Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine Vol. 93 No. 4

SEISMICALLY SOUND GOLD & WHITE HONOREES

DREAM HOME

A L U M N I

DOCUMENTING DISASTER

COME RAIN OR SHINE:

A METEOROLOGICAL LOVE STORY

M A G A Z I N E

VOLUME

93 NO.4 WINTER

2017

FORCES OF

NATURE Exploring Tech's expertise in researching & responding to whatever Mother Earth unleashes

“Knowing our endowment will affect lives positively long after we’re gone is extremely satisfying.”

— Kay E. and Larry R. Westbrook, IE 1967 Larry Westbrook — born in Savannah, raised in Gainesville,

retiring, Westbrook has served on the PULS advisory board,

educated at Georgia Tech — left the state after graduation to

providing strategic direction, coaching, and mentorship.

begin a career in power distribution and industrial automation that spanned 50 years.

His first job out of college took him to Arlington-Ft. Worth,

Retirement also brought the Westbrooks back to Georgia.

They now live in Canton, where Larry plays more golf than ever and Kay enjoys tutoring young children in reading. Both are active

Texas, where he met Kay, his wife of 48 years. She began

in Canton First United Methodist Church. They feel blessed to

teaching second grade after graduating from North Texas State

have three daughters and — at last count — seven grandchildren.

University, and he continued to put his industrial engineering

It’s perhaps for this reason the couple is excited about having

degree to work, rising to vice president of Automation Sales

an impact on the future through an estate commitment that

and Market Development for Square D Company in Raleigh,

will one day establish the Kay and Larry Westbrook Scholarship

North Carolina, and later moving to vice president and general

Endowment Fund for students in the College of Engineering.

manager of the Industrial Products Division for Siemens Energy and Automation.

After retiring from Siemens in 2002, he founded PULS North

“Kay and I have learned that giving back is the most rewarding activity we have in life, and pausing to set up this endowment has brought both of us a special feeling of satisfaction,”

America. As president and CEO from 2003 - 2013, he led the

Westbrook says. “We have had many mentors who have helped

company to global leadership in DC power products for the

us through various life stages, and Georgia Tech has made a

industrial market. The company also garnered numerous “Green

tremendous impact on us. Now this positive impact will live on

Excellence” awards for product innovation and design. Since

through others for many years to come.”

Founders’ Council is the honorary society recognizing donors who have made estate or life-income gifts of $25,000 or more for the support of Georgia Tech. For more information, please contact: 404.894.4678 • founderscouncil@dev.gatech.edu • gatech.giftplans.org

Courses

Certificates

Degrees

Online & On-site

pe.gatech.edu/alumni2017

TO HELL WITH GOOD. BE EXCEPTIONAL. CONTINUE YOUR SUCCESS STORY

PUBLISHER’S LETTER

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine Vol. 93, No. 4 PUBLISHER Joseph P. Irwin, IM 80

Tech’s Elemental Knowledge IF YOU’RE LIKE ME, and you’ve been watching the 24-hour news cycle this past few months, you might think humankind was headed toward some kind of doomsday—and not one caused by domestic or global political strife. The world seems to have been uncommonly hard hit of late by natural disasters of all types, from devastating hurricanes to raging wildfires to ground-trembling earthquakes to fiery volcanic eruptions.

The frequency and the intensity of these events appear to grow with each passing year. Perhaps that’s due to our greater awareness of such disasters, thanks to the incessant (and often histrionic) news coverage, or maybe in truth we’re caught in a cycle of natural upheaval. I personally find it hard to believe that Hurricane Sandy destroyed parts of the upper Atlantic states five years ago or that Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast some 12 years ago. Those regions still haven’t fully recovered.

And after this year’s pounding by massive storms in the Caribbean and southern United States, we continue to learn new and frightening things about the unstoppable forces that Mother Earth can unleash. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria proved to be truly destructive, and the recovery will no doubt take years. Estimates of wildfire-burned areas exceed 8 million total acres this year in the United States—and not just out west. A large earthquake rattled one of the most populated urban areas in the world, Mexico City, in September, and some scientists predict that 2018 could see an uptick in major quakes. Meanwhile, as I write this, Mount Agung in Bali is threatening a potentially catastrophic eruption, requiring tens of thousands of people to be evacuated from their homes. While the property damage of these natural disasters are often sobering, the human costs run even higher.

As you might expect, Georgia Tech

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VP MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS Dawn Churi EDITOR Roger Slavens ASSISTANT EDITOR Melissa Fralick

experts are among those leading the way in getting a better understanding of nature’s forces in the hopes we can better predict major events and prepare for them. One of our faculty members, David Frost, is a close friend of mine and a co-founder of GEER—the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance association—a consortium of global researchers who quickly head to disaster sites to collect as much data as possible and then share it with the greater scientific community (page 56).

Furthermore, two civil engineering alumni, Eli Diaz and Ryan Arrieta, have been in charge of getting Puerto Rico’s water and sewer systems back up and running following Hurricane Maria (page 42). That’s been no easy task, to be sure. We even have a faculty expert in earthquakes, Zhigang Peng, who is watching the recent surge of seismic activity in, of all places, Oklahoma, that appears to be man-made (page 14.)

Be sure to read these enlightening stories and many more, including profiles of our newest class of Gold & White Honors winners (page 64), the Alumni Association’s fiscal year 2017 Annual Report (page 73), and a photo essay on the history of ROTC at Georgia Tech (page 100), which is celebrating its 100th year.

Enjoy the read, and best wishes to all our alumni and their families in the New Year.

Go Jackets!

DESIGNER Joshua Baker | joshbkr.com COPY EDITOR Rebecca Bowen STUDENT ASSISTANT Christine St. Jean EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE David Bottoms, Mgt 01, Chair Andrea L. Laliberte, IE 82, MS IE 84, Past Chair Bird Blitch, IE 97, Chair-Elect/ Vice Chair of Roll Call Sheri Prucka, EE 82, MS EE 84, Vice Chair of Finance Jeni Bogdan, Mgt 89, MS MOT 96, Member at Large Shan Pesaru, CmpE 05, Member at Large Tyler Townsend, IE 98, Member at Large Brent Zelnak, Mgt 94, Member at Large Joseph P. Irwin, IM 80, President & CEO BOARD OF TRUSTEES Michelle Adkins, IM 83; Dorothy B. Autin, ChE 80; Lee A. Baker, IE 90; Carlos Barroso, ChE 80; Trevor Boehm, ME 99, MS ME 04; Rita Breen, Psy 90, MS IE 92; Julian A. Brown III, Mgt 97; Frank T. Campos, EE 80, MS MoT 96; Catherine C. Davidson, Mgt 89; Samuel L. Gude III, MBA 08; Julie E. Hall, Phys 99; Scott Hall, ME 96; Cathy P. Hill, EE 84; Lara O’Connor Hodgson, AE 93; Tim Holman, MS EE 88, PhD EE 94; Keith Jackson, Mgt 88; Ronald L. Johnson, MS OR 85; Plez A. Joyner, EE 89; Garrett S. Langley, EE 09; Mark E. Ligler, ME 76; Robert D. Martin, IE 69; George R. Mason, IE 92; Angela Mitchell, PTCH 04; Alex Muñoz, Mgt 88; Thomas J. O’Brien, IE 81; Blake Patton, IE 93; Amy H. Phuong, IA 05, MBA 14; William J. Ready, MatE 94, MS MetE 97, PhD MSE 00; Bert Reeves, Mgt 00; John W. Simmons Jr., EE 88; Mayson T. Spellman, Mgt 05; Jocelyn M. Stargel, IE 82, MS IE 86; James F. Stovall IV, CS 01; Kristen M. Thorvig, STC 98; David P. Touwsma, IE 97; Brian Tyson, EE 10 ADVERTISING Betsy Maddox (404) 894-0751 betsy.maddox@alumni.gatech.edu GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI MAGAZINE (ISSN: 1061-9747) is published quarterly by the Georgia Tech Alumni Association, 190 North Ave. N.W., Atlanta, GA 30313. Periodical postage paid in Atlanta and additional mailing offices. © 2016 Georgia Tech Alumni Association POSTMASTER Send address changes to: Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, 190 North Ave. N.W., Atlanta, GA 30313.

JOSEPH P. IRWIN, IM 80 PRESIDENT & CEO GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

TELEPHONE Georgia Tech Alumni Association (404) 894-2391

On the Cover: Elements of this Hurricane Irma image furnished by NASA/Shutterstock

TABLE OF CONTENTS D E PA RT M E N T S

LOVE IN THE FORECAST

Laura and James Belanger met at Georgia Tech, got married and embarked on dueling careers as national weather service meteorologists.

50

Features 42

50

56

IN THE WAKE OF MARIA

COME RAIN OR SHINE

DOCUMENTING DISASTER

Alumni Eli Diaz and Ryan Arrieta led the restoration of Puerto Rico’s water and sewage systems following the huge storm.

It’s been all lightning bolts and thunder for two married Yellow Jacket meteorologists who work for rival weather services.

Tech researchers play a big role in GEER, a consortium of scientists that travels to sites of extreme events and records precious data.

Ben Rollins

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D E PA RT M E N T S

EXPLOSIVE POWER

The rare, violent eruptions from volcanoes like Bali’s Mount Agung provide scientists such as Tech’s Josef Dufek with prime opportunities to understand them better.

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Michael W. Ishak

TABLE OF CONTENTS

10 Around Campus

32 In the World

12 What Lies Beneath One of the largest underground water cistern systems in the U.S. resides at Tech.

14 Earthquake Epicenter The increased seismic activity in Oklahoma has faculty and students curious.

18 Hidden Danger of Wildfires Destruction gets the headlines, but pollution may have a greater effect.

19 Talk of Tech 22 Student News

34 Engineered to a Fault Marc Lindsell, Arch 89, designed a beautiful home that’s also seismically resilient.

38 Ten Questions Volcano scientists like Tech’s Josef Dufek are learning from the fiery showcase of Bali’s Mount Agung.

The latest news and views from Georgia Tech

Ramblin’ Wrecks generating buzz beyond the Institute

62 Alumni House

All about what’s going on at 190 North Avenue

24 On the Field

The scoop on Tech’s studentathletes and alumni 26 Seniors Lead the Way Basketball veterans Ben Lammers and Zaire O’Neil hope to drive Tech’s hoops teams to new heights this season.

64 Great Eight The 2018 winners of the Gold & White Honors are some of Tech’s finest alumni and friends.

73 Annual Report Learn how your Alumni Association made an impact in 2017.

78 Upcoming Alumni Events 80 Ramblin’ Roll 86 In Memoriam

100 Tech History

Memories and artifacts of Tech’s storied past 100 ROTC at Georgia Tech Celebrating 100 years of ROTC at the Institute, from its roots in the studentrun Signal Corps to the programs on campus today.

106 Back Page

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FEEDBACK DROWNPROOFING I echo Dr. Ray Pettit’s sentiments from last issue’s (Fall 2017, Vol. 93 No. 3) letters section regarding Drownproofing.

I often reflect upon the philosophical implications of this class when faced with adversity. This class taught me that, somewhere along the line, someone will tie you up and throw you into a crisis, and you need to remember to bob up and down and breathe until it is over.

Incidentally, I had the good fortune of studying under Ray Pettit at Cal State Northridge. One of the best teachers I ever had, I remember him telling me: “No one can know it all.”

WES WILLIAMSON, EE 83 INGLEWOOD, CALIF.

A MISSING PIECE OF MARCHING BAND HISTORY As a Tech band and Kappa Kappa Psi alumnus, I was most surprised that the article “A Band That Marches to the Beat of its Own Drum,” in the Fall 2017 issue (Vol. 93 No. 3), ignored director Ben Logan Sisk’s contribution to the band and Georgia Tech. He was the Institute’s longest tenured band director, having served for 29 years (1946-1975).

Even though he was only a “parttime” director, he established the music department in 1963 and saw the band finally become the marching 100 in 1964. His halftime shows were truly creative, making the best use of a limited number of musicians with sometimes limited talent. I’ve tailgated some with younger band alums who all know about him even though he retired before they were even born.

AL ARGROVES, IM 68 HILLSBOROUGH, N.C.

[Ed. Note: Thanks so much for sharing this information, Al. The article spanned the vast, storied history of the Yellow Jacket Marching Band in very brief order, focusing primarily on the comparative experiences of a current drum major and an alumnus with a decades-long connection to the program.

No doubt we will do more explorations on the history of the band in the future, and we will be sure to give Ben Logan Sisk his due!]

‘DIRTY DANCING’ DESIGNER In “Hollywood Wizards” (Fall 2017, Vol. 93, No. 3), you missed at l ea s t o n e Te c h alumnus with movie connections—me. I spent two years as an officer on a destroyer, returned to Tech and graduated in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in architecture. Eighteen months later I was registered as an architect and working in Atlanta.

I fell in love with live theatre at Theatre Atlanta. I became the set, costumes and lighting designer for the organization and went to New York when our production moved there in 1969. Eight years later, I art directed my first movie that filmed in New York. And in 1986, I worked as the production designer of Dirty Dancing and never looked back.

At the tender age of 79, I am slated to design a “movie of the week” with Tom Selleck, for the Jesse Stone: Stone Cold series of films, next spring.

Yours was a great article. Couldn’t resist this tweak.

maybe even follow up for a future story in the magazine!]

LONG LIVE DRAGONCON! I enjoyed the article/photo essay about DragonCon in the last issue of the Alumni Maga z i n e ( Fa l l 2 0 17, Vol. 93 No. 3). Georgia Tech students and alumni were indeed involved with DragonCon from the very beginning.

My roommate Mike Helba, Phys 88, even invested in the first DragonCon, which was held in 1987. He served on the board of directors and was in charge of publicity. The first convention was near campus and many of the students Mike knew from his studies and social circles ended up working with him on it.

CHRIS JORDAN, ME 90 LOS ALAMOS, N.M.

DAVID CHAPMAN, ARCH 63 MARINA DEL REY, CALIF.

[Ed. Note: We’ve had a number of alumni reach out to us to add their names and accomplishments to our ongoing, interactive list of Hollywood Wizards— mainly made up of special effects and animation professionals—which was collected and designed by the GVU Center. If you’re not on the list, please do write us so we make sure to add you and

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Alumna Jasmine Mackey, STC 14, created one of the best cosplay outfits we saw at this year’s DragonCon.

Want to get in touch? Send letters to: Editor, Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, 190 North Ave. N.W., Atlanta, GA 30313, or editor@alumni.gatech.edu. Share your personal news, birth and wedding announcements (with photos!), out-and-about snapshots and in memoriam notices at gtalumni.org/magazine.

BUSINESS. POWERED

BY TECH.

Immersive. Relevant. Transformative. Georgia Tech’s Sheller College of Business MBA is a career changer. Consistently ranked among the nation’s top MBA programs, Scheller offers three formats – Full-time, Evening, or Executive MBA – designed to equip you with the knowledge you need to thrive in tomorrow’s technology-driven world of business.

Learn more at scheller.gatech.edu.

TECH SAVVY. BUSINESS SMART.

Around Campus

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Rob Felt

UNDERGROUND OR THE UPSIDE DOWN? Many students and faculty don’t realize that below Tech Green resides a hidden 1.4-million-gallon reservoir system that’s one of the largest of its kind in the country. It can supply irrigation and toilet water for Clough Commons and the surrounding landscaped area for up to 28 days without rain. The reservoir’s floor is covered with water, and the concrete ceiling is 2-feet thick.

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AROUND CAMPUS

What Lies Beneath

BY VICTOR ROGERS

Let’s take a trip down under Tech Green, where you’ll find an extensive cistern system designed to help reclaim and reuse stormwater.

IN THE HEART OF CAMPUS, west of Clough Commons, sits a 3.2-acre green space called Tech Green. The open space is a prime location for student celebrations of all sorts, throwing a Frisbee or just relaxing between classes.

While there’s almost always something happening on the open lawn, a different kind of activity is taking place a few feet below—in a 1.4-million-gallon underground cistern system. Let’s go down under.

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1. Lying below the lush grass on Tech Green is a cistern system composed of a series of 30,000-gallon containers that feed into a massive 750,000-gallon cistern.

the

BASELINE

2. Billy Baxter, a plumber with Tech facilities management, must set up a cable that attaches to a safety harness before he travels underground. When entering the reservoir,

#8

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he carries a carbon monoxide monitor and wears protective gear including a safety harness.

3. This platform is where plumbers stand when they

OVERALL WORLD RANKING of Georgia Tech’s computer science programs

perform maintenance on the pumps that supply reclaimed water to Clough Commons and the Kessler Campanile fountain, and when they irrigate Tech Green and nearby areas.

97%

4. In addition to collecting runoff from Tech Green, the system captures condensate from the mechanical systems at Clough Commons and from some of the nearby buildings.

TECH’S FRESHMAN RETENTION RATE, one of the highest in the U.S.

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5

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7

8

Want to see more Hidden Georgia Tech? Across campus, hidden spaces and forgotten places await rediscovery. Some are relics of an earlier time, difficult to find and explore. Others are very much in view, but often overlooked. Visit more lesser-known locales at www.news.gatech.edu/features/hidden-georgia-tech

5. The water captured by the cistern system substantially reduces the amount of stormwater Georgia Tech feeds into the city of Atlanta’s combined stormwater-sewer system.

6. From the vantage point of the bottom of the reservoir system— a clear blue sky.

7. This monitoring station, also located under Tech Green, allows facilities staff to inspect

$25 Million Rob Felt

the cistern without going into it. Inspections include gathering and removing debris from the vault.

8. The water treatment equipment in Clough Commons eliminates

INVESTMENT BY THE Kendeda Fund to design Georgia Tech’s Living Building

harmful microorganisms before the water is repurposed. The treatment system includes ultraviolet lighting and a variety of filtering mechanisms. Reclaimed water is not connected to fountains or sinks

80th

in Clough Commons; a regular city water system fulfills those needs. If the level of reclaimed water gets too low to supply enough for the building, the system switches to domestic water.

ANNIVERSARY of the founding of the Georgia Tech Research Corporation

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TECH RESEARCH

An Unexpected Epicenter of Earthquake Activity

BY MONICA ELLIOTT, IE 94

Geophysics professor Zhigang Peng and his students want to know why there are so many earthquakes in Oklahoma.

MANY OF US GREW UP THINKING of California as the epicenter of most earthquake activity in the United States.

(It’s really Alaska.) But today, in the contiguous U.S., most of the major tremors—magnitude 3 or higher—actually occur in Oklahoma. And these tremors don’t appear to come from wholly natural causes.

“Most of this seismic activity is man-made or induced,” says Zhigang Peng, a professor of geophysics in Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

Peng says that humankind has been proven to create earthquakes in three different ways: the construction of reservoirs or other surface-loading excavations; the direct extraction of natural resources, such as coal and oil from the earth; and the injection of fluids into the earth.

the

BASELINE

However, Peng says a major misconception about induced earthquakes in the U.S. is that they’re primarily caused by the process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to obtain oil and natural gas trapped in the earth. Fracking involves pumping high-pressure fluid

24,318

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NUMBER OF PRINT BOOK CHECKOUTS made at Tech’s library in 2016

into the ground with enough force to break open layers of rock so we can access those natural resources.

Most of the earthquakes in Oklahoma and southern Kansas that researchers believe are induced are not directly caused by fracking itself, but

87

GEORGIA TECH STAFF MEMBERS who completed the Inclusive Leaders Academy

That number decreased to 2,500 in 2016, which Peng postulates is likely due to tighter regulations and the decrease in oil prices leading to less fracking activity and resulting wastewater injection.

Among other things, Peng is studying why wastewater injection wells cause so many more earthquakes in Oklahoma than in any other part of the country. The factors he’s researching include injection rate, total volume injected and the presence of subsurface faults large enough to produce earthquakes that can be felt by man.

Professor Zhigang Peng (second from left) and student researchers in Oklahoma

INTO THE EARTHQUAKE HOT ZONE In October, on a trip funded by the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Peng and some of the Ph.D. students in his earthquake physics course went to that hot zone in Oklahoma—places in and around the towns of Alva, Moreland and Fairview—and deployed some 20 seismic sensors to measure the activity.

“We think we have pretty clear evidence saying wastewater injection and those induced earthquakes are related,” Peng says. “Fortunately, the state of Oklahoma also recognizes it’s a big problem. But there are still many open questions.”

Peng says the state is providing resources to help with their studies. Two staffers from the Oklahoma Geologic Survey and several University of Oklahoma students joined Peng and his students during the last deployment, as did two representatives from the company that provided the seismic sensors for the study, Seismic Source of Ponca City, Okla.

instead by attempts to dispose of the wastewater at the end of the process by injecting it back into the ground, Peng says.

“The fracking process normally takes a short amount of time—maybe a few hours to a few days—to gain access to oil or natural gas,” Peng explains. “If everything works fine, you start to turn the fracking well into a production well. The production well will usually last for at least a few years if not longer, and during this process, a lot of extra things come out of the earth—most of them things you don’t want, like salt water. The easiest and cheapest way to dispose of this fluid is to inject it back into the earth.”

But to reach the type of rock formation that will consume it and to avoid contaminating aquifers, this wastewater must be injected back into the earth at a much deeper level than the fracking and production wells—which creates a seismic problem.

“The wastewater settles in a formaA RESERVOIR OF POSSIBILITIES IN CHINA tion named Arbuckle that includes limestone and other sedimentary rocks dam and reservoir was built IN ADDITION TO HIS with a lot of porous space because you within 10 kilometers of the WORK on earthquakes want to have a layer that can suck a lot epicenter of the event. There induced by wastewater inof water,” Peng says. “This layer sits right has been a long debate on jection, Zhigang Peng is on top of the basement rock where most whether the reservoir trigconducting research on resinduced earthquakes occur.” gered the 2008 earthquake. ervoir-induced earthquakes With the help of some of his stuPeng is currently working in the Sichuan Province dents, Peng is studying high-rate with scientists in China to of China where he grew injection wells in northwest Oklahore-examine the seismic data up. He’s focused on the ma where the U.S. Geological Survey geophysicists in the world. near the epicenter to find magnitude 7.9 Wenchuan forecasts the highest chance of earthIf his findings establish a answers. earthquake that occurred quake damage in 2017. connection between the Peng is presenting in May 2008—the largest According to the Los Angeles Times, reservoir and the 2008 his research this month and most devastating earththe Sooner state had only two to three earthquake, it would be in New Orleans at the quake in China in the past the largest confirmed huAnnual American Geo40 years. earthquakes a year that reached 2.7 or man-induced earthquake physical Union Meeting, A few years before the greater from 1980 to 2000; but in 2015, on record. the largest conference for earthquake, the Zipingpu there were 4,000 of that magnitude.

3

GRADUATION CEREMONIES held during the 2017 Fall Commencement weekend

$1,000,000

AMOUNT AT&T AND ACCENTURE have each pledged to support Tech’s new Online Master’s in Analytics degree program

Volume 93 No. 4 2017 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | 15

TECH RESEARCH

AN EARTHQUAKE BOOM IN OKLAHOMA

“The field deployment really highlighted the complexities of seismology and earthquake physics,” says Tech doctoral student Louisa Barama.

“Over a few days, we set up stations in the same region but were surprised by the small differences each location had, from soil type and surrounding landscape and even picking station location.”

Kai Hu, another PhD student, adds that their team also had a chance to communicate and interact with the local people who were well aware of all the seismic activity. “We let them know how the earthquake monitoring network can be used to advise and inform the government and oil companies to regulate their injection practices,” Hu says.

The largest earthquake registered in the region was a 5.8 in October 2016 near Pawnee, Okla., causing injury and damages. However, the vast majority of the tremors

TREMOR TRIVIA THE LARGEST RECORDED EARTHQUAKE in the United States was a magnitude 9.2 that struck Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 28, 1964. The largest recorded earthquake in the world was a magnitude 9.5 (moment magnitude) in Chile on May 22, 1960.

MAGNITUDE is the most common measure of an earthquake’s size. It is a measure of the size of the earthquake source based on the maximum motion recorded by a seismograph or seismometer. It is the same number no matter where you are or what the shaking feels like.

THE RICHTER SCALE is no longer used by seismologists to measure

magnitude, but it is still referenced often by the media. Other magnitude scales, extensions of Richter’s original idea, include body wave magnitude (Mb) and surface wave magnitude (Ms). Their range of validity is equivalent to the Richter magnitude. The more uniformly applicable extension of the magnitude scale is moment magnitude (Mw). For very large earthquakes, moment magnitude gives the most reliable estimate of earthquake size.

AN INCREASING NUMBER of earthquakes are being cataloged today not because there are more earthquakes, but because there are more seismic instruments able to record them.

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Source: United States Geological Survey

remain small, though still concerning.

According to Peng, there are two schools of thought on whether these induced earthquakes can cause larger, more dangerous earthquakes. Some believe it depends on the size of the perturbed area—if only a small, confined area is perturbed, only a small event could result, so the maximum size is limited. But the other argument is that once an event is triggered, no matter how small, that event could trigger an even larger event.

“We’ve actually seen signs of this type of domino effect,” Peng says.

“And in that case, once you start something, it’s not controlled by the region of perturbation, it’s controlled by tectonic loading. That means if the region is already stressed out and you trigger something and it THE NATIONAL EARTHgoes into this domino effect you may QUAKE INFORMATION trigger something much bigger than CENTER now locates your initial perturbations.” approximately 20,000 Peng hopes ultimately his research earthquakes each year, or can help inform better ways for enapproximately 55 per day. ergy companies to access natural resources from the earth without inABOUT 16 MAJOR ducing large, damaging earthquakes.

EARTHQUAKES, includ“You can’t just say to companies, ing 15 earthquakes in the ‘Don’t do it,’” Peng says. “We have to magnitude 7 range and have energy, but we have to find a one earthquake magnitude way to do it so that we don’t poten8.0 or greater, are expected tially cause problems. Nobody wants to occur each year. to trigger a damaging magnitude 7 or Source: United States 8 earthquake. In that aspect, we’re all Geological Survey on the same page.”

EVERY GIFT HAS A PURPOSE

Continue the tradition and make a difference for outstanding students, world-class programs, and the value of your Georgia Tech degree.

MAKE YOUR GIFT TO THE 71ST ROLL CALL:

gtalumni.org/giving

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The 71st Roll Call ends June 30, 2018.

TALK OF TECH

The Hidden Danger of Wildfires RAMPANT WILDFIRES this summer and fall stoked considerable concern in western states as drought conditions led to thousands of fires that burned more than 1 million acres in California alone. However, the damage to land and buildings aren’t the only danger these fires pose.

New research shows that wildfires increase air pollution considerably more than previously believed. Naturally burning timber and brush launch what are called fine particles into the air at a rate three times as high as officially noted in emissions inventories at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to a new study led

by Georgia Tech. These fine particles— the microscopic, sooty specks that form aerosols—are a hazard to human health, particularly to the lungs and heart “Burning biomass produces lots of pollution,” says Greg Huey, chair of Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “These are really bad aerosols to breathe from a health point of view.”

This does not mean that burning biomass produces more pollution than it previously did, but the new research makes clearer how much and what pollutants are inside a wildfire plume. The study also describes other chemicals

BY BEN BRUMFIELD

A new study shows that wildfires contribute heavily to air pollution.

in wildfire smoke, some never before measured, and it will likely raise the EPA estimated annual emission of fine particles, or particulate matter, in the western United States significantly.

The previous EPA data had been based on plume samples taken in controlled burns ignited by forestry professionals. Measuring naturally occurring plumes so thoroughly, from the sky, directly in the thick of a wildfire had not been possible before this study.

SCHELLER EXECUTIVE MBA PROGRAM TOPS IN STATE FINANCIAL TIMES RELEASED its 2017 global rankings of the Top 100 Executive MBA (EMBA) programs, and Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business Executive MBA program is ranked No. 1 in Georgia and No. 15 in the U.S. Additionally, the Financial Times ranked the Scheller College EMBA program No. 2 in the U.S. and No. 7 globally for facilitating career progress.

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PLUNGING INTO PLUMES Unique research missions deployed planes to plow through the plumes of three major wildfires, including the 2013 Rim Fire, the third-largest wildfire in California history. An ensemble of instruments bristling from the flanks of NASA and U.S. Department of Energy aircraft allowed teams of researchers on board to measure chemicals and particles in real time and cull masses of data, which the new study is based on. “We actually went to measure, right above the fire, what was coming out,” Huey says.

Bob Yokelson, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of Montana, has taken a leadership role in many aspects of the research and was in a group of about 20 scientists who selected the instruments to be installed on the large NASA plane. “We really didn’t have to go without anything we

wanted really badly,” he says. Yokelson also helped design the flight paths.

Georgia Tech also had instruments and scientists on the NASA DC-8 plane.

Researchers associated with a total of more than a dozen universities and organizations participated in data collection or analysis. The scientists published their findings in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

“This paper is expected to serve as a basis for the next NASA fire chemical monitoring mission,” Huey says.

A REFINERY IN THE FLAMES Methanol, benzene, ozone precursors and other noxious emissions collected from wildfire plumes may make it sound like an oil refinery went up in flames.

That’s not so far-fetched, as oil and other fossil fuels derive from ancient biomass.“You can see the smoke, and it’s dark for a reason,” Huey says. “When you go measuring wildfires, you get everything there is to measure. You start to wonder sometimes what all is in there.”

The study found many organic chemicals in the wildfire plumes, and technological advancements allowed them to detect certain nitrates in the smoke for the first time. But burning biomass does not appear to be a dominant source of these chemical pollutants.

The major findings of the study involved the fine particles, which are dusty, sooty particles much thinner than a grain of sand or a human hair. They can go airborne, as aerosols, on their own or combined with moisture. Then people can inhale them. Some particulate matter contains oxidants that cause genetic damage. They can drift over long distances and pollute populated areas.

Industrial sources also expose people to harmful aerosols, but fires produce more aerosol per amount of fuel burned. “Cars and power plants with pollution controls burn things much more cleanly,” Huey says.

Various aerosols also rise up in the atmosphere, but their net effect on global warming or cooling is still uncertain, as some aerosols reflect sunlight away from the Earth, and others, in contrast, trap warmth in the atmosphere.

WHY DAYDREAMING MIGHT BE A GOOD THING

A NEW STUDY from Georgia Tech suggests that daydreaming during meetings isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it might be a sign that you’re really smart and creative.

“People with efficient brains may have too much brain capacity to stop their minds from wandering,” says Eric Schumacher, an associate professor of psychology at Tech who co-authored the study.

Schumacher and his students and colleagues, including lead co-author Christine Godwin, measured the brain patterns of more than 100 people while they lay in an MRI machine. Participants were instructed to focus on a stationary fixation point for five minutes. The Georgia Tech team used the data to identify which parts of the brain worked in unison.

“The correlated brain regions gave us insight about which areas of the brain work together during an awake, resting state,” says Godwin, who is working toward her PhD in psychology at Tech. “Interestingly, research has suggested that these same brain patterns measured during these states are related to different cognitive abilities.”

Once they figured out how the brain works together at rest, the team compared the data with tests the participants took that measured their intellectual and creative ability. Participants also filled out

a questionnaire about how much their mind wandered in daily life.

Those who reported more frequent daydreaming scored higher on intellectual and creative ability and had more efficient brain systems as measured in the MRI machine.

“People tend to think of mind wandering as something that is bad. You try to pay attention and you can’t,” Schumacher says. “Our data are consistent with the idea that this isn’t always true. Some people have more efficient brains.”

Schumacher says higher efficiency means more capacity to think, and the brain may wander when performing easy tasks.

How can you tell if your brain is efficient? One clue is that you can zone in and out of conversations or tasks when appropriate, then naturally tune back in without missing important points or steps.

“Our findings remind me of the absent-minded professor—someone who’s brilliant, but off in his or her own world, sometimes oblivious to their own surroundings,” Schumacher says. “Or school children who are too intellectually advanced for their classes. While it may take five minutes for their friends to learn something new, they figure it out in a minute, then check out and start daydreaming.”—JASON MADERER

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TALK OF TECH WHEN NEUTRON STARS COLLIDE Through gravitational waves, astrophysicists like Tech professor Laura Cadonati are seeing and hearing the universe in new ways.

The latest gravitational wave detected by LIGO scientists, including Tech’s Laura Cadonati, was produced by the collision of two neutron stars.

LAURA CADONATI’S FIRST CHIRP came on Sept. 14, 2015. It lasted just a fraction of second, passing through Earth 1.5 billion years after a violent collision of two massive black holes.

The signal confirmed the existence of gravitational waves, ripples in space-time, which the world had been hoping to detect since Albert Einstein predicted them a century ago.

On Aug. 17, 2017, Cadonati and her LIGO colleagues heard another chirp—much different from the original. This chirp didn’t come and go in the blink of an eye. It stretched for 100 seconds.

“Groundbreaking,” says Cadonati, a professor in Georgia Tech’s College of Sciences.

“It’s just as special as the first one, if not more.”

That’s because the gravitational wave that produced this chirp arrived with something else, something that couldn’t have been produced by colliding black holes. It arrived with light.

For the first time, scientists have detected a gravitational wave produced by the collision of two neutron stars. The wave was born 130 million years ago when the stars spun around

each other, creating warps in space and time. When the stars crashed together, they produced a burst of electromagnetic radiation—gamma radiation, to be precise.

Those gravitational waves and gamma rays raced through the cosmos at the speed of light, arriving at Earth at 8:41 a.m. on Aug. 17.

The observations are allowing scientists to view a neutron star collision, and learn what happens next, for the first time.

“The 2015 detection was about discovery,” says Cadonati, who also serves as deputy spokesperson of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), an international team of more than 1,200 researchers. “This time it’s about understanding. We’re decoding the mysteries of the universe using our senses. We’re listening to the information within gravitational waves and combining it with what we’re seeing within electromagnetic radiation.”

Neutron stars form when massive stars explode in supernovas and collapse upon themselves. The Aug. 17 neutron stars were about 12 miles in diameter—about the size of Atlanta—with an estimated mass within

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the range of 1.1 to 1.6 times that of our sun.

Neutron stars are so incredibly dense that a teaspoon of their material would weigh a billion tons.

Theorists have predicted that what follows the initial fireball is a “kilonova”—a phenomenon by which the material that is left over from the collision is blown out of the immediate region and far out into space and triggers a chain of nuclear reactions.

The new light-based observations show that heavy elements, such as lead, gold and platinum, are created in these collisions and subsequently distributed throughout the universe. This solves a decades-long mystery of where about half of all elements heavier than iron are produced.

More findings are expected as scientists continue to monitor the smashup’s remnants in the weeks and months to come.

“This detection has genuinely opened the doors to a new way of doing astrophysics,” Cadonati says. “I expect it will be remembered as one of the most studied astrophysical events in history.”—JASON MADERER

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STUDENT NEWS TECH FRESHMAN TOYS AROUND AARON BROWN, a first-year industrial engineering major, is beginning his journey at Tech as the founder and CEO of a successful company: Tin Toy Arcade. The young entrepreneur runs a website that allows people to buy genuine tin toys and, hopefully, reconnect with their childhoods.

When he was in second grade, Brown discovered a box of vintage toys as he was digging around in his grandfather’s basement: think windups, robots and rocket ships. While most kids would be perfectly content to simply play with toys, Aaron Brown wanted to share them with other people.

With a $500 loan from his dad and camera in hand, Brown entered an art show, where he displayed creative photos of the toys next to the toys themselves and sold them as a pair. By the end of the night, he had quadrupled his father’s investment and won Best in show.

Brown’s family helped him set up a website, and whenever he got an email from an interested customer, he would go to the box of tin toys he kept in the living room and ship the toy out.

Eventually, Brown ran out of his grandfather’s old toys, but found ways to keep selling the trinkets. His newly-minted toys are created on the same machine presses that the vintage versions were made on decades ago.

Brown’s success is due in part to capitalizing

on the nostalgia of his customers, as well as taking carefully calculated business risks. Improvements to his business have been made in tiny increments, but Brown says that is what has made Tin Toy Arcade flourish.

That’s where Brown’s major, industrial engineering, comes in. He loves to constantly improve the efficiency of his business—so much so that their main competitor is now Amazon, due to the ability of both companies to promise same-day shipping.

While his intent was to use Tin Toy Arcade to save money for college, Brown says that he is going to keep it going because growing the company motivates him. His passion for what he loves and his entrepreneurial spirit are some things that he shares with many Georgia Tech students. Brown thinks that the key to a great entrepreneur isn’t the spark that starts the business, but the continued work that is needed to keep an idea aflame.

—POLLY OUELLETTE

THE INSTITUTE GETS ITS SIXTH RHODES SCHOLAR CALVIN RUNNELS plans to spend his life learning, and learning about life. That’s what the biochemistry major wrote in his personal statement when he applied for the Rhodes Scholarship earlier this year. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry this coming spring—after only three years of study—next fall Runnels will begin postgraduate study at the University of Oxford as the sixth student in Tech history to be named a Rhodes Scholar. Runnels works in the lab of Loren Williams, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Under the

guidance of Williams, graduate student Nicholas Kovacs, lab manager Jessica Bowman, and others in the lab, he is studying the origins of protein folding. Runnels’ research investigates the primitive protein and RNA folding structures fossilized in the ribosome, which may provide insight into the origins of life. The Rhodes Scholarship, established in 1902 and named for the British mining magnate and South African politician Cecil John Rhodes, is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford. It is considered one of the world’s most prestigious

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scholarships, with 32 American students chosen for 2018. Previous Tech Rhodes Scholars include: S. Alton Brown (1951); Will Roper (2002); Jeremy Farris (2004); Joy Buolamwini (2012); and Melissa McCoy (2013).

WRECK RACING WINS HIGH-SPEED, LOW-BUDGET COMPETITION

arts@tech Enjoy the Arts on Campus!

Arts@Tech Season

Miguel Zenon Quartet

January 27

DramaTech Presents

Constellations February 2-10

DramaTech Presents

The George P. Burdell Variety Hour February 16-17

A TEAM OF Georgia Tech engineering students recently came out on top in a competition to build a high-speed racing vehicle on a low-speed budget. Wreck Racing won the Grassroots Motorsports $2017 Challenge in Gainesville, Fla,, where 40 teams from across the country built cars on a budget of just $2,017. Tech’s team won with a Subaru-powered Honda Insight. The team placed seventh in last year’s competition.

HACKING THEIR WAY TO FIRST PLACE

Georgia Tech Symphonic Band and Percussion Ensembles February 22

Poetry@Tech presents

McEver Poetry Reading

with Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Christopher Collins, and Bruce McEver February 22 Arts@Tech Season

Rebirth Brass Band February 24

Georgia Tech Symphony Orchestra with ASO Principal Trombonist

Samuel Schlosser February 27 Arts@Tech Season

Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental 17 Border Crossings IT’S BEEN A GRUELING YEAR, but Georgia Tech students have risen to the top of the Major League Hacking (MLH) ranks to claim first place in the recently completed 2017 MLH Hackathon Season. Participating in sanctioned events throughout North America, Tech student teams collectively competed in most of the 190 events held between August 2016 and July 2017.

In all, more than 3,000 university and high school students participated in the North American MLH events. Georgia Tech rose to the top of the MLH standings this season by earning the highest number of merit points and the second-highest number of participation points. Combined, these stats put them ahead of student hackers from Rutgers University and the University of Waterloo. For the first place finish, Georgia Tech received the MLH Season Trophy and $50,000 in equipment from competition sponsors Dell and Windows.

—ALBERT SNEDEKER

March 3

Guthman Musical Instrument Competition March 7-8

Arts@Tech Season Guitarist Kaki King March 10

Georgia Tech Chamber Strings and Chorale March 11

Arts@Tech Season

Atlanta’s Dance Canvas

10 Years of World Premieres March 23-24

details and more events at

arts.gatech.edu 404-894-2787

On the Field ELBOW-ROOM ENFORCERS Seniors Ben Lammers and Zaire O’Neil plan to throw around a lot of muscle in their quest to guide the Georgia Tech men’s and women’s basketball teams to greater heights this college hoops season.

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Danny Karnik/Georgia Tech Athletics

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ON THE FIELD

Seniors Lead the Way

BY BILL CHASTAIN, IM 79

Ben Lammers and Zaire O’Neil are ready to shoulder the load as Tech’s basketball teams look to build on last season’s success.

THE GEORGIA TECH MEN’S AND WOMEN’S hoops squads both enjoyed memorable 2016-17 seasons by reaching the finals of the National Invitational Tournament after some pundits had them pegged for last in the ACC. These surprising finishes have helped fuel expectations and enthusiasm by the Yellow Jacket faithful for the coming season.

BEN LAMMERS ALUMNI MAGAZINE: You were recruited by other schools, but the prospect of becoming an engineer helped you make your decision to attend Georgia Tech. Did you always want to be an engineer?

LAMMERS: My senior year in high school, I realized it was something I wanted to do. When I was a kid, I always enjoyed taking stuff apart and trying to put it back together. Usually unsuccessfully, but I guess I had an engineering mindset.

AM: Did you have to learn how to study once you got to Tech?

LAMMERS: Definitely. In high school, I could get away studying three hours the night before a test and do well. For these classes, if you don’t start studying four or five days ahead, you’re out of luck.

AM: What awes you more, guys you see in the classroom or guys you see on the basketball court?

LAMMERS: It’s basically the same thing, just a different environment. You’ve got guys in your classes who won’t show up to class, sleep every day, and get 98 on a heat transfer test. Or guys who can jump out of the gym crazy fast. Freaks of nature in both cases.

the

BASELINE

7,116

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MILES FLOWN BY THE MEN’S BASKETBALL TEAM for their season opener in Shanghai, China

100

YEARS SINCE COACH JOHN HEISMAN’S “Golden Tornado” won the National Championship

Two seniors—Ben Lammers and Zaire O’Neil—are ready to shoulder the load of leading the men’s and women’s teams to nothing less than the NCAA’s March Madness tournament.

Lammers is a 6-foot-10 center from San Antonio, Texas, whose play last season earned him second-team All-ACC honors after averaging 14.2 points per game and 9.2 rebounds while hitting 51.6 percent of his shots. He also was third in the nation in blocked shots and named conference defensive player of the year. For the upcoming season—his last—Lammers was placed on three national watch lists, including one for the John R. Wooden Award, which is given annually to the nation’s top Division 1 player.

“I love Ben,” says Josh Pastner, Tech men’s coach and last season’s ACC Men’s Basketball Coach of the Year. “He’s an awesome, awesome, young man with a high, high character. He’s a very good basketball player and a dedicated mechanical engineering student—what a big-time combo. His work ethic and blue-collar mentality make him a model Georgia Tech student-athlete.”

O’Neil is a 5-foot-10 senior from Newark, N.J. In 2016-17, she led the Tech women’s hoops team in scoring with a 12.9 points-per-game average, while connecting on 50 percent of her shots. She recorded three double-doubles, capping her season with a 21-point performance against Michigan in the WNIT title.

“Zaire is one of the best low-post scorers in the ACC,” says Tech’s women’s head coach MaChelle Joseph. “Her challenge is to be consistent night in and night out on both ends of the floor. She’s a remarkable young woman with her head on her shoulders and a chance to make a big impact in her future—both on and off the basketball court.”

Lammers and O’Neil recently took time out from their busy academic and athletic schedules to talk with the Alumni Magazine.

ZAIRE O’NEIL ALUMNI MAGAZINE: It’s not easy being a student-athlete at Georgia Tech.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced in your four years here so far? How does it push you?

O’NEIL: It motivates me. I have the opportunity to earn a degree from such a great institution and I’m playing in one of the top conferences, so you can never take a day off. Other schools have high academics, but don’t have sports in general. And there are schools that aren’t as academically qualified as Tech and are all about sports. I wanted to be able to do both.

AM: You lost your father, Joseph, to cancer while you were in high school. Losing a parent at such a young age had to be difficult. How did you handle this and grow from it?

O’NEIL: It was really hard for me. I’m his only girl. Everything I did growing up was because of him. He was my best friend and my biggest role model. Both of my parents were role models, but Dad and me were just super close—I was always daddy’s little girl. Losing him made me work harder, but it also took a lot out of me. Trying to get through some days was a struggle knowing I didn’t have him to talk to and ask for advice. Everybody called him Yogi, and everybody in my family calls me Boo-Boo. Like Boo-Boo Bear. I miss him.

4

NUMBER OF TECH FOOTBALL PLAYERS named to all-ACC teams, including KirVonte Benson, Parker Braun, Presley Harvin III and Shamire Devine

Ben Rollins

2/22 /18

DATE OF MATCHUP between Tech and archrival Georgia in men’s tennis for 2018 USTA College MatchDay

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ON THE FIELD BEN LAMMERS (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 26) AM: What are your career goals, once you “get out” of Tech?

LAMMERS: I want to see how basketball works out. I enjoy basketball and mechanical engineering. But with basketball, you have a window of maybe 10 years until that option no longer exists. You can always be an engineer. Age isn’t as much of a factor. Preferably I’d like to play basketball for as long as I can.

AM: Everybody underestimated Tech last year. You’re certainly not going to be the ACC favorites this season, but you’re not going to be deemed an easy opponent anymore. Other teams are going to be looking out for the Yellow Jackets. How do you anticipate that playing out?

LAMMERS: I think we earned some people’s respect last season. And I kind of like that. It’s one thing to kind of sneak up on people. But now that we’ve done that, we have to realize nobody’s going to just check us off as a win. We know they’re going to be giving us their best effort.

AM: You played the high post more last season, setting up scoring opportunities all over the court with your passes. Did that present a challenge for you?

LAMMERS: Coach Pastner moved me up to the free-throw line, that kind of thing. So that was an interesting change. I think he just kind of recognized that I was a good passer, so he thought I might be able to be a good distributor. It worked out, so we continued doing it.

AM: Your commitments to basketball and finishing your engineering degree no doubt limit your time to take a siesta. How do you manage to squeeze in time for a good nap?

LAMMERS: The way our schedules are, most of our classes are in the mornings and we have practices in the afternoon. So I usually try to get out of class by noon or so and get a nap in here at McCamish for about an hour.

AM: Has your experience validated your decision to go to Tech?

LAMMERS: Definitely the right decision—I’ve just had an amazing time. I mean, there have been some really tough classes and some long nights. School-wise, the research project I did in Mechanical Engineering 2110 was probably the most fun. Lots of all-nighters and lab reports while working on the project. My teammates and I made it to the semifinals of the competition.

“You can always be an engineer,” Lammers says. “Age isn’t as much of a factor. Preferably I’d like to play basketball for as long as I can.”

AM: What areas of your game do you hope to improve on this season?

LAMMERS: Other than just my general game, I’ve tried to focus on extending my game a little more to the 3-point line. I figure it’s a good skill to have maybe in the future for basketball, but also for the team to have a five player who can extend out and make a long-distance shot. That makes it harder for the other team to guard.

AM: Ben, the word’s out. You love naps.

LAMMERS: (Smiles) I do.

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AM: Are you aware you’ve evolved into the poster boy for Tech athletics?

LAMMERS: (Laughs) I caught on to that a little while ago, they had me do a picture for a billboard. I had my arms out and in one hand I held a basketball and in the other there was an engineering textbook.

AM: You don’t seem like a guy who would be the most comfortable with that kind of attention.

LAMMERS: You get used to it. After enough interviews and pictures, you get kind of desensitized to it. But it’s definitely been interesting. I feel like Georgia Tech is very motivated to see me graduate (laughs).

AM: Do you see the light at the end of the tunnel?

LAMMERS: I do. I’m not going to be able to finish my degree in four years, because I still have to do senior design. And that would be impossible to do during basketball season. So that’s going to have to bump over to the summer or the fall. Other than that, I only have another couple of classes I have to do.

AM: What are some of your hopes for the coming season?

O’NEIL: To do something that’s never been done here before. We want to leave a legacy so the people who come after us can see what we have done. We don’t want to be the untold story, because we have such great potential.

We want that to unfold, and to be able to show that to everyone.

ZAIRE O’NEIL (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 27) AM: What path took you to Georgia Tech?

O’NEIL: Coach Jo (MaChelle Joseph) was one of the first coaches to recruit me. I was really young. I’m a big fan of loyalty. Coach Jo never went away. She was constantly trying to get me on campus. I didn’t want a coach that had just started recruiting me to come play for her. She saw my potential at a young age and wanted to help me get there.

AM: Did Yogi like Coach Jo? O’NEIL: He loved her and (Tennessee coach) Pat Summit.

Before Pat Summit stopped coaching, Tech and Tennessee were my top schools.

AM: You experienced a bad knee injury in the last practice of your freshman season. Take us through your recovery.

O’NEIL: I had to bounce back a lot mentally. A lot of people don’t come back the same from an injury like that. Some people come back better. Some people come back worse.

And some can’t recover from it. It helped being able to talk things through with a good friend of mine, Brittany Sykes, who went to Syracuse. She tore her ACL twice.

Talking to different people like her motivated me and helped me back from the injury.

AM: What kind of relationship do the men’s and women’s teams have, if any?

O’NEIL: We have a great relationship. Whenever we have time to go to their games, we go. When they have time to come to our games, they do that. We play video games with them. We look at the team as our brothers. We don’t ever play basketball against them, but sometimes we like to get Francesca (Pan), who was the ACC Freshman of the Year, go 1-on-1 against Josh Okogie. They have 3-point shooting contests, and all the girls are cheering for Pan, and all the guys are cheering for Josh. That’s something fun we do.

AM The team took a two-week trip to play in Italy this past summer. How was the experience?

O’NEIL: It was an experience of a lifetime. We saw the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican and the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Colosseum in Rome. To have an opportunity like that meant a lot to me, coming from the area where I grew up in New Jersey.

“We want to leave a legacy so the people who come after us can see what we have done. We don’t want to be the untold story, because we have such great potential,” O’Neil says.

AM: Can you share some of your career goals after college?

O’NEIL: If I can play professionally I would take advantage of that opportunity. I would like to go into coaching, or do something that allows me to give back to my community. I’ve also thought about going into sports media.

Anything that allows me to give back to my community, and be able to help kids. Give them some of the same opportunities I’ve had.

Ben Rollins

AM: What has been the most satisfying aspect of Georgia Tech for you?

O’NEIL: I have made friends from all different backgrounds, all different cultures. It’s good to see how Tech always allows people to be themselves. Walking around campus, I get excited seeing how we have such a diverse community of students and faculty who all learn from each other.

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ON THE FIELD CALVIN JOHNSON NAMED WALTER CAMP MAN OF THE YEAR

TECH ATHLETICS RECORDS HIGHEST-EVER GRADUATION SUCCESS RATE FOR THE FIFTH STRAIGHT YEAR, Georgia Tech athletics has posted its highest NCAA Graduation Success Rate (GSR) ever. Tech’s student-athlete GSR of 88 percent ranks as its best since the NCAA began using the metric in 2005, topping last year’s record of 87 percent. Tech has posted an all-time best GSR each year since 2013.

Individually, 10 of Georgia Tech’s sports have GSRs higher than the national average for their respective sports. Five programs—men’s cross country/track and field, women’s cross country/track and field, golf, women’s tennis and volleyball—own perfect 100 percent GSRs. Each of Georgia Tech’s five programs that currently own 100 percent GSRs have done so for multiple years in a row. Leading the way is head coach Bruce Heppler’s golf program, which has posted a 100 percent GSR for 13 straight years. Women’s tennis and volleyball have recorded perfect GSRs for five consecutive years and both men’s and women’s cross country/track and field have owned 100 percent GSRs in each of the last two years.

GSR measures the success of an athletics department in graduating its student-athletes within a six-year period. The latest GSR cohort includes student-athletes that enrolled at Georgia Tech from 2007-2010.

GEORGIA TECH FOOTBALL GREAT Calvin Johnson has been named the Walter Camp Man of the Year by the Walter Camp Football Foundation. The award honors an individual who has been closely associated with the game of football as a player, coach or close attendant to the game. He must have attained a measure of success and been a leader in his chosen profession. He also must have contributed to public service for the benefit of his community, country and his fellow man, as well as have an impeccable reputation for integrity.

In 2008, Johnson founded The Calvin Johnson Jr. Foundation Inc., dedicated to the education, training and social development of at-risk youth, along with providing financial

assistance to community organizations. Since its inception, the foundation has assisted hundreds of youth with limited financial resources “catch” their dreams on and off the field by awarding college scholarships to deserving student-athletes, offering free football camps featuring NFL athletes, feeding countless families in the Atlanta and Detroit areas, and sponsoring toy drives that benefit homeless children and children of incarcerated women.

Johnson is one of the most successful wide receivers in the history of both college and professional football. He was a first-team allAmerican twice during his time at Tech, and was a six-time Pro Bowler in his nine years with the NFL’s Detroit Lions.

GRANT FIELD NAMED “FIELD OF THE YEAR”

HISTORIC GRANT FIELD, the playing surface at Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium, was named college football’s 2017 Field of the Year by the Sports Turf Managers Association (STMA). Grant Field is maintained by Chris May, Georgia Tech director of athletic grounds and turf maintenance, and his staff.

In addition to hosting six Tech football games in 2017, the field was also the home to Major League Soccer’s Atlanta United for the first nine matches of its inaugural season. Combined with the Yellow Jackets’ spring football schedule and preseason scrimmages,

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the natural-grass playing surface withstood more than 20 major sporting events over a 40week span from March to November.

Since 1992, the STMA has presented the Field of the Year awards as its industry’s highest honors. A panel of judges rates fields based on playability, appearance of surfaces, effective use of budget and implementation of a comprehensive agronomic program. The Field of the Year honor is the second of May’s career. In 2014, he and his staff won the STMA Field of the Year award in college baseball for their work at Tech’s Russ Chandler Stadium.

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In the World

MORE THAN JUST GOOD LOOKS This luxurious San Francisco Bay Area home designed by Marc Lindsell, Arch 89, sure is a stunning beauty, but behind its exteriors lie a few feats of engineering that give the residence a surprising strength.

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Treve Johnson

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IN THE WORLD

Engineered to a Fault

BY ROGER SLAVENS

San Francisco-based architect Marc Lindsell, Arch 89, oversaw the design of one of the most seismically resilient houses in the United States.

BUILDING A CLIENT’S DREAM HOME on a steeply sloped and wooded hillside was a challenging enough task for 2M Architecture, a San Francisco-based design and architecture firm co-founded by Marc Lindsell, Arch 89. But the site of the luxurious, modern, three-story house was also located in the Bay Area just a stone’s throw from the San Andreas Fault. The owners not only wanted the structure to keep their family safe in the event of a severe earthquake, but also for it to survive the seismic shocks.

“National residential building codes set the design standards to ensure ‘Life Safety’—essentially to get people out of the building alive and intact, though the home itself might be damaged beyond repair,” Lindsell says. “But this young couple didn’t want to spend millions of dollars and still potentially lose their house to a major quake.”

So they asked 2M Architecture what it would take to engineer their home so it would incur minimal damage. “If the building were to be on a flat site, we could just isolate the base from the ground—which is how it’s done with critical institutional or commercial structures,” Lindsell says. “But on a hill, there’s no single place where you could separate a three-story residence. We brought in a structural engineer who had experience with using viscous fluid dampers—kind of like huge automotive shock absorbers—that dissipate the energy of a quake and limit the displacement of the structure.”

Mark Tetrault, co-founder, principal and the second “M” in 2M Architecture, says that the wood shear walls and moment frames that are traditionally employed in residences to withstand the force of an earthquake serve, essentially, as rigid braces for the home. “Using another automotive analogy, when a quake hits these types of structures it’s like a car crash, with the walls remaining stiff to resist the shaking and absorbing damage if the forces and displacement increase beyond a certain level,” Tetrault says. “But dampers can dissipate the energy of the shaking better than a rigid structure. They help preserve the integrity of the building, while transmitting less of an earthquake’s forces inside and minimizing the risk to its occupants and valuable contents.”

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This multi-million-dollar dream home designed and engineered by 2M Architecture isn’t merely a marvel of seismic engineering; it also features a breathtaking design that employs sweeping cantilevers that appear to emerge straight from the natural shoulders of the ridge the house is perched atop.

Treve Johnson

Viscous fluid dampers placed throughout the house were used to absorb the destructive energy of earthquakes and increase the structure’s survivability. These dampers are the much-smaller cousins to those used on bridges and major commercial buildings.

Based on the structural engineer’s recommendation, Lindsell, Tetrault and the design team decided to integrate a system of steel frames and these viscous dampers into the structure—even though such a system had never been used before (at least to their knowledge) on a small-scale project like a house.

“You see something like this incorporated into large commercial structures, like the Petronas Towers in

Malaysia and even the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge,” Lindsell says.

2M Architecture integrated steel frames with dampers at strategic locations throughout the house to develop a seismic skeleton, with each frame fitted with a viscous fluid damper. “The dampers we used are about 18 to 24 inches long and about 3 to 4 inches in diameter,” Lindsell says. “They vary in capacity, but range from about 2,000 to 3,000 pounds per

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The three-story, 6,500-square-foot house features four bedrooms, four-and-a-half bathrooms, a full walk-out basement, an elevator for accessibility, radiant heating and cooling, near net-zero energy consumption, a 5,000-bottle wine cellar, game room, home theater, luxurious finishes throughout and a stunning birds-eye view of the Bay Area.

damper. Each is specially tuned to fit the dynamics—they’re not off the shelf. There are 13 in total throughout the house.”

The tops of the frames are attached to horizontal diaphragms—not the walls themselves. The walls can’t be attached to the frames to allow for differential motion, Tetrault explains.

“That means the frames actually are free standing inside the walls,” he says. “All the wall finishes have to be held off by about a half inch so that you have two independent systems. One system holds up the wall finishes and then the other is just the lateral system. They’re totally independent inside the same wall assembly, and that was quite a trick for the architectural detailing.”

But these physical materials of the home can’t accomplish anything without careful engineering and design.

“In addition to our regular geotechnical engineer, we had

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to hire a specialist who could do a ‘ground motion time history’ of the property,” Lindsell says.

On projects of this scale and construction type, geotechnical engineers would likely make fairly generic calculations about ground motions that could occur at the building site, but performance-based design techniques used on this project required the structural engineer to understand the vulnerabilities of the site, as well as how different faults— the San Andreas is not the only one nearby—could rupture and travel through the ground to impact the building.

“Because there are multiple earthquake faults that could rupture in different places, the building had to be modeled exactly relative to the direction of those faults,” Lindsell says. “In other words, if one fault goes, it might be more powerful in one location in the house than another.

The specialist geotechnical engineer modeled all this data,

Treve Johnson

In addition to being resilient to earthquakes, the home was also built with highly durable and fire-resistant materials. “It’s designed for the woodland-urban interface,” says Tech alumnus Marc Lindsell, co-founder and principal of 2M Architecture. “All of the materials are ignition resistant, including the exposed concrete, Prodema wood panels and aluminum window-door system, leaving no place for sparks to get in, including the gutters and ventilation strips.”

and helped us determine accelerations and forces that needed to be offset by the dampers and frames.”

Because this is the first time such materials and design have been applied on such a small scale, Lindsell and Tetrault admit they can’t know exactly how it will perform in real life. “You can look at the models and say it should do just great, but it’s not exactly known,” Lindsell says. “Luckily, the owners understood this, but because they are big into data, they wanted us to measure the performance of the house during seismic activity.”

2M Architecture contacted the California Strong Motion Instrumentation Program—a state agency that monitors earthquake data—and got it to agree to monitor the house.

“We purchased a number of earthquake sensors from a

This series of images above shows a time-lapse of the construction of the living room, which includes the integration of a viscous fluid damper and a steel frame.

California-based company called Kinemetrics and placed them throughout the property, including a free-field monitor on the grounds and a GPS sensor on the roof,” Lindsell says. “Whenever a tremor strikes the building, the agency records the performance data. That will allow engineers in the future to look at our data and compare it to theoretical models, and find out how close the calculations were to the actual numbers. Hopefully this knowledge can lead to even safer and more cost-effective building designs.”

The price for all this far-beyond-building-code earthquake protection may surprise you. “It wound up running only about two percent of the cost of construction,” Lindsell says.

“It turned out to be a relatively small price that the owners had to pay for some strong piece of mind.”

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10 QUESTIONS

Erupting to Applause

T

BY ROGER SLAVENS

Volcano scientists like Georgia Tech’s Josef Dufek are cheering for the chance to learn from the fiery showcase of Bali’s Mount Agung.

THOUGH VOLCANIC ACTIVITY of some form or another happens daily on our planet Earth, explosive eruptions of ash and pyroclastic matter—like those recently spewing from Bali’s Mount Agung—are a fairly rare occurrence. So it should be no surprise that Josef Dufek and his fellow volcanologists are excited by the opportunity to watch the fireworks and learn something new. An acclaimed expert on magma, fluid mechanics and the detonative dynamics of volcanoes, Dufek serves as professor and associate chair in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, where he teaches a number of courses and regularly leads students in field research. The Alumni Magazine thought it would be a blast to talk to Dufek about his work at Tech and find out if we’re all inevitably doomed to die under mounds of volcanic ash and lava.

1. WHAT’S YOUR SPECIFIC EXPERTISE WHEN IT COMES TO VOLCANO SCIENCE? My training really is in fluid dynamics; in particular I’m trying to understand how fluids play a role in distributing energy—from the crust of the earth upwards. I look at the magma system below the ground and how it interacts

flight. We also teach a field course that’s called Field Methods in Volcanic Terrains that’s taught every year, and faculty and students travel to different volcanic sites every year. We often go to the Pacific Northwest, Northern Arizona and California, but we’ve also traveled farther afield to places like Mexico and Greece.

Tech professor Josef Dufek

with geothermal fluids and subsurface rocks. But probably the majority of my time is spent studying how volcanoes erupt, what causes them to erupt, and then—once they erupt— what the likely outcomes are. I’m most fascinated with explosive eruptions, like the one going on in Bali right now.

2. HOW CAN YELLOW JACKETS PURSUE THE STUDY OF VOLCANOLOGY AT TECH? We have an intro level class called Natural Hazards that’s fairly broad to start them off. But, more focused, we have a class called Physical Volcanology that really dives into the physics of volcanoes. It draws a lot of earth science majors but also many from engineering disciplines, most notably aeronautical engineers who are interested in how volcanic ash affects

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3. IS THAT EVERYTHING? Those are the big courses but there are many related offerings such as Geodynamics, that explores how large earth motions are dictated by energy in the earth, and an Intro to Geophysics class. I teach Fluid Mechanics as well. So there’s actually quite a breadth of things that touch upon volcanoes in one way or another. An undergraduate at Tech who is really interested in volcanoes would typically be an earth and atmospheric sciences major, and then could specialize in Geophysics.

4. WHAT’S INVOLVED WITH YOUR BIG RESEARCH PROJECT IN SOUTH AMERICA THIS COMING JANUARY? Yes, in Chile. It’s a long-term project that involves a number of different U.S. institutions, but the main ones are Georgia Tech, Wisconsin and Cornell. It’s focused on one volcanic region called Laguna del Maule that first gained interest a few years ago because satellites found it evidence of sustained and dramatic uplift that might indicated volcanic activity. Our project aims to document that activity, and to try to understand better what will happen in the future in this region.

KieselUndStein/iStock

Mount Agung in Bali erupted several times in late November 2017, prompting mass evacuations and disrupting air travel.

10 QUESTIONS 5. YOU MENTIONED THE EXPLOSIVE VOLCANO IN BALI, MOUNT AGUNG. WHAT’S GOING ON WITH THAT? WHY IS IT RECEIVING SO MUCH ATTENTION? I’m not an expert on this particular volcano, but what’s happening is that magma is rising and volatile species—water, carbon dioxide, sulfur—are exsolving, creating a bubbly, low density magma. So you have this rapid change in density, and the change in buoyancy allows the magma to rise faster and faster, and then if it gets fast enough, it goes past the yield strength of the fluid, the magma, and it’ll break up or fragment.

That’s when you get an explosive eruption that releases all that builtup pressure.

6. IS THIS ERUPTION PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS? Yes, because the material being released is extremely energetic. There are two main hazards to worry about. One, which is making the news now, is the volcanic ash that’s being expelled into the atmosphere. You can’t fly airplanes through it because the ash is rapidly quenched molten rock, which is really a glass. So if you have a plane up there in the ash, you’d be flying through glass shards, which you can guess would be bad for jet engines.

The other hazard, which is why thousands of people are evacuating, is pyroclastic density currents. These are fast-moving, ground-hugging, deadly currents that are akin to a scalding hot avalanche. They’re turbulent, and they can move tens of meters per second—faster than you probably can drive down the roads there. It’s very hard to predict where these flows will go and they are much worse than effusive lava flows, which tend to move slower and more predictably. One other issue that becomes important in a place that gets a lot of rain, like Bali, is something called lahars, or mudflows. From this volcano, you’re ejecting tons and tons

of really fine-grain material, and if you add a little water in, that kind of soup is a lahar. They are also very mobile and energetic and capable of causing much destruction in lowlying areas.

7. HOW COMMONPLACE ARE VOLCANOES LIKE THIS? They’re pretty rare in terms of overall volcanic activity, but they get most of the news coverage. At any given moment, somewhere around the earth there’s something erupting, just not as grand as Mount Agung or in as populated a region.

8. WHAT’S ONE OF THE BIGGEST MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT VOLCANOES? Most people think of active volcanoes being these majestic mountains with colorful, relatively tranquil streams of lava flowing out of them, like the ones we have in Hawaii. But there’s a wide range of volcanic activity that doesn’t look or behave like that. The most dangerous ones are those like Agung that can explode violently and eject a lot of ash and create fast-moving, very destructive pyroclastic density currents.

to evacuate people and prepare for what’s about to come.

10. THERE’S A LOT OF TALK ABOUT SOCALLED “SUPERVOLCANOES” AND THAT THEY COULD BE MANKIND’S DOOM. IS THAT TRUE? “Supervolcano” is one of those terms with which volcanologists have a love-hate relationship.

What people are talking about is something that’s massive in size and can produce a hundred to a thousand times the volcanic materials of, say, Mount St. Helens produced (about one cubic kilometer of volcanic material). We know that eruptions producing 100 to 1,000 cubic kilometers of material have happened in the past, just not in recorded human history. If you drive across the western United States, you almost certainly have driven by eruption deposits that document past volcanic activity on this scale—the evidence is there at Yellowstone National Park and all across southern Idaho in the calderas, many of which are now buried beneath potato fields. Researchers know that a so-called supervolcano

“At any given moment, somewhere on this earth there’s something erupting, just not as grand as Mount Agung or in as populated a region,” Dufek says.

9. WHAT’S THE UPSIDE OF VOLCANOES COMPARED TO OTHER NATURAL DISASTERS? The thing that we do have an advantage over some other geophysical phenomena—say, earthquakes—is that we often have good warning signs that volcanoes will erupt. With earthquakes, scientists can make some long-term predictions about when faults are likely to fail, but the exact moments are pretty impossible to predict. Volcanoes generally give us more time

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will explode in the future, but there are no signs it will happen anytime soon, or even during our lifetimes.

If Yellowstone did erupt on a massive scale right now, the volcanic ash would cool temperatures across the northern hemisphere and settle across the Midwestern U.S., probably destroying much of the country’s food production capabilities. There would be a domino effect globally, but it wouldn’t likely cause mass extinction or our ultimate doom.

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IN THE WAKE OF MARIA Two Georgia Tech civil engineering alumni and Puerto Rican natives—Eli Diaz and Ryan Arrieta— are playing key roles in helping the island territory recover and rebuild following the destructive power of Hurricane Maria.

BY MELISSA FRALICK

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O

ON SEPT. 20, 2017, HurriA RETURN HOME TO SERVE cane Maria made landfall in Diaz and Arrieta had been with PRASA—the utility that proPuerto Rico. The fast-growvides water services for roughly 97 percent of the island’s 3.4 ing storm, which brought million residents—for less than a year when the hurricane hit. winds of 155 miles per hour In early 2017, Puerto Rico’s newly elected Gov. Ricardo Rosand heavy rainfall, left unselló appointed Diaz as PRASA’s president. In addition to precedented devastation of Diaz’s work as an engineer, he’s also a lawyer. He began his enlife and land in its path. gineering career with Puerto Rico’s super aqueduct system, As leaders of the Puerto served as executive director of the solid waste authority and Rico Aqueduct and Sewadvised former Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuño on infrastrucer Authority (PRASA), Eli ture matters.

Diaz, CE 99, and Ryan ArDiaz was certain his days in the public sector were behind rieta, CE 98, MS CE 00, him, but he couldn’t say no when presented with the opportunihave found themselves at the nexus of the U.S. territory’s rety to head the island’s aqueduct and sewer authority. covery. Since Maria, they’ve been working diligently to devise ways to restore water and sewer services to the people of Puerto Rico despite the loss of electricity and communications.

“Since before the storm, we knew that water availability would be the most critical aspect of this emergency,” says Diaz, who serves as PRASA’s president. “Everything would fall back on our ability to get the system back on its feet, and we needCaption goes here ed to be prepared and make sure our people understood our recovery plan.”

Diaz and Arrieta believe that having water makes all the difference in providing Eli Diaz, left, CE 99, and Ryan Arrieta, right, CE 98, MS CE 00, serve as president and vice president of Puerto Rico’s water authority. some semblance of normalcy.

“We needed to keep going, because people here are counting on having water,” Arrieta says. “Water’s such a trivial thing, people never think about it. They just open their faucet and there it is. But all the processes that have to take place within the operations and to be able to get the water there is very complicated. Especially on the island.”

“People here are counting on having water,” Arrieta says.

“Water’s such a trivial thing, people never think about it.

They just open their faucet and there it is.”

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A TIMELINE TO DISASTER: HURRICANE MARIA

Sept. 10: Maria formed from an African easterly wave that moved across the tropical Atlantic Ocean.

Sept. 16: At 2 p.m. AST, the system was classified as a tropical depression about 700 miles east-southeast of the Lesser Antilles. By 5 p.m., the depression was upgraded to Tropical Storm Maria with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph.

Sept. 17: Maria gradually intensified and became the eighth hurricane of the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season with 75 mph maximum sustained winds.

Sept. 18: Within an 18-hour period, Maria rapidly intensified, strengthening from a Category 1 to an extremely dangerous Category 5 hurricane. Hurricane Maria made its first landfall on Dominica, part of the Windward Islands, as a Category 5

Kapustin Igor/Shutterstock

hurricane at around 9:15 p.m.

Maria maintained Category 5 strength as it continued toward the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

Sept. 19: Rain bands first approached St. Croix, as well as portions of St. Thomas and St. John. Throughout the afternoon and early evening hours, rain bands generating tropical storm conditions reached Vieques, Culebra and Puerto Rico.

Sept. 20: The center of Maria approached the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, with more frequent rain bands and stronger, more intense winds.

Between 12-1 a.m., hurricane force winds were first reported in St. Croix as Maria’s eyewall moved over that island.

Based on observations from the Hurricane Hunters, the intensity of Maria was lowered from a Category 5 hurricane with 175 mph winds just southeast of St. Croix to a

Category 4 hurricane with 155 mph winds south of Vieques.

Around 5 a.m., hurricane force winds were reported in Vieques and the eastern half of mainland Puerto Rico.

At approximately 6:15 a.m., Maria made landfall in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico. As the center of the storm moved over southeastern Puerto Rico into the interior and northwestern Puerto Rico, widespread hurricane force winds spread all over the island along with extremely heavy rainfall that produced major, catastrophic flooding and flash flooding, especially across the northern half of Puerto Rico.

Maria’s center moved over the coastal waters off northwestern Puerto Rico early that afternoon.

Hurricane force winds started to diminish once the system moved offshore, but tropical storm force winds continued well into the evening and overnight hours across mainland Puerto Rico.

Source: National Weather Service

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“I am very passionate about the water industry,” Diaz says.

“When [Rosselló] offered me the opportunity to lead the water authority I knew that this was the perfect time to give back to the island that had given me so much. It also gave me the opportunity to go back and put all my experience and knowledge into one of the first industries I had worked in as an engineer.

Although Puerto Rico was going through financial hardships, I understood PRASA’s potential.”

As he began building his team, Diaz recruited Arrieta—his longtime friend and former roommate at Georgia Tech—to serve as PRASA’s vice president of strategic and corporate planning.

After getting out of Georgia Tech, Arrieta earned an MBA and was consulting in finance and strategic planning for the energy sector in Atlanta. His experience working with utilities made him a natural fit, Diaz says.

“I’ve known Ryan for years,” Diaz says. “This is a position of trust, I had to make sure that I hired people that were willing to put in a lot of work and a lot of effort.”

Arrieta says he accepted the position knowing that it would be challenging, but rewarding, to return home to Puerto Rico and help the island work toward financial solvency.

Puerto Rico has been in a recession since 2006, and the government went into crushing debt over the past decade borrowing money to fund operating expenses and pension obligations. In 2016, U.S. Congress passed the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act, known by the acronym PROMESA. The act established a Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, to work with the government to restore the economy.

“It’s a very interesting time in the history of Puerto Rico, where a lot of precedents are going to be established, given the debt situation,” Arrieta says. “I thought, let me go down and be part of not only a challenging time and also a great company—because the water company here is a great company—but also the opportunity to work with someone I’ve known for many years, and a good friend of mine, and also a Tech alumni.”

One of Diaz and Arrieta’s main objectives with the Aqueduct and Sewer Authority has been creating a 10-year fiscal plan to present to the Financial Oversight and Management Board. As part of PROMESA, they’ve been meeting with stakeholders,

Diaz and Arrieta had been with PRASA— the utility that provides water services for roughly 97 percent of the island’s 3.4 million residents—for less than a year when the hurricane hit.

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Winds of up to 155 miles per hour during Hurricane Maria toppled trees and knocked down power lines all across Puerto Rico, leading to widespread power outages.

restructuring the agency—as well as the debt—and gaining access to capital markets to fund infrastructure.

But those efforts ground to a halt once Hurricane Maria loomed on the radar.

A PROBLEM OF POWER A few days before Maria made landfall, forecasters predicted a biblical storm would head straight for the island, making a massive power outage all but certain. Arrieta and Diaz recognized that a lack of power would create a dire situation for PRASA. “PRASA’s system is one of the most complicated aqueduct and sewer systems in the U.S. with more than 4,000 facilities, including 115 water filtration plants and 51 wastewater treatment plants,” Diaz says.

The mountainous topography of Puerto Rico makes pump stations necessary to get water uphill and through the system’s 20,000 miles of pipes.

RaiPhoto/Shutterstock

“A lot of the water system depends on pumps, and so we need to pump water up the tanks and then from the tanks the water is distributed… through our systems. Without power, we can’t pump,” Arrieta says.

At the beginning of the hurricane season, PRASA activated its preventive maintenance teams to get all of its roughly 1,300 generators ready and on standby before storms hit. At the same time, more than 125 water cistern trucks were utilized for post-hurricane water deployment.

“We knew we had to devise regional approaches because of the potential complications,” Diaz says. “Everything— diesel, cistern trucks, chemicals—was mobilized pre-storm and that really helped us in being able to respond as quickly as we did. Regional heads understood the plan and were ready to implement regardless of communication or accessibility issues.”

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The dark stormclouds of Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, 2017, leaving behind a stark view of what was going to be needed to recover from its devastation.

would bring especially heavy rains. Five days before Maria arrived, PRASA began emptying reservoirs to make room for the expected rainfall, ultimately lowering the reservoir levels by about 3.5 meters of water.

Just six hours after Hurricane Maria reached the island, the reservoirs had already risen 4 meters.

Diaz feels that the decision to drain the reservoirs was a bright spot against a dark, unstoppable storm.

“I tell you, that’s one of the stories that we reflect back upon,” Diaz says. “If it weren’t for our management, those reservoirs would have caused catastrophic damages. Not only to the properties, but probably massive loss of life. A bridge over one of our reservoirs runs at a height of 6 meters. We would have probably lost the bridge and the dam, if it weren’t for the process that we undertook lowering the water.”

Hurricane Maria put everything on pause. Strong winds toppled trees, brought down power lines and destroyed homes. Heavy rains flooded roads, making travel impossible in places.

“We haven’t had this amount of damage or havoc with other storms in Puerto Rico,” Diaz says.

He and Arrieta agree without hesitation that Hurricane Maria is the worst storm they’ve experienced in their lifetimes.

“You know, there is always the risk of some sort of natural disaster, here on the island, with the hurricane season,” Arrieta says. “But honestly, we went through Hugo, and Hugo was pretty bad, Georges also hit Puerto Rico, but this thing has been at a whole other level. It’s incredible, the amount of destruction.”

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WORKING NONSTOP TO PROVIDE WATER After the storm passed, Diaz and Arrieta needed to make sure that PRASA could continue to provide clean water and process sewage—a difficult challenge. Diaz recalls staying in the authority’s San Juan facility for two days amongst uncertainty as the storm raged.

“We had power issues,” he says. “We had communication issues. Roadways were blocked. Everything at that time, at that moment, was very complicated.”

As part of PRASA’s emergency plan, generators kicked in to power some of the plants, and the cistern trucks that had been distributed to different regions of the island were deployed to transport water to areas without generators.

PRASA also used vacuum trucks to make up for roughly half of the system’s 51 wastewater treatment plants that didn’t have electricity. The trucks were utilized to move wastewater to plants that were powered by generators so it could be treated.

“A lot of people talk about the ability to provide water,” Diaz says. “But we also manage the treatment of wastewater.

That was a big issue for us. We had the risk of causing wastewater to overflow through our manholes and run through our streets, contaminate bodies of water or even backflow into homes.”

Since Sept. 20, Diaz, Arrieta and their team at PRASA have been working overtime—often as much as 20 hours a day—to get the system back up and running.

“It’s an incredible workforce that we have here,” Arrieta says.

“Everybody at heart, their No. 1 interest, is to do the best they can and help. With the least resources, with communications problems, with the power problem, you know they put in full time,

being an island in the middle of the Caribbean. Federal aid and relief organizations can’t drive into Puerto Rico the way they were able to drive to Texas and Florida following hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

Post-storm, Diaz and Arrieta say managing electricity has been their biggest priority. Much of the island still remains without power, and Diaz and Arrieta say they have devoted a lot of their time and attention to maintaining their network of generators so they can provide water and sewer services.

“The generator is not as simple as you would think,” Arrieta says. “Because you have the logistics, the staging, you have the fueling, the maintaining. And so, a lot of our daily operations have switched from providing water, which we continue to do, but also, we added this whole new dimension on how do we maintain power.”

But things are starting to get better.

As of Dec. 5, 93.5 percent of Puerto Ricans had water service, while about 50 percent had power. Fifty of the island’s 51 wastewater treatment plants were up and running again.

“We are taking steps to provide independence to some of our facilities,” Diaz says. “For example, we recently reached a collaborative agreement with TESLA Solar and installed battery packs in our wastewater facilities in Vieques and Culebra, two of Puerto Rico’s island municipalities. Culebra Waste Water Plant now runs entirely off grid through solar energy.”

For now, the goal is to try and create a sense of normalcy, more than two months after Hurricane Maria.

The water and sewer authority is concentrating on transitioning out of emergency mode and back into typical operations. Moving forward, Diaz and Arrieta are eager to renew their work on the fiscal initiatives that they were brought in to do originally.

Diaz and Arrieta say they’ve been inspired by the attitude of the people of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of the hurricane.

“I really have to thank the governor, our mayors, the almost 5,000 PRASA employees and the people of Puerto Rico for their support through this very difficult time,” Diaz says.

“Without their support we would not be where we are today.

Now we have to put our full efforts into rebuilding and resiliency, given the probability of recurrence of natural disasters such as this, the Puerto Rico of tomorrow has to be tougher and stronger than the Puerto Rico of today.”

“With the least resources, with communications problems, with the power problem, you know they put in full time, overtime, sometimes even straight days, to get the system going,” Arrieta says. “So, we’re very proud of the workers we have and the effort that they’ve made as well.” overtime, sometimes even straight days, to get the system going.

So, we’re very proud of the workers we have and the effort that they’ve made as well.”

THE LONG ROAD TO RECOVERY Recovery has been difficult and slow, with so much of Puerto Rico’s power and communication infrastructure ravaged by Hurricane Maria. Added to that is the logistical difficulty of RaiPhoto/Shutterstock

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COME RAIN OR SHINE A METEOROLOGICAL LOVE STORY It’s been all lightning bolts for Laura and James Belanger, who met at Georgia Tech as undergraduates, fell in love, got married and pursued careers as rival forecasters for two of the nation’s biggest weather services.

By Kelley Freund | PHOTOS BY BEN ROLLINS

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--SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT-NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PEACHTREE CITY GA JULY 2003 Both Laura and James turned to Georgia Tech to jumpstart their careers in meteorology. The closeness to their hometowns played a factor, but the big draw was the prestige of the school and the holistic approach of Tech’s earth and atmospheric sciences program. The curriculum didn’t just focus on one facet, but provided them with a breadth of knowledge in the field.

While he was in class, James might have resented sitting through lectures on PRECAUTIONARY ACearthquakes and atmospheric chemisTIONS: This is the beginning of try when all he wanted to learn about something special. But James was severe thunderstorms and hurriis a very risk-averse guy. canes. But graduates of Tech’s earth and atmospheric sciences program leave This could take a while. with a fundamental knowledge of earth science—as well as a passion to solve the world’s problems.

Laura and James are no exception.

LAURA BELANGER likes to tease While most people think of meteorologists as the peoher husband, James, that his first ple who deliver the local daily weather forecast on TV, the love was Weather Channel metecouple works largely behind the scenes, analyzing weather orologist Jeanetta Jones. Instead data and its impacts, getting us all prepared for weather’s of watching cartoons as a kid, he next big event. would sit and watch the Weather Channel for hours. But according to James, it was not because THE WEATHER FRONT of Jeanetta. Since the age of four, Laura has been a part of the National Weather Service James knew he wanted to be a longer than she hasn’t. For the past 17 years, she’s worked meteorologist. He spent the first her way from volunteer to intern to meteorologist. few years of his life in North CarThere are 122 National Weather Service offices scatolina before moving to Georgia, tered across the country. Laura works at the only office and he remembers staying up late physically located in Georgia, which covers forecasts and to watch the old TV version of rawarnings, such as tornadoes and flash floods, for about twodar, looking for snow. thirds of the state. As a meteorologist, Laura produces routine “During elementary school, forecast products (advisories and updates that you would see when we had our closed-circuit on TV or on weather apps). The National Weather Service protelevision broadcast, I was the TV vides decision support—supplying information to people who weather guy,” James says. “It was kind of a no-brainer that I wantare trying to make decisions based on weather, like emergened to go to a university where I could become a meteorologist.” cy managers or people putting on events. For example, when As for Laura, she wanted to be a dentist. But that was Atlanta hosts the College Football Championship in January short-lived. In the eighth grade, she was given a homework as2018 and the Super Bowl in 2019, the Weather Service is alsignment to talk to someone with an occupation that she might ready making plans so that plenty of forecasters will be on site like to have someday. Through acquaintances, she set up an infor support in case of inclement weather impacting the area terview at the National Weather Service in her hometown of (even though the stadium’s retractable roof will provide ample Peachtree City, Ga. What was supposed to be a 15-minute concover come game time). versation lasted an hour and a half because she wouldn’t stop Laura also currently serves as the acting service hydrologist asking questions. She walked out of the meeting with an offer for the office. In this role, she goes out to the region’s flood-prone for a volunteer position. rivers to determine if the flood risk is literally rising, and then

WHAT: A slow moving warm front will pull through the Georgia Tech campus as new students gather for FASET orientation near the student center. Expect this front to affect two students in particular: Laura Griffith and James Belanger. As the group of future Ramblin’ Wrecks gather around large signs depicting their major—with some 300 incoming freshmen milling about all the engineering fields—Laura will find just two other students under the Earth and Atmospheric

Sciences banner. The small group will make the 10minute walk to the department building and no one will say anything. Laura will think this is weird. The boy walking next to her seems like the less odd of the two students with her. So she will say, “Hi, I’m Laura.” “Hi, I’m James.”

L

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products (advisories, updates, etc.).

In January 2016, IBM bought The Weather Company, acquiring their product and technology businesses.

(The proprietary name, The Weather Channel, was included in the purchase. The television station was not acquired, however, but is now owned by Weathergroup, who has a long-term license and data agreement with IBM to use the name The Weather Channel and The Weather Company’s data products.) More funding became available to expand, including the creation of a new senior meteorological scientist position, which James took later that year in July.

The Weather Company is using artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve day-to-day

Laura and James work largely behind the scenes, analyzing weather data and its impacts, getting us all prepared for weather’s next big event.

draws up detailed reports, also known in her world as impact statements. The National Weather Service uses these statements to provide more detailed information when warnings are issued.

“So when somebody says, ‘OK, you issued a flood warning for this river—what does that mean?’ We have specifics that say a house on the right bank of the river could have one foot of water above the foundation or this road is going to be closed,” Laura says.

When Laura was offered her full-time position with the National Weather Service, James was wrapping up his master’s at the State University of New York in Albany. To be near her, he decided to pursue his PhD at Georgia Tech and got a side gig working with a small startup company, CFAN, through Tech’s VentureLab program.

CFAN eventually established a relationship with The Weather Company (which began as The Weather Channel in the 1980s), becoming their exclusive provider of tropical

weather forecasting around the globe. James and his team take in the forecast the National Weather Service is providing, but they also take in forecasts from a variety of other weather information sources, as well as other predictive models. The Weather Company then figures out a way to blend all this information together and deliver it to both consumers and businesses. James’ job is on the back end to work on the algorithms that are in place to generate those forecasts and combine them.

“I’m taking my knowledge of AI and meteorology and trying to bring those two together—trying to identify how we can help industries that have been plagued by weather impacts and make better decisions as they consider their operations,” James says.

As you can imagine, there’s a lot of weather talk going on at the Belanger house. There’s not always agreement. But Laura and James describe these debates as “healthy discussions.”

Because James is in the private sector and Laura works for the government, Laura likes to say the two are not rivals, but teammates who work in tandem. The Weather Company is working on projects that help support the mission of the

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National Weather Service, and the National Weather Service is providing data to The Weather Company for their forecasts.

“Since James is on more of the research side of things, and trying to improve forecast models and products, I joke with him that he’s got to leave room for the meteorologist,” Laura says.

“He can’t do so well at his job that he eliminates the need for forecasters.”

“And my point to that is that we want to use forecasters in different ways than we’ve used them in the past,” James says.

MAN VERSUS HURRICANE --SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT--

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PEACHTREE CITY GA 2006

WHAT: That same slow-moving warm front from 2003. Over the next few years, Laura and James will have a lot of interactions, from classes to study groups. But they will remain “just friends” for a long time.

Then, their junior year, they will both become part of a study group for a particularly difficult class, and James (one of the only people Laura knows who will graduate from Tech with straight As) will teach everyone the

material. It turns out he is only coming to the study group because Laura is there.

IMPACTS: This has gone on long enough. A friend will finally convince James to ask Laura out—which he will do over AOL Instant Messenger. She will respond with, “I have to check my work schedule.” James will think she’s going to say she has to wash her hair that night.

She doesn’t.

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season was one of the most active on record. In late August, Hurricane Harvey became the first major hurricane to make landfall in the United States since 2005. Hitting Texas as a Category 4 storm, it went on to affect 13 million people in six states and cause $180 billion in damage.

Hurricane Irma followed a few weeks later and went down in the record books for its meteorological significance, including its number of days as a major hurricane and as the strongest storm in the Atlantic this year.

When Irma hit Florida, traveling up toward Georgia, it was all hands on deck for Laura and James at their respective

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companies. Laura was deployed to FEMA Region IV headquarters in Atlanta to help the office prepare ahead of the storm, and James was called up to write editorial content for weather.com.

“I think there is a general consensus when you’re talking to meteorologists about significant weather systems,” Laura says.

“Meteorologists are torn between the awe and beauty of the storm (something we’ve studied and trained for), and the ache of knowing people are in harm’s way.”

As a meteorologist, part of Laura was excited to see such a huge storm persist. But as a forecaster providing decision support to FEMA—knowing what was likely to occur and the potential impacts to the millions of people in harm’s way—it was an emotional experience.

James echoes Laura’s sentiments, but points out that valuable information can come from these significant storms. “As someone who works to implement the science of weather prediction into operations, these hurricanes provide us with a new sample for testing our machine learning forecast systems,” he says. “In the end, these cases ultimately result in improvement in the accuracy of our weather forecast content even though they end up causing billions of dollars in damage.”

Meteorologists like Laura and James know that we can use the new insights gained from significant weather systems to drive better decisions and outcomes not only in the short term

food systems. James says that regardless of the underlying causes, these changes should motivate conversation and action centered around sustainability policies that increase resilience and reduce our environmental footprint. “A society that is more resilient to high-impact natural hazards like drought, winter storms and landfalling hurricanes is more likely to better withstand the impact of low-frequency climatic changes,” he says.

“You can look at the numbers, and I think it’s 90 percent of the presidential declarations are natural disasters,” Laura says. “We are lucky to be in a field where we can bring some education and some greater understanding to what those impacts mean for people and try to get people to understand what their greatest risks are.”

--SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT-NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PEACHTREE CITY GA 2006 TO PRESENT DAY WHAT: Expect bright lights over Stone Mountain. This laser show, a Georgia tradition since 1983, is where Laura and James will have their first date, picking up KFC for dinner on the way.

(whether or not to put on a coat because of a given day’s temperature or threat of precipitation), but also in terms of the decisions we make when we think about things like where an airport should be located, how we should be designing our cities or implementing building codes.

“You can’t keep the weather from happening,” Laura says. “But you can lessen the impact.”

EXTENDED OUTLOOK Weather is an equalizer. It doesn’t care about your socioeconomic status. It doesn’t care where you live. It doesn’t care what college you went to or what you do for a living. It is one of the only things on this planet that affects everyone.

Because of this far-reaching impact, the change in weather statistics over time is an active area of research. The consensus among the scientific community is that there have been changes in things like the planet’s atmosphere, ecosystems and human

IMPACTS: A happy ever after. James will fall in love with Laura’s laugh and her happy personality. As for Laura, she will love James’ drive and his moral character.

They will give each other the nickname “Kiddo,” get married in 2010 and have two children. One of those children will go into their preschool class and use the word cumulonimbus to describe clouds with preternatural confidence. Someday, when Laura and James retire, they will go on

vacation, wake up one morning and say, “Oh, I didn’t know it was going to rain today.”

PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS: For now, expect extreme levels of happiness, whether it rains or shines. When it rains, the family stays in their pajamas all day. When it shines, they go to Georgia Tech football games.

“We shared the weather interest, but it was really a lot more than that,” says James of that moment when he met Laura under a FASET major sign at Georgia Tech in 2003. “That may have helped bring us together, but it was these other features about Laura that drew me to her. I definitely made the right choice.”

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DOCUMENTING

DISASTER IN THE WAKE OF A MAJOR CATASTROPHE, a hand-selected team from the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association—which pulls from natural disaster experts around the globe, including Georgia Tech faculty and alumni—will arrive to collect data from the scene quickly and then share it with the scientific community so researchers can help prepare for future catastrophes.

BY ELLIS BOOKER

Anne Lemnitzer/UC Irvine

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J

JUST DAYS AFTER A MAJOR EARTHQUAKE STRUCK central Mexico in September 2017, Alejandro Martinez, MS 12, PhD 15, found himself at the site taking vital measurements of the disaster.

“It was a shocking day for everyone,” Martinez says.

Early reports didn’t reveal the true extent of the earthquake’s damage or its death toll. Since Mexico City is such a seismically active spot, it’s not unusual for local residents—including Martinez’s own sister—to feel them and pass them off as yet another tremor. This time it most definitely wasn’t.

With an epicenter about 55 kilometers south of the city of Puebla, the 7.1-magnitude quake that hit on Sept. 19 caused major damage in the Mexican states of Puebla and Morelos, as well as greater Mexico City. Some 370 people were killed, with another 6,000 injured.

This year’s temblor happened on the anniversary of a far more devastating Mexico City quake, which struck the region in 1985 and killed 10,000 people.

“It reminded everyone of the event in ’85, and paralyzed the entire city for a day or two,” Martinez says.

Arriving in Mexico on Sept. 24, Martinez’s team of five U.S. professors and two Tech alumnus Alejandro Martinez inspects road damage in Central Mexico after the 2017 quake. industry experts were joined by a faculty member from a local university, several engineers and a number of civil engineering students. A second U.S. team of 10, which arrived as Martinez and other members of the first reconnaissance squad were leaving after a week-long tour, conducted more detailed analysis at key sites that the first team identified.

Before traveling, both teams of experts consulted with their contacts in Mexico, pored over documentation from the 1985 and 1999 Mexico City quakes, and even collected Twitter posts and videos to determine the best locaa natural or human-induced event,” says GEER co-founder and tions to study. Both teams were coordinated by the Geotechnical current co-chair David Frost, the Elizabeth and Bill HigginExtreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association, which botham Professor of Civil Engineering at Georgia Tech. “That Georgia Tech faculty helped created 15 years ago. provides us insights for improving its performance in the future, “We see how our infrastructure has performed in the face of to make the infrastructure more resilient.”

Composed of geotechniacal engineers, engineering geologists and earth scientists from academia, industry, government organizations and nonprofit organizations, GEER coordinates National Science Foundation-sponsored reconnaissance efforts of geotechnically important events across the globe.

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Anne Lemnitzer/UC Irvine

Two to four times a year, GEER volunteers—primarily academic researchers—board airplanes and rush to disaster sites to collect vital data and then quickly share their measurements and observations with a worldwide scientific community.

Composed of geotechnical engineers, structural engineers, engineering geologists and earth scientists from academia, industry, government organizations and nonprofit organizations, GEER coordinates National Science Foundation-sponsored reconnaissance efforts of geotechnically important events across the globe. Not only does this coordination result in better use of resources and personnel, it creates an invaluable mechanism for distributing data, as well as the training of young researchers. The field work is also vital for improving reconnaissance technologies and protocols. (See “3 Tools of the Trade” on page 60.)

GEER’s mission is to collect “perishable” data. Rescue and recovery efforts often disturb land and buildings and bother physical evidence, such as the height of receding flood and tsunami waters, which can vanish quickly. The group’s model is to have its teams rapidly prepare a report of their findings, uploading it within a few weeks to, at most, a month after an event. There are some 100 reports at GEER’s website: geerassociation.org.

HELPING PREPARE FOR FUTURE CALAMITIES Conducting reconnaissance immediately—often while the other two “R’s” of disaster response, rescue and recovery, are ongoing—informs the science and, crucially, can help mitigate the impact of future natural disasters, saving precious lives and property.

In Mexico City, for instance, it is now understood that the city, which is built atop an old lakebed, is susceptible to amplification of earthquake motions.

In 1985, the waves predominantly affected midrise buildings, those between 10 and 20 stories. Updated building codes since 1985 may account for why most new buildings of that height escaped harm in 2017. On the other hand, the September quake, with

Tech faculty member David Frost co-founded GEER and will become its chair in 2018.

FROM ‘EARTHQUAKES’ TO ‘EXTREME EVENTS’: A BRIEF HISTORY OF GEER WITH THEIR DRAMATIC, destructive potential, earthquakes hold a special fascination for geotechnical researchers. Fifteen years ago, following every major quake, U.S. scientists and engineers eager to visit the epicenter would send in their proposals promptly to the National Science Foundation (NSF).

“Individual faculty members from around the country would reach out to the NSF and say, ‘I’d like to study the damage that’s just occurred,’” says David Frost, the Elizabeth and Bill Higginbotham Professor of civil engineering at Georgia Tech. “But three hours later, somebody else from a different university would call, wanting to study something else. There were lots of great ideas, but they were all quite disjointed.”

When the NSF program director at the time challenged the geotechnical field to improve how it conducted postearthquake reconnaissance, Frost and a handful of academic colleagues founded the Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering Reconnaissance Association (GEER), as it was then known.

After GEER documented the geotechnical effects of the 1999 Kocaeli, Turkey, earthquake, the NSF awarded the group its first funding, a three-year grant. NSF has since awarded two fiveyear grants and is due to issue another one next year.

Over time, GEER broadened its scope to include other natural disasters, including landslides, floods and

tsunamis, as well as human-made disasters. To reflect the expanded mandate but keep its by-now-familiar acronym, the group’s name was revised, becoming the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association.

Interestingly, while earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides and even manman disasters like the terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Center are within GEER’s expanded purview, fires are not, because they generally don’t change the subsurface. (On the other hand, researchers have become more cognizant of what Frost calls “cascading events,” such as the susceptibility a fire-devastated landscape to heavy rains, and subsequent floods or landslides.)

If imitation the highest form of flattery, GEER is doing very well. Earlier this year, the NSF decided to create two additional organizations modeled after GEER. Social Science Extreme Events Reconnaissance (SSEER), led by the University of Colorado at Boulder, has already been funded; a second group, for which NSF has solicited proposals, will be aimed at structural engineering reconnaissance.

Currently serving as one of GEER’s three co-chairs and set to become the association’s chair next year, Frost is now leading the writing of the latest NSF proposal. Assuming acceptance, this five-year grant will commence in June 2018.—ELLIS BOOKER

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3 TOOLS OF THE TRADE FOR DISASTER RECONNAISSANCE them to disaster sites.

Typically, the devices are used to fly over areas that may be inaccessible or hazardous, and can give a quick overview of key locations and record photos and videos.

GPS Hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) technology has been a boon to GEER, which insists that every piece of information collected on a mission include latitude and longitude readings.

By synchronizing the camera clock with the GPS clock, every moment of the day can be mapped precisely. With free online software, an annotated image file and the GPS track can be merged and uploaded to Google Earth for sharing with other researchers.

DRONES Now affordable and compact, GEER teams can bring several drones with

LIDAR GEER makes use of both airborne and terrestrial Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) systems, which use a pulsed laser to measure distances.

These large data files can be turned into a 3-D surface rendering and merged with satellite maps or analyzed by software.

Together, GPS, drones, LIDAR and mapping services like Google Earth let GEER gather and share detailed information in a short amount of time, much closer to when extreme events occur than ever before—sometimes even while rescue and recovery are ongoing.

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its higher-frequency waves, hit hard 2- to 7-story buildings, many built in the 1960s or before. There may also have been an interesting interplay between the pumping of Mexico City’s aquifers, land subsidence –some places are settling at 1 centimeter per month—and earthquake effects, Martinez says.

Learning from events around the world is a core part of GEER’s mandate. As Martinez notes, it’s possible to apply an understanding of Mexico City’s susceptibility to seismic events to Salt Lake City, another city constructed atop an ancient lakebed.

Similarly, while most Americans know about the famous San Andreas Fault and the danger it poses to San Francisco, those working in earthquake engineering are far more concerned about the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which hasn’t seen a major quake in hundreds of years.

“If and when an earthquake occurs there, it’ll affect Seattle, Portland, down the Oregon coast—and there may be a tsunami as well,” Frost says. “We can start to do things now, building upon what we’re learning at other foreign earthquake sites, that can perhaps mitigate the effect of major U.S. earthquakes in the future.”

That is the true, long-term benefit of GEER’s reconnaissance trips. While tests in a lab or simulations are great, “nothing beats observing how the infrastructure performs, at full scale, in a real event,” Frost says.

A TSUNAMI OF INFORMATION For Hermann Fritz, a newly minted assistant professor at Georgia Tech in 2004, December 2004 is an important date, personally and professionally.

Fritz was on Christmas holiday in Switzerland when the Indian Ocean earthquake hit off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, on Dec. 26.

“The news came slowly, so I came back from Switzerland to Georgia on Jan. 2, and then on Jan. 3 flew right back out to Sri Lanka,” he recalls. That began his documentation of the staggering aftereffects of the deadliest extreme event in recorded history, a tsunami that killed about 250,000 people in 14 countries and inundated coastal communities with waves up to 100 feet high.

But just as important as taking rigorous measurements— from water inundation marks on wrecked buildings and standing trees to examining soil samples for evidence of tsunami activity in the distant past—a key GEER practice is interviewing eyewitnesses, Fritz says.

“We interview people, talk to survivors to see what happened,” Fritz explains. “We try to use the accounts to improve tsunami awareness and education, so it’s very important to have examples and know what worked for survivors.”

For example, thanks to reconnaissance conducted by Fritz and others, it’s now better understood that water flow depth and velocity are critical factors in determining the

“We interview people, talk to survivors to see what happened,” Fritz explains. “We try to use the accounts to improve the tsunami awareness and education, so it’s very important to have examples and what worked for survivors.”

Tech faculty member Hermann Fritz has been deployed numerous times to disaster sites by GEER.

impact on buildings, erosion and potential fatalities.

Cultural differences matter, too.

During a GEER reconnaissance trip to Turkey in 1999, Frost’s Turkishborn graduate student explained why so many buildings were only partially constructed, telling him that because there are no mortgages in Turkey, people build what they can afford, and may take 10 years to build the next floor.

“The engineering of rusted rebar is that it won’t bond to the concrete as well, which leads to some lower performance of the reinforced concrete,” Frost says.

“Something as non-engineering as, ‘We don’t have mortgages,’ has ripple consequences. These cultural differences are absolutely critical to understanding what is happening and what will happen.”

GEER’s motto may be “Turning Disaster into Knowledge,” but sometimes its members cannot visit a place of interest because of extraneous factors.

Recently, GEER wanted to visit an earthquake site on the border area between Iran and Iraq, but the nineperson steering committee determined the potential benefits and relevance did not outweigh the hazards. (Frost said he was hopeful that GEER’s international network of contacts could acquire the needed data, remotely.)

Speaking of GEER team deployments, Frost stresses how the organization strives to assemble a mix of experts, including complimentary academic interests, languages and familiarity with the country. “Also, we don’t want our teams to be working vacations for aging scholars with gray hair, so we seek to include on every team young faculty members and even graduate students,” he says.

GEER has a modest operating budget, so deployments don’t include luxury accommodations for researchers. In a disaster zone, team members often find themselves sleeping in tents or the back of vans, boiling water and eating MREs. “We’re not staying in a 5-star Hilton and having T-bone steak for dinner,” Frost says.

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Alumni House

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DRIVING RINGS AROUND CAMPUS—LITERALLY The Student Alumni Association and the Ramblin’ Reck Club have partnered up to establish a new campus tradition: Special delivery of class rings. This fall, the Wreck transported the rings to the Campanile to kick-off the Student Spirit Day celebration just before finals.

Students were then able to pick up their Balfour-designed bling and take a photo with the Wreck showing off their new signets of Tech pride.

Sheretta Armstrong

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ALUMNI HOUSE

Great Eight These 2018 Gold & White Honors recipients represent the latest class of award-winning alumni and friends.

BY ROGER SLAVENS PHOTOS BY KAYLINN GILSTRAP, BEN ROLLINS, SHANE BEVEL AND ERIC SCHMIDT

FOR MORE THAN 125 YEARS, Georgia Tech has educated, fostered and empowered some of the most influential people in the United States and the world at large. Not only are they engineers and designers, but they are also pioneers in business and technology and leaders in government and education.

The Alumni Association has been proud to formally recognize the many Yellow Jackets who have distinguished themselves through outstanding achievements in their fields and generous contributions to society since 1934.

That year, L.W. “Chip” Robert Jr., CE 1908— for whom the Alumni House is named—was

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bestowed the very first alumni award for his success in industry and public service, which included helping to run U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) from 1933 to 1936.

Now officially called the Gold & White Honors, these awards recognize career accomplishments, service to society, dedication to their communities and generosity to Tech. Let’s introduce you to the next eight Yellow Jackets we’ve singled out for their successes and whom will be honored this January at the 2018 Gold & White Honors Gala in Atlanta.

FRANCIS LOTT, TECH 58, ARCH 59 CEO OF LOTT PROPERTIES INC. AFTER GRADUATING FROM GEORGIA TECH, Lott served five years as an officer in the United States Air Force before returning to his hometown of Douglas, Ga. (in Coffee County), and joining the family-owned Lott Builders Supply Co. In 1981, he founded Lott Properties Inc. and led his family’s diversification into real estate development, which grew rapidly.

Lott was a founding board member of the highly successful Douglas National Bank, served for 22 years on the Georgia Chamber of Commerce board and currently serves on the Community Foundation of Coffee County and Wiregrass Georgia Technical College Foundation boards. He is a two-time recipient of the Georgia Economic Developers Association’s “Volunteer of the Year” award, tirelessly volunteering his time and money to drive economic growth in Coffee County. He created a local development fund with a $1,000,000 endowment and gifted a prominent building in downtown Douglas to headquarter its Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Authority. In 2015, Lott and his wife, Diane, endowed $500,000 to the G. Wayne Clough Georgia Tech Promise Scholarship program to help provide a debt-free education for students, particularly those in Coffee County, who could not afford Tech. He’s a true ambassador of the Institute and a champion of higher education.

DEAN GRIFFIN COMMUNITY SERVICE AWARD This award recognizes alumni who have performed exemplary community service in the following ways: service in a long term volunteer capacity; impact on the quality of life of others; leadership and creativity in dealing with societal problems; and serving as a source of inspiration for others.

Kaylinn Gilstrap

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ALUMNI HOUSE

ANNE M. WALKER, IE 02 VICE PRESIDENT OF OTC MERCHANDISING FOR WALMART WALKER IS NOTHING LESS than a star at the world’s largest retailer. She joined Walmart in 2002 after “getting out” of Tech with a degree in industrial and systems engineering. She advanced rapidly within the company, graduating from the Walmart Leadership Academy and becoming a vice president at Walmart Stores in 2012. Since 2015, Walker has served as vice president of the retailer’s over-the-counter pharmaceutical and sales merchandising operations. In 2016 and 2017, she was named one of Mass Market Retailing’s “Most Influential Women.” Despite moving a few states away, she’s remained actively involved with Georgia Tech and is a past president and treasurer of the Northwest Arkansas Alumni Club. She’s also been a member of Tech’s ISyE Advisory Board and received Tech's Council of Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni Award in 2017. Walker lives with her husband, Jacob, and two young children in Fayetteville, Ark.

THE OUTSTANDING YOUNG ALUMNI AWARD The award is given to young Georgia Tech alumni—those who have not reached their 40th birthday by the date of the awards gala— who have demonstrated outstanding leadership and service to Tech, the Alumni Association, the community and their profession.

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Shane Bevel

CAREY BROWN, IE 69 FOUNDER & PRINCIPAL OF THE BENEFIT COMPANY FEW ALUMNI HAVE GIVEN SO MUCH of themselves to Georgia Tech—both as a student and alumnus—as Carey Brown. While at Tech, he served as president of the Student Government Association (SGA), the Ramblin’ Reck Club, ANAK Society and Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, as well as chair of the Alexander-Tharpe Fund. After graduating, Brown participated on the ISyE Advisory and Georgia Tech Athletic Association boards, and served three, three-year terms as a board member of the Alumni Association. He’s given back plenty to his community, too, by serving on the boards of the Tommy Nobis Center, Buckhead Rotary Club, Literacy Action, Georgia State Golf Association, and the Cherokee Art Endowment Trust, among others. Brown and his wife, Sally, had three children: Natalie, who graduated from the College of Charleston, as well as Brent, IM 96, and Tyler, IM 01, HTS 01. During his service as a first lieutenant with the U.S. Army Airborne Rangers, Tyler was killed in action in Iraq in 2004. Like his father, Tyler was a student president of the SGA and they both received the Outstanding Young Alumni Award from the Alumni Association. Carey, Sally and numerous Tech friends created an endowed scholarship in Tyler’s name which is given each year to an outstanding graduate of the Woodward Academy who will attend Tech the succeeding fall.

THE JOSEPH MAYO PETTIT DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD This is the highest award conferred by the Alumni Association and honors alumni who have provided outstanding support of the Institute and the Alumni Association throughout a lifetime, while also providing leadership in their chosen professions and local communities.

Kaylinn Gilstrap

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ALUMNI HOUSE MARC DASH, AE 66, MS AE 68 RETIRED PARTNER & ADVISORY DIRECTOR FOR GOLDMAN, SACHS & CO. DASH STARTED HIS CAREER as a co-op at NASA during the height of the Apollo missions, but his true calling turned out to be business. While at Tech, he was heavily involved in student government, ultimately elected president of the Graduate Student Senate, and worked to integrate the undergraduate and graduate student governments.

He was the first graduate student elected to ANAK. Dash and fellow Gold & White honoree Carey Brown, helped develop a plan to build a student rec facility that eventually became today’s Campus Recreation Center.

This experience led Dash to Harvard,where he earned his MBA, and then embarked on a long career with Goldman Sachs on Wall Street. He retired as a partner and joined the faculty at Tech where he taught in the Scheller College of Business.

His service to the Institute is extensive, including 22 years as a trustee of the Georgia Tech Foundation, and positions such as founding chair of the College of Engineering Advisory Board and member of the Campaign Steering Committee. He has been extensively involved in philanthropy, and with his wife, Patty, created the Dash Family Foundation. They have two sons, one of whom, Eliot, earned his MBA from Tech in 2014.

Thanksgiving in New York Nov. 21-25, Beyond Group Travel

68 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | Volume 93 No. 4 2017

THE JOSEPH MAYO PETTIT DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD

Eric Schmidt

JIM LIENTZ, IM 65 PARTNER WITH SAFE HARBOR CONSULTING LLC AFTER "GETTING OUT OF TECH" in 1965, Lientz served two years as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He joined the Citizens and Southern National Bank in 1968, and worked with the bank and its successor, Bank of America for 35 years. In 2001, he retired as president of Bank of America’s Mid South Banking Group. Following this first retirement, Lientz was named the first-ever chief operating officer for the state of Georgia in 2002. In this role, he held responsibility for all operating units of the state government and led a cultural change to become more result-oriented, accountable and customer-focused. He retired again in 2010 only to become a partner with Safe Harbor Consulting, where he coaches senior executives toward higher levels of leadership and accomplishment.

Throughout his career, Lientz has served as a director on numerous corporate boards and civic organizations. He served as chair of both the Atlanta Metro and Georgia chambers of commerce, and for 12 years as vice chair of the Georgia Ports Authority. Lientz is an emeritus member of the Georgia Tech Foundation and former chair. He received the Dean Griffin Community Service Award in 2007 from the Alumni Association. Lientz and his wife, Peggy, reside in Atlanta and have three daughters and 10 grandchildren.

THE JOSEPH MAYO PETTIT DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD

Kaylinn Gilstrap

Volume 92 93 No. 4 2016 2017 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | 69

ALUMNI HOUSE BILL TODD, IM 71 PROFESSOR OF THE PRACTICE FOR GEORGIA TECH’S SCHELLER COLLEGE OF BUSINESS TODD RANKS AMONG THE TOP FACULTY MEMBERS at Georgia Tech—winning acclaim for his teaching in both the Scheller College of Business and Institute-wide, as well as the deep admiration of his students. He returned to his alma mater in 2011 to share the expertise he gained in the healthcare and technology management industries over his 40-year career, the last eight of which he served as presidentCEO of the Georgia Cancer Coalition. He was also the founding president of the Georgia Research Alliance, where he played an instrumental part in fostering innovation in science, medicine and technology throughout the state. Todd is an emeritus board member of the Georgia Tech Foundation, past chair of the Alumni Association, and a former member of numerous other boards and programs across the Institute. He’s a past recipient of the Dean Griffin Community Service Award, and was named to Georgia Trend’s “100 Most Powerful and Influential People in Georgia” list for seven years in a row.

THE JOSEPH MAYO PETTIT DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD

70 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | Volume 93 No. 4 2017

Kaylinn Gilstrap

BRUCE HEPPLER GEORGIA TECH MEN’S GOLF HEAD COACH UNEQUIVOCALLY RANKING as one of the top collegiate golf coaches in the nation, Heppler is now in his 23rd year as head coach of the men’s golf team. He’s led the Yellow Jackets to 11 Atlantic Coast Conference championships, including eight in the past 12 years, 16 trips to the NCAA Finals and four trips to match play in the NCAA Championships over the last eight years. Heppler has been named the ACC Coach of the Year a whopping eight times. Eleven of his former student-athletes are currently active members of the PGA or Web.com tours, and many other graduates have their eyes on the top levels of pro golf. What’s even more impressive is that Heppler has also coached his players to a perfect APR score—which measures academic eligibility, graduation and retention—12 years in a row. Though he may be an alumnus of Brigham Young University, Heppler has proved that he’s a Ramblin’ Wreck through and through.

THE HONORARY ALUMNI AWARD This award bestows a long-due honorary degree to those who didn’t earn a degree at Georgia Tech but have devoted themselves to the greater good of the Institute.

Kaylinn Gilstrap

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ALUMNI HOUSE STEVE SWANT GEORGIA TECH EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF ADMINISTRATION & FINANCE SWANT JOINED GEORGIA TECH IN 1996, and has served as the chief business and financial officer of the Institute, overseeing all administrative, facility and budget activities since 2008. He has played an invaluable role in Tech’s rise to being ranked among the best universities in the world and has an impeccable record of shrewd decision making when it comes to strategic planning, capital budgeting, facilities management and campus operations.

He has long been a champion of sustainability at the Institute, helping to position Tech as a national leader in environmental, social and fiscal endeavors. Engineering News-Record named Swant one of its “Top 25 Newsmakers of 2014” for his leadership in sustainability. He’s made many other contributions to Tech, serving on the boards for the Athletic Association, the AlexanderTharpe Fund, the Georgia Tech Foundation, the Georgia Tech Applied Research Corporation, GT Facilities Inc. and Georgia Advance Technology Ventures Inc.

THE HONORARY ALUMNI AWARD

ABOUT THE GALA: The 2018 Gold & White Honors Gala, presented by The Home Depot, will be held Thursday, Jan. 25, at The InterContinental Buckhead in Atlanta.

Attendees get to meet the eight new honorees and mingle with generations of Tech’s movers and shakers during a festive cocktail reception and dinner. The Gala also serves as a crucial fundraiser to support future generation of Yellow Jackets. Last year’s event, which included both silent and live auctions, raised $516,502 for the Alumni Association’s award-winning student programs.

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Ben Rollins

Annual Report 2017 (Fiscal Year)

Once again the Alumni Association boasted record participation in events, programs, giving and more, completing another successful year of engaging Tech alumni. Find out all the ways we bolstered the Institute’s academic mission while building strong bonds among past and future generations of Yellow Jackets.

ALUMNI BY COUNTRY, TOP 5 (OUTSIDE U.S.)

ALUMNI BY GRADUATION DECADE

FRANCE

#3

INDIA

154,895

#1

S. KOREA

#4

Total Tech Alumni in the World

CHINA ALUMNI BY STATE, TOP 5

GEORGIA

GERMANY

#2

#5

FLORIDA

#2

#1

6%

42%

TEXAS

#4

ALUMNI BY COLLEGE

5%

CALIFORNIA

#3 5%

N. CAROLINA

#5 3%

ENGINEERING 93,679 60% BUSINESS 22,805 15% SCIENCES 12,375 8%

COMPUTING 11,430 7% DESIGN 9,069 6% LIBERAL ARTS 4,899 3%

2010s 37,711 24% 2000s 36,065 23% 1990s 26,872 17% 1980s 22,419 14%

1970s 15,938 10% 1960s 9,791 6% 1950s 5,088 3% 1940s 994 1%

47%

OF GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI HAVE GRADUATED SINCE 2000.

Percentages reflect total alumni worldwide. Totals may not equal 100% due to rounding.

Volume 93 No. 43 2017 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | 73

ANNUAL REPORT

Letter from the Chair DEAR FELLOW YELLOW JACKETS,what a terrific year I had representing you as the fiscal year 2017 chair of the Alumni Association Board of Trustees. It started with a visit to Dublin, Ireland, for a football victory over the Boston College Eagles and ended with a lovely President’s Dinner at the Loews Hotel here in Atlanta with many great experiences in between.

As I reflect back on the year, I’m reminded of the remarkable alumni with whom I’ve met and shared memories of the Institute. We are truly a family, and one of the greatest assets that we share is our Georgia Tech alumni network. I strongly encourage you to utilize this network to advance your business, your career and your life, as well as to help us advance Georgia Tech. A world-class university can never achieve its aspirations without the robust and continuous support of alumni like you.

Each year, our support of Roll Call is critical. This past year, together we raised almost $9.9 million from nearly 34,000 donors. For your generosity and participation, I cannot thank you enough. Roll Call is Georgia Tech’s Fund for Excellence because it sets the Institute apart from other universities. Most higher education institutions don’t have the financial flexibility that

Tech enjoys as a result of philanthropic alumni.

But it’s not all about the money. Georgia Tech is one of the world’s great teaching and research universities. And the knowledge both generated and transferred to and from some of the smartest people in the world makes the Institute stand tall on the global stage. The ever-increasing ubiquity of science and technology in daily life puts a Tech education in high demand. “Progress and Service” is the Institute’s model and, indeed, the ethos of Georgia Tech.

Thank you for your pride, loyalty and service to Georgia Tech. Go Jackets!

Sincerely, Andrea Laliberte, IE 82, MS IE 84 Fiscal Year 2017 Chair Georgia Tech Alumni Association

24,241 ALUMNI DONORS GAVE IN FY17 FOR A PHILANTHROPIC PARTICIPATION RATE OF 16.5%. 10% is the national average. Tech historically ranks in the Top 3 Institutions in philanthropic participation among public research universities in the United States.

The Alumni Association drove ACTIVE ENGAGEMENT with

1,701,382

direct participations by alumni, via events, social media, mobile apps and more.

74 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | Volume 93 No. 4 2017

AN ALL-TIME RECORD OF $9.89M was given back to Tech for the Alumni Association’s 70th Roll Call.

SUPPORTIVE ENGAGEMENT, which includes indirect engagement and communications like reading the Alumni Magazine and visiting gtalumni.org, reached an all-time high of

24,048,626.

ASSOCIATION FINANCES FISCAL YEAR 2017 REVENUES

BUDGET ACTUAL VARIANCE

GT Foundation Georgia Tech Advertising & Sponsorships Career Services Tours Merchandise Sales (Net of Cost of Sales) Royalties Event Registrations Other Sources of Revenue Gold & White Honors Gala/Contributions

$4,743,300 643,933 390,000 255,000 115,000 18,000 15,400 233,844 180,842 498,000

$4,743,300 688,921 296,369 187,625 142,705 21,947 7,608 416,747 204,340 510,296

$0 44,988 (93,631) (67,375) 27,705 3,947 (7,792) 182,903 23,498 12,296

Total Revenues

$7,093,319

$7,207,418

$114,099

EXPENDITURES

BUDGET ACTUAL VARIANCE

Administration & HR Technology Career Services Communications Alumni Relations & Tours Roll Call & Business Development Campus Relations Event Management Marketing Services Business Development

$1,788,813 736,330 285,200 709,877 344,900 661,700 599,013 1,179,236 552,850 235,400

Total Expenditures

$7,093,319

$7,173,317

$79,998

$0

$34,101

$34,101

2017

2016

Cash and Cash Equivalents

Accounts Receivable less Allowance for Doubtful Accounts of $3,000 in 2017 and $3,000 in 2016 Prepaid Expenses

Inventory Property, Plant and Equipment, net Antique Ramblin' Wreck

$379,723

$381,414

65,256 61,785 10,077 319,432 12,500

61,439 90,534 11,621 258,726 12,500

Total Assets

$848,773

$816,234

Excess (Deficiency) of revenue over expenses

ASSETS

$2,034,678 718,785 280,797 638,016 277,295 630,756 478,434 1,353,016 550,930 210,610

$245,865 (17,545) (4,403) (71,861) (67,605) (30,944) (120,579) 173,780 (1,920) (24,790)

LIABILITIES AND NET ASSETS 2017 LIABILITIES Accounts Payable Accrued Expenses

2016

210,076 383,867

357,852 391,668

$593,943

$749,520

UNRESTRICTED NET ASSETS Expended for Property, Plant & Equipment Available for Operations

331,932 (77,102)

271,226 (204,512)

Total Liabilities

Total Unrestricted Net Assets

$254,830

$66,714

Total Liabilities and Net Assets

$848,773

$816,234

Volume 93 No. 4 2017 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | 75

ANNUAL REPORT

Engagement & Impact ALUMNI COMMUNICATIONS

11M+

Social Media interactions with over 117K followers

452,581

GIVING DAY

1,241 DONORS During our first-ever Giving Day on June 7: In 24 hours, 1,241 donors (460 new to Roll Call) from 48 states and 22 countries gave $133,625 (for an average gift of $107) via text (6%), Venmo (19%) and online (75%)

annual circulation of the Alumni Magazine in print and online

GEORGIA TECH STUDENT FOUNDATION At the CASE ASAP National Convention, GTSF was named the Outstanding Student Organization of the Year and outgoing GTSF President Weatherly Langsett, BA 17, was named Outstanding Student Leader of the Year.

In 31 years, the initial GTSF funding of $100,000 (1986) has grown to $1.3 million (2017), with $680,000 given back to student initiatives.

ALUMNI TRAVEL In FY17, 525 alumni and guest travelers went on 40 tours. 57% were repeat travelers with Tech.

NETWORKS AND AFFINITY GROUPS

Those who travel, give: 69% of Tech travelers this fiscal year donated to Roll Call.

More than 100 active Alumni Networks and Affinity Groups across the U.S. with representatives in 35 countries 10,629 alumni, parents and students participated in 413 events in FY17, including new student send-offs, game-watching parties, scholarship drives and more.

Approximately $400,000 in alumni scholarships were raised by 60 Alumni Networks and Affinity Groups and were given to more than 150 students (from 2,000 applicants). The average scholarship amount was $2,500.

ALUMNI EVENTS

1,600 600+

runners participated in the 45th Annual Pi Mile Road Race (a new record).

Leadership Circle donors attended the 2017 President’s Dinner Celebrating Roll Call.

$516,502

was raised at the 2017 Gold & White Honors Gala for award-winning student programs while bestowing 8 extraordinary alumni and friends with the Association’s top awards.

STUDENT ALUMNI ASSOCIATION CAREER SERVICES & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Presented 17 professional development programs and webinars in FY17, and developed an Executive Leadership Program to debut March 12-18, 2018 34th Annual Alumni Career Fair hosted 94 employers and 650 attendees.

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With an all-time record of 6,959 SAA members / donors and an additional 206 GTSF-only donors, Roll Call had a total of 7,165 student donors in FY 2017.

SAA raised an all-time record of more than $49,000, including a matching gift from alumnus Gary Jones, IM 71, for the Annual Gift to Tech, which went to the Tech Ends Suicide Together project.

LEADERSHIP

The Leadership Circle is the cornerstone of Roll Call Georgia Tech’s Fund for Excellence

Georgia Tech’s commitment to education has produced tremendous success and leadership giving plays a key role in academic programming, research, and student support such as our mentoring programs.

“The Georgia Tech experience became the foundation for my professional success and some of my greatest friends and memories.

It is my privilege to invest in the institution and in current and future Yellow Jackets, to give back a little of what we gained.”

- Betsy Wallace, ARCH 96 Former GTAA Board Member Mentor

“Your gift to Roll Call makes a huge impact on the education that future generations of Yellow Jackets receive. Having donors who give back at the Leadership Circle level is crucial to helping Georgia Tech always stay one step ahead of the game.”

- Ria Banerjee, BA 16 Former SAA President Mentee

BURDELL SOCIETY PHOENIX CLUB TRADITIONS CLUB TOWER CLUB CORNERSTONE CLUB

a gift of $25,000 $10,000 - $24,999 $5,000 - $9,999 $2,500 - $4,999 $1,000 - $2,499

Please send your gift or pledge to: ROLL CALL, GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI ASSOCIATION 190 North Avenue | Atlanta, Georgia 30313 or call (404)Volume 894-0778 93 No. 4 2017 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | 77 www.gtalumni.org/giving

ALUMNI HOUSE

Upcoming Events

JAN. 25, 2018: GOLD & WHITE HONORS GALA

MAR. 14, 2018: GIVING DAY (PI DAY)

APR. 21, 2018: PI MILE ROAD RACE

MAY 1: ALUMNI CAREER FAIR

An evening of celebrating some of Tech’s finest alumni and friends while raising money to support the student enrichment programs that develop the alumni leaders of tomorrow.

Show your support for Ma Tech by joining fellow alumni around the world and making a gift to Roll Call.

Follow us on social media to be part of the Pi Day fun!

Lace up your running shoes and join us for a favorite campus tradition and one of the longest continually run road races in Atlanta.

Whether you are on the hunt for the perfect job, or looking to hire a Yellow Jacket to join your team, you won’t want to miss this hiring event exclusively for Georgia Tech Alumni.

78 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | Volume 93 No.4 2017

Meet ‘n Geek

at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center

<< Located in the heart of Tech Square >>

<< Equipped with the latest in built-in technology >>

No wonder it’s the official meeting facility of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association!

From small meeting rooms to large-scale conference facilities, the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center offers purpose-built space to suit your company’s needs.

Featuring flexible room arrangements, a continuous refreshment service, dedicated event and technical support from start to finish, and more – the GLC is ideal for your next business event. Schedule your personal tour today!

Visit us for a site tour. www.gatechcenter.com/alumni2016

RAMBLIN' ROLL

Jenkins To Lead Southern Crescent Habitat CYNTHIA E. JENKINS, ARCH 98, has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of Southern Crescent Habitat for Humanity. Southern Crescent Habitat for Humanity is a locally run and operated affiliate of Habitat for Humanity that builds and repairs homes in Clayton, Henry and Fayette counties in South Metro Atlanta.

“We are excited to have Cynthia on board. We think she’s going to take this organization into the future,” says Elias Makres, Southern Crescent Habitat for Humanity Board President and owner and contractor at Elias Hogan Homes Inc. “Her years of expertise in both the construction and affordable housing industry will serve her well in this role.”

After graduating from Georgia Tech, Jenkins established her career with affordable housing organizations including the Reynoldstown Revitalization Corporation, the Tyler Place Community Development Corporation and G3 Communities Inc., where she served as executive director. She was instrumental in raising more than $3

million to rehabilitate and resell foreclosed homes in distressed neighborhoods.

Most recently, Jenkins has worked as the owner of C. E. Jenkins Construction in specialty trades construction and consulting for public and private development projects. She is also serving as Mayor Pro Tem for the City of Newnan with 14 years of service as a councilwoman.

1950s

1960s

Charles Johnson, Chem 58, announces that his book, "Science for the Curious Photographer, 2nd Edition," has been published

by Routledge/Focal Press. The second edition has been extensively updated with new material on digital cameras, panoramic and infrared photography, new technologies, anomalous color vision and the operation of the eye/mind system. Johnson is a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina.

John C. Sutherland, Phys 62, MS 64, PhD 67, has been appointed dean of the College of Science and Mathematics at Augusta University in Augusta, Ga.

1980s Mark Konenkamp, ME 83, is celebrating 30 years at Hyundai Motor America. Konenkamp was the first Georgia Tech alumnus to be employed at HMA

80 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | Volume 93 92 No. No.44 3 2017 2017 2016

and is now serving as senior manager of field engineering. He lives with his wife, Jo Ann, and their two children in Dunwoody, Ga. John Meredith, MS Mgt 85, was named chief operating officer for Chamberlain Hrdlicka law firm. Meredith is based in Houston and will work with the offices in Atlanta, Houston, Philadelphia and San Antonio.

Don Owen, EE 88, co-founded Evolution Sensors and Controls LLC on Aug. 1. He serves as the company’s executive vice president. Owen lives in Swedesboro, N.J.

WHITE HONORED FOR LIFETIME SERVICE C. “CODY” WHITE JR., IM 57, has been honored by the Society of Louisiana Certified Public Accountants with the Lifetime Membership Award.

The award recognizes White’s extensive record of achievement to benefit the future of CPAs throughout Louisiana.

White has served the accounting profession for more than 55 years while leading his firm, Heard, McElroy & Vestal, in Shreveport, La. A past recipient of LCPA's Distinguished Public Service Award, he is dedicated to sharing his time and talents with organizations such as the Grayson Foundation, the Powers Foundation, Volunteers of America, the Greater Shreveport Chamber of Commerce and others.

White retired in 2000 and remains active with his firm as a Partner of Counsel.

His areas of specialization include personal financial services, estate advisory services, and estate planning and administration.

A donation will be made in his honor to LCPA’s Education Foundation, which supports scholarships to accounting students.

After graduating from Georgia Tech in 1957, White went on to pursue a Master's

1990s Justin Honaman, IE 96, and his wife, Monique, have founded a concept-to-consumer business called Contender Brands. Justin is also a managing director in digital technology and analytics at Accenture.

Anustup Nayak, MS PP 98, a co-founder of the Singapore-based XSEED Education, returned to the Georgia Tech School of Public Policy in

Cassandra Walsh, Mgt 92, was promoted to partner at Baker Tilly in Tysons, Va. Walsh is a partner in the risk, internal audit and cybersecurity service group at Baker Tilly and has more than 25 years of experience in internal audit, operational and financial process improvements. Walsh also consults on a wide range of business issues and regulatory compliance matters, corporate governance and internal control structures at private, public and not-for-profit organizations.

2000s Alexander Brunk, PP 05, was elected to the Board of Education for North Shore School District 112 in April. Brunk works as a data scientist with CVS Health and lives in Highland Park, Ill., with his wife Karuna and their two children. in Public Accountancy from the University of Texas in Austin and graduated in 1961. He continued his education in the Owner/President Management Program at Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration. As a CPA, White is additionally accredited as a Personal Financial Specialist through the AICPA and a Certified Valuation Analyst from the National Association of Certified Valuation Analyst.

Carmen Dykes, MS HP 06, is one of 10 federal government officials selected to participate in the year-long Mike Mansfield Fellowship Program in Japan. The Fellowship Program was created to build a corps of U.S. government officials with substantial Japan expertise. During her placements she hopes to gain a greater understanding of Japan’s nuclear safety policymaking for civilian use of nuclear material and energy. Dykes has been a Health Physicist at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, RII (Atlanta) since 2009.

September to speak to Gordon Kingsley’s STEM Education class. Nayak is an edutech social entrepreneur whose XSEED Education programs are helping to lead change in education around India, Singapore, the Philippines and the Middle East.

Peter J. Stewart, CE 97, has been elected to the Board of Directors for the nonprofit AIESEC Life. Stewart is the President of Americas for Cyviz, a global provider of IT visual collaboration display systems. He is married to Jessica (Fogel) Stewart, Bio 97.

J. Nathanael Watson, PP 04, EAS 04, has joined the firm of Stoel Rives LLP as an Of Counsel attorney in the Environment, Land Use and Natural Resources Group in Seattle. Watson adds his litigation experience to Stoel Rives’ national practice, including recent matters involving the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, the Indian Reorganization Act, tribal recognition, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, federal common law trespass actions, and First Amendment freedom of association.

Volume 93 No. 4 2017 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | 81

RAMBLIN' ROLL BIRTHS

3

2

1

4

5

1. Noah Woodward, ME 13, and wife Jessica Woodward, welcomed daughter Chloe Nicole Woodward on May 2. The family lives in West Palm Beach, Fla., where Noah works as a design engineer for Syneo, a medical device automation company.

2. Graham Barnes Mellen, MSE 17, and Caitlin Elizabeth Poole, BA 16 welcomed Charles Gordon

6

Mellen on June 27. The family lives in Acworth, Ga. 3. Sarah (Shacter) Resnick, IE 07, MS HS 08, and Scott Resnick welcomed Max Ezra Resnick on July 24. Sarah is an industrial engineering project manager with The Walt Disney Company.

The family lives in Orange, Calif.

4. Shannon Langston Foster,

82 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | Volume 93 No. 4 2017

Mgt 08, and husband, Dan Foster, welcomed daughter Hannah Madeline Foster on Aug. 13. Hannah joins sister Lila. Shannon is a project manager at Oracle in Portland, Ore. Grandfather: Gregory Langston, IE 70.

5. Jordan Jones, MGT 10, and Sarah (Jeffcoat) Jones, MGT 11, welcomed son Henry Martin Jones on Aug. 21. Jordan is a

CPA at Jones and Kolb, and Sarah is a Revenue Integrity Manager at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.

6. Patricia Bell, ID 10, and Daniel Alan Pusey welcomed son Daniel Kirk on July 25. Tricia is a Research Engineer with TraumaF/X Solutions. The family lives in Atlanta. Aunt: Lauren Pusey, ME 07. Uncle: David Pusey, IA 05, ME 15.

It’s our people who impact lives through technology.

WEDDINGS 1

2

Sandia is a top science and engineering laboratory for national security and technology innovation. Here you will find rewarding career opportunities for Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Ph.D. levels in:

sandia.gov/careers

• Electrical Engineering • Mechanical Engineering • Computer Science • Computer Engineering • Cybersecurity • Data Science • Systems Engineering • Chemistry • Mathematics • Information Systems • Physics • Materials Science • Business Applications • Aerospace Engineering

3 SCAN TO SEE VIDEO

World-changing technologies.

Life-changing careers.

Equal opportunity employer/Disability/Vet/GLBT

1. Alex Sullivan, BA 14, and Casey Moore, Bio 17, were married on June 10 in Johns Creek, Ga. Casey is a high school teacher, and Alex works in IT consulting. The couple lives in Duluth, Ga. 2. Brianna Young Harrington, ME 14, and Jourdan Harrington were married on Sept. 16 in Atlanta, Ga. The couple lives in Smyrna, Ga. 3. Katie Davignon Masoor, IE 11, and Kris Masoor, BME 11, were married on Sept. 23 in Atlanta. Kris is an orthopedic medical device sales rep at Zimmer Biomet, and Katie works as a consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton. The couple lives in Washington, D.C.

The Wealth Manager Alumni Are Buzzing About JOHN A. HANSON, CFA 11 Industrial Engineering PH: 404-822-1370 jhanson@riverstoneadvisors.com

SAND2016-4685 HR

RAMBLIN' ROLL TECH SHINES AT WOMEN OF THE YEAR AWARDS

2010s Karissa F. Blyth, ChBE 10, has been selected to take part in the Hispanic National Bar Association’s (HNBA) 2017 Latina Leadership Academy.

Blyth joins other lawyers and emerging leaders in this competitive program that focuses on personal and professional development. Blyth is an associate at Eversheds Sutherland, where she advises clients across a variety of industries on patent licensing, counseling, prosecution and litigation matters, as well as trademark licensing and prosecution matters.

GEORGIA TECH WAS WELL REPRESENTED at the Atlanta-based Women in Technology’s 2017 Women of the Year Awards. Among this year’s winners were

Gene Kansas, MS DM 16, is developing a new project called Constellations, a civic, social,and business galaxy. It will be located in the historic Southern School-Book Depository in Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn district.

Maryam Alavi, dean of the Scheller College of Business, left; and Jennifer Bonnett, general manager of Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center, at right.

Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation



 How should your investment allocation change after retirement?

What percentage of your Social Security benefits may be taxed?

↸ How can you help reduce or avoid estate taxes?

INVITES YOU TO:

CHARTING YOUR RETIREMENT Topics covered during this four-night financial seminar: • Financial Basics • Medicare • Taxes • Investment Strategies • Social Security

• Retirement Goals • Retirement Income • Estate Planning • Risk Management • Retirement Plans

Dates: March 6, 13, 20, and 27, 2018 Time: 6:30 - 9 p.m.

Location: Georgia Tech Alumni Association Alumni/Faculty House 190 North Avenue NW, Atlanta, GA 30313 To register call: 404.894.0751 or email betsy.maddox@alumni.gatech.edu For more information visit: gtalumni.org/chartingyourretirement

(Required by 39 USC 3685) Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, Publication No. 014-073 Frequency: Quarterly.

No. of issues published annually: Four. Annual subscription price: None. Publisher: Joseph P. Irwin Editor: Roger Slavens Owner: Georgia Tech Alumni Association, 190 North Ave. N.W., Atlanta, GA 30313 Known bondholders, mortgagees and other security No. of Average holders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total amount of bonds, copies of No. of mortgages or other securities: None Tax Status/The purpose, function and single issue copies each nonprofit status of this organization and the exempt status for federal published issue during income tax purposes: Has not changed in the preceding 12 months. nearest to preceding filing date 12 months Extent and nature of circulation 84,832

131,382

b. Paid Circulation (1) Mailed Outside-County Paid Subscriptions Stated on 83,634 PS Form 354

(2) Mailed In-County Paid Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541 None

(3) Paid Distribution Outside the Mails Including Sales Through Dealers and None Cariers, Street Vendors, Counter Sales & Other Paid Distribution Outside USPS

(4) Paid Distribution by Other Classes of Mail Through the USPS None

a. Total No. Copies

130,338

c. Total Paid Distribution

83,634

None None

None 130,338

d. Free or Nominal Rate Distribution (1) Free or Nominal Rate Outside-County None Copies Included on PS Form 3541

(2) Free or Nominal Rate In-County Copies Included on PS Form 3541 None

None

(3) Free or Nominal Rate Copies Mailed at Other Classes Through the USPS None

None

(4) Free or Nominal Rate Distribution Outside the Mail

698

544

698

544

e. Total Free or Nominal Rate Distribution

None

f. Total Distribution

84,332

130,882

g. Copies not Distributed

500

500

h. Total

84,832

131,382

i. Percent Paid

99.2%

99.6%

This statement of ownership has been printed in the Vol. 93, No. 4 issue of this publication. I certify that the statements made by me above are correct and complete.

Joseph P. Irwin, IM 80 President & CEO, Georgia Tech Alumni Association

Experience Excellence Encounter Creativity Embrace Peace of Mind

Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center â&#x20AC;Ś where innovative meetings thrive 800 Spring Street, NW Atlanta, Georgia 30308 (404) 838-2060 sales@gatechhotel.com

IN MEMORIAM

John Franklin Broyles Athlete and Coach

John Franklin Broyles, IM 47, of Fayetteville, Ark., on Aug. 14 FRANK BROYLES HAD A LEGENDARY CAREER in college football, from his days as a standout player at Georgia Tech through his years as head coach and athletic director at the University of Arkansas.

Broyles, a native of Decatur, Ga., was a three-sport athlete throughout high school and college. He received a bachelor’s degree from Georgia Tech in 1947, where he lettered in football, basketball and baseball, and set numerous records as quarterback of the Yellow Jacket football team. He led the Yellow Jackets to four football bowl appearances, was twice All-SEC and was the 1944 SEC Player of the Year.

He joined the U.S. Navy Reserve in 1942, and in 1945, while still at Georgia Tech, he was activated and served until the spring of 1946.

Following his graduation from Georgia Tech, Broyles was drafted in three sports, baseball, basketball and football, but he turned down the professional offers to become an assistant football coach for Bob Woodruff at Baylor. After three years, he moved with Woodruff to University of Florida. The following year, Coach Bobby Dodd hired Broyles as the offensive backfield coach at Georgia Tech, and the team rolled to a 31-game winning streak. In 1957, Broyles was named head football coach at the University of Missouri, where he served one season before receiving an offer from Athletic Director John Barnhill to come to the University of Arkansas.

In 1973, Broyles was named Director of Athletics, a title he balanced with his coaching duties until he retired as head coach in 1976 after 19 seasons. While still serving as athletics director, Broyles worked alongside legendary sports announcer Keith Jackson with ABC’s college football coverage for nine years.

In more than 33 years as athletic director, Broyles transformed the Razorbacks from a program competitive primarily in football to one of the most successful all-sports programs in the nation. His leadership was the driving force behind the University of Arkansas moving to the Southeastern Conference (SEC) in 1990, a move that set the stage for the program’s growth and future success. Following retirement, Broyles continued to serve the

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program at the Razorback Foundation until 2014.

B r oyl e s ga r nered numerous prestigious awards througho u t h i s ca r e e r and was inducted into more than a dozen halls of fame, including the College Football Hall of Fame, Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame and the Georgia Tech Hall of Fame. In 1996, the Broyles Award was created in recognition of his long-standing history of developing successful assistant coaches. The Broyles Award is given annually to college football’s top assistant coach. In 2007, the field at Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium was dedicated as Frank Broyles Field.

After Broyles’ wife Barbara died in 2004 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, he established the Barbara Broyles Legacy, later becoming the Frank & Barbara Broyles Legacy Foundation. He appeared before governmental agencies in Washington, D.C., and served on the White House Council on Aging. He spoke throughout the country on behalf of the Alzheimer’s Association, as well as private eldercare organizations.

In 2006, he turned his energies toward the publication and national distribution of a guidebook for caregivers, entitled “Coach Broyles’ Playbook for Alzheimer’s Caregivers” which is based on his family’s personal experience caring for his first wife, Barbara Day, in their home. To date, more than one million copies of the playbook have been distributed.

JOSEPH HAMMOND

PROFESSOR AND ADVISOR JOSEPH HAMMOND, PHD EE 61, of Pittsboro, N.C., on Aug. 6.

Hammond was a professor emeritus of the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He served as a faculty member from 1955-1984, in what was then known as the School of Electrical Engineering.

Before going to college, Hammond enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the age of 17 and served for several years. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from MIT and then earned a PhD in the field at Georgia Tech. He taught electrical engineering and computer science at Georgia Tech for 30 years, and then for another 15 years at Clemson University, though he always identified as a Yellow Jacket.

Hammond coauthored two engineering textbooks and was known as a warm, gracious, and encouraging professor and mentor who advised a record number of M.S. and PhD students at both Georgia Tech and Clemson. His technical interests centered around information theory and control theory, and his research was primarily in communications and networking. He also pursued consulting interests with Bede Liu of Princeton University and did work in statistical reliability of systems.

In addition to being an avid tennis player, Dr. Hammond was a master at playing bridge and was very

knowledgeable in stock market investing. He and his wife, Edith, were longtime members at Northside Baptist Church and Second Ponce de Leon Baptist Church, where Edith sang in the choir, and they held season tickets to the Atlanta Symphony for many years.

1930s

1940s

Joseph Wallace Henderson, EE 39, of Atlanta, on Sept. 28. Phi Delta Theta Fraternity. WWII. Army Air Forces. Founder, Henderson Hardware.

Myron Lee Ball ME 43, of Atlanta on July 3. Navy. WWII. Grinnell Corp. Regional manager, Power Piping Co. Regional sales manager for Industrial markets, Taulman Company Sales Agency. M.L. Ball Company.

Morgan B. Coker Cls 49, of Florence, S.C., on July 6. WWII. Korean War. Army. Army Reserves (Col. of Armor.). Farmer. Founding head, Department of Business Administration at Francis Marion College. Dean, Dean emeritus, School of Business at Francis Marion University. Civil Air Patrol.

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IN MEMORIAM BENJAMIN JAMES "BEN" THIREY SOLDIER AND SCHOLAR MAJ. BENJAMIN JAMES "BEN" THIREY, MS OR 09, MBA 09, of Lebanon, Ohio, on Aug. 15.

Although he had an impressive military resume, Thirey did not want that to define him. He was just as comfortable in academia as he was in the military. He was a warrior-scholar, but what mattered the most to him were his faith, family and friends.

Before attending Georgia Tech, Thirey earned a commission as an infantry officer in 1998 from Cedarville University. There he graduated with honors, earning a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics. After completing initial training and an assignment in the 10th Mountain Division, Ben graduated the very selective Special Forces Qualification Course in 2004.

Following three deployments to Iraq with the 5th Special Forces Group, he attended graduate school in preparation to teach at West Point.

In 2009, while under a dual master’s degree program, he earned both a Master of Operations Research and a Master of Business Administration from Georgia Tech.

Thirey was an instructor at West Point in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, where he taught calculus and statistics. He was later promoted to assistant professor and led the Combat Weapons Team.

He also played guitar in the Army Math Band.

James Harvey "Jimmy" Cox Sr., Text 49, MS Text 52, of Sandy Springs, Ga., on Aug. 14. Civilian Conservation Corps. Navy. Bombardier, Army Air Corps. WWII. Navigator, Air Force Reserves and Air National Guard (Lt. Col.). Vietnam War. Textile engineering instructor, Auburn University. Engineer.

Celanese, Chemstrand. Uniroyal. IRS. Charles Lewis "Charlie" Davidson Jr., IM 49, of Mt. Pleasant, S.C., on July 26. ANAK Society. Phi Delta Theta fraternity. President, Davidson Mineral Properties Inc.; North Carolina Crushed Stone Inc.; Gainesville and Athens Stone Companies; and the Atlanta, Stone Mountain and Lithonia Railroad. President, Georgia Freight Bureau. President, American Automobile Association (AAA) Club of Georgia.

DeKalb Chamber of Commerce "Outstanding Young Man." Georgia Chamber of Commerce "Outstanding Young Man." Chairman, Georgia Game and Fish Commission.

Robert H. “Bob” Davis Jr., IM 45, of Prairie Village, Kan., on July 26. Navy. WWII. Korean War. General Motors.

His two professional passions were coding advanced mathematical routines that took hours to run difficult math problems, and spending as much time on gun ranges as possible.

Thirey was diagnosed with brain cancer while getting ready to command a Special Forces company in Afghanistan in 2013. However, he wanted to serve as long as possible on active duty, and returned to complete a second teaching assignment at West Point. He was medically retired from the military in July 2016 and moved back to Ohio with his family.

Thirey is survived by his wife of 11 years, Tricia Walsh Thirey; his three children Joshua, Savannah and Kinsey; and his parents and five siblings.

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John R. Harper Jr., Cls 49, of Atlanta, on July 11. Vice president of operations, Zep Manufacturing Company.

John Robertson Kinnett Jr., IM 49, of Columbus, Ga., on Aug. 15. Navy. WWII. General manager, president, Kinnett Dairies Inc. Director, president, International Ice Cream Association. Son: John Robertson "Bob" Kinnett, III MS Mgt 85.

Roy H. Lange, GE 42, of Lake Allatoona, Ga., on Aug. 9. Aeronautical engineer. NACA. Wilton Clifford (Cliff ) McGahee , IE 48, of Atlanta, on July 4. U.S. Naval Reserve (Lt. Cmdr.). Pollock Paper Company. Founder, McGahee Lacy Associates.

Seth Baldwin Mellen Jr., IM 49, of Atlanta, on July 12. Eagle Scout. President, Chi Phi fraternity. WWII. Navy. President, Mellen Parts Company.

Hughlon Walstein O'Neal, TextE 49, of Atlanta on Sept. 8. Air Force. WWII. United Distributers. Insurance sales.

William Beacham "Bill" Pearce, MS IE 49, of Raleigh, N.C., on Aug. 15. Navy.

Commercial construction industry.

Grover Cleveland Robinson Jr., MS ME 49, of Knoxville, Tenn., on Aug. 15. Navy (Lt.). Naval Retired Reserve. Shell Oil. Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

John Harrell Rogers, ME 49, of Jacksonville, Fla., on July 14. Real estate broker and developer. 1961 President, Jacksonville Board of Realtors. Son: Walter Ford Rogers III EE 82, Psy 83.

Thomas Erwin Schneider, Jr., IE 45, of Atlanta, on July 7. Navy. Tesco Chemicals.

Clinical psychologist.

John Thomas “Sonny” Williamson Sr., IE 49, of Milledgeville, Ga., on July 7. Eagle Scout. Alpha Tau Omega fraternity.

Navy. WWII. General manager, president Freeport Kaolin Co. Founder, president, Impex Corporation. National Advisory Board of Georgia Tech. Robert Earl McConnell Award for contributions to industrial minerals technology in Georgia.

Frank M. “Bones” Willis Jr., IM 53, of Ocala, Fla., on July 9. Navy. WWII. World War II Victory Medal. Automotive production engineer, Guide Lamp Division of General Motors. Real estate and air conditioning systems design. Amway.

Donald Waldron Youmans, IE 51, of Ocala, Fla., on July 8. NROTC. Jet fighter pilot, U.S. Air Force and D.C. National Guard. Industrial engineer in research and development, U.S. Army Materiel Command.

George Monroe Youmans, Jr., IM 48, of Ocala, Fla., on Sept. 21. Airborne ranger, U.S. Army. U.S. Army Reserve (Col.).

Operations and Research Analyst, U.S. Army TRADOC.

1950s James "Jimmy" Alford Jr., IM 58, of Commerce, Ga., on Sept. 18.

H. Glenn Ball, AE 54, of Azle, Texas, on Aug. 11. U.S. Maritime. U.S. Navy. Aerodynamics engineer of General Dynamics.

Cyril Joseph Banick, MS Chem 52, of Augusta, Ga., on July 24. Savannah River Site. Research chemist, technical information analyst, and liaison to the SRS History Project Team for DuPont and Westinghouse Savannah River companies.

Kenneth Marc Barre, Arch 52, of Dunwoody, Ga., on Aug. 5. Air Force (2nd Lt.).

Korea. Lockheed Aircraft. Brother: Dennis Barre, ME 63. Sister in law: Shelby Barre, ME 56.

Mark W. Bennett, Cls 57, of Marietta, Ga., on Aug. 17. Army. Western Electric. AT&T. Lucent Technologies. Daughter: Marla Litz, IE 82.

James Carl Bergman, EE 50, of Jacksonville, Fla., on Sept. 24. Army Air Corps.

WWII. IBM. Homer “Jackson” Boatwright Jr., IM 56, of Newnan, Ga., on Aug. 21. U.S. Air Force.

Vice president of Administration, U.S. Borax Inc. David Bowen Jr., ChE 58, MS ChE 63, PhD ChE 65, of St. Augustine, Fla., on Sept. 16.

Eagle Scout. Army. Professional engineer.

Chemical engineer, Monsanto. Four patents. Son: Philip Wesley Bowen, ChE 80.

Joseph Robert Cardella, EE 52, of Ansonia, Conn., on July 24. Navy. WWII. Founder, Waterbury State Technical College. Waterbury Tech Teacher of the Year.

New England Technical Teacher of the Year.

William Cleo Cheek Jr., CE 55, MS IM 56, of Morrilton, Ark., on Aug. 30. Kappa Sigma Fraternity. Sandia National Laboratories.

Cheek Wholesale Grocery. Owner, North Plaza Cinema. Past South Conway County school board member. Lockheed Martin.

Co-founder, United Avionics. Ansonia Board of Education.

Charles Emory Commins, Text 51, of Atlanta, Ga., on Oct. 10. U.S. Army Infantry.

WWII. Purple Heart, Silver Star, Bronze Star.

French Legion of Honor. Textile engineer, National Cotton Council and Fulton Cotton Mills. Security department, the Coca-Cola Co. Bobby Clyde Dameron, IM 59, MS IM 60, of Vero Beach, Fla., on Aug. 14. Army.

Business.

Charles F. "Chuck" Eaton, ChE 56, of Greer, S.C., on Aug. 19. Air Force. Bronze star, four air medals. Combat pilot, Vietnam War. Baseball umpire. Football and volleyball official. Football clock and scoreboard operator, Furman University.

Professional Engineer. Mechanical drawing teacher, Greenville Technical College.

Martin "Sully" Farfel, IE 58, of Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., on July 5. Navy. U.S. Department of Energy. Financial planner, Morgan Stanley.

Julian Denver "J.D." Fleming Jr., ChE 55, PhD ChE 59, of Atlanta, Ga., on July 29. Professor, Georgia Tech. Research engineer, Georgia Tech Engineering Experiment Station.

Staff consultant, Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Consultant in chemical engineering and metallurgy. Attorney, intellectual property law practice, Sutherland, Asbill, & Brennan.

American Bar Association. Fellow, American College of Trial Lawyers. Fellow, American Bar Foundation. Fellow, American Inns of Court Foundation. Fellow, American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

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IN MEMORIAM

Regis Magyar

Human Factors Developer Regis Magyar, Psy 71, of Indian Harbour Beach, Fla., on Aug. 27 A NATIVE OF WINTER PARK, FLA., Magyar earned his bachelorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s degree from Georgia Tech; a Master of Science and doctorate degrees in experimental psychology from the University of Florida; and in 1992, received an additional masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s degree in telecommunications from Pace University.

Magyar was a board-certified human factors professional and consultant, who performed human factors consulting for small businesses and large corporations such as IBM, Fujitsu Networking, AT&T and Panasonic.

His projects included network management applications, graphical user interface design and evaluation, standards development, internet and intranet website design, and software and hardware usability testing.

He is best known for his research and development of the IBM converged alphanumeric keyboard, which is now the de facto keyboard design used by virtually every personal computer manufacturer. The converged keyboard was ergonomically designed to facilitate word processing and spreadsheet use.

In 2000, he became manager of the Human Factors & Usability Engineering Department for the Panasonic Mobile Communications Division in Atlanta.

In this role, he conducted user-interface research and development for wireless mobile communications products and contributed to the design of efficient user interfaces for cell phones.

He retired from the Panasonic Wireless Design Center in 2005 and moved to Indian Harbour Beach, Fla. He became an adjunct professor at the Hamilton Holt School

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and Psychology Department at Rollins College, where he taught research methods and human factors courses. Magyar is survived by his wife of 43 years, Patricia "Pat" Felty Magyar, brothers and sisters, and several nieces and nephews.

John Robinson Dominey, Jr, ME 51, of McRae, Ga., on July 11. Army Air Force (Staff Sgt.). WWII. POW. American Theater Ribbon. EAME Ribbon with 3 bronze stars. Good Conduct Medal. Air Medal with 1 bronze cluster. Victory Medal. Hercules Powder Company.

Philip “ F. J.” Fote, AE 57, of Salem, N.H., on Aug. 19. Chief Engineer, Textron Systems. Daughter: Lynn Andrews, ICS 83.

Son-in-law: Peter Andrews, ME 85.

Carl H. Fulton, IM 50, of Auburn, Ga., on Aug. 27. Kappa Sigma fraternity. ROTC. Editor, "The Yellow Jacket." U.S. Air Force Reserve (2nd Lt.). Korean War. Fulton Brothers Electric Company. Founder, Carl Fulton Enterprises Inc. Grandchildren: Michael Apple, Arch 05, Russell Apple, ME 13.

Lloyd Earl Gardner, Jr. MS Chem 53, of Bartlesville, Okla., on Oct. 1. Army. WWII. Research Chemist, Phillips Petroleum. 56 patents.

Robert Moore (Bob) Giffin, IM 52, of Knoxville, Tenn., on July 17. U.S. Army.

Tom's Foods.

James Thomas “Tommy” Haynes, MS IE 56, of Maryville, Tenn., on Aug. 22. Army (Col.). WWII. Korean War. ROTC Instructor, Georgia Tech. Ordnance Corps. Industrial engineering teacher, Wayne State University. Director of Procurement and Production at the Army Missile Command. Breeder Reactor program. Martin Marietta. Awards: Presidential Citation. Army Commendation Medal.

Meritorious Service Medal.

Robert "Bob" Parris Hellerstedt Sr., IM 58, MS IM 64, of Lookout Mountain, Tenn., on Sept. 5. Air Force. Korean War. Banking. High school teacher. Cherokee Warehouses Inc. Kenco Logistic Services.

Heller Properties, LLC.

William “Bill” Hill, ME 51, of Naples, Fla., on July 27. Pilot and flight instructor, U.S. Navy. Developed ceramic heat shield for spacecraft to re-enter Earth's atmosphere without disintegrating. Instructor, Purdue. Professor, dean of engineering, vice president and First Dresser Endowed Chair of Engineering, Tri-State University.

President, Indiana Society of Professional Engineers. Vice president, National Society of Professional Engineers. Chairman, Indiana Board of Registration Engineers.

Collier County, Fla. Environmental Advisory Council.

Bruce Donald McDowell, M CP 59, of Gaithersburg, Md., on Sept. 2. Maryland National Capital Planning Commission. Director of program coordination, Washington Metropolitan Council of Government. United States Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. Consultant, National Academy of Public Administration.

Clyde M. Kennedy III, CE 52, MS CE 53, of Atlanta, Ga., on Sept. 1. Beta Theta Pi fraternity. Editor of The Georgia Tech Engineer. ROTC. Army (Lt.). Korean War. Georgia National Guard (Capt.).

Atlanta Branch Manager, Director of Engineering, and President Law Engineering Testing Company. Senior Geotechnical Consultant with Qore, Inc. National Vice President of The American Civil Engineers Council

Hugh Lane Middleton, Text 53, of Rye, New York, on Oct. 1. Kappa Alpha fraternity. U.S. Army. Textile Division, Monsanto. Textile industry.

William Fleming Law, Jr., IM 58, of Atlanta , on Sept. 17. Army. Adair Realty and Loan Company. Cauble & Company.

President, chairman, Colliers International. Alvin Cates Award for Outstanding Transactions, Atlanta Commercial Board of Realtors. 2014 Carter Mathis Award for community service from the Georgia Chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Realtors.

Stanley Dale Motsinger ChE 51, of Baton Rouge, La., on July 19. Ethyl Corporation. Army. Korean War.

Harry Thomas “Tom” Mathews, Phys 58, of Knoxville, Tenn., on July 18. U. S. Army. Math professor, University of Tennessee.

Emmet K. McCrary, AE 57, of Murfreesboro, Tenn., on July 14. Beta Alpha fraternity. U.S. Navy.

Larry Delano McNair ChE 56, of Brunswick, Ga., on June 11. Chemical engineer, Combustion Engineering, Alabama Power and Southern Company.

John Hope Murphy, ME 51, MS ME 55, PhD ME 63, of Atlanta, on July 19. Navy.

WWII. Atomic bomb program, The Sandia Corporation. Engineering professor, Georgia Tech. Norsk Marine Company.

Georgia Tech Experiment Station.

Gordon G. Palmer, IE 57, of Cincinnati, Ohio, on July 6. U.S. Air Force (Staff Sgt.). Korean War. Corporate senior vice president, Litton Industries. Chairman of the board, Baptist Hospitals of Kentucky. Engineering Hall of Fame, Georgia Institute of Technology. Son: Gary Palmer, IE 84.

Max Torrence Palmer, CE 55, of Durham, N.C., on Sept. 25. Professional baseball player. U.S. Air Force. Korean War. Civil engineering and public works.

Executive Committee of the American Public Works Association.

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IN MEMORIAM

Charles Edward Weaver Professor and Scientist

Charles Edward Weaver, of Saint Simons Island, Ga., on Sept. 12 WEAVER WAS BORN IN LOCK HAVEN, PA., IN 1925 and served as a naval lieutenant during WWII during the battle of Okinawa. He later attended Penn State University, where he received a PhD in mineralogy in 1952. He began a long career in the oil business first with Shell Oil in Houston, Texas, followed by Continental Oil in Ponca City, Okla., where he distinguished himself internationally with groundbreaking research in the field of clay mineralogy, shale and sedimentology and its correlation to oil deposits. Weaver then joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as an associate professor of geology. He founded, and was the first director of, the School of Geophysical Sciences from 1970 to 1981. During his 22 years at Georgia Tech, he published more than 40 scientific papers, administered 11 large research grants and authored five academic books, including "Chemistry of Clay Minerals," an authoritative reference book he co-authored with Lin Pollard. Weaver received numerous awards, including the Mineralogical Society of America’s award for Outstanding Mineralogist

Frank Arden Perkins Jr., ME 51, of Melbourne, Fla., on Sept. 15. Army. Engineer, radar tracking systems for RCA at Patrick Air Force Base. Missileonics Inc. Radiation Inc. Harris Corporation.

Hoke Smith 'Smitty' Randall Jr., Cls 58, of Suwanee, Ga., on Aug. 12. Army. Korea. Ford Motor Co. Parts Distributors Warehouse.

James White “Jim” Reilly, IM 55, of Lookout Mountain, Tenn., on Oct. 11. Chairman and CEO, Sherman and Reilly Inc. U.S. Representative of the International Electrical Committee. Pilot.

Morris Edward Roberts, IM 51, of Evansville, Ind., on Sept. 18. Army. Kraft Foods. Introduced measurement marks for margarine sticks. Recipient of Jade

Under the Age of 35 in 1958; a Battelle Memorial Institute Award for Exceptional Performance in 1979 for his work in shale and high-level radioactive waste; and a Distinguished Member Award from the Clay Minerals Society in 1985.

He was president of the Georgia Geological Society in 1966 and president of the Clay Minerals Society in 1968. In addition, he created the "Weaver Index" a geological standard of measure evaluating grades of metamorphism. Weaver was honored with a Regents Professorship at Georgia Tech in 1982.

He was an avid athlete, playing tennis and racquet ball into his 80s and running up to 6 miles a day well into his 60s. After he retired with his wife, Jan, in the early 80s, splitting their time between Highlands, N.C., and Saint Simons Island, Ga., he took up pottery and continued a life-long fly fishing hobby.

He is survived by his wife of 70 years, Janice Hartland Weaver, two daughters, two grandchildren, and two great grandchildren.

Ring, Kraft’s highest award for industrial innovation.

Charles E. Rogers, Jr., Cls 50, of Tequesta, Fla., on Aug. 17. Navy. Electronic engineer, Eastern Airlines. Vice president, Babcock Construction Company. President, Gables Engineering Inc. Thomas Alton Russell, IM 50, of Winter Park, Fla., on Oct. 2. Army. Commercial real estate.

Henry "Si" Sineath, PhD ChE 56, of Anderson, S.C. on Oct. 8. Army. WWII. Coleman Millard 'Nig' Smith, IE 52, of Huntsville, Ala., on Aug. 28. Owner and manager, Madison County Equipment Company.

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William Hunt Smith, Sr. IM 51, of Centreville, Miss., on Aug. 6. U.S. Marine Corp.

WWII. District manager, William Carter Company.

James Mead Stallings, IM 59, of Centreville, Ala., on July 29. Georgia Tech football player. Alabama Power Company.

John William “Bill” Tate Jr., EE 54, of Sharpsburg, Ga., on Oct. 3. Army ROTC. Coop student. Army (2nd Lt.). Georgia Power Co. McKinney V. "Mac" Taylor, CE 52, of Richmond, Va., on Sept. 28. Sigma Nu fraternity. U.S. Army Ordnance Corps (1st Lt.).

Korean War. R.H. Wright & Sons. President, Florida and Virginia Prestressed Concrete Associations. Concrete Panel Systems of

Virginia. Registered Professional Engineer.

Fellow, PCI. Fellow, American Society of Civil Engineers. Son: Paul McKinney Taylor, IE 87.

Derward Westley Terry, IM 50, of Columbus, Ga., on July 31. Pilot, Army Air Force Aviation Cadet Program (2nd Lt.).

WWII. Swift Manufacturing. Smith-Raymond. Partner in Comfort Contractors.

Vice president of engineering and special projects, The Gas Light Company of Columbus.

Tommy S. Williams, Arch 50, of Griffin, Ga., on Sept. 24. Kappa Alpha Order. Architecture. Investor. Junior Army Air Corps.

Robert Louis Zwald, IM 52, of Cumming, Ga., on July 1. US Coast Guard. Grady Memorial Hospital. Assistant administrator, Chief Executive Officer, Georgia Baptist Medical Center. Board of directors, Georgia Health Foundation.

1960s Charles Frederick “Joe” Baker, CE 64, of Livermore, Calif., on Jan. 5. California Highway Department. California Bridge Department. Registered Civil Engineer.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/University of California. Expert witness.

Consulting engineer.

William A. Bezaire, Cls 60, of Atlanta, on Sept. 16. Navy. National Security Agency.

Naval Reserve (Cmdr.). Manager, computer science center at Georgia Tech. Son: Bill Bezaire, IM 76.

Robert Travis "Bob" Biccum, CerE 61, of Cumming, Ga., on July 7. Army. Engineer.

U.S. Department of Energy. Son: Bryan Biccum, CE 95.

William Michael Biddle, IM 62, of Temple Terrace, Fla., on July 26. Georgia Tech football player. Army. Army Reserves. Real estate broker. Commercial property manager. founding member, Apartment Owners and Managers Association. President, Building Owners and Managers Association.

Charlton Harry "Chart" Bonham III, MS EE 68, MS IM 71, of Asheville, N.C., on Oct. 3. Navy.

Walter Davis Cain Jr., IM 60, of Camden, S.C., on July 15. Navy. DuPont.

George Henry "Sporty" Carswell III, IE 67, of Macon, Ga., on Aug. 13. Navy.

Plant engineer, Johns Manville. President, Wilkinson County Telephone Company. President of the Georgia Telephone Association.

Terrence "Terry" Malin Colker, IM 69, of Boca Raton, Fla., on Sept. 21. National Guard. President of CPC Aeroscience.

Member, International Sanitary Supply Association. Past President, Southern Aerosol Technology Association.

Robert Homer "Bob" Cowart, IE 61, of Milton, Ga., on Oct. 1. Vice president of technical operations, Delta Airlines. Son: Alan Cowart, MSci 87. Grandson: Ryan Yarborough, ME 17.

Carl Coster Dobson, Bio 68, of Atlanta, on Aug. 16.

William E. "Bill" Farrington, IM 65, of Birmingham, Ala., on July 4. Army. U.S. Steel.

Edward Groseclose, Text 66, of Oklahoma City, Okla., on Oct. 11.

William G. Hardisky Jr., ME 64 , of Glen Burnie, Md., on Sept. 4. Mechanical

engineer, general supervisor of engineering, Baltimore Gas & Electric Company.

William Gilbert “Bill” Harris Jr., ME 67, of Melbourne, Fla., on Oct. 6. Engineer.

Private government subcontractor, NASA. Henry William Heermann, IM 60, of Glen Allen, Va., on July 6. Air Force (Lt. Col.).

Vietnam War. Distinguished Flying Cross.

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Wall of Honor. Defense contractors.

David Boyd Howard Jr., Phys 63, of Oak Ridge, Tenn., on July 24. U.S. Navy Nuclear Submarine Service. Atomic Energy Commission and Department of Energy.

Eugene "George" Hudson Jr., IM 60, of Media, Pa., on Aug. 18. Bell of Pennsylvania. District manager, Verizon.

Harry Burritt Jennings Jr., EE 64, of Warner Robins, Ga., on Oct. 2. U.S. Army (Capt.). Launch control engineer for the Apollo program. Electrical engineer, Robins Air Force Base.

Wayne Ivey Lewis, Jr. AE 61, of Ocala, Fla., on June 30. Engineer. U.S. Air. Dennis Parker Lynch, Sr., M CP 68, of Pinehurst, N.C., on Oct. 5. Air Force. Alamance County Planning Director. Dual Executive Director for the Cumberland County Joint Planning Board and Region M Council of Government. Public Works Director for Moore County. Licensed broker.

Partner in a real estate investment company. Designed and built homes. Traded in the stock market.

James Ray Mendheim, IM 66, of Abbeville, Ala., on July 13. Football player, Georgia Tech. Football player, Buffalo Bills.

General Motors.

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IN MEMORIAM

Robert A. “Bob” Olson, BC 61, of Winder, Ga., on Sept. 7. U.S. Marine Corps (Staff Sgt.). Korean War. Vice president, American Resources Management Corporation.

Brother: Frank L. Olson, EE 61.

William Michael "Mike" Polen Sr., IM 66, of Columbus, Ohio, on Aug. 16. U.S. Navy Reserve. Vietnam Veterans of America. Naval Institute. College professor, Ft. Hays State University Coastal Carolina University.

Pratt Smith, IM 66, of Alpharetta, Ga., on July 22.

Erik K. Straub, CE 63, of Easton, Md., on Sept. 13. Founder and owner/operator of Erik K. Straub Inc. Baltimore Contractors Inc. Martin G. Imbach Inc. U.S. Army.

Russell Perry Wharton, EE 63, MS EE 65, PhD EE 70, of Houston, Texas, on June 21. Navy. General Dynamics. Schlumberger. Vice president, Phillip Crosby Associates. Electromagnetics teacher, Rice University.

1970s Albert Wayne Austin, IE 70, of Johns Creek, Ga., on Oct. 8. Simmons Engineering. Military Order of the World Wars, Atlanta Chapter.

Robert Mitchell “Bob” Carson, GM 74, of Grovetown, Ga., on Sept. 27. Eagle Scout.

Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. General Motors.

Frank Edward Coffey, Arch 77, of Atlanta, on Aug. 6. Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity.

Joseph William Dean, MS Bio 76, of Island Heights, N.J., on July 28. ICI. Exxon Labs. Database design.

Ricardo Estrada, EE 74, of Guayaquil, Ecuador, on Sept. 3. Former president, Corporation for the Promotion of Exports and Investments. Executive Chairman, Petroecuador. president in the EcuadorianAmerican Chamber of Commerce.

Gary Andre' Faulkner, IM 74, of Gray, Ga., on Aug. 24. Georgia Tech football player. Freshman coach. Student assistant coach. Defensive MVP. Coach, Tattnall Square Academy and Barnesville Academy. Teacher, Hutchings Career Center.

Alan Mann, EE 71, of Chapel Hill, N.C., on June 23. Entrepreneur.

Martin William “Marty” Mann, ME 77, of Sandy Springs, Ga., on Sept. 25. President, Mann Mechanical Company.

William “Bill” Robert Martinson, ME 70, of Perry, Fla., on Sept. 3. Mechanical engineer, Proctor and Gamble/Buckeye. Eagle scout. NASA. Ronald L. Mays, ME 72, of Gaithersburg, Md., on July 12. Engineer. Bechtel.

Roger H. Millwood, Bio 74, of Greenback, Tenn., on Sept. 29. Communications specialist, Air Force. Medical officer, Carswell USAF Regional Hospital. Emergency medicine physician at Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center, Baptist Hospital and Turkey Creek Medical Center. Wound Care Specialist at Tennova Wound Care and Hyperbaric Center.

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Mark Adams Mixon, IM 78, of Atlanta, on Sept. 7. President, Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. Student Government. Ramblin' Reck Club. Founder, Georgia Tech Flying Circus Froth Association (Frisbee golf club).

Oil and gas industry. Chief business development officer, MYCELX Technologies Corporation.

Frank M. Modrak Jr., IM 77, of Weston, Fla., on Aug. 21. Eastern Airlines. Cox Communications. PRC. Andrew Cecil Oliver III, GM 73, of Proctor, Ark., on Sept. 15. Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. Farmer. President, Crittenden County Farm Bureau. Arkansas Promotion Board. Mid-South Soybean Board. Southwest Soybean Board.

Marshall Osteen Pace, PhD EE 70, of Knoxville, Tenn., on June 25. Professor of electrical engineering at University of Tennessee. Faculty Fellow, NASA. Principal investigator, NSF. Carborundum.

Carrier. Union Carbide. Martin Marietta.

U.S. Department of Energy. Editor: Gaseous Dielectrics IV, 1984. 1980 Tennessee Tomorrow Professor, University of Tennessee. Engineering Distinguished Faculty Member, 1984.

Chester Lanier Parker, Jr., IE 72, of Augusta, Ga., on Sept. 25. Professional Engineer. Georgia Power Company. President, Airport Area Chamber of Commerce.

Son: Lanier Parker, MBA 08.

Earle "Rocky" Felton Reeves Jr, IM 79, of Chattahoochee Hills, Ga., on Aug. 3. Chattahoochee Hills Planning and Zoning Board. Founder, Mellow Mushroom Pizza and RockBack Pizza.

Terry Stockdale, IE 75, of Baton Rouge, La., on Oct. 5. Industrial engineer, plant controller, risk manager; Ethyl Corporation. Risk manager, The Shaw Group.

Wayne Raymond Olliff Jr., Cls 00, of Lawrenceville, Ga., on Sept. 23. HP. IBM. Systems administrator, Linux support, Lenovo. Machinist, U.S. Navy.

Jackie Kleiner, of Atlanta, on July 1.

Army (Master Sgt.). Korean War. Attorney. Professor, Georgia Tech School of Business. Son: Cary Lee Kleiner, Econ 91.

1980s

Howard Lewis Zion, Phd ME 03, of Acworth, Ga., on Aug. 20.

William Wayne "Bill" Cox, EE 80, of Warner Robins, Ga., Â on July 11. Atlanta SWAT. Stromberg-Carlson. ITEC. Robins AFB.

2010s

Richard Earl Martz, of Roswell, Ga., on Sept. 12. Lockheed. MSA. Co-founder, Consultec Inc.

Scott Emmons, CE 81, of Conyers, Ga., on Sept. 5. Licensed Professional Engineer. Engineer, Exxon Corporation.

Engineer, Rockdale Water Resources.

Chief engineer, Newton County Water & Sewer Authority. Georgia Tech College of Engineering Advisory Board.

Scott Mayo, ME 83, of Newnan, Ga., on July 29.

1990s Robert Tracy Still, Phys 90, MS HP 99, of Dothan, Ala., on Sept. 28. Superintendent of Operations in the Health Physics Department, Farley Nuclear Plant.

2000s James Reynolds Danko, MS BC 09, of Mt. Pleasant, S.C., on Aug. 22. Construction project engineer, The Beck Group.

Lawyer. United States District Court for the District of South Carolina. Danko Law LLC. Licensed general contractor. Construction manager. Residential builder.

Home inspector.

Tessa Maren Powers, Cls 18, of Rockf o rd , M i c h . , o n S e p t . 2 3 . S t u d e n t assistant in the Stamps President's Scholars Program office. Pacific study abroad program.

Friends Ruby P. Borkman, of Alpharetta, Ga., and Clearwater, Fla., on Sept. 26. Husband: Raymond Borkman.

Anthony J. Chimera, of Marietta, Ga., on Oct. 2. Radar Engineer for Calspan Corporation. Georgia Tech Research Institute. Scientific Research Corporation.

Lockheed Martin.

Enrico Davoli, of Amelia Island, Fla., on July 15. Pediatrician.

Mary Karel DeHaye, of Marietta, Ga., on July 3. IBM. Manned Spaceflight Center. DeHaye Scholarship for women mathematicians at Georgia Tech.

Jerry Wainfield Head, of Atlanta, on July 16. Navy. Korean War. Georgia Tech Information Technology.

Yvette Lea McDonald, of Cleveland, Ga., on July 25. Director of undergraduate programs, Georgia Tech College of Management. 1996 Olympic Committee representative. Alpha Delta Chi Christian Sorority. City Council member, Jonesboro, Ga. Cathryn Redwine Stephens, of Fayetteville, Ga., on July 10. Son: Thomas Stephens, BC 88; daughter-in-law: Lisa Volmar, IE 86; granddaughter: Morgan Stephens, Cls 18.

James C. Wiltse, of Gainesville, Ga., on Sept. 22. US Navy. Navy Reserves (Lt. Cmdr.). Director, Advanced Technology for Electronic Communications Inc. Associate director, Georgia Tech Research Institute. Adjunct Professor, Georgia Tech School of Electrical Engineering. Author and co-author of 160 articles, reports and presentations at national and international scientific conferences and technical symposia. Principal investigator on NASA Applications Technology Satellite program at higher than ordinary frequencies. Task leader on the ATS-4 satellite. Department of Defense Advisory Committees. Peer reviewer for proposals to the National Science Foundation and the Army Research Office. General chairman of the First National Radar Conference. Fellow of the IEEE and SPIE.

Volume 93 No. 4 2017 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | 95

TECH MARKETPLACE BUSINESS SERVICES

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96 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | Volume 93 No.4 2017

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Volume 93 No. 4 2017 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | 97

TECH MARKETPLACE MANUFACTURING

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MEDICAL

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customized solution. We solve your foundation problems – settlement, wall failure, water intrusion

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Volume 93 No. 4 2017 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | 99

TECH HISTORY

100 Years of ROTC at Georgia Tech

BY MICHAEL PEARSON

From their roots in a student-run Signal Corps, Georgia Tech’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps programs have trained thousands of military and industry leaders.

MORE THAN A CENTURY AGO, Georgia Tech students watched with what must have been foreboding as World War I swept across Europe. They decided to form a student-run Signal Corps, to begin wearing uniforms, and to do what they could to

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help defend the United States should war come calling. From that beginning, a rich tradition of military service was born.

Starting in 2017, the Institute celebrates 100 years of Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC).

1. GEORGIA TECH HAS A RICH TRADITION of developing leaders. This is true in academia, government and industry. It's true for the military, as well. Since the earliest formal military education at Georgia Tech, in 1917, thousands of Georgia Tech students have gone on to become generals, admirals and Medal of Honor recipientsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; game-changers in their field.

2. ROTC IS A TRAINING PROGRAM for young men and women who want to become officers in the Army, Navy, Marines or Air Force. Most cadets and midshipmen spend four years learning about the military and leadership in a highly regimented program spelled out by each service. It wasn't always so formal, however. Way back in 1915, students organized their own Signal Corps, and they started wearing uniforms on campus and began to practice marching around the time the United States entered World War I in 1917. Here, Tech students are seen in a photo from that year labeled, simply, "our hike."

3. THE FIRST FORMAL MILITARY TRAINING PROGRAM known to have taken place at Georgia Tech was the School of Military Aeronautics, an eight-week ground school for pilots that wasn't open to regular students. It opened in the summer of 1917, helping train some of the first pilots for the United States in World War I. As war needs shifted, it closed the following winter and was replaced by an aviation supply officers school.

4. LT. ELMER HUBBARD was the first 5. GEORGIA TECH PRESIDENT JOHN MATHESON, himself a in a long line of military science profes- veteran, presided over the formal establishment of ROTC at sors to be assigned to Georgia Tech. Georgia Tech on March 30, 1918. Here, he reviews cadets.

The Army roused him from retirement in 1917 to lead military education at the school. He was an artilleryman, a mathematics-heavy military discipline that current Army ROTC commander Lt. Col. John Meister says fascinates some of his Georgia Tech cadets to this day.

6. ROTC HASN'T BEEN THE ONLY MILITARY TRAINING PROGRAM for Georgia Tech students. In October 1918, the entire student body was sworn into the Student Army Training Corps, a short-lived program to train college students for the military during World War I. Around this time, Georgia Tech's faculty voted to make participation in military training compulsory for all freshmen and sophomores. That requirement would stay in place for nearly 50 years.

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TECH HISTORY

7. IN ITS EARLY YEARS, Army ROTC at Georgia Tech fo- 8. LATER, TRAINING EXPANDED to include infantry tactics and even the then-new-fangled world cused on engineering and math-heavy disciplines, such of military aviation. as the Signal Corps and Coastal Artillery.

9. WHILE LAND-LOCKED ATLANTA doesn't come to mind as a mighty maritime city, it has a strong tradition of producing well-trained officers for the Navy. A highly technical service, the Navy chose Georgia Tech as one of six universitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and the only one in the Southâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to host its new naval ROTC units in 1926. The training involved sailing whaleboats around Piedmont Lake. Here, Navy ROTC cadets from Georgia Tech board a ship in 1927 as part of their summer training.

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10. WORLD WAR II saw the Georgia Tech campus transform into a largely military encampment. Thousands of soldiers, sailors and Marines were assigned here to attend class as part of specialized training programs. The school built temporary barracks around campus. Athletic fields were used for gunnery practice in addition to sports. ROTC programs continued to operate, but few graduated due to personnel needs.

11. ONE SUCH PROGRAM was the Navy's V-12, designed to produce technically minded officers at an accelerated clip. But, like all military personnel, they spent plenty of time doing physical training, as seen here in this photo from 1943.

12. LIKE THESE ARMY ROTC PARTICIPANTS demonstrating gunnery skills during World War II, many of today's ROTC cadets can expect to spend time deployed in combat, or in support of combat operations around the world as the United States continues to fight terrorism.

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TECH HISTORY

13. THE END OF WORLD WAR II allowed Georgia Tech to return to its roots as a civilian institution, but ROTC rolled on. In 1950, the Air Force established an ROTC program at Georgia Tech.

15. IN 1965, THE UNIVERSITY ELIMINATED the requirement that all freshmen and sophomores participate in ROTC. While some campuses were rocked by protests over the presence of ROTC amid growing anger over the Vietnam War, little such clamor occurred at Tech. Here, the Navy ROTC sails the USS Fubar as part of the Ramblin' Wreck parade in 1969.

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14. FIVE YEARS LATER, IN 1955, the Air Force ROTC program would become the first at Tech to allow women to take military training courses. Today, 29 percent of ROTC students at Georgia Tech are female.

16. WITH THE END OF COMPULSORY ENROLLMENT IN ROTC, the cadet corps was smaller, but continued to turn out officers. This is a photo of Army cadets from the 1970s.

17. TODAY, ROTC CONTINUES TO THRIVE on Georgia Tech's campus. Army ROTC, for instance, has grown by more than 31 percent in the last five years.

About 130 Georgia Tech students are enrolled in one of the three programs.

18. THE AIR FORCE HAS 40 CADETS enrolled at Georgia Tech. Its graduates go on to military careers as pilots, security officers and technical experts.

19. ARMY ROTC INCLUDES 32 Georgia Tech students. Once commissioned, many become infantry officers. Some carry on the Tech tradition of becoming Signal Corps and artillery officers, among many other specialties.

20. NAVY ROTC IS THE SMALLEST of the ROTC programs based at Georgia Tech, but has the highest percentage of Institute students enrolledâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;57 of the program's 72 midshipmen. These officers in training will go on to careers as aviators, surface warfare officers, Marine infantry commanders and more.

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BACK PAGE

ALL ABOUT THE SWAG YELLOW JACKETS WHO REGULARLY ATTEND ALUMNI ASSOCIATION EVENTS know that they often can score some Georgia Tech-branded swag they won’t find anywhere else. This year, for instance, fidget spinners were added to the mix during Homecoming & Reunion Weekend,

and they quickly rivaled the popularity of such perennial fan favorites as light-up Buzzes, GT foam fingers and Sting ’Em banners. While the biggest benefits of attending these events is to show your support to the Institute and network with fellow Ramblin’ Wrecks, picking up some

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of these special freebies will no doubt make you the envy of your Tech friends, family members and co-workers. Don’t forget, the only way you can get them is to come out to some 2018 Alumni Association events. Find out what’s happening next at www.gtalumni.org/events.

FIND OUT WHERE THEY LANDED

Now that you’ve “got out,” are you curious where your classmates have taken their careers?

At the re-engineered GTALUMNI.ORG, you can find out. Connect with fellow Yellow Jackets on social, professional, and intellectual levels like never before.

• Network with alumni in your area or profession • Sign up for alumni events near you • Take advantage of professional development services • Search the Alumni database Email us for your personalized registration link at webregistration@gtalumni.org for access to all this and more.

Then go to gtalumni.org/profile to update your profile so we know how to reach you.

Volume 93 No. 4 2017 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | 107

Introducing the

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Earn Unlimited 1% Cash Back1 Earn 2% & 3% Cash Back1 for purchases in select categories2 No Annual Fee A percentage of all transactions go to support Roll Call, Georgia Tech’s Fund for Excellence*

1) A Cash Back redemption is applied as a statement credit. The statement credit will reduce your balance, but you are still required to make at least your minimum payment. Values for non-cash back redemption items such as merchandise, gift cards, and travel may vary.

2) Merchants self-select the category in which they would like their transaction items to be listed. Please note some merchants may be owned by other companies, therefore transactions may not be counted in the expected category. A maximum of 2,500 bonus points will be awarded per quarter, per rewards account.

Cardholder benefits are subject to change. Mastercard is a registered trademark of Mastercard International Incorporated.

*Learn more and apply online at commercebank.com/GeorgiaTech