Class Notes

TIMO PLATT ’73

A New Frontier

A Brooksian’s contribution to the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic and the future of digital privacy.

Timo Platt ’73 is the founder and chief executive officer of technology company PoKos Communications Corp. PoKos has found the solution to a pressing issue: How can public health authorities conduct effective, universal COVID-19 contact tracing through mobile phones without infringing on individuals’ privacy and data security?

Dig in to your mobile phone’s settings, and chances are you’ll have the option to turn on an “Exposure Notification” setting. During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the technology giants Apple and Google came together to help develop a national system for combating the spread of the coronavirus through mobile phone-based contact tracing. If you enable the “Exposure Notification” setting on your phone, your phone will exchange anonymous identifier beacons with other nearby phones — and, since people tend to keep their phones with them, the beacons serve as a proxy for other people you’ve been near. If you also download a contact tracing application, this record allows public health authorities and governments around the world to find and alert you if you have been in close contact with someone who has also enabled exposure notifications on their phone and has tested positive for COVID-19.

“Contact tracing is one of the essential tools (in addition to mask-wearing and physical distancing) that governments have to fight the pandemic,” Timo says. “If we can automate part of it, and make it more accurate and realtime, we don’t impose the human resource burden and the delays in identification that would otherwise necessarily take place.”

Mobile phones are key to the contact-tracing effort, Timo says, because they’ve become so universal. The Pew Research Center’s data confirms how common mobile phones are: By February 2021, 85 percent of American adults owned a mobile phone, up from 35 percent a mere 10 years ago. A contact-tracing system, Timo says, that operates in the background and across devices regardless of their manufacturer — that would allow an Apple iPhone to recognize and communicate with a Samsung Android device, for example — should prove extremely helpful to slow the growth of any new highlyinfectious virus.

A universal, automatic contact-tracing system powered by mobile phones naturally raises privacy concerns, and that’s where the PoKos technology comes in. “The most important thing is

that we need to be able to ensure anonymity, especially when we’re dealing with something as sensitive as health information,” Timo says. “The old-fashioned ways of tracking people — phone numbers, email addresses and cookies — have all been discredited because they don’t ensure privacy and anonymity, and they expose people all the time.”

PoKos’s exposure notification technology (“ENT”) helps ensure that the data collected during contact tracing is protected and anonymous. PoKos’s ENT assigns a random “key” — a multi-digit code — to phones as they move with their owners. The phones use Bluetooth to transmit a beacon derived from their key to nearby phones and receive the beacons from phones near them (see sidebar).

Digital privacy and anonymity are paramount. Each phone’s key is unique and changes every 15 minutes. The beacons each phone generates and receives are stored on the phone itself. If a user receives a COVID-19 diagnosis, they can opt-in to uploading their own location beacons to a server hosted by the local public health authority. “By virtue of the way the beacons are encrypted, the public health authority cannot sell, share or mine that data for any other purpose,” Timo says, “and the beacons are shared on an opt in basis by the user.” Even if the data does fall into malevolent hands, Timo says, the beacons do not reveal any health or other personal information, are “not traceable to a person,” and even with respect to a phone, “are traceable only to the beacons stored on that phone, rather than the phone itself.”

In July 2020, the Association of Public Health Laboratories reported that it would support the national enterprise by hosting on its secure servers the keys uploaded by users who have opted in to the system. Timo notes the importance of that development, which allows for different public health authorities to use the same data across state and local borders. It lets users benefit from exposure notifications even as they travel.

“What we’re about at PoKos is providing infrastructure capabilities to ensure privacy and anonymity in communications,” Timo concludes. “We’re under the hood; we’re not an app, and nobody’s going to see PoKos’s name anywhere on contact tracing. But if they really go in and see how it all works, they’ll see PoKos inside, trying to make digital communications a better, safer place.”

A CLOSE CONTACT

Here’s an example of how PoKos’s exposure notification technology works by using random beacons transmitted over Bluetooth:

Two people, Amy and Barbara, stand in line at a store at the same time. They have both opted in to use the ENT on their phones. During their time in line, both Amy’s phone and Barbara’s phone generate random keys. Using Bluetooth, both phones transmit their beacon out to, and also receive beacons from, nearby phones. Each phone also stores a list of the beacons they receive from nearby phones.

One week later, Amy is diagnosed with COVID-19. She confirms her diagnosis in the app developed by her local public health authority, and she consents to uploading all the beacons her phone has used for the last two weeks to a central server. These beacons are uploaded to the central server without including any of Amy’s personal information or location data.

Barbara’s phone then downloads a list from the central server of beacons associated with people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and compares it to the list of beacons that have been stored in Barbara’s phone. Because Barbara’s phone received and stored Amy’s beacon when the two were in line together, a match is made. Barbara receives a notification that she has been in contact with someone who was diagnosed with COVID-19, along with information on what to do next.

DR. TEERAWAT WIWATPANIT ’07

Scientific Advancements

Dr. Teerawat Wiwatpanit ’07 has engaged in groundbreaking research on the transmission of the Zika virus, and his team’s work could pave the way for future medical research breakthroughs.

Dr. Teerawat Wiwatpanit ’07 arrived at Brooks from his native Thailand as a participant in the Royal Thai Scholars Program. The government-supported program sends Thai high school graduates abroad to continue their education through the completion of doctoral programs. Following the conclusion of their education, the scholars are expected to bring innovative ideas back to Thailand to aid in the country’s technological and economic development. The program supported Wiwatpanit through his sixth-form year at Brooks, and then through Bowdoin College and a doctoral program in life sciences from Northwestern University.

Wiwatpanit completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern as well, in the university hospital’s obstetrics and gynecology department. In that fellowship, Wiwatpanit noticed what he calls “an imbalance” on research dedicated to women’s health and also the health of children and fetuses. “That fellowship opened my eyes to thinking about women’s health research, and the fact that not much research focuses on women’s health,” he says. “Our department was big on expanding the research to focus more on women’s health and make scientific research on women’s health more accessible.”

Now a research scientist in Thailand, Wiwatpanit is contributing to his country’s — and the world’s — understanding of and battle against the Zika virus and other, similar mosquito-borne viruses. Wiwatpanit leads a team of doctors and researchers in a collaboration

between Thailand’s National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Center and Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok. The team is trying to discover a way to block transmission of the Zika virus from an infected mother to a fetus. Wiwatpanit’s research is notable not just for what it represents — a treatment to prevent Zika transmission during pregnancy — but also for its process: His team conducts its research by building organoids (organ-like tissue culture or “mini organs” grown in a dish) and then combining them into a system. If Wiwatpanit’s team is able to successfully combine organoids into systems, future biomedical researchers would have broadened experimental capabilities for any variety of research topics.

Fighting the Zika Virus

In February 2016, the World Health Organization declared the Zika virus a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. The Zika virus, which saw local transmission in the United States in 2016 and 2017, is transmitted primarily through mosquitoes. While those infected with the Zika virus are generally asymptomatic or show only mild symptoms, a pregnant adult can transmit the virus to the growing fetus. This transmission can cause infants to be born with microcephaly and other congenital malformations and neurological complications, and is also associated with pregnancy complications including preterm birth and miscarriage.

The Zika virus has been recorded in 87 countries and territories across the world, and outbreaks have become more frequent over the last two decades. In Thailand, cases of Zika virus have been reported for the past 16 years in low numbers. Wiwatpanit points, though, to the ripe conditions in Thailand for a full-blown Zika epidemic. “We have all the factors here in Thailand,” he says, “and it’s better to be prepared.”

Wiwatpanit’s team uses samples of cells from a uterus to create what he calls a “mini organ” in a dish. This organoid mimics the layers of cells in the uterus. The team is also able to cause the organoids to mimic different stages of the menstrual cycle and pregnancy. Then, the team infects the organoids with the Zika virus at various stages of the menstrual cycle and pregnancy to study at which point the uterus is most likely to become infected. Wiwatpanit’s team, he says, is also attempting to engineer a system that mimics the placenta, so that it can study the transmission of the Zika virus across the placenta from mother to fetus.

The team’s work also looks at a specific class of antibodies that have been shown to neutralize the Zika virus in other systems, like kidney cells. “Those systems are not directly relevant to mother-child transmission,” Wiwatpanit explains, “so this would be the first time that we look into how to use this antibody to neutralize the process of mother-to-child transmission.”

“We’re hoping that we can use this knowledge to develop future treatment for the Zika virus,” Wiwatpanit says. “Can we apply this antibody to the mother to prevent transmission? Can we even develop vaccines? Can we treat the mother to protect the fetus? This research will be the base for the development of a bunch of therapeutics for the Zika virus.”

System of Organoids

Another exciting aspect of Wiwatpanit’s research is the potential to combine an organoid mimicking the uterus and an organoid mimicking the placenta into a combined system. Wiwatpanit notes that most diseases affect multiple systems in the body. “We [the bioengineering research field] have mini brains now,” he says. “We have intestines, we have the uterus. I think the field is moving in the direction of putting different types of organoids together to see how they interact with each other.”

If Wiwatpanit is able to culture cells from a placenta and create a two-organoid system, his team will be able to study both the maternal compartment and the fetal compartment moving forward. This, he says, will enable disease modeling or drug testing.

“If we can engineer a system that mimics the placenta with the maternal and fetal compartments all together, this can be used to research more than just the Zika virus,” Wiwatpanit explains. “We can also use this system to study other diseases that are capable of being transmitted from mother to child, like HIV. We can also use this system as a platform for drug testing, or to develop therapeutics intended for use during pregnancy. We can do toxicology studies to see if substances, or drugs, or even nutrients or supplements can be transmitted through the placenta from mother to child.”

PING HWA O. OKORIE ’12

An Entrepreneur With a Purpose

A Nigerian swimwear brand strives for a global reach and honors the founder’s home.

Ping Hwa O. Okorie ’12, pictured in a piece from Salt and Sunscreen’s upcoming collection.

ON THE WEB

Visit Salt and Sunscreen’s website at saltandsunscreen.com, or check out the collection on Instagram at @saltnsunscreen. Ping Hwa O. Okorie ’12 hails from Lagos, Nigeria. She is the founder and chief executive officer of Salt and Sunscreen, a swimwear brand that caters to a global market through bold prints and colors, eye-catching designs, and a fit that celebrates the different shapes of women’s bodies across the world, and especially Black bodies.

Okorie’s Salt and Sunscreen pieces are sophisticated and feminine, and Okorie strives to fill a niche she found herself searching for as a young girl in Lagos. “Growing up in Lagos, it was hard to find swimwear that I loved and felt comfortable in,” she says. “I wanted to create something that was soft on the skin and that was high quality and sophisticated — and that’s how Salt and Sunscreen was born. As a beach lover and traveler, I’m always looking for pieces that are fashion-forward and chic. Now I can bring that beauty and style into pieces for all women.”

The brand’s pieces accentuate the beauty of what Okorie calls the African woman, with a feminine physique and accentuated curves. Salt and Sunscreen pieces are meant to fit all body types with maximum comfort. “I think it’s more of a global issue,” she says. “A lot of countries look to the United States and American fashion as a symbol of how things should move in the future. But for me, when creating swimwear, I felt as if there was a lack of pieces that would fit the body correctly. Nigerian women, Black women here in general, they might be fuller on the bottom than

on the top or vice-versa, and they might have a smaller waist. I wanted to create pieces for these kinds of bodies that would flatter them and fit them properly. I chose to focus on pieces that are adjustable so women of various shapes and sizes can adjust the pieces to their comfort. That’s what I chose to focus on.”

Okorie’s instinct to push the boundaries of what’s possible stretches back to her own time at Brooks. She journeyed to North Andover for school from her childhood in Lagos, following her sister, Hauwa Okorie ’06, to Brooks. “When I was applying, of course, Brooks was one of the schools on my list, and I visited and obviously fell in love with it,” Okorie says. “I felt that Brooks was a small, close community. Of course, it’s far up in the Northeast, a freezing place!” she laughs. “But I didn’t mind. I loved that there were a lot of activities that we weren’t forced to try, but encouraged to try.”

At Brooks, Okorie tried activities ranging from soccer to basketball to the school musical, and she appreciates the opportunity to have spread her wings. “I definitely tried different things before I found out exactly what I wanted to pursue in college,” she says. “I think that’s why I loved Brooks. It was a very wholesome community that pushed me to try many different things.”

She matriculated at The George Washington University, where she put the ideal of trying different paths into practice. She began in the school of arts and sciences, and then transferred to the business school, where she learned the basics of business, accounting and finance. She then focused on hospitality, and held positions with several prominent hotel chains after graduating college. “I liked hospitality because I was doing work that helped the community and helped customers,” Okorie says. “I love building brands, and hospitality also exposed me to accounting, to finance, to sales. I found my interest in marketing and learned about the digital marketing landscape, which is a big portion of how I push my brand today.”

When Okorie moved back to Lagos in 2017, she saw a booming Nigerian tourism industry with only a few swimwear brands to meet demand for Nigeria’s warm, tropical tourist destinations. “You could probably count the number of brands that made up the swimwear industry in Nigeria on one hand,” she recalls. “This was a market that I knew I could fill.” Okorie saw her chance and began her market research and design process, focusing on creating an affordable, locally inspired brand with “pieces that actually fit people.”

Salt and Sunscreen’s first capsule has three collections; each collection calls to Okorie’s identity and family history. “I picked solid colors first, before working my way to prints,” she says. “It’s bold and fierce depending on how you style it.” She uses a lot of yellows that, she says, evoke the warm weather and the sun in Lagos. The green in her pieces calls back to the nature and natural beauty of her home. The deep red that’s prevalent in Salt and Sunscreen pieces evokes images of Okorie’s father’s village in the eastern part of Nigeria. “It’s almost like the color of the sand, the deep red,” she says. “So there are little things that tie back to who I am as a person.” Okorie is also introducing new colors and a set of prints, she says: stripes that flatter different body types and abstract designs that call to flowers that are native to Nigeria.

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged Okorie’s efforts toward Salt and Sunscreen in many ways; still, she pushes on. She’s taken steps to expand her customer base outside Nigeria and into the rest of Africa and the world: She’s ordered fabric and arranged for local tailors to sew her pieces; she’s expanded into beachwear to accompany her swimwear; and she’s continued to promote her brand on social media. “I want to pave my own path to what I want to do,” she says. “I hope to create a brand in the future that is not only for people in Nigeria, but for people across Africa. I want people to be able to buy an African brand, and not have to buy from outside the continent.”

“I want people to be able to buy an African brand, and not have to buy from outside the continent.”

The crew shell Thomas “T. J.” Baker pulls away from the Brooks dock and into its maiden voyage on Lake Cochichewick at sunset on October 15, 2020. Baker taught English at Brooks from 1998 to 2014. The crew team christened the new shell at the boathouse with a speech by English faculty John Haile, who called Baker “first and foremost, a gentleman in every way,” and noted that Baker “loved dressing properly for every occasion, was scrupulously polite and a lover of fine things.” Haile also noted that Baker was “a truly gentle soul” who enjoyed rowing and sailing, and who worked extensively with the Brooks crew during his time on the faculty. Baker, Haile said, was passionate about teaching and particularly loved working with “The Great Gatsby.”

Third-formers and students arriving on campus for the first time engage in orientation and team-building activities on Anna K. Trustey Memorial Field at Brooks in spring 2021.

This year of challenge has also been a time of innovation, opportunity and collaboration. As we all excitedly anticipate a return to a more traditional school experience next fall, the community has also been expressing its appreciation for everyone’s efforts this past year.

I am so appreciative of my Brooks experience. This is my home away from home, and I’ve loved it so much. Thank you.”

DAELLY OSORIO ’22

Teaching at Brooks has been one of the most meaningful experiences of my career. I love the students’ eagerness to learn and the warm community built to support them. Students here care greatly about learning, but they also care about growing as an individual and fostering lifelong relationships with their peers and teachers, and that is one of my favorite aspects of teaching and living here at Brooks.”

KENNETH GRIFFITH, arts faculty and director of choral and chamber music

I wish to thank John Packard for his leadership and the entire team of faculty and staff at Brooks for upholding the tradition and the values of Brooks School. Under the severe challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, Brooks has been able to extend extra care, love and attentive culture to every and all students, including those who are thousands of miles away attending classes virtually. We all, the students and the parents, can feel the warmth and the personal care from every faculty and staff member.”

LINCOLN YING ’75, P’23

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