Magnet Alumni News: Summer 2026

Distinguished Alumnus: On March 26th, Maneesh Agrawala '90 was recognized with the Foundation's Distinguished Alumni Award, and he spoke to Magnet seniors as part of a celebration of the Magnet Program's 40-year history.

Several Magnet alumni have won notable awards in 2026:

• Lorrie Cranor '89 won the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award (cmu.edu)

• Erik Agard '11 won the 2026 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament

• Jeremy Fain '95 and Aaron Andalman '95 were recognized in ADWEEK's AI Power 50

• Several alumni won National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships (research.gov): Yasha Anand '21 (umd.edu), Efe Eroz '22 (Princeton), Grace Hu '22 (MIT), Ayush Varshney '21 (Caltech), and Charlotte Wallsten '21 (U. Chicago)

• On May 16th, the Blair Alumni Association inducted four Magnet alumni into its Hall of Fame (blairalumni.org): Cynthia Addai-Robinson '98, Patrick Lee '92, Eric Liu '92, and Chris Williams '01

Medical research publications:

• H. Luo, M.G. Kharas, and Samie Jaffrey '89, N6-Methyladenosine: an RNA modification as a central regulator of cancer (Nature Reviews Cancer)

• C.C. Young et al., incl. Stephen Chen '91, A Report from the Inaugural Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery Neurointerventional Oncology Summit (Am. J. Neuroradiology)

• V.Y. Polotsky et al., and Jonathan Jun '92, Role of Sleep-Related Upper Airway Neuromuscular Dysfunction in the Pathophysiology of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (Current Pulmonology Reports)

• Hormuzd Katki '92, Comparing approaches to designing and accelerating evaluation of multicancer early detection tests (J. Nat'l Cancer Inst.)

• Jennifer Caswell-Jin '02 et al., Guideline concordance in triple-negative breast cancer: What does it measure? (Cancer)

• M. Mehul et al., and Srikanth Divi '05, Preoperative Opioid Use is a Robust Predictor of Increased Health Care Utilization Following Lumbar Spine Surgery (Clinical Spine Surgery)

• Adrienne Long '05 et al., Integrating thymic expression patterns into tumor antigen selection enhances immunotherapy design and stratifies clinical responses to immunotherapies (Blood)

• M. Kim et al. and Vicky Yao '07, Ontology-aware DNA methylation classification with a curated atlas of human tissues and cell types (Cell Reports Methods)

• Jean Fan '09, Revisiting the somatic mutation theory of cancer pathogenesis (Nature Reviews Genetics)

• Ashley Thommana '22, Erin Beck '99, et al., Leptomeningeal enhancement in multiple sclerosis demonstrates posterior predilection and T1 alterations in the adjacent cortex (Multiple Sclerosis Journal)

Biology research publications:

• G. Li et al., and Joshua Weitz '93, Phase separation and coexistence in spatial coordination games between microbes (Physical Review E)

• David Hu '97, Cooperative behavior: Weaver ants build homes without a plan (Current Biology)

• C. McCosker et al. and Kristina Cammen '03, Whole genome sequencing reveals variation in immune and nervous systems associated with harbor seal susceptibility to phocine distemper virus (J. Heredity)

• C. Zhang, E. Libby, Anthony Burnetti '07, et al., The fitness costs of reproductive specialization scale inversely with organismal size (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

• Melodi Anahtar '12 et al., Integrated evaluation of antibody responses to mosquitoes and mosquito-borne pathogens using highly multiplexed serology (Science Advances)

• L. Weed, Arec Jamgochian '12, et al., Circadian Phase Estimation From Ambulatory Wearables With Particle Filtering: Accuracy Depends on Initialization, Recording Duration, and Light Exposure (Journal of Biological Rhythms)

Psychology and Neuroscience research publications:

• T.A. Morton and Jessica Salvatore '98, When it doesn’t get better: Leaning into minoritized identity to brace for decline (Advances in Psychology)

• A. Malci et al. and Michael Sidorov '03, Experience-Dependent Plasticity to Visual Sequences in Mouse Anterior Cingulate Cortex Reflects Familiarity (J. Neuroscience)

• Wilma Bainbridge '05, Distinctive places make memories stick (Nature Human Behavior)

• Emily Aery Jones '10, Entorhinal cortex represents task-relevant remote locations independently of CA1 (Nature Neuroscience)

Environmental science publications:

• A.R. Carlson, T.J. Hawbaker, Miranda Mockrin '95, et al., Rising rates of wildfire building destruction in the conterminous United States (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

• Ellen Kohl '97 and M. Sullivan, Obscuring double vulnerability: framing children’s environmental health science in the United States (Environmental Sociology)

• C, Gore et al. and Jennifer Helgeson '02, Patterns and gaps in co-benefit reporting in global adaptation research (Environmental Research)

• Erica Hartmann '05 et al., Ten questions concerning indoor dust (Building and Environment)

Astronomy research publications:

• P.H. Reiff, Amir Caspi '96, et al., Engaging and educating eclipse observers in the Heliophysics Big Year (Front. in Astron. and Space Sciences)

• C. Cattell et al. , incl. Marc Pulupa '99, Correlated Quasiperiodic Pulsations in Type III Radio Bursts and Solar EUV Emission, Jetlets and Magnetic Fields: Comparisons of Intervals with and without Type III Storms (Astrophysical Journal)

• M. Khalaf et al. and Nicholas Stone '04, Direct mass measurements of superradiance clouds near black holes (Physical Review D)

Mathematics research publications:

• Samit Dasgupta '95 and M. Kakde, Ranks of matrices of logarithms of algebraic numbers II: The matrix coefficient conjecture (Advances in Mathematics)

• Jared Marx-Kuo '15, The p-widths of RP2 (Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society)

Physics research publications:

• Y. Wang et al. and Minjoo Larry Lee '94, Embedded growth of visible InP quantum dot lasers in silicon nitride photonic integrated circuits (Optica)

• A.L. Shaw et al. and Jonathan Simon '00, A cavity-array microscope for parallel single-atom interfacing (Nature)

• Ning Bao '04, J. Chu, and Y. Jiang, Coarse-grained fixed-point tensor networks and holographic reflected entropy in 3D gravity (J. High Energy Physics)

• Purnima Balakrishnan '09 et al., Depth-resolved amorphization and nonuniformity in square-planar nickelate films (Physical Review Materials)

• J. You et al. and Avikar Periwal '14, Control of Dipolar Dynamics by Geometrical Programming (Physical Review Letters)

• Michael Winer '15 and A. Herderschee, Using a Parisi ansatz in the unsatisfiable phase of constraint satisfaction problems (Physical Review E)

• Anna Barth '17 et al., Acoustic tuning of shear thickening suspensions: A universal scaling analysis (Journal of Rheology)

Policy and Social Science research publications:

• R. Boghrati and Jonah Berger '98, What Leads to Longer Word of Mouth Discussion? (J. Assn' Commercial Research)

• Greg Howard '06, JUE insight: Moving cost magnitudes in moving cost models (J. Urban Economics)

• Sarah Peitzmeier '06, Violence Against Transgender People—The Ongoing Pandemic (JAMA Network Open)

More alumni news:

• Chris Williams '01 spoke with WTOP News from the International Space Station: This Potomac native doesn’t have the coolest job on the planet because he’s not on the planet

• Kristin Mink '03 sponsored the County Values Act, as reported in Bethesda Magazine: MoCo Council prohibits ICE from operating in county-owned parking areas

• Jean Fan '09 was interviewed about her development of a mentorship index in The Scientist: The M-Index: A New Metric Puts Mentorship in the Spotlight

• Gautam Mukunda '97 wrote in Bloomberg: AI is Ripe for Disruption, Too

• Lorrie Cranor '89 published a children's book: Privacy Please! (washingtonpost)