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)