Columbia Engineering Magazine - Spring 2012

ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

BIG DATA ALICIA ABELLA MS’93, MPhil’94, PhD’95

ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

E-GREEN GIA MACHLIN BS’87, MBA’91BUS

ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

MAP APP JESSICA TSOONG BS’08 ­­ COLUMBIA ENGINEERING | 1

Comments, suggestions, or address changes may be mailed to: Columbia University The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science Room 510, MC 4714 500 West 120th Street New York, NY 10027 Phone: 212-851-5993 Fax: 212-864-0104 E-mail: mf2362@columbia.edu Read more about Columbia Engineering

http://www.engineering.columbia.edu

Dean of the School Feniosky Peña-Mora Executive Director of Communications Margaret R. Kelly Editor: Melanie A. Farmer Writers: Jeff Ballinger, Holly Evarts, Janet Haney, Christopher McGarry, Cecily O’Connor Photographers: pages 11, 12: Eileen Barroso; page 14: Diane Bondareff; page 17: Spencer Brown; pages 7, 9, 25, IBC: Bruce Gilbert; page 30: Frank Wojciechowski Contributors: Doneliza Joaquin, David Simpson Design and Art Direction: University Publications Columbia Engineering is published twice a year by: Columbia University in the City of New York The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 500 West 120th Street, MC 4714 New York, NY 10027

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contents Spring 2012 | Volume 53, No. 2

ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT 3

Letter from the Dean

4 Empowering Future Scientists: Alicia Abella MS’93, MPhil’94, PhD’95 6

High-Tech Pioneer: Edward Botwinick BS’58, BA’56CC

8

An Organic Evolution: Adnan Durrani BS’81

19 Top Chef: Rahul Akerkar BS’83, MS’86 20 Finding Your Way: Jessica Tsoong BS’08 22 Light Innovator: Luke Chen MS’88 24 Opposites Attract: Steve Jacobs BS’94, MS’95, PhD’98 26 The (High) Definition of Success: Ami Miron ProfD’89

10 Vibrant Duo, Vibrant Deal: Raymond Chan BS’01 and Kevin Tung BS’01

27 Trading Spaces: Richard Hunter MS’67

11 Pocketful of Dreams: Adam Rapp BS’04

28 Millien’s Patented Success: Raymond Millien BS’92

12 Making It Easier to Be Green: Gia Machlin BS’87, MBA’91BUS

30 Structural Safety Patrol: Sotirios Vahaviolos MS’72, MPhil’75, PhD’76

14 Iron Man: Edward Heffner BS’68

32 Creating Turkey’s Largest Internet Portal: Emre Kurttepeli BS’90

16 Troubleshooting Home Mortgages: Michael Bykhovsky BS’83

34 Leading Bio-Pharma Innovation: Vijay Samant MS’77

18 Healthy Thinking: Vikram Kumar BS’99

35 All in the Cards: John Koger MS’86

36 Engineering School, NYC in Discussions over New Data Sciences and Engineering Institute 37 Inspiring Entrepreneurship Globally 38 Building Business Savvy 39 Letter from the Alumni Association Presidents 40 Alumni Notes 49 Program Notes: Graduate Alumni 52 In Memoriam 56 Movers and Shakers Global entrepreneurs, story on page 37

IBC Giving Back: Alessandro Piol BS’79, MS’82 and Alexandra Piol BS’79, MS’83

Columbia Engineering online at: engineering.columbia.edu

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IT STARTED HERE

Herman Hollerith

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Did you know that computer giant IBM has its roots at Columbia Engineering? One of the School’s earliest entrepreneurs, Herman Hollerith (Class of 1879), played a major role in transforming technology. When Hollerith worked as a statistician at the 1880 U.S. Census, he soon became convinced there had to be a better way to tabulate the huge amounts of data being collected and recorded by hand. His answer: punch cards and a tabulating machine (pictured above), used to calculate the 1890 Census. In 1896, Hollerith’s business in electric counting machines was thriving, so he started his own company. His start-up, the Tabulating Machine Company, was one of the three companies that merged to form the ComputingTabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R). In 1924, C-T-R changed its name to International Business Machines (IBM). The rest is history.

Courtesy of Library of Congress

ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

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his issue of Columbia Engineering magazine focuses on engineering and applied science alumni who are entrepreneurs and whose work is making an impact, locally, nationally, and globally. Because of space limitations, we can highlight only a small fraction of our entrepreneurial graduates.

These men and women, and others like them, exemplify the wide range of entrepreneurial enterprises made possible by a Columbia Engineering education. In these pages you will find businesses that run the gamut from technological products and patented processes to theft-proof clothing design. I am sure you will find this sampling of alumni stories both interesting and inspiring.

As you may know from reading about New York City’s challenge to institute a new applied sciences campus here, the City is committed to creating and fostering a climate of high-tech entrepreneurship that will spark new start-ups to drive a new economic engine for the City. We at Columbia Engineering have been engaged in technological innovation since the early days of King’s College. The steam ferry and locomotive engines developed by John Stevens, Class of 1768, are among the first examples of our inventive alumni. This legacy of innovation has been present through every generation of Columbia alumni, as our graduates have helped to shape technology breakthroughs that have affected daily life during their era and into the future.

We are creating a new educational paradigm that includes an entrepreneurship component and have developed a minor in entrepreneurship, offering 17 courses in the schools of Engineering, Business, and Arts & Sciences. In addition, we have many co-curricular programs to appeal to the fledgling entrepreneur, including the annual PitchFest, where students vie for funding for their inventive products and services.

At the beginning of this academic year, we offered students a unique opportunity to be in an entrepreneurial atmosphere, 24/7. We launched the Entrepreneurship Residential Initiative, popularly called Res. Inc., as a living-learning module in Hartley and Wallach Halls. Res. Inc. provides an environment for students to collaborate, develop programs and products, identify potential markets, and promote ideas as entrepreneurs. You can read more about this program, and the entrepreneurial alumni who are making it possible, Alessandro Piol ’79, MS’82 and Alexandra Piol ’79, MS’83, on the inside back cover.

As New York City seeks to develop greater opportunities for entrepreneurs, I know that more and more of our Columbia Engineering alumni will be ready to bring their ideas to market, providing us with solutions to many of the challenges that face us today and tomorrow.

Feniosky Peña-Mora Dean and Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Professor

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ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

Empowering Future Scientists ALICIA ABELLA MS’93, MPhil’94, PhD’95

Growing up in Queens, New York, first-generation American Alicia Abella never imagined her career path would eventually lead to the White House.

Her Cuban-born parents helped pave the way, emphasizing how education was a means to opportunity.

Abella remembers how her family cut coupons and relied on hand-me-down clothing to save money for her tuition.

“My parents came to this country to give me the opportunities they didn’t have,” Abella said. “They saw that the best route to achieve that American dream was through education.”

It’s a lesson that continues to resonate with Abella today as an executive who aims to foster greater understanding of science and engineering among a diverse pool of young students.

Abella received a bachelor’s degree from New York University and an MS, MPhil, and PhD, all in computer science, from Columbia Engineering. She chose the School for its strong computer science program and even met her husband, Aleksandar Timcenko MS’91, MPhil’93, PhD’94, during graduate school.

“As soon as I graduated from Columbia, I joined AT&T Bell Labs and went straight into, and continued on, the work tied to my thesis at Columbia,” she said.

Abella’s thesis centered on natural language generation, which involved developing computer programs that automatically produced coherent language. Her advisers at the time were Professors John Kender and Kathleen McKeown.

Abella is now executive director of Innovative Services Research at AT&T Labs, where she oversees a staff of 10 people who work in the area of emerging devices and “the services those devices inspire.”

“We’re looking at new devices that go beyond the telephone and computers— devices that haven’t even been seen before,” Abella added.

Her 17-year career at AT&T helped propel her into the spotlight. In 2010, Abella was chosen as one of the top five women of the year by Hispanic Business magazine.

A few weeks later, she was nominated to join President Barack Obama’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. Abella became a commissioner in May 2011, after an extensive, months-long background check.

“I never would have imagined when I was young … that I’d end up in the White House, being part of something that could affect so many people,” Abella said. “Our role as commissioners is really to bring back to the president recommendations on what to do to help that particular group.”

Abella is one of 30 commissioners who meet twice a year at the White House. Her focus is on corporate/public partnerships and media.

“I am very passionate about the role media plays in trying to encourage students to pursue an engineering degree and become scientists,” she said.

“The media doesn’t do the science people justice.”

A strong believer in diversity in and out of the workplace, Abella’s leadership doesn’t end with her work on the commission. She’s executive vice president for Young Science Achievers, where she encourages high school girls and minorities to pursue careers in science and engineering. She’s also chairwoman for the AT&T Labs Fellowship program.

All of her accomplishments aside, Abella said her parents’ sacrifices gave her a deep appreciation for hard work and sacrifice.

“To them, I was an example of the American dream.”

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ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

High-Tech Pioneer EDWARD BOTWINICK BS’58, BA’56CC

Veteran technology business leader Edward Botwinick helped pioneer the voice/data communications market long before users and businesses were able to connect over multiple high-speed networks simultaneously.

During the 11 years that he ran Timeplex Inc., he turned a struggling company into a leading provider of T1-based networks and one of the first to use microprocessors in its systems. In 1988, Botwinick had increased the company’s total market capitalization from approximately $3 million to a whopping $440 million before selling Timeplex to technology giant Unisys.

Timeplex was Botwinick’s highest-profile business deal but not his first.

“I did it several times so I must’ve enjoyed it,” he says with a laugh.

After graduating from Columbia Engineering, Botwinick went to work for US Semiconductor Corp. In 1960, he cofounded chip-maker Silicon Transistor Corp., a company that went public and was eventually sold. From 1963 through 1967, he served as president and principal shareholder of Quantum Inc. and its associated group of international companies.

He went on to specialize in high-technology investment research and venture capital as a vice president of investment research at Goldman Sachs. He left Goldman in 1977 to run Timeplex as chairman and CEO, eventually retiring from his position as president of Unisys Networks in 1989, one year after the Unisys-Timeplex deal. Since then, he has continued to invest in and advise small technology companies in, and as he puts it, “whatever keeps me interested.”

A self-proclaimed geek, Botwinick has always enjoyed building things. Electronics and technology captivated him the most as a student. Thinking back to his Columbia days, Botwinick credits Jacob Millman’s course in digital electronics as a particular favorite.

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“I remember building a piece of electronic equipment in his lab that came pretty close to state of the art,” says Botwinick. “Professor Millman said, ‘I think that’s beyond what you can do,’ but I got it to work. I was pretty proud of that.”

When Botwinick returned to the Engineering School as the Class Day keynote speaker in May of 1985, the former University Trustee urged the new graduates to “come back often to Columbia, in person and in thought,” and said, “whatever the form of your contribution, do give back to Columbia more than you have received. For only if you systematically do so can the cycle repeat.”

He has lived by these words. Botwinick is one of Columbia Engineering’s most generous donors.

Over the past 20 years, he has made numerous contributions, including more than $1 million to establish the Botwinick Multimedia Learning Laboratory, which has revolutionized the first-year engineering curriculum since its inception in 1994.

With Botwinick’s steady support, the lab has been re-equipped three times, maintaining its state-ofthe-art capabilities. He was instrumental in securing a $25 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish the National Center for Telecommunications Research at the School and also headed the fundraising effort for the Schapiro Center for Engineering and Physical Science Research (CEPSR). He continues to sit on the advisory board of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory as well as the Board of Overseers of the Duke Cancer Institute.

“I’ve always felt it was important to give back,” says Botwinick. “If people who are successful don’t give back, they fail to plant the seed that brings out the next generation.”

MAKING A GLOBAL IMPACT

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entreprene u rs making an impact

An Organic Evolution Adnan Durrani BS’81

The stock market crash of 1987 marked Adnan Durrani’s turning point. “I had my head handed to me,” he says. “I got professionally burned by tech stocks and began to realize that, for me, Wall Street’s ethos of immediate gratification was toxic and unfulfilling. I was driven to social capitalism— generating profits while holistically contributing back to society and positively impacting humanity.”

And so Durrani, chief executive officer of American Halal/Saffron Road Foods and president of Condor Ventures Inc., became a pioneer in the natural food business. “I loved the idea that, as a socially responsible food entrepreneur,” he says, “I could feel and touch what I innovated. Plus, building sustainable enterprises is a lot more gratifying!”

The idea for Saffron Road Foods was born out of Durrani’s desire, after the tragedy of 9/11, to create a social enterprise that would bring together different cultures, faiths, and politics.

“Saffron Road’s mission is to restore the spiritual sacredness to food and celebrate commonality of all cultures. It’s been a huge success—the number one new product nationally in Whole Foods Market, the $10 billion organic retailer,” says Durrani.

Born in Pakistan, Durrani grew up in Maryland.

His mother was a diplomat in Washington, D.C., and his father worked for the World Bank. Both Columbia, where he earned his BS in electrical engineering with a minor in economics, and New York City were a huge draw. He credits Columbia with broadening his cultural and social edification, since the majority of classmates were not in engineering but in economics and liberal arts.

“The faculty and student body were game changers for me. Whether on the debate team or in class, I constantly felt intellectually challenged in such a positive and enlightening way. I couldn’t have succeeded without the quantitative discipline and worldly view Columbia gave me, especially the importance of social responsibility to both my com-

munity and the world,” says Durrani. “My transition from engineering to business at Columbia was really an organic evolution.” He found electrical engineering great training for a career in business, giving him the fundamentals to think broadly.

After graduation from Columbia, Durrani went to Lehman Brothers, where he got a “front-row seat” on how American entrepreneurship works. “I was lucky to witness enormous tech innovation and enlightened by how our whole system caters to the entrepreneur,” he says.

In 1989, he founded Vermont Pure/Crystal Rock Water Co., the second largest bottled water company in the Northeast. He was the principal financial partner of Stonyfield Farms, the leading organic yogurt brand, spearheading its private sale to Danone in 2003. He was also a principal of Delicious Brands Inc., whose growth he led, with the financial backing of Carl Icahn, to become the fifth largest cookie brand in the United States.

Reflecting on his education at Columbia Engineering, Durrani, who serves on Columbia Engineering’s Board of Visitors and is chairman of the School’s Entrepreneurship Advisory Board, exclaims that, “Engineering rocks! It’s the only undergrad major that’s embodied by an unmatched work ethic, a deeply steeped quantitative discipline, a real-life approach to solving big problems, and an elegant methodology of how to take complex problems and make them simple in a challenging world.”

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ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

Vibrant Duo, Vibrant Deal RAYMOND CHAN BS’01, KEVIN TUNG BS’01

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usiness partners Kevin Tung and Raymond Chan met as undergraduates at Columbia Engineering and were suitemates their senior year in Hogan Hall. Now, 10 years after graduation, the two entrepreneurs are fresh from celebrating a positive acquisition deal as cofounders of an Internet advertising firm they built from scratch.

Indeed, they kicked off 2012 on an upswing.

Announced January 19, media giant Vibrant Media acquired Tung and Chan’s three-year-old company, Image Space Media. Vibrant, headquartered in New York, is adding Image Space’s in-image advertising platform to its coffer of targeted advertising technologies. Tung and Chan will be taking management roles to further the development of in-image advertising at Vibrant.

“It’s definitely a validation that we took the right path,” says Chan, chief technology officer of New York City–based Image Space.

This path began in 2006 when Tung noticed that many Asian periodicals were filled with images surrounded by supporting advertisements.

“If you look at a photo of a celebrity in an Asian

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magazine,” explains Tung, “there will be blocks of ad blurbs all over the image. In the United States, our magazines have one page of editorials, the following page will be ads, the next page will be editorials, and so on. It definitely has a stronger impact to merge the two.”

So Tung, chief operating officer of Image Space, brought that idea to the United States. He teamed up with Chan in 2008, and the duo presented a demo of their in-image advertising platform at a TechCrunch 50 Conference held in San Francisco. The product was well received.

“We started to think this could be a real business,” says Tung. “We’ve been building our team ever since.”

They raised approximately $3 million in initial funding and formally launched Image Space in October of 2009. Their first client was New York’s Daily News. Later, Proctor and Gamble signed on, charging Image Space with the Jennifer Lopez campaign for Gillette Venus. Image Space’s technology identified all of Jennifer Lopez’s images online and overlaid Gillette Venus ads on top of those photos.

By the time of the acquisition, Image Space had nine employees and several household names as clients under its belt, including Target, USA Today, and Amazon.com.

Both native New Yorkers, Tung and Chan chose Columbia because they wanted to stay local and near family. Chan studied computer science and Tung, operations research. For Chan, Columbia provided strong networking skills and great opportunities to meet people with diverse backgrounds and specialties. Both still remain connected to Columbia Engineering and have returned to campus to recruit for Image Space and to serve as mentors to students who want to be entrepreneurs.

Their advice is practical and realistic, and draws from their own experience. Says Chan, “Some may have this romantic vision of how start-ups are. But it’s pretty grueling, and so are the hours and emotions you invest. It’s critical to have the right team. The students may have a good idea, and it’s their own, but you can’t build a company by yourself. You need a group who shares that vision.”

ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

Pocketful of Dreams ADAM RAPP BS’04

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vid traveler Adam Rapp had a run-in with a pickpocket while visiting Xi’an, China, in 2007. Following the incident, Rapp did what most engineers are trained to do: find a solution to the problem.

“People said to beware of pickpockets in Xi’an, but you never think it’ll happen to you,” says Rapp.

“I didn’t carry money belts because they were inefficient and cumbersome. I looked down at my pants and realized there was something missing in the design.”

He eventually added that missing piece and more.

Rapp’s start-up, Clothing Arts, released its line of pickpocket-proof pants in 2010. P^Cubed Pants are designed to “put security back in the hands of the travelers,” says Rapp.

The pants’ pockets are equipped with all-around zippers; hidden pockets for money and valuables; DuPont Teflon fabric protector to repel oil, water, and stains; and cut-resistant cargo pockets. The pants are available through major U.S. travel catalogs, including Magellan’s, TravelSmith, and Orvis.

After graduation, Rapp worked as an assistant trader for a hedge fund. In 2007, he traded in his desk job for a backpack.

“I found a love of both life on the road and the gear that makes it possible,” he says. “One thing led to another, and I thought, why not build the kind of clothes I wanted to travel in?”

Clothing Arts focused first on T-shirts, inspired

by Rapp’s travels. The shirts are made of highquality, durable cotton, supporting the company’s principle of “making clothes that stand up to life on the road.”

Designing clothes is a bit of a surprise to even Rapp himself, who majored in engineering management systems.

“Most people who knew me then and know what I do now just don’t believe it,” he says with a laugh.

But the travel gear is what got him hooked. “I love backpacks, jackets, and shoes, and all that translated into looking at the details and at how they were made, and improving them,” he adds.

The inventor gene runs in the family. Rapp’s

father, Joe, invented the Rapper, a plastic clapping hand that is used at sporting events, as a promotional tool, and in past years, by Engineering students at Commencement. Rapp has fond memories of helping his father in the factory. “That’s where my ability to sell comes from,” says Rapp.

To Rapp, the friendships he made at Columbia Engineering are as valuable as the education he received. In fact, an old college friend introduced him to the factory owner he uses in India to manufacture the pants.

Clothing Arts will soon debut a line of T-shirts inspired by Rapp’s visits to India, and a women’s line of P^Cubed pants are in the works.

Of making that fateful decision to leave corporate America for the life of an entrepreneur, Rapp says, “Starting my own business and the freedom that comes with that is refreshing. I watched my dad do it. He gave me the tools that make it possible to do what I do now. And, now he wears my pants all the time. I feel like it’s come full circle.”

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ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

Making It Easier to Be Green GIA MACHLIN BS’87, MBA’91BUS

It may not be an exaggeration to say that Gia Machlin was predestined to attend Columbia Engineering. Her mother is a graduate of the School of General Studies, and her father, Professor Eugene S. Machlin, taught metallurgy at Columbia Engineering for more than 40 years.

“My father was a huge influence on my decision to come to Columbia Engineering,” says Machlin, “and given my passion for math and science, it was just a natural thing to do.”

However, Machlin didn’t follow her father’s career path into academia. She had a mind for business.

Machlin is the founder and CEO of New York– based EcoPlum, a socially conscious website that sells a range of environmentally friendly products.

EcoPlum resells only for vendors that have earned third-party sustainability certification or can provide notable eco-labels—a type of seal of approval that verifies a product or vendor meets certain “green” standards.

There is an education component to the website, too.

“We want to foster environmental stewardship by informing and inspiring people to be conscious of their daily habits,” says Machlin. “We’re rapidly becoming a trusted source for information on how to be green.” EcoPlum made its formal debut in 2010.

Machlin credits the rigorous education she received at Columbia Engineering for giving her the fundamentals to succeed as an entrepreneur.

“My approach to challenges is to break down the problems, and when formulating solutions, I’m methodical about ensuring that they fit all the constraints. Columbia Engineering taught me that.”

Engineering was the foundation of Machlin’s future as an entrepreneur, but her career began in industry. “Working for a larger company allows young entrepreneurs to learn,” she says, “and to build a network of professional contacts who are

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critical for a fledgling venture.”

Machlin spent three years at Deloitte as a management consultant, but it eventually became clear that greater professional freedom would be more rewarding and profitable, and that is when she branched out on her own. So began a consultancy focused on the managed health care industry. At the urging of a client in 1998, she launched her first business providing software and services tailored to health care providers.

“We got our first contract with a major managed health care company the day my son was born,” says Machlin, a mother of two. “From there, both Plan Data Management and Noah were my babies.” Her son and Plan Data Management grew strong and healthy. In 2006, Plan Data was acquired by health care management solutions provider TriZetto Group.

Machlin then took a break from her career to focus on raising her children. But she knew she would eventually start another business. This time, however, she decided to align her venture with her personal values. Since the formal launch of EcoPlum, she has been happily enjoying this next stage in her career as an entrepreneur.

“If you look up ‘plum’ in the dictionary, below the more obvious definitions is ‘extremely desirable, rewarding, profitable,’” explains Machlin.

“That’s entrepreneurship for me. It has been an incredibly rich and rewarding experience to find the balance between being a good business person and being a good mom.”

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ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

Iron Man EDWARD HEFFNER BS’68

For a company that has been around for more than a century, Edward Heffner’s family-operated business remains strong as iron.

Empire City Iron Works, founded by Heffner’s grandfather, an immigrant who fled anti-Semitism in Austria, has been providing steel stairs, ironwork, and structural steel since 1904. Business has been so steady, thanks to repeat clients, that the company doesn’t even have a sales force or website.

“People trust us,” says Heffner, co-owner of the Long Island City–based company. “We deliver the quality our clients need when they need it and solve their thorniest technical problems.”

Many NYC buildings have used Empire City, including the United Nations, the Metropolitan Opera, and the new Yankee Stadium. Its current project list includes the new Strand Theatre in Brooklyn; World Trade Center Towers 2, 3, and 4; 9/11 Memorial; the Vehicle Security Center; and the new Police Academy in Queens.

Heffner’s grandfather, father, and uncle, all civil engineers, worked at Empire. His father, Simon, required that involved family members be engineers.

“He would say, ‘I don’t want poets in this business.

They lack the technical training for what we do.’”

Soon after graduating from Columbia Engineering in 1968, Heffner joined the company. After his father’s death in 1975, he became a co-owner with his brother, at age 29. He admits the responsibilities were “a bit scary and difficult,” but now, it’s “just like breathing. Engineering is in my blood.”

As a kid, Heffner accompanied his father to job sites. Whenever he returns to the Metropolitan Opera, he remembers those days.

“We did the framing for the big windows in the

front of the opera house,” says Heffner. “I remember the beautiful panels that were carved in place by Italian craftsmen, the only people in the world able to do that kind of work.”

His ironworkers, like those craftsmen, possess unique skills, and Heffner has a deep appreciation for what he calls “dying” art forms. “It is difficult now to find people who can weld, burn, and fit things together,” says Heffner.

Equally serious, he feels, is the scarcity of engineers today, which Heffner blames on the pay disparity that has pushed them to Wall Street. Heffner points to an increase in cost overruns and delays as a consequence of having too few competent, technically trained engineers available for major projects.

“I am hoping that a silver lining of the financial crisis, given layoffs and bonus cuts on Wall Street, will be more talented students attending engineering school and joining the profession.”

He chose Columbia Engineering for its reputation and location. “I had a lot of good professors,” says Heffner, “such as Rene Testa. He never laughed then, but now he’s one of the most jocular people I know.”

Heffner has always supported the School. He has funded the Heffner Laboratory for Hydrologic Research and the Heffner Biomedical Imaging Lab and is currently funding the renovation of the student lounge on the sixth floor of Mudd.

“SEAS taught me a lot and gave me a terrific experience,” says Heffner. “It’s important for me to give back.”

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ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

Troubleshooting Home Mortgages MICHAEL BYKHOVSKY BS’83

Armed with plenty of ambition, a subway map, and 35 cents for his fare, Moscow native Michael Bykhovsky found his way to Columbia Engineering and began an entrepreneurial journey that has taken him from Wall Street to California.

Upon arriving in the United States, Bykhovsky recalled seeing Manhattan on a subway map. The borough’s name quickly conjured up his memories of the Manhattan Project, a research and development program that produced the first atomic bomb.

He knew Columbia University had a role in the project’s beginnings, and he was determined to find the campus.

“In ’77, it was still the Iron Wall, so there was absolutely no information flow between the two countries,” Bykhovsky said. “Columbia picked me up as a 17-year-old kid, pretty much off the street, and gave me the opportunity to develop and learn.”

His determination to succeed led to earning a BS in applied physics from the Engineering School and an MS in physics from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Bykhovsky’s solid scientific background proved to be the launching pad for his career in finance.

He got busy building mortgage analytics systems for Wall Street businesses like Hyperion Capital Management and Prudential Securities. He realized, though, that there weren’t high-quality commercial models available that could generate sufficiently accurate mortgage projections. So, in 1996, he started a company that could: Applied Financial Technology.

Bykhovsky’s software connected macroeconomic scenarios such as home prices and interest rates as well as mortgage holders’ projected behaviors. In turn, the company could calculate the mortgages’ values as well as other derivatives.

“Quantitative training is probably the most important thing in quantitative finance, and that’s what I did,” he said.

Having built a mortgage database and a set

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of analytics, he asked his researchers to analyze what would happen if U.S. home prices stopped increasing.

“I got convinced enough that the whole thing would collapse, so I sold the company in 2006 before it did,” Bykhovsky said.

He’s also used his financial smarts while sitting on an economic advisory board for U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier of California. Bykhovsky pushed for refinancing of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans with no questions asked and explained that by allowing lowered payments, “we would definitely not increase the defaults; quite the opposite would happen.”

After many attempts, the new regulation by the Federal Housing Finance Agency passed in late 2011.

Nowadays, the San Francisco–based Bykhovsky continues to act as an academic and economic adviser. He mentors a technology start-up that includes Columbia Engineering faculty and students.

He also keeps active as a member of the School’s Board of Visitors and the Engineering Entrepreneurship Advisory Board.

“What distinguishes Misha from many other highly successful entrepreneurs is his passion … to share with others what he has learned and help them become successful entrepreneurs,” said Steve Perlman ’83, Bykhovsky’s friend since freshman year and CEO of Rearden Companies.

While Bykhovsky encourages his four children, with his wife Charo of 17 years, to find their own life’s mission, he would be delighted if they landed at Columbia.

“Without Columbia I most likely wouldn’t be who I am today,” he said.

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ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

Healthy Thinking VIKRAM KUMAR BS’99

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ikram Kumar calls himself a thought leader, and the constant concern on his mind is health care.

After graduating from Columbia Engineering with a BS in operations research—and a handful of entrepreneurship classes from Columbia Business School under his belt—Kumar attended Harvard Medical School, combining and cultivating his interests in engineering, medicine, and health. Over the past decade, he has launched four businesses, each with its own specific health care focus.

Though he juggles several projects, he is currently more heavily involved in Dimagi, a company he started in 2002. At Dimagi, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Kumar serves as chief medical officer and leads the India office and its global research and development grant pipeline.

Dimagi’s flagship product, CommCareHQ, enables community health workers to track patients and data on a mobile phone, specifically in remote areas where there are few or no clinics or doctor care.

During medical school, Kumar and his cofounders developed the concept that is today CommCareHQ. He also worked with his adviser, Sandy Pentland (at MIT Media Lab), on a mobile phone–based soft-

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ware tool to help detect the mood state of bipolar disorder patients using voice analysis and video games. This eventually became another one of Kumar’s start-ups, Cogito Health.

“Cogito is commercializing the use of acoustic analysis to understand mood patterns and behavior,” he says, “and has significant traction with Fortune 500 health management companies interested in this technology.”

Indeed, Kumar’s constantly thinking up health care innovations. But not all of them pan out.

It was at Columbia Engineering where Kumar got to experience firsthand the excitement of creating an innovative product as well as the not-so-easy and not-so-clear path to executing it.

“One of the most valuable skills I learned as an engineer was how to write software,” says Kumar, based now in New Delhi, India. As an undergraduate student, with former Columbia biological sciences professor and mentor Rafael Yuste, Kumar developed a software program that analyzed multidimensional neuronal data. He patented their invention and shopped it around. “We were unable to find licensees,” he says, “but that process gave me my first taste for commercializing innovations—

something I’ve done in all my ventures to date.”

While ideas seemingly come easy to Kumar, who even at age 14 invented a secure printer-fax machine with his father, he admits being an entrepreneur is likely one of the most difficult “jobs” he has ever had.

“The experience seems glamorous from afar, but it is a lot of nonstop work for little pay,” says Kumar. “The payoff is in the joy of creation, with a bonus of financial returns if you’re lucky.”

Luckily for the many clients benefiting from his products, Kumar keeps at it. In addition to Dimagi and Cogito Health, he is the cofounder of Doctor Kares, a short-stay surgical hospital he founded with his father, a well-known neurosurgeon in India. One of the hospital’s focus areas is the use of ozone therapy for the treatment of herniated discs, a therapy developed by his father. This led to Kumar’s latest venture, Ozorie, a range of natural topical oils for pain relief and rejuvenation enriched with oxygen.

Kumar’s entrepreneurial wheels are constantly spinning. To budding entrepreneurs, he says, “Stop thinking and just do it.”

ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

Top Chef RAHUL AKERKAR BS’83, MS’86

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ahul Akerkar is all about mixing his passion for life, food, and science, and has managed to blend these key ingredients into a career as one of Mumbai’s leading restaurant moguls.

Regarded as the pioneer of the independentchef-restaurateur-run eatery in Mumbai, shifting the focus in fine dining away from the five-star hotel domain, Akerkar, who is the managing director and director of cuisine at deGustibus Hospitality Pvt. Ltd., says, “I’ve been able to shape and change the way people eat here, and that’s exciting!” His restaurants are known for their warm hospitality and his eclectic, loosely modern-European cuisine, expressed with a healthy dose of local Indian flavor.

Akerkar cofounded deGustibus Hospitality with his wife, Malini, in 1996. They operate six restaurants in Mumbai, including the much acclaimed Indigo, a bar, an event/banqueting space, and a catering business.

Born in Mumbai to a German-American mother and an Indian father, Akerkar grew up across two continents, spending many summers in the United States visiting his grandparents in New York. He earned his BA in biology at Franklin and Marshall

College in 1981 and planned to go to medical school but changed his mind when he discovered biomedical engineering. He enrolled in Columbia Engineering’s 3-2 program and earned his BS in chemical engineering in 1983 and his MS in biochemical engineering in 1986.

Well on his way to completing his doctorate, Akerkar fell into a disagreement with his adviser over his research and lost, as he puts it, his faith in academia and research. Meanwhile, all through college and grad school, Akerkar worked in restaurant kitchens, learned to cook, and absorbed the business. While it helped pay the bills, he was also very drawn to the allure of working at some of New York’s top restaurants.

“If you’ve read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential,” he says, “you’ll know what I mean— I lived that life!”

So when it came down to deciding whether to choose restaurants over a research job in biotech, food won.

“I pursued cooking. It was the only other constant in my life.”

Restaurants and academia were “journeys unto themselves,” he adds. Doing various restaurant

jobs taught Akerkar the food and beverage business, while the discipline of doing engineering research at Columbia helped him question the whatwhy-how of the tasks he was performing at work.

“Working was never a routine job for me,” he observes, “but rather a challenge to solve and master a problem or situation—much like a line of questioning one might develop while determining a course of research. This was an approach to work that allowed me to learn and grow as a chef, and to understand the business very quickly.”

Even though today Akerkar is not an engineer, he still thinks like one.

“I love analyzing and interpreting my own business-specific data in an attempt to understand how I’m doing and to improve the business.”

His entrepreneurial path may have taken a few sharp turns, but Akerkar does not mind. He is a firm believer in going after what you enjoy the most. “Follow your heart and your dreams—have the guts to have faith in your own vision!”

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ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

Finding Your Way JESSICA TSOONG BS’08

Jessica Tsoong may be considered fresh out of school, but she’s already revolutionizing the way people interact with their environments. Last year she cofounded WiFiSLAM, a start-up that develops enabling technologies for indoor location-based services. Its technology can run on any smartphone and has the ability to provide indoor locationbased services with no initial setup in any Wi-Fi-enabled building.

“WiFiSLAM’s technology can pinpoint the location of your phone on a map to within a couple of steps,” says Tsoong. “This could lead to all kinds of useful applications, like helping people find their way through sprawling complexes like airports, malls, and hospitals. And if you stop in front of something that interests you, we’d be able to give you information on it.”

Tsoong has always been interested in entrepreneurship. While both her parents are doctors, they are also entrepreneurs and “savvy business people,” as she puts it, “who created a lot of inspiration for me.”

Born and raised in California, Tsoong planned to go to college locally, but after attending a SEAS Days on Campus, she changed her mind. “It was mainly the people and other students that I met at Columbia that made me decide to come,” she says. “The caliber of students and the curriculum set Columbia apart from the other schools I was considering.” Its New York City location was an added bonus.

During her undergrad years at Engineering, Tsoong was active in a range of interests, even though she says that Columbia was a lot of work.

“Doing problem sets every week definitely helped me to learn diligence and persistence,” she notes. “Even if it wasn’t something you wanted to do, you knew that it had to get done. That happens a lot in a start-up, too!”

Tsoong played tennis all through her four years at Engineering and also took piano lessons at Teachers College. She credits the Core Curriculum for encouraging her to learn beyond her major.

Tsoong also took all the classes she could on entrepreneurship that were offered at the time and cites Professor Jack McGourty as one of the professors who encouraged her to explore entrepreneurship.

She also was active in the Columbia Organization of Rising Entrepreneurs. After graduation, she earned her MS from Stanford.

Tsoong, who is the youngest member on the School’s Entrepreneurship Advisory Board, loves being an entrepreneur. “It’s been such an amazing experience because you are able to meet innovative and passionate young entrepreneurs who are so smart and have a strong drive to build products that can change the world,” she says. “It’s also been tough at times because you are always learning. The start-up experience, like everyone says, is filled with ups and downs, exactly like a roller coaster. You have to learn to take the ups and downs in stride and not let it affect the big picture of what you want to create.”

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ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

Light Innovator LUKE CHEN MS’88

Luke Chen sees the light at the end of the tunnel. Opto Express Inc., the start-up Chen’s been furiously working on since 2009, is gearing up to launch its first product in March. The product, which Chen claims will rival what is offered by technology conglomerate 3M, has the capabilities to increase the brightness of any TFT-LCD (Thin Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Display) panel by at least 40 percent.

“In general, 50 percent light from the back-light unit of a TFT panel will be absorbed and turned into heat,” explains Chen, cofounder of Opto Express. “Our product will be able to convert that light that is supposedly being absorbed by the components in the TFT panel into penetrable light.” This technology, he says, will “enable either a portable device to run longer on the same battery or a LCD TV to use less energy under the same level of brightness.”

Chen attributes his ability to fine-tune a business idea that is smart, innovative, and market ready to his engineering background coupled with his experience as a former investment banker.

“Being an engineer and an investment banker helps me to understand the rise and fall of companies,” says Chen, who splits his time between Nanjing, China, and Taipei, Taiwan. “As soon as I saw that the right engineering, right market, and right management were on the table, I assembled them together with the right capital.”

Chen came to the United States from Taiwan in 1985 to attend Columbia Engineering. His older brother, who was already studying at Baruch College, urged him to move to New York City, too.

Chen had $6,000 to his name and naively thought that would be enough for graduate school. Still, this didn’t stop him.

“I realized I couldn’t afford Columbia, but I still wanted to attend. I got admission, after all,” he says. He set up a meeting with the School’s treasurer who ended up helping Chen find a job ­­ 22 | ­­ COLUMBIA ENGINEERING­­

in Public Safety. Chen parked cars full time and also worked as a security officer, benefiting from the University’s employee tuition exemption plan.

“I don’t remember his name but he must’ve been my guardian angel.”

Growing up in Taiwan, Chen says “Engineering became every boy’s dream.” He remembers being inspired by all of the infrastructure expansion happening in Taiwan in the early 1980s.

After graduating from Columbia Engineering with an MS in operations research, Chen worked at Andersen Consulting. He moved back to Asia in 1995 to work for PaineWebber. He left investment banking altogether in 2007 after connecting with a former high school classmate whose expertise was in the TFT-LCD industry. Now they are business partners.

Thinking back to how SEAS prepared him for running his own business, Chen says the Engineering School definitely sent him on the right path.

“To be an entrepreneur, you need not just luck and encouragement, but you also need good analytical skills and the enthusiasm for innovation,” says Chen. “The Engineering School taught me well in these areas and helped build my passion to innovate.”

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entreprene u rs making an impact

Opposites Attract Steve Jacobs BS’94, MS’95, PhD’98

For Steve Jacobs, fashion and engineering are two industries that don’t clash; instead, they complement one another well.

Jacobs oversees the technology organization at the Gilt Groupe, a members-only website launched in 2007 with steep discounts on high fashion and designer labels. On Gilt, shoppers can find Zac Posen, Jimmy Choo, and other luxury brands at up to 60 percent off. Jacobs joined Gilt in 2009 to build out its data engineering team, after which, he quickly rose to the chief information officer position a year later.

On landing in the fashion world, Jacobs says, “As a broad generalization, engineers are not fashionable and I’m no exception, though I have noticed incremental improvements in my own style.

That said, Gilt does boast some of the most talented and fashionable engineers.”

Jacobs has straddled technology and management throughout his career, beginning with Poindexter Systems, an online ad personalization company, where he was responsible for development, architecture, and operations. He later worked at Merrill Lynch and is currently involved as a mentor for NYC Seed, an early-stage investment fund.

He joined Gilt for many reasons but says, “The most surprising motivator for me was how passionately customers felt about Gilt. When I tell people where I work, their faces light up and they tell me, ‘I love Gilt!’ or ‘I got these on Gilt!’ pointing to some article of clothing. Sure it’s only fashion, but there aren’t a lot of places to make people that happy on such a large scale.”

The engineer in him has always been obsessed with improving things, even as a kid.

At age 8, Jacobs created a system that would automatically open his bedroom door with a press of a button.

“As I’d walk up the stairs to the second floor, I would press a button, which would cause a motor

to turn on in my bedroom and pull open the door via a string so it was open by the time I reached it,” he says. “Huge time savings!”

Jacobs earned his three degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia Engineering and feels lucky to have finished his PhD at a time when the Internet was booming.

“There was a lot of entrepreneurial activity to admire at Columbia: professors taking sabbaticals to start companies, the patent office encouraging and looking for good ideas to patent, partnerships with the business school in the form of joint classes with business and engineering.”

That melding of philosophies has been part of Jacobs’s life since college. He started his bachelor’s at Bard, where he studied physics, and went on to complete the 3-2 program at Columbia, where he took classes his final two undergraduate years.

“A lot of innovative ideas come from applying something from one industry to the problem of another,” he says of his career, which has included work in finance, online marketing, and now e-commerce.

“The combination of Bard, a small liberal arts school in the woods of upstate New York,” he adds, “and Columbia, a large university in Manhattan, was the perfect set of extremes for me to experience two very different ways of learning.”

Kind of like engineering and fashion.

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ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

The (High) Definition of Success AMI MIRON ProfD’89

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mi Miron learned a simple but significant lesson by the time he was 20 years old: if he worked hard enough, he could achieve more than he imagined he could. And in the cable television and broadcast world, he certainly did, leading the team that developed the U.S. standard for high-definition television (HDTV).

Miron, who was born in Israel, traces this to his mandatory military service. He graduated first in his class from the Israel Defense Forces Officers Academy and was recognized for distinguished service as a captain in the Israeli Army.

“The military let me, at age 20, be in charge of a battalion, where I had to be responsible for all the needs of my unit in war and peace,” he says. “This background helped my leadership, organizational skills, and my confidence in achieving stretched goals.”

Lessons learned from serving in the military contributed to a successful technology career that spans 35 years—from his start with Philips Electronics to his current endeavor helping entrepreneurs develop successful ventures—and includes winning two Technology and Engineering Emmy awards.

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Miron earned his professional degree in electrical engineering at Columbia in 1989, taking classes at night while working at Philips Electronics as manager for VLSI video systems. Although he completed all course work for the PhD, he left school without doing a dissertation to accept a promotion at Philips to vice president for television systems and worked on HDTV. That decision proved fruitful for more than just Miron.

His ensuing technical achievements are as visible worldwide as they are anonymous, at least to those outside the realm of electrical engineering.

Miron could be the answer to a trivia question or even a series of them.

At Philips, he developed and patented the first picture-in-picture technology for televisions under the Magnavox brand. He devised a system to solve the problem of ghost images on television screens, which the FCC adopted as the nation’s standard.

He was later a member of the team that developed the U.S. standard for high-definition TV. In 1993, Miron joined General Instrument Corporation (now Motorola) as vice president to lead

advanced technology and new products for the cable TV market. He left Motorola four years later and founded MoreCom Inc., a software networking company that provided digital entertainment and Internet content to televisions. It was later sold to Comcast.

Currently, Miron is the founder and president of AM Partners, based in Philadelphia. He works with entrepreneurs, start-ups, venture capital, and universities. He serves on the board of Ben Franklin Technology Partners, is senior adviser at Wharton Small Business Development Center, and is on the Upper Dublin School District strategic planning committee.

Miron earned his BSc in electrical engineering from the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. He came to New York to earn an MS from what is now Polytechnic Institute of NYU, before coming to Columbia Engineering.

Miron says his graduate work at Columbia “was instrumental in convincing the Philips management that the immigrant can be successful.”

ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

Trading Spaces RICHARD HUNTER MS’67

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any parents hope their child follows in their footsteps and takes over the family business. Richard Hunter at first followed his academic interests, until a genetic pull tugged at his entrepreneurial spirit.

The lure of New York City and Columbia Engineering’s aerospace engineering graduate program motivated Hunter to apply after getting his bachelor’s degree in math and physics in 1965 from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.

“I was convinced I was going to have a career in aerospace,” Hunter said. “It was the middle of the space program, and I found the attraction of New York City and trying something different a great experience.”

Soon after graduation, he began working for Bellcomm, a consulting arm of Bell Telephone Laboratories. Hunter worked with NASA headquarters on projects involving the U.S. Apollo space program.

“My interest in aerospace started with the first satellite launched by Russia,” he said. “I was very fortunate to have a broad engineering, math, and physics education that allowed me to participate in the Apollo project at a ‘systems’ level right out of school.”

When Bell Telephone Laboratories exited aerospace work, Hunter went to work at the Toro Company for his late father, Edwin, who is considered an irrigation industry pioneer.

“Aerospace jobs were very scarce in 1974,” Hunter said. “The family business opportunity won.”

In 1981, Hunter’s dad and brother Paul founded Hunter Industries Inc., a global manufacturer of landscape and golf course irrigation equipment. Hunter’s sister Ann joined the company in 1982, and Hunter came on board in 1983.

Hunter became president and chief executive officer of Hunter Industries in 1994.

“One of the things that’s fun about our company is that it’s a relationship business, not a transaction business,” he said. “If you can build a good product with enough margin in it to provide customer satisfaction, you’re in good shape.”

For a company that started out with a single product, Hunter Industries has grown to 1,500 employees around the world, including Jordan, China, and Spain, among others. The San Marcos, California–based business also boasts 120 patents and 57 registered trademarks.

Hunter said the business has been profitable

since the first year, but he cautioned the entrepreneurial route is a tough one.

“You will need more start-up capital and you will work harder and longer than you expect,” he said. “It’s a 24-hour job.”

Hunter credits his dad with fueling his business innovator fire. The family legacy continues: Hunter’s son Greg, 38, is now Hunter Industries’ vice president of marketing, and son Scott, 31, graduated from Columbia College in 2003 and is now in his medical residency in California.

Hunter remains involved in academia. He was a long-time trustee at Whitman College and also served on two boards for California State University, San Marcos. He has been a member of the Columbia Engineering Board of Visitors. He received the Irrigation Association’s Industry Achievement Award in 2010.

When he’s not busy running the company, Hunter likes to chase solar eclipses with his wife Jan, three kids, and five grandchildren.

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ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

Millien’s Patented Success RAYMOND MILLIEN BS’92

Raymond Millien said he heeded his parents’ advice to “major in something practical” when he settled on a computer science degree.

As far as usefulness goes, the degree has paid dividends, especially now in Millien’s work as a patent attorney for PCT Law Group, a firm he cofounded in 2007. Millien’s engineering background helps him better relate to clients, many of whom are software engineers, he said.

Recently, he said, “I was out working with a client who had a new compiler invention, and all the things I learned at Columbia were still running in my head.”

Some of those lessons began during meetings with his core undergraduate study group when he was trying to plug through courses such as firstyear chemistry. It’s these kinds of experiences that helped shape Millien’s ability to think logically and successfully problem solve—skills that prove invaluable as an entrepreneur today.

At PCT, Millien counsels clients on patent, copyright, trademark, and trade-secret matters. He also performs intellectual property portfolio evaluations and due diligence for mergers and other corporate transactions. The firm has 11 attorneys, and revenue recently hit seven figures.

While proud of these achievements, Millien acknowledged starting the firm has been challenging.

“It’s not like your job is over at 5 p.m. and you go home,” said Millien, who is married with two children. “I think about work seven days a week.”

Millien’s decision to start a business was preceded by a distinguished career and educational path. While he grew up in Brooklyn, he didn’t consider Columbia Engineering until his high school history teacher, an alumnus, made the suggestion.

After touring the campus, “I loved it and said I was going to apply.”

After graduation, he was accepted into General Electric’s Edison Engineering Program, a technical training program. He enjoyed the work there as a

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software engineer, but found it difficult to sit behind a computer 8 to 10 hours a day.

“I am much more a people person,” said Millien, who decided to pursue an interest in patent law and entered George Washington University Law School in 1994.

After graduating in 1997, Millien practiced law at the Washington, D.C., offices of DLA Piper U.S. LLP, as well as Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox PLLC. With the technology boom under way, the majority of his clients were entrepreneurs.

While he gained a great deal of experience working with these start-ups, he eventually moved back to New York City in 2004, taking a job as patent counsel at American Express. Two years later he got an opportunity to be general counsel at Ocean Tomo, a Chicago-based, start-up IP merchant bank. The position required him to split his time between legal and management responsibilities, giving him a better window into what it’s like to run a business.

“It was there I got the entrepreneurial bug,” Millien said.

While starting PCT during the recession proved challenging, the firm continues to grow. Millien has his sights on doubling the number of lawyers on staff and growing the international client base.

Said Millien: “Who knew this little kid from Brooklyn would have a minority-owned firm with seven-figure revenue and clients all over world?”

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ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

Structural Safety Patrol SOTIRIOS VAHAVIOLOS MS’72, MPhil’75, PhD’76

Born and raised in Greece, Sotirios Vahaviolos could have followed the military route most young men take. Fortunately for many users of bridges and highways, Vahaviolos pursued engineering and, for the past 40 years, has made it his business to monitor the safety and wear and tear of these vast structures.

In 1978, Vahaviolos founded Physical Acoustics Corp. (now Mistras Group Inc.), a leader in nondestructive testing (NDT) and acoustics emissions that provides “early warning” information about the degradation of bridges and highways.

“Think of a doctor,” says Vahaviolos. “If you have a health problem that requires an ultrasound or sonogram, your general practitioner would send you to a specialist. We do the same thing but in structures.”

As a child, Vahaviolos experimented with electronics and knew he would be an engineer. He also knew he would start his own business like his father, who ran a butcher shop in Sparta, Greece. “It was in my genes to work for myself,” he adds.

Vahaviolos left Greece in 1966 to study electrical engineering at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. After graduation, he joined AT&T Bell Laboratories as a researcher and remained there until he launched Mistras.

Vahaviolos has sustained a successful business for four decades but not without its share of challenges.

“I made the classic mistakes that many entrepreneurs make—undercapitalized, working on product concepts that took longer to manufacture, and having customers accept them slowly and with great reluctance,” he says.

Headquartered in Princeton, Mistras steadily grew after it expanded with the acquisition of a national NDT services provider.

Mistras went public in 2009 on the New York Stock Exchange—it now has continuous annual revenue growth of 30 percent. Its technology monitors many important and historic bridges, including the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and the Hammersmith Bridge in London. Mistras also

provides “asset protection inspection solutions” to refineries, nuclear, fossil, and chemical plants, pipelines, and aerospace structures, and it provides software to perform risk-based asset integrity management.

The idea behind Mistras began while Vahaviolos worked at Bell Labs.

“I was inspired by many colleagues who were starting their own businesses,” says Vahaviolos.

“Once it was clear to me that the field of structural health monitoring was thirsty for technology-based solutions, I approached AT&T to give me a license of my 15 or so patents to start a new company.

They did, and they became my first and best customer.”

AT&T also gave Vahaviolos a full scholarship to pursue his master’s and PhD in electrical engineering at Columbia.

His thesis adviser, Professor Henry Meadows, urged him to become more interdisciplinary and work with the School of Mines and civil engineering.

“That led me to focusing on NDT today,” says Vahaviolos.

Thirty-five years after graduation, Vahaviolos remains connected to Columbia. He and his company have been working with Raimondo Betti, chair of the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, on a new NDT system to monitor cables of suspension bridges.

“Sotirios is a lively personality. Very easy to get along with and work with,” says Betti. “He is a pioneer in the field.”

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entreprene u rs making an impact

Creating Turkey’s Largest Internet Portal Emre Kurttepeli BS’90

Emre Kurttepeli knows his way around the Net. He launched Mynet.com—Turkey’s largest Internet portal— a decade ago by offering free e-mail to customers. The portal now has 18 million customers using 40 different services, ranging from e-mail to content and social Internet services.

Nearly 60 percent of the Turkish Internet population visit Mynet daily, ranking it as one of the largest Internet properties in Europe, he says.

“We are assertive about being the biggest Internet portal for Turkey,” he says. “Today, the number of people who have access to the Internet in Turkey is approximately 31 million, and most of these people make use of services like e-mail, news, finance, music, and video on Mynet.”

Kurttepeli, who studied industrial engineering at Columbia, chose engineering because he wanted to know more than just how things work.

“I wanted to know not only the what but also the why,” he says.

So far, with Mynet’s traction, things are working out fine, and Kurttepeli says what he learned at Columbia Engineering had a lot to do with his success.

The Engineering School and the diverse cultures among students, he says, helped him learn to appreciate other people’s points of view.

“As of today I still try to cultivate this diversity in the companies I’ve been part of and, specifically in a field of Internet, where everything is changing at lightning speed, I strongly feel this kind of approach and philosophy paves the way to success.”

Growing up in Turkey, Kurttepeli was exposed to an international flavor early on by attending a U.S.affiliated high school.

“Continuing my education in the United States was a natural extension of this,” he says. “But what drew me to Columbia, besides the institutional reputation, really was the international flavor it has in its culture and students.”

Kurttepeli says the University lived up to its reputation.

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“Studying at Columbia gave me not only access to great scholars and challenging students but also access to the best New York City has to offer. I was exposed to leaders in every aspect of life, and this has given me the ‘courage’ to think truly globally.”

Despite the success he has experienced with Mynet, Kurttepeli is not one to sit back and just watch his tech empire grow. He has founded or invested in more than 20 Internet and technology start-ups in Turkey, ranging from e-commerce to vertical social network sites to mobile and gaming companies.

Kurttepeli is also one of the founding members of the Columbia University Global Center in Istanbul, which opened in November. The center is the sixth opened by Columbia University since 2009 and will be a regional hub for a wide range of activities and resources available to the University community.

Kurttepeli always follows his passion.

“I believe it is the key ingredient of any successful entrepreneur, and when you have that passion, all those long hours of work and the compromises you make come so easy.”

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ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

Leading Bio-Pharma Innovation VIJAY SAMANT MS’77

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s a foreign student who came to Columbia Engineering in the 1970s, Vijay Samant quickly learned how important it is to go after what you want.

Samant hoped to receive a different room assignment when he arrived on campus, so without hesitation, the Mumbai, India, native gathered his unpacked bags, made his way to the crowded Dean of Student Affairs Office, renegotiated, and got a different one.

“It instantly taught me how this country works, which is different than any other country,” he said.

The initiative Samant displayed then has contributed to the development of his American entrepreneurial spirit.

Since 2000, Samant has served as president and chief executive of Vical Inc., a San Diego–based biopharmaceutical product developer focused on DNA vaccines and cancer immunotherapies.

The bulk of his career took place at health care giant Merck, where he spent 23 years in sales, marketing, operations, and business development roles. From 1998 to mid-2000, he was chief operating officer of Merck’s Vaccine Division. Samant’s time at Merck was significant.

“Mind-boggling innovations came out of the

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company,” he said. “The entrepreneurial spirit there was incredible.”

Samant’s education blends business with engineering—a mix that has given him a leg up in his career. Samant earned his MBA from the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983. He received his master’s in chemical engineering from Columbia in 1977 and a bachelor’s, also in chemical engineering, from the University of Bombay in 1975.

“I’m a technocrat by training and a businessman by experience,” Samant commented. “Anybody who doesn’t understand how business works cannot be a successful entrepreneur.”

Samant credits Columbia for being “intellectually honest and intellectually intensive”—two characteristics he feels a person needs to possess as an entrepreneur.

Of course, he got some help along the way, too.

There were influencers at Columbia who supported Samant, including Carlos Bonilla, former professor and chair of the Chemical Engineering Department at the School. Professor Bonilla gave Samant a paid fellowship when he couldn’t cover his health insurance costs. Samant said Bonilla expressed concern to him, however, that as a foreign student,

Samant might go back to India and never contribute to Columbia.

“I told him I would prove him wrong. Over the years, I have contributed very hard,” Samant said.

The life lessons didn’t stop there. Samant’s adviser, the late Professor Carl Gryte, became a lifelong friend.

“I learned most of my problem-solving and entrepreneur skills from him,” said Samant.

Samant returns to Morningside several times a year and has been active on the board of managers of the Columbia Engineering Alumni Association.

He has also chaired the Pupin Medal Committee for the last 12 years.

Samant knows it takes energy and passion to be an entrepreneur. He believes 75 percent of success is based on hard work, 5 percent on genius, and the remaining 20 percent is luck.

“If you’re going to engineering school, you need to get hard skills to make sure you learn something,” Samant advised. “Don’t chase money; get some good experience. Money will come.”

ENTREPRENEURS MAKING AN IMPACT

All in the Cards JOHN KOGER MS’86

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ven as a kid, John Koger knew he wanted to start his own business. He kept a log of business ideas on index cards. There was a card dedicated to a concept for adding handbrakes to skis and another for a solar-powered dirigible. He also had a natural knack for electronics and spent hours at home putting together electronic projects, including a primitive video game system and an electronic BB gun made from magnetic coils and a straw.

“Engineering chose me,” he says.

Koger attended Princeton University as an undergraduate, but when he decided to pursue a master’s in electrical engineering, the faster pace and energy of the city drew him to Columbia Engineering. It was at the School where he had his first taste of entrepreneurship.

Koger and a friend attempted a start-up around the concept of a digital oscilloscope plug-in card for an IBM PC. “We convinced a professor to sponsor our project as independent work for course credit and begged parts from local electronics distributors,” he recalls.

They got it to work and scored an A in the class but could not pull it off as a viable business.

“We had no comprehension of production, marketing, or sales,” he adds, “so the idea of a start-up

faded and we went off to get jobs in industry.”

It was not until 1995—after working 10 years making graphics chips at computer giant Digital Equipment Corp.—that Koger fulfilled his childhood dream. With two business partners and $250,000 of angel funding, he launched Oasis Semiconductor, a developer of image-processing chips for copier and printer manufacturers. For Koger, those early days were exciting yet rocky.

“We had five years of long hours and little cash, followed by five years of long hours and lots of cash when we found our sweet spot of helping companies create cost-effective, multifunction printers,” says Koger. “We screwed up lots of times, but usually we were able to figure it out and get things back on track.”

In 2005, Oasis, which grew in size from three employees to a hundred and achieved $30 million in annual sales, was acquired by SigmaTel in a $70 million deal. Koger has since become an angel investor and adviser to several start-ups. His current ventures include a solar company developing a heliostat (mirror on motors that constantly adjusts to reflect the sun onto a fixed point), a computer tablet software infrastructure company that has been leading the charge on android tablets, and a surveillance drone

aircraft start-up that plans to debut its special flying properties this summer.

At Columbia Engineering, Koger sits on the Entrepreneurship Advisory Board. He has fond memories of Professor Yannis Tsividis’s class on analog chip design. Beyond just the classwork, it was Tsividis himself who left a lasting impression.

“The part I remember most was his confident but gentle personality that showed me you can be bold and successful without being abrasive or abusive,” says Koger.

“When running Oasis, we were careful to select team members who enjoyed what they were doing and who knew how to laugh. You have to spend a lot of time together; you might as well enjoy it.”

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Engineering School, NYC in Discussions over New Data Sciences and Engineering Institute

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of all departments of the Engineering School in a state-of-the-art interdisciplinary facility.

Kathleen McKeown, vice dean of research and Henry and Gertrude Rothschild Professor of Computer Science, and Patricia Culligan, vice dean of academic affairs and professor of civil engineering and engineering mechanics, led the University’s response to the city.

“Data science and engineering,” said McKeown, “is relevant to many disciplines.

The level of interest from faculty is high, with participation from fields as diverse as journalism (digital media) to civil engineering (sensors for infrastructure).”

“The centers of the Institute focus on grand challenges important to the future of New York City,” said Culligan. “Our existing faculty are already leaders in these areas. We are excited to capitalize on this straight away.”

As the University conveyed in its proposal, said Dean Peña-Mora, the School is ready to go on this. “This is our city and has been our home for more than 250 years. We are here to stay,” he said, “and to invest in our future and the city’s future.”

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he request for proposal (RFP) by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to build a new applied sciences campus in New York City has ignited Columbia Engineering’s thinking around the development of an altogether new top-tier, cross-disciplinary campus.

Columbia’s proposal for the city was for a new Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering (IDSE), to be located at the University’s Manhattanville campus in the old manufacturing zone in West Harlem. The Institute could fill the explosive need for the acquisition, synthesis, and analysis of “big data” generated in five areas of an information-driven society: new media, smart cities, health analytics, cybersecurity, and financial analytics. The proposal called for a rich, interdisciplinary approach, with SEAS faculty working closely—as many already do—with departments in the Arts and Sciences, Columbia University Medical Center, and the University’s professional schools.

While Cornell University and partner Technion-Israel Institute of Technology will be building a campus on Roosevelt Island, conversations between the city and the senior administration at Columbia are still ongoing.

“We remain greatly encouraged by the city’s interest in our plan,” said Dean Feniosky Peña-Mora, “and the Engineering and Applied Science Faculty are very much engaged in a discussion of how the School can best take advantage of its position and resources to make an impact on the city’s future as a tech hub.”

Part of the continued discussions between the city and the School include proceeding immediately with a modified plan of Engineering’s new Institute that will be housed in existing space, with a longer-term vision of housing the Institute in a new applied science and engineering building on the Manhattanville campus that can accommodate the expansion

Jerome L. Greene Science Center BR

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Conceptual rendering of a massing diagram of Manhattanville, showing Site 6, slated for a new Engineering building.

Construction is currently under way for the Jerome L. Greene Science Center, scheduled to open in 2015, which will be home to the Mind Brain Behavior Initiative. The Studebaker Building, to the northwest of Site 6, presently houses the University’s Departments of Finance, Human Resources, and Information Technology.

Left: Karlee Blank ’12CC assists an In-V-Ent-Ed student; center and right: students attend class at the November 2011 India session.

INSPIRING ENTREPRENEURSHIP GLOBALLY

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olumbia Engineering is promoting entrepreneurship globally. First stop: India.

In-V-Ent-Ed, a new program developed by Corporate, Government, and Global Engagement at the School, debuted this past November in New Delhi. Tailored to students in high school, college, or graduate school, the five-day program consists of an intensive set of interactive lectures and short case studies focused entirely on the process of planning a new venture. In-V-Ent-Ed—Innovation, Venture Creation, Entrepreneurship, Education—is another example of the ways in which the School is helping to foster, support, and engage in entrepreneurship.

It is also a new way for the School to extend its reach globally.

“We’re constantly trying to engage with other countries and create opportunities there for our faculty, students, alumni,” said Jack McGourty, who spearheads the program. “We felt a global entrepreneurial program would be a good way to engage a region and to potentially create a foothold for us there and create partnerships that make sense. We’re in the early stage still, but people are already interested in getting involved.”

In its inaugural session in New Delhi, In-VEnt-Ed had 21 high school students and four college students. Already eight sessions are confirmed for this summer, including four more in India, two in Turkey, one in China, and one in Dubai. The strategy is to partner with local entrepreneurs, said McGourty, to handle on its end the recruitment, marketing, and admissions. In India, the School’s partner is FutureWorks Consulting, a company that provides admissions consulting to students interested in American universities.

In-V-Ent-Ed exposes the students in India to a “completely different pedagogy,” said Kavita Singh ’03BUS, CEO of FutureWorks, who earned an MBA at Columbia Business School.

Entrepreneurship is becoming more and more important in emerging countries, said Singh, and so “providing students with the opportunity to understand whether such a path is right for them and also the tools to start thinking as an entrepreneur at an early stage is critical.”

In-V-Ent-Ed has the potential to get other participants involved, said McGourty, and not just the students who sign up for the program.

In fact, one of McGourty’s former students, Karlee Blank ’12CC, helped develop In-V-EntEd’s programming and even came up with its

unique moniker. Engineering alumnus Ashok Sinha MS’99 has volunteered to be a mentor and currently advises one of the high school students who attended the India program.

Each session culminates with a little healthy competition. Students present their business plan to a panel of experts that includes members of the local business and venture capital communities.

In November, high school student Shreya Bahl took first place with her idea for a mobile application dedicated to medical benefits. InV-Ent-Ed helped flesh it out and fine-tune the details. “They made me look at it from different angles and consider multiple situations.”

Another participant, Urvi Raghbeer, said he learned more about starting a business than he had expected, and also had fun doing it. “I didn’t expect it to be such an enjoyable and memorable experience. . . . We learned about key concepts in an interesting manner and were able to reach our potential within five days.”

Like the start-up businesses it helps cultivate, In-V-Ent-Ed seems to be off to a good start with a promising future.

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W

hen it comes to shopping around a business idea or breaking into a new industry, it pays to know someone who has been there, done that. That is one of the reasons why Columbia Engineering has created a mentorship program for students specifically interested in entrepreneurship.

The Columbia Engineering Entrepreneurship Mentoring program, which began last January, immediately attracted a sizable group of Engineering alumni who wanted to advise budding entrepreneurs. Nearly 45 businesssavvy Engineering alumni across the United States have volunteered to be mentors, and to date, 40 students are actively participating in the new program. Mentors are assigned not only to Engineering students but also to undergraduates, graduate students, and even young alumni from any Columbia school.

Engineering senior David Mills was a fan of the mentorship program right off the bat.

Mills works on the start-up Sportaneous, a social sporting company, with its founders Omar Haroun, a graduate student at Columbia Business School and the Law School, and Reuben Doetsch, a Columbia College senior. Down the road, Mills hopes to start his own business centered on sports and hospitality—two areas that interest him the most. Having an adviser who clearly understands his business goals is key.

“I wanted advice on how to navigate corporate America before I start my own business,” says Mills, whose mentor is William ­­ 38 | ­­ COLUMBIA ENGINEERING­­

Hooper BS’71, MS’73, ’74BUS. “Bill has been able to counsel me on the relationships I need to identify and build. He also helps to validate the crazy ideas I have and want to pursue. He gives me honest advice.”

Hooper, a big proponent of mentorship programs, currently mentors three Columbia students. The benefits of a solid mentor-mentee relationship are tremendous, he says, and it pays to pass on years of professional Alumni mentor Bill Hooper talks to student entrepreneurs at an Engineering experience and life lessons to School networking event. young people who are just getting started. care, retail, and more. The program provides “There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel,” just enough structure to ensure the mentorsays Hooper, senior business development mentee’s relationship takes hold. consultant at the Hooper Group and formerly The outcomes from these relationships a senior vice president at Citigroup. “Mentors vary. In many cases they result in the launch help young people avoid critical mistakes that of viable businesses that attract customers, we may have made. The bottom line is that it’s revenues, and investors, but this is not the an opportunity for me to help young people only measure of success. All the participants in achieve their vision of personal success.” the program, both mentor and mentee, begin The program has afforded him a chance, to understand the real value of a life-long as well, to stay connected to Columbia and connection with the Columbia Alumni comits students. “It’s an opportunity for me to munity. give back to the University, and as a mentor, The mentorship program is part of the to support these students with my 40 years of Engineering School’s focus on promoting a experience,” he adds. “It’s energizing to be a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation mentor.” in and around Columbia Engineering. To Columbia Engineering alumni mentors find out more about the program and how to represent a range of industries, including participate, contact Christopher McGarry at finance, technology, civil engineering, health cm3014@columbia.edu.

Columbia | Engineering

Young Alumni

Dear Columbia Engineering Alumni, Family, and Friends: As Columbia Engineering alumni, we are members of a dynamic, global group of talented individuals active in every field imaginable, worldwide. What a tremendous resource this alumni network is—but how to take advantage of it?

This year, the Columbia Alumni Association has issued “The Columbia Challenge” to encourage ALL alumni to make the most of the global network. Central to the Challenge is the idea “Do One New Thing.” In 2012, we challenge all our Engineering alumni to take advantage of Columbia’s many programs and try something new. Go to an event. Contact your roommate. Send in a story to Columbia Engineering magazine. Forward a Columbia Magazine article that caught your eye. Do one Columbia Engineering thing you haven’t done before and find out what the alumni experience can mean to you.

We’re making it easy for you to take the challenge! Regardless of your career, major, age, interests, or location, there is a way for you to engage with the Columbia Engineering community that will be significant and meaningful. Visit engineering.columbia.edu/get-involved to find out more and take the Columbia Challenge! From there you can also vote in the annual CEAA Ballot to elect new members of the Alumni Association Board.

While there are a multitude of Columbia Engineering and Columbia University events throughout the year, we would like to extend a special invitation to you and your guests to join us for the official welcome dinner at Engineering Reunion Weekend on the evening of Thursday, May 31, 2012 (Low Memorial Library). As part of celebrating our tradition of excellence, the Columbia Engineering Alumni Association (CEAA) will honor three distinguished alumni with prestigious awards. Dr. Bernard Roth MS’58, PhD’62, the Rodney H. Adams Professor of Engineering at Stanford University, will receive the Egleston Medal for Distinguished Engineering Achievement. Dr. Harold Varmus ’64SIPA, ’66PS, ’90HON, a Nobel laureate and former University Trustee, will be awarded the Pupin Medal for Service to the Nation. Jae-Un Chung ’64, MS’69, former president of Samsung Electronics, will be presented the Samuel Johnson Medal for Distinguished Professional Achievement. For more information or to make a reservation, you can contact Cliff Massey at cam2171@columbia.edu or 212-854-2317.

We would be proud to have you join us in celebrating Columbia Engineering ingenuity and achievement. Be sure to visit the new website and check your e-mail for updates on the many opportunities to connect with other engineering alumni in the months to come. In the meantime, we want to know: what will your “One New Thing” be?

Russell Baccaglini BS’63, MS’64, ProfD’72 Jonathan Lung BS’06 President President Columbia Engineering Alumni Association Columbia Engineering Young Alumni

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Top row, left to right: Columbia start-up Producteev shows off its technology at the venture demo in NYC; alumni networkers make connections; Columbia Engineering student Victoria Nneji (right) pitches her social venture, The Digital STEM. Bottom row, left to right: Columbia Professor and HackNY cofounder Chris Wiggins leads the panel discussion at the NYC Entrepreneurship Night; keynote speaker Steve Perlman ’83CC engages with alumni after his presentation in Palo Alto, CA.

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Omar Haroun (foreground) ’12LAW, ’12BUS demonstrates his start-up, Sportaneous, at the Silicon Valley Entrepreneurship Night.

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olumbia Entrepreneurship Nights give alumni entrepreneurs a chance to network and student-led start-ups a platform to pitch their next big idea. Two networking nights were held last semester, one in New York City and one in Silicon Valley.

Technology entrepreneur and inventor Steve Perlman ’83CC addressed more than 250 Bay Area Columbia alumni at the event held November 15 in Palo Alto, California. Perlman discussed his venture, OnLive, and its role in revolutionizing video games and entertainment, using technology that delivers top-tier games on demand to a user’s TV, PC, Mac, or tablet. Perlman is widely known in the tech and Internet sphere as a pioneer and serial entrepreneur. He developed QuickTime technology at Apple, founded and sold WebTV to Microsoft, and invented the MOVA facial capture technology that led to a special effects Academy Award for the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Following his presentation, seven start-ups pitched the audience including WiFiSlam, cofounded by Jessica Tsoong BS’08 (who is featured in this issue), and ConnectTV, cofounded by Alan Moskowitz BS’92, MS’94.

In New York City, Entrepreneurship Night was held at the Columbia Club and attended by more than 270 alumni. Featured guest speakers Curtis Mo ’85CC, ’88LAW, a partner in DLA Piper’s corporate and securities group, and David Soloff ’91CC, cofounder and CEO of Metamarkets, spoke about the burgeoning start-up community in New York City and compared it to the entrepreneurial community in Silicon Valley. Their discussion was led by Chris Wiggins, professor of applied physics and applied mathematics at Columbia Engineering, who is also a cofounder of HackNY, a community of software developers with entrepreneurial aims.

The School will be hosting more entrepreneurial networking events both in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area. For more information, e-mail Christopher McGarry at cm3014 @columbia.edu.

Giving Back: Alessandro Piol BS’79, MS’82

and Alexandra Piol BS’79, MS’83

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he Piol family is helping Columbia Engineering students foster their entrepreneurial spirit, even from the comforts of their dorm rooms. In September, a newly created Piol Family Entrepreneurship Fund helped to support the launch of the new Engineering Entrepreneurship Residential Initiative. The Res. Inc. program is bringing together 73 Engineering undergraduate students with a common interest in entrepreneurship. On the top floors of Wallach and Hartley Residence Halls, they collaborate on various business ideas, and each month, they get together for working dinners to listen to industry experts and share progress on their start-up plans.

“It puts these students—with the same type of interests—in one place,” says Alessandro Piol, cofounder of Vedanta Capital. “They have a chance to share knowledge and to share ideas, but to do so with structure.” The hope, he says, is to generate more like-minded programming for students who are serious about entrepreneurship.

Husband and wife who met at Columbia, Alessandro and Alexandra are themselves committed entrepreneurs and have been successful advisers to executives on their businesses and choosing start-ups worth investing in. For Alexandra, it’s the problem solving that excites her. “The more complex the problem, the better. I like combining technology, marketing, and management issues, and advising CEOs on their strategic plans in the hope of building viable companies,” she says. Alexandra is currently managing director at 4C Ventures Management Inc. With the Res. Inc. Program, students have the potential to turn their business ideas into real companies, and, more importantly, gain the skills necessary to do so—a set of skills the Piols know a thing or two about. “This is rewarding for us because we feel we can help them,” says Alessandro, who also serves on the School’s Entrepreneurship Advisory Board. “You can’t start a business knowing everything. It is always good to talk to someone with experience and to find mentors who can really help.”