Magnet Alumni News: Spring 2019

Fellowships and Awards:

• • Joshua Weitz '93 was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology.

  • Barbarous, co-authored by Ananth Hirsh '01, was nominated for a 2019 Reuben Award for best long form online comic.

  • Samir Paul '06 was named a 2019 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow, winning a $90,000 scholarship to attend Columbia Law School.

  • Jared Duker Lichtman '14, Sara Shonkwiler '14, and Eric Neyman '15 were awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowships.

  • Dilhan Salgado '18 won a $250 prize in the 2018 Putnam Competition. Adam Busis ‘15 (Harvey Mudd) and Pratik Rathore ‘17 (UMD) were members of teams winning Honorable Mention.

Academic Publications:

• • J.L. Litke and Samie Jaffrey '89, Highly efficient expression of circular RNA aptamers in cells using autocatalytic transcripts (Nature Biotechnology)

  • R. Koch et al., and David Weinstock '90, Biomarker-driven strategy for MCL1 inhibition in T-cell lymphomas (Blood)

  • T. Tommasi et al., Alex Berg '92 and T. Berg, Combining Multiple Cues for Visual Madlibs Question Answering (International Journal of Computer Vision)

  • L.C. Cheung, Q. Pan, N. Hyun, and Hormuzd Katki '92, Prioritized concordance index for hierarchical survival outcomes (Statistics in Medicine)

  • T. Finegan et al., and Dan Bergstralh '93, Tissue tension and not interphase cell shape determines cell division orientation in the Drosophila follicular epithelium (The EMBO Journal)

  • Y-H Lin and Joshua Weitz '93, Spatial Interactions and Oscillatory Tragedies of the Commons (Physical Review Letters)

  • R. Ignace, Z. Damrau, K. Tabetha Hole '94, and W. L. Waldron, Variability in X-ray line ratios in helium-like ions of massive stars: The wind-driven case (Astronomy & Astrophysics)

  • Miranda Mockrin '95, et al., Forests, houses, or both? Relationships between land cover, housing characteristics, and resident socioeconomic status across ecoregions (Journal of Environmental Management)

  • S. Shahrzad et al., incl. Caleb Fasset '98, Crater Statistics on the Dark‐Toned, Mafic Floor Unit in Jezero Crater, Mars (Geophysical Research Letters)

  • Cynthia Chang '01 et al., Testing conceptual models of early plant succession across a disturbance gradient (Journal of Ecology)

  • Jennifer Caswell-Jin '02, et al., Clonal replacement and heterogeneity in breast tumors treated with neoadjuvant HER2-targeted therapy (Nature Communications)

  • Kristina Cammen '03, D.B. Rasher, and R.S. Steneck, Predator recovery, shifting baselines, and the adaptive management challenges they create (Ecosphere)

  • D. Lionetti, S. Suseno, Emily Tsui '04, et al., Effects of Lewis Acidic Metal Ions (M) on Oxygen-Atom Transfer Reactivity of Heterometallic Mn3MO4 Cubane and Fe3MO(OH) and Mn3MO(OH) Clusters (Inorganic Chemistry)

  • J. Hu, S.B. Maamar, A.J. Glawe, N. Gottel, J.A. Gilbert, and Erica Hartmann '05, Impacts of Indoor Surface Finishes on Bacterial Viability (Journal of Clinical and Translational Science) (northwestern.edu)

  • Jackie Villadsen '05 and G. Hallinan, Ultra-wideband Detection of 22 Coherent Radio Bursts on M Dwarfs (The Astrophysical Journal)

  • Jordyn Wolfand '07, et al., Occurrence of Urban-Use Pesticides and Management with Enhanced Stormwater Control Measures at the Watershed Scale (Environmental Science & Technology)

  • Dan Quang '08 and X. Xie, FactorNet: A deep learning framework for predicting cell type specific transcription factor binding from nucleotide-resolution sequential data (Methods)

  • M.B. Ross, Yifan Li '10, et al., Electrocatalytic Rate Alignment Enhances Syngas Generation (Joule)

  • P. Ivanisvili and Samuel Zbarsky '13, Centered Hardy–Littlewood maximal operator on the real line: Lower bounds (Comptes Rendus Mathematique)

  • Arnold Mong '16 and D. Huse, The longest-lived current in a quantum chaotic spin chain (APS March Meeting 2019)

  • M. Saha et al., incl. Ryan Holland '18, Project Sidewalk: A Web-based Crowdsourcing Tool for Collecting Sidewalk Accessibility Data At Scale (pdf) (CHI 2019, Best Paper Award) (washington.edu)

In the News and Online:

• • Lorrie Cranor '89 was interviewed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about "mobile hijacking" and identity theft.

  • Josh Juran '91 was interviewed by Ars Technica about his Advanced Mac Substitute, an emulator for running old Mac OS software.

  • Helen Fields '93 was one of the organizers of a science-themed Peeps diorama contest. (Vox)

  • Wei-Hwa Huang '93 was interviewed by the Society for Science & the Public about his career in puzzle making.

  • Zeki Mokhtarzada '96 was interviewed for a UMD entrepreneurship podcast: From Brothers to Co-Founders: Building Businesses with Family

  • David Hu '97 was featured in an article in Mechanical Engineering Magazine: David Hu Refines the Art of Observation to Turn Animal Abilities into Elegant Engineering Solutions.

  • Tom Hunsicker '00 collected some March Madness statistics for WUSA9.

  • Abigail Fraeman '05 wrote in The Washington Post: Losing the Mars rover Opportunity is like saying goodbye to a friend

    • She participated in the NASA press conference announcing the end of the Opportunity mission.

    • Earlier in January, she gave a lecture at NASA JPL; and she periodically provides mission updates on the Mars Rover Curiosity.

    • She appeared on The Today Show, was interviewed for Science News, and joined a podcast hosted by The Planetary Society.

  • Jonathan Gootenberg '09 is one of the co-founders of a new biotech company, Sherlock Biosciences, using CRISPR-based technology for medical diagnostics (Forbes)

  • Ben Shih '09 contributed to a story on Skynet Today: Boston Dynamics' robots — impressive, but far from the Terminator

  • Erik Agard '11 joined the crossword puzzle constructing team at the New Yorker. (video)

  • Agam Mittal '15 covers sports for the GW Hatchet, recently recapping the disappointing basketball season.

  • Akshay Guthal '15 co-hosts a sports podcast at UMD: Play Ball

  • Alice Park '16 writes for the Yale Daily News, contributing to a cover story about a professor's sexual misconduct.

  • Noah Friedlander '17 was interviewed in The University of Chicago Magazine as part of the a capella group, Rhythm and Jews.

  • Laura Espinoza '18 writes for the Harvard Crimson, reporting on undergraduate student government.

Teaching and Mentoring:

• • Lorrie Cranor '89 was one of the Cybersecurity Stars featured on Carnegie-Mellon's "Mt. Rushmore" of privacy and security.

  • Robyn Sanderson '99 was one of the researchers at UPenn who shared women in STEM who inspire them during Women's History Month.

  • Stacey Roshan '00 was featured in an interview, Math Teacher uses New Technology to Reduce Student Anxiety & Build Confidence, and she has a book releasing soon: Tech With Heart.

  • Sheila Xiah Kragie '01 and Daniel Bates '01 returned to Blair for the Females in Science and Technology Conference (@blairmagnet)

  • Jean Fan '09 shared some of her tools for continuous integration and unit testing of R packages.

Politics and Activism:

• • Craig Rice '90 was recognized as a Montgomery County trailblazer during Black History Month. (WJLA)

  • Joshua Weitz '93 wrote an Op-Ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Roll back Georgia’s ‘temporary’ fees on college students

  • Aaron Klein '94 wrote in Spotlight on Poverty & Opportunity: Real-Time Payments Can Help Combat Inequality; he also talked about the issue in an American Banker podcast.

  • Drew Linzer '94 is the Director of Civiqs, which recently began releasing daily polling results in all 50 states.

  • Jeremy Fisher '97 wrote in POWER magazine: States Seek Financial Tools to Replace Coal with Clean Energy

  • Hans Arora '01 was featured as an active member of the American Medical Association.

  • Elizabeth Green '02 is a co-founder of the new American Journalism Project, a venture philanthropy firm to support local news.

  • Jennifer Helgeson '02 wrote in Kol Habirah: We're Running Out of Time to Reduce Climate Change — Let's Do it Anyway

  • Sofi Sinozich '12 is an analyst for Langer Research Associates, where she designs and analyzes public opinion polls used by ABC News.

Share your own news by e-mailing alumni@mbhsmagnet.org or in the form below: