin based cell adhesion in tissue remodeling (Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology)

• M. Dominguez-Mirazo et al., and Joshua Weitz '93, Accounting for cellular-level variation in lysis: implications for virus–host dynamics (mBio)

• C.Z. Li et al., incl. Jason Ernst '98, Epigenetic predictors of species maximum life span and other life-history traits in mammals (Science Advances)

• K.E. Stanchak et al., and Bingni Wen Brunton '02, Intraspecific Variation in the Placement of Campaniform Sensilla on the Wings of the Hawkmoth Manduca Sexta (Integrative Organismal Biology)

• M. Lotfollahi, Y. Hao, F.J. Theis, and Rahul Satija '02, The future of rapid and automated single-cell data analysis using reference mapping (Cell)

• G. Aihara et al., incl. Rahul Satija '02 and Jean Fan '09, SEraster: a rasterization preprocessing framework for scalable spatial omics data analysis (Bioinformatics)

• O.O. Abudayyeh and Jonathan Gootenberg '09, Programmable biology through artificial intelligence: from nucleic acids to proteins to cells (Nature Methods)

• Lily Durkee '14 et al., Immigration delays but does not prevent adaptation following environmental change: experimental evidence (Evolutionary Biology)

Medical Research:

• S.M. Horwitz et al., incl. David Weinstock '90, Duvelisib plus romidepsin in relapsed/refractory T cell lymphomas: a phase 1b/2a trial (Nature Medicine)

• M.L.F. Ramos et al., and Hormuzd Katki '92, Efficient risk-based collection of biospecimens in cohort studies: Designing a prospective study of diagnostic performance for multicancer detection tests (Am. J. Epidemiology)

• A.H. Ghobashi et al., and Heather O'Hagan '94, Single-Cell Profiling Reveals the Impact of Genetic Alterations on the Differentiation of Inflammation-Induced Murine Colon Tumors (Cancers)

• Atish Choudhury '95 et al., A phase 2 trial of ADT interruption in patients responding exceptionally to AR-pathway inhibitor in metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer (A-DREAM/Alliance A032101) (Clinical Oncology)

• N.A. Murdock et al., incl. Cheriko Boone '96, Long-acting HIV Treatments: Study Design, Logistics, and Access (Open Forum Infectious Diseases)

• S. Selvaraj et al., incl. Ani Manichaikul '99, Cardiovascular Burden of the V142I Transthyretin Variant (Journal of the American Medical Association)

• S. Pandit et al., and Yevgeny Brudno '00,  Implantable CAR T cell factories enhance solid tumor treatment (Biomaterials)

• C. Shiau et al., and William Hwang '02, Spatially resolved analysis of pancreatic cancer identifies therapy-associated remodeling of the tumor microenvironment (Nature Genetics)

• N. Contaxis et al., incl. Hao Ye '02, Building on NIH’s data sharing policy (Science)

• M. Rocafort, David Gootenberg '07, et al., HIV-associated gut microbial alterations are dependent on host and geographic context (Nature Communications)

• A.C.Y. Chen et al., and Debattama Sen '09, The aged tumor microenvironment limits T cell control of cancer (Nature Immunology)

• M.Y. Lu et al., incl. Richard Chen '13, A Multimodal Generative AI Copilot for Human Pathology (Nature)

• K.Z. Sanidad, Stephanie Rager '15, et al., Gut bacteria–derived serotonin promotes immune tolerance in early life (Science Immunology)

• S.S. Soldan et al., incl. Daniel Schäffer ‘19, Multiple sclerosis patient-derived spontaneous B cells have distinct EBV and host gene expression profiles in active disease (Nature Microbiology)

Clinical research:

• Y. Qiao et al., and Stephen Chen '91, Current and future directions in interventional neuro-oncology-are we there yet? (NeuroInterventional Surgery)

• T.P. Joshi and Arash Kimyai-Asadi ‘92, Epidemiology, survival, and risk of subsequent primary malignancies in patients with digital papillary adenocarcinoma: a retrospective study of 213 patients in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program (Clinical and Experimental Dermatology)

• S. Woo et al., incl. Nicole Hindman '93, Utility of ADC Values for Differentiating Uterine Sarcomas From Leiomyomas: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (Am. J. Roentgenology)

• A.A. Dixit, B.T. Bateman, and Eric Sun '96, Preoperative GLP-1 Receptor Agonists and Risk of Postoperative Respiratory Complications-Reply (Journal of the American Medical Association)

• Erin Savner Beck '99 et al., Contribution of new and chronic cortical lesions to disability accrual in multiple sclerosis (Brain Communications)

• Susan Huang '00, Out with Legacy, in New: Achieving Success with New Money Models (NEJM Catalyst)

• R.A. Freeman, Jennifer Caswell '02, et al., Optimal Adjuvant Chemotherapy and Targeted Therapy for Early Breast Cancer—Cyclin-Dependent Kinase 4 and 6 Inhibitors: ASCO Guideline Rapid Recommendation Update (Clinical Oncology)

• Byron Drumheller '02, Which bystander treatment method of foreign body airway obstruction is best? A problem that is stuck on our plate (Resuscitation)

• W.W. Liu et al., and Melodi Javid Whitley '03, Hispanic patients with Merkel cell carcinoma have lower mortality compared to non-Hispanic patients in the National Cancer Database (J. of the Am. Acad. of Dermatology) 

• L.M. Warmke, Sophia Strike '03, et al., Undifferentiated Round Cell Sarcoma With CRTC1::SS18 Fusion: Expanding Clinicopathologic Features of a Rare Translocation Sarcoma With Prominent Desmoplastic Stroma (Modern Pathology)

• M.N. Warden, S.L. Heltshe, Noah Simon '04, et al., Statistical approaches for the integration of external controls in a cystic fibrosis clinical trial: a simulation and an application (Am. J. Epidemiology)

• S.A. Sabe et al., incl. Cynthia Xu '08, Comparative effects of canagliflozin and sitagliptin in chronically ischemic myocardium (Vessel Plus)

• Kristen Rosano '10 et al., Predicting iatrogenic adrenal insufficiency in neonates exposed to prolonged steroid courses: do cortisol levels help? (Perinatology)

Neuroscience and Psychology research:

• M. Alleman, M. Panichello, Timothy Buschman '97, and W. J. Johnston, The neural basis of swap errors in working memory (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science)

• Wilma Bainbridge '05 et al., Drawing as a means to characterize memory and cognition (Memory & Cognition)

• P. Rodriguez-Rodriguez et al., incl. Vicky Yao '07, A cell autonomous regulator of neuronal excitability modulates tau in Alzheimer’s disease vulnerable neurons (Brain)

• E.E. Neurmann, T.M. Bertozii, Elaine Wu '18, et al., Brainwide silencing of prion protein by AAV-mediated delivery of an engineered compact epigenetic editor (Science)

Astronomy and Planetary Science research:

• D.B. Seaton, Amir Caspi '96, et al., Observations of the Polarized Solar Corona During the Annular Eclipse of 14 October 2023 (Solar Physics)

• J. L. Dickson, B. L. Ehlmann, L. Kerber, and Caleb Fassett '98, The Global Context Camera (CTX) Mosaic of Mars: A Product of Information-Preserving Image Data Processing (Earth and Space Science)

• S. Xu et al., incl. Marc Pulupa '99, Closed magnetic topology in the Venusian magnetotail and ion escape at Venus (Nature Communications)

• T. Donlon, H.J. Newberg, Robyn Sanderson '99, et al., The debris of the ‘last major merger’ is dynamically young (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society)

• L. Broggi, Nick Stone '04, et al., Repeating partial disruptions and two-body relaxation (Open Journal of Astrophysics)

• V. Payre, A. Udry, and Abigail Fraeman '05, Igneous Diversity of the Early Martian Crust (Minerals)

Earth Science and Environmental research:

• L. Fernando Chavez et al., and Luke Bergmann '98, Community-serving research addressing climate change impacts on vector-borne diseases (Lancet Planetary Health)

• J.A. Gilbert and Erica Hartmann '05, The indoors microbiome and human health (Nature Reviews Microbiology)

• J. Claudet et al., incl. Miranda Bernard '11, Advancing ocean equity at the nexus of development, climate and conservation policy (Nature Ecology & Evolution)

• L.A. Dove, Clare Singer '14, S.E. Murphy, Bringing a Lens of Equity to Geoscience Qualifying Examinations (AGU Advances)

Mathematics and Computer Science research:

• Y. Alnawakhtha, A. Mantri, Carl Miller '97, and D. Wang, Lattice-Based Quantum Advantage from Rotated Measurements (Quantum)

• Steven V. Sam and Andrew Snowden '00, The representation theory of Brauer categories II: Curried algebra (Combinatorial Algebra)

• Frederic Koehler '14 and Elchanan Mossel, A phase transition in Arrow’s theorem with three alternatives (Annals of Applied Probability)

• Noah Singer '18, et al., Streaming approximation resistance of every ordering CSP (Computational Complexity)

Physics and Chemistry research:

• G. Roberts et al., incl. Jon Simon '00, Manybody interferometry of quantum fluids (Science Advances)

• Ning Bao '04, J. Naskar, Properties of the contraction map for holographic entanglement entropy inequalities (High Energy Physics)

• W. T. M. Seo, V.A. Tsang, M. Ballesteros II, and Emily Tsui '04, Ligand Basicity and Chelate Effects on Sulfur Insertion vs. Sulfur Reduction by Zinc Thiolate Complexes (Chemistry Europe)

• Purnima Balakrishnan ‘09, et al., Extensive hydrogen incorporation is not necessary for superconductivity in topotactically reduced nickelates (Nature Communications)

• C.M. Knaut et al., incl. Bart Machielse '12, Entanglement of nanophotonic quantum memory nodes in a telecom network (Nature)

• C. Hoang et al., incl. Elizabeth Billings '13, Tandem Mass Spectrometry across Platforms (Analytical Chemistry)

• Michael Winer '15, et al., Glass transition of quantum hard spheres in high dimensions (Physical Review E)

• E.Y.X. Ong, Anna Barth '17, et al., Jamming Memory into Acoustically Trained Dense Suspensions under Shear (Physical Review X)

Engineering research:

• M. Kim, Y. Sun, and Minjoo Larry Lee '94, Metamorphic and Lattice-Matched GaInP Rear-Heterojunction Solar Cells for Improved Performance at Elevated Temperatures (IEEE Photovoltaics)

• K. Kurzer-Ogul, et al., and Jessica Shang '04, Radiation and heat transport in divergent shock–bubble interactions (Physics of Plasmas)

• R.K. Padhy, K. Suresh, and Aaditya Chandrasekhar '09, TOMAS: topology optimization of multiscale fluid flow devices using variational auto-encoders and super-shapes (Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization)

• W. Fox, G. Fiksel, D.B. Schaeffer, and Jesse Griff-McMahon '16, Proton deflectometry analysis in magnetized plasmas: Magnetic field reconstruction in one dimension (Physical Review E)

Social Science and Public Policy research:

• C. Choy et al., incl. Lorrie Cranor '89, Consumer-driven design and evaluation of broadband labels (Telecommunications Policy)

• Miranda Mockrin '95 and M.L. Johnson, Local government perspectives on housing buyouts in New York after Hurricane Sandy (Environmental Hazards)

• M. Sullivan, Ellen Kohl '97, and C. Sellers, The Co-Development of Environmental Justice and Children’s Environmental Health at the EPA (Environmental Justice)

• G. Packard and Jonah Berger '98, The Emergence and Evolution of Consumer Language Research (Consumer Research)

• Christine Dobridge '98, J. Hsu, and M. Zabek, Personal Tax Changes and Financial Well-being: Evidence from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (FEDS)

• Jean Lee '99, et al., The social meaning of mobile money: Earmarking reduces the willingness to spend in migrant households (Economic Behavior & Organization)

• K. Ravi and Adan Vela '99, RICo: Reddit ideological communities (Online Social Networks and Media)

• Jennifer Helgeson '02, et al., Community-informed Decisions for Equitable, Cost-effective, and Inclusive Disaster Resilience planning (Co-DECIDR): A Hybrid Framework (NIST)

• Maggie Shi '12, Monitoring for Waste: Evidence from Medicare Audits (Quarterly Journal of Economics)

Alumni authors:

• Ashlee Ford Versypt, Rebecca Segal '90, and Suzanne Sindi, Mathematical Modeling for Women’s Health (Springer)

• Joshua Weitz '93, Asymptomatic: The Silent Spread of COVID-19 and the Future of Pandemics (JHU Press)

• Ananth Hirsh '01 and Tess Stone, Greater Secrets (Penguin Random House)

• Maia Kobabe and Sarah Peitzmeier '06, Breathe: Journeys to Healthy Binding (MIT Press)

Election 2024:

• The work of Drew Linzer '94 was cited for the Washington Post’s presidential polling averages and the Economist's presidential forecast.

• Gautam Mukunda '97 discussed the Presidential campaign on the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast Single Best Idea.

• Asher Labovich '22 worked with the Brown Political Review to create 24cast.org, a website of political predictions for the 2024 election. (moco360)

More alumni in the news:

• Joshua Oppenheimer '92 directed The End, a post-apocalyptic musical that premiered at the Telluride Film Festival. (Vanity Fair)

• Cynthia Addai-Robinson '98 spoke with US Weekly about her role in the upcoming season of Rings of Power. (Nerdist) (Black Girl Nerds)

• Sarah Oh Lam '00 discussed the potential regulation of cryptocurrency with Broadband Breakfast.

• Erik Agard '11 wrote several recent crossword puzzles for The New Yorker.

• Nina Lu '12 has started her own substack, Near Futures with Nina.

• Ivvone Zhou '20 appeared in a May episode of Jeopardy! (mymcmedia)

• Anika Seth '21 was a Washington Post summer intern, assigned to cover international news. (Washington Post)

From Silver Quest: College advice from the Class of '23