Class Notes

1962

Dick Silver (engineering) reports: “It is lots of WORK to get older! And as I have succeeded at that, there is joy and rejoicing in my posterity. Kay Lea Silver, Menlo-Atherton High school 1959 and BYU, granted me a contract renewal for our 58th year married coming up. We have had two grandchildren pass away. There are three in the U.S. Navy. One is retired from the National Guard and one has top-secret clearance in National Guard Signal Corps. When I ask him what training was given to you this year? His reply, “If I told you, I’d have to shoot you.” Oldest son is in the IT group for Delta Airlines. I asked him for recommendations for a good router on my home network; he said the only routers he was familiar with cost $20,000 each. The family now is eight children, 19 grandkids and 13 great-grandkids. The photo shows me using my planer to prepare zebra-wood for bathroom cabinets. Woodwork is my hobby. I became an engineer as well to afford an early retirement!”

1966

Michael Beug (chemistry) published his second mushroom identification book (the first was Ascomycete Fungi of North America in 2014 with coauthors Allen and Arleen Bessette). The new book is a solo effort featuring 45 years of his mushroom photography: Mushrooms of Cascadia: An Illustrated Key, Fungi Press 2021. It is a unique mushroom field guide designed to slip into a fanny pack and used in the field with nearly 1,050 photographs of 950 species (several of which he discovered and helped name). Michael says, “The book covers far more mushroom species than any other book on the market. Nearly the entire book is devoted to the illustrated key and both novice mushroom hunters and professional mycologists are already using it with ease. See samples on the website mushroomsofcascadia.com. He adds, “I am forever indebted for having been chosen for the Bates program many years ago. Like virtually all Bates graduates, I have maintained regular contact with Iris.”

1967

Brian Dorman (chemistry) has horses and mammoth riding donkeys on six acres in McKinleyville, California. He graduated from UCSF medical school 50 years ago and practices telemedicine as a urologist. He’s part of the open-heart team in Eureka because in California they need a second surgeon when they do heart cases. Brian is a large animal shelter lead and is on the animal evacuation team for the North Valley Animal Disaster Group in Butte county and worked during the Bear North Complex fire. He’s also a volunteer at the California Native Plant Society Nursery in Eureka.

Jon Williams (physics) was appointed vice president clinical affairs of Adverum Biotechnologies Inc, to further its efforts in developing novel therapies. He will provide scientific and technical expertise and leadership across Adverum’s clinical development program for ADVM-022. Julie Clark, MD, chief medical officer at Adverum Biotechnologies, says, “Jon is a dynamic scientist and prolific published researcher, bringing 25 years of experience in clinical and preclinical drug and medical device development and regulatory strategies to this new position at Adverum. His comprehensive knowledge of ocular diseases, including angiogenic retinal disease, strategic clinical trial design and execution across all phases of ophthalmic product development will be valuable for our ADVM-022 clinical development program and our pipeline.” “Ocular gene therapy to treat retinal diseases is an exciting field with the potential to transform the current standard of care for patients,” says Jon. “Adverum is propelling this therapeutic area forward in bold new ways.” He joins Adverum from Bausch Health Companies, where he served as senior director, clinical affairs and was responsible for leading clinical science and medical writing for ophthalmic medical device projects. Previously, he worked at Aerie Pharmaceuticals, Bausch + Lomb Incorporated and ISTA Pharmaceuticals. While executive director for biological research at Magainin Pharmaceuticals, he was instrumental in characterizing the novel antiangiogenic nature of Squalamine, a natural aminosterol product, in several animal models of systemic or ocular disease.

1968

David Wilbur (math) and Linda Wilbur started a nonprofit in 2013 providing education and mentoring to low-income, underserved families in east Los Angeles. The main program is a free parenting and toddler program called Baby College (lindave.org). Dave says, “Baby College has had quite a 2020-2021. First, we lost our lease in January 2020, but luckily found a new place at a church in the Hermon part of Los Angeles. Just as we had moved in but before we could open, the pandemic hit. We transitioned to a more remote mode, providing families with COVID-safe, curbside pickup of weekly art/science bags with online meetings with their teachers for the kids as well as online meetings with the parents providing our Parenting Without Violence program. When food insecurity hit, we arranged to deliver food boxes. So far, we have delivered over 2,500 art/science bags and 3,000 food boxes. With the improved vaccination rates and lowered infection rates, we finally opened with in-person classes in mid-June 2021. So far, over 100 families have attended.”

1969

After 12 years as dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, Henry E. Brady (math and physics) stepped down June 30. “I’m proud to say that the school got bigger adding two more degree programs and many new faculty members. Its student body and faculty got much more diverse, and it is rated

1970

Bruce Cohen (physics) still works about two days each week for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on a contract basis doing technical work (telecommuting because of COVID). Otherwise he’s busy with work around the house, gardening, walking and hiking, books, weekly golf games, and lots of Zooms with friends and family.

Jack Cuzick (math) received the QM Engagement Voyager Award for “impact with the best scope and geographical reach.” The award was made for a body of research that was instrumental in worldwide decisions to replace cytological screening for cervical cancer with more effective primary HPV screening. HPV primary screening is now implemented in the UK and Australia and recommended by the European Commission, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and American Cancer Society. Jack received the HMC Outstanding Alumnus award in 2010.

1977

Mid-pandemic, James Bean (math) and his wife, Margaret, retired from positions in Boston and moved back to Portland, Oregon. Their two children (Meghan and James) and two granddaughters (Lillian and Rosie) had settled there. They recently welcomed a third granddaughter (Zoe). James is senior advisor to the president at Northeastern University in addition to chairing the Harvey Mudd College Board of Trustees.

Brian Williams (chemistry) retired from Bucknell University in May 2020 after 31 years. He writes, “Given COVID, the non-academics I run into thought that was a brilliant move, but the academics will know this was sheer dumb luck as the whole process of retirement and replacement had to be planned two years in advance. Since retiring, I have done a little traveling, done a little research work to finish up a math-based manuscript and worked on remodeling my basement. Since my significant other is planning to move to Denver and I have a small place out on Whidbey Island on Puget Sound, the immediate plan is to move to Whidbey, and split our time between Denver, Whidbey and travel. I mess around with math a bit (any advice re: learning Lie methods from scratch would be appreciated!) and am also trying to learn how to play the piano, which is something I promised myself I would try when I retired.”

1980

Rich Helling (chemistry), director of sustainability at Dow Chemical in Midland, Michigan, reached the milestone of “biking around the world” in December (cumulative 24,901 miles on 12/6/20, almost all done in Midland County on my commuting bike [I’ve not opted for an array of bikes, just one]). Rich, an expert in chemical engineering, works intimately with life cycle assessment and analysis at the Dow Chemical Company.

1981

Greg Eiden (chemistry) writes, “After Mudd, five years at Tektronix, then six years in Madison to get a P-Chem PhD, married Ann and had our first child, Madeline Rose. Then postdoc at LANL and second child, Jack Aloysius. Finally, 27 years at PNNL where child No. 3, Benjamin Braun, was born. Finally figured it out: we have a baby every time we move, so we stopped moving! I work on nuclear non-proliferation and other national security related R&D for PNNL and our USG clients— very fulfilling to see the impact. Shameless plug: I chair review panels of such research, conducting 60+ such reviews each year and am always looking for expert reviewers. Drop me a line with CV; would love to sign up some Mudders for reviews.”

Kirk Norenberg (engineering) has been fully retired since the summer of 2018. He writes, “My wife and I had expected to increase our international traveling as she edged closer to retirement herself, but COVID-19 had other ideas. We have recently ventured out for some domestic travel as we recover from our pandemic-induced cabin fever.”

1985

Laveille Kao Voss (engineering) and Jeff Voss ’82 (engineering) have used the pandemic year to learn how to manage a vineyard and make wine in the garage. Laveille says, “Our family vineyard didn’t make a commercial wine for the 2020 vintage, and we took advantage of that. We recently had a blending session, and we learned a lot from this process. We are looking forward to our 2021 vintage and improving from 2020. When not working (whatever that means) I am also trying to improve my golf game. One of these days, I will be able to take advantage of being an empty nester.

Wendell Wenjen ’85/86 (engineering) leads strategic alliances with storage software companies for Seagate’s enterprise systems group. After five years of software engineering for Hughes Aircraft after HMC, he received an MBA from UCLA and has been in the Bay Area doing business development, product management and marketing for a variety of companies in the data center hardware business, consumer electronics and advertising industries.

1988

Susan (Buckels) Doherty (engineering) is chief marketing officer at Fort Mason Games, where women create fun mobile games for women. She says, “Now that the pandemic is here, I’m taking time off to help family and take care of our new Collie pup, who is a delightful addition to our family. For fellow Bates Aeronautics alums out there, I enjoyed reading Iris Critchell’s new biography The Privilege of Flight. What a great book about Iris’ interesting life!”

1989

Tim Wendler (engineering) hosted several virtual Class of 1989 mini-reunions. He rejoined the board of the Arroyos and Foothills Conservancy, a land trust that works to preserve wildlife corridors, and was recently appointed to the Pasadena Unified School District Redistricting Committee. He continues to serve on the Pasadena Planning Commission, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy Advisory Committee and as president of the Professional Environmental Management Association.

1990

Janet Cooke Hansen (engineering) is still based in Encinitas, California, where she enjoys year-round gardening and daily beach walks. For the past 20 years, she’s been making custom lighted clothing, mostly for clients in the entertainment industry (Broadway shows, theme parks, concerts, sports mascots, etc.). “While this work has been slower during the pandemic, I’ve been spending more time on the non-wearable side of my business, building up my portfolio of LED art.” See janethansen.com and enlighted.com.

Paul Vahey (chemistry) is celebrating 25 years of marriage with Sheri and completing 15 years at Boeing as an analytical chemist and associate technical fellow. He says, “Enjoy seeing fellow Mudd alums at martial arts class, online escape rooms and old-fashioned in-person visits.”

1993

Ellen Heian (engineering) is interested in cottage-scale plastics recycling and welcomes input on the topic.

1994

Greg Harr (engineering) joined a small consulting firm focusing on utility energy efficiency and electric vehicle programs, Electrify Everything. His unpaid side hustle solarforall.org is working on its 30th solar install on affordable housing in Oregon and southwest Washington this year.

Yvonne Ulrich-Lai (biology) is an associate professor of pharmacology and systems biology at the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine. She says, “The goal of my research program is to identify the neural and hormonal substrates that are responsible for the interactions among diet, obesity and stress. This includes investigating how eating so-called ’comfort’ foods provide stress relief.”

1997

Joe Beda (CS) writes, “Rachel Donahue (biology) and I are 21 years married with two kids in Seattle. I’m currently a principal engineer at VMware after selling my startup, Heptio, in late 2018. Beyond Heptio, I also helped found the Kubernetes open-source project and started Google Compute Engine, all while at Google for over 10 years.”

1998

Sarah Jacobson (engineering) has been an economist at Williams College since 2010, and has been an associate professor since 2016. She specializes in environmental and behavioral economics. “In recent years, I’ve also been working a lot on diversity, equity and inclusion in economics, in my department and more broadly. I recently won an NSF grant with some colleagues to study in-kind donations (donations of stuff rather than money). And I’m looking forward to a sabbatical in 2021–2022!”

1999

Econ/engineering alum Edith Harbaugh and John Kodumal ’00 (CS), are co-founders of LaunchDarkly (featured in spring 2019 HMC Magazine, https://bit.ly/LDspr19). They raised $200 million in late-stage financing led by Lead Edge Capital LLC to scale up the company’s core feature platform. With this new funding, LaunchDarkly has tripled its valuation to $3 billion. Edith and John met at HMC and later founded their continuous-delivery, feature flag management platform in 2014.

2000

David Beydler (CS) writes, “After working as a software engineer at a company called Paracel for a few years, I developed a repetitive stress injury in my hands (don’t let this happen to you!) and had to stop working. I rested my hands for about three years, traveling to Europe, China and New Zealand, then went back to school and got an M.S. in mathematics from Cal State LA. I’ve been a math professor at Mt. San Antonio College (California) since 2011. It has been a joy sharing the wonders of math with my students, many of whom are first-generation college students. I like to challenge them to learn programming (my primary passion!) and sometimes create fun little programs with them during breaktime. My favorite students are my two sons, who are currently enduring endless quizzing on circle properties and for loops.”

2001

Jon Erickson (physics) was promoted to professor of physics and engineering at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.

For the past 18 months, Angie (Kurle) Luengen (math) has been working at a tiny EdTech startup, Corsava. She says, “As is often the case with startups, I wear a lot of hats. Rarely does a day go exactly as planned, but I love my team, and it’s fun to be tackling the “college fit” problem; working to connect the next generation of college students with a college campus and experience that will allow them to thrive. I’m learning a ton too, which makes it even better! Outside of work, Ross and I continue to enjoy hiking, backpacking, and kayaking in the Pacific Northwest. Our two dogs are frequently along for the adventures. My most frequent trail buddy is our three-anda-half-year-old pup, Strider. We’re racking up miles training to earn his Working Pack Dog title.”

2002

Antonio Medrano (engineering) is an assistant professor of computer science at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. In 2020, he was part of a group awarded an NSF grant on using artificial intelligence for environmental science research (AI2ES, www.ai2es.org). His lab is using deep learning to protect sea turtle nests from inundation along the Texas coast. He and his wife, Noemi, just had their first child, Nolan, in June 2021.

2003

Trish Brock (biology) has been working at California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, for about 15 years, first helping submit grant applications, and more recently as director for research compliance. She now reviews human subject and animal subject protocols and helps faculty working on export-controlled projects and activities. She says, “It has been wonderful getting to use my broad Mudd education across a wide variety of projects and activities. I love living and working in the Central Coast and seeing lots of animals and life in my yard.”

2004

Joseph Checkelsky (physics) is one of five faculty members in the MIT School of Science to earn tenure for 2021. Joseph investigates exotic electronic states of matter through the synthesis, measurement and control of solid materials. His research aims to broaden the boundaries of understanding quantum mechanical condensate systems and to reveal new physical phenomena that open the door to new technologies by realizing emergent electronic and magnetic functions. Checkelsky received a PhD in physics from Princeton University and was appointed a postdoc at the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Japan and a lectureship at the University of Tokyo before joining the MIT Department of Physics in 2014.

Last fall, Eric Harley (math) left Baltimore for South Kingstown, Rhode Island, to be closer to family. He says, “I had been living in Baltimore since starting grad school in 2004 at Johns Hopkins, so it was the end of an era, but 2020 was especially rough on the kids (9 and 5), and we didn’t feel like we had another choice. Professionally, over the last year and a half I led the development and implementation of a new sampling method for the USDA’s Food Safety agency leveraging big data, machine learning and good ol’ fashioned statistics. I can say unequivocally that America’s supply of chicken nuggets has never been safer.”

After working for the last 10+ years as an operational weather forecaster, Lewis Kanofsky (engineering) moved to Kansas City in mid-March to start a new job as a research meteorologist at the Aviation Weather Center.

2006

George Malikov (math and economics) joins Ivey Business School (Ontario, Canada) as assistant professor of finance, where he teaches the HBA1 core finance course. His research interests include market microstructure, information economics and asset management. This summer, he received his PhD in finance from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. Prior to that, he spent more than six years in the asset management industry working at two hedge funds, Citadel and Millennium, as a fundamental equity investor and about a year in financial litigation consulting at Charles River Associates. In his free time, he enjoys watching and playing soccer, traveling and spending time with family.

2007

Holly Johnsen (mathematical biology) has been a data scientist at Facebook in the Small Business Group for two years. Spouse, George Tucker’08 (CS/ math) is a research scientist at Google Brain. They’ve both been working from their home in Sunnyvale and enjoying the extra time with their 2-year-old son and newborn son.

Kapy Kangombe (CS) recently left Microsoft to join Amazon Web Services as a senior software engineer working on the Domain Name System service called Route 53.

Rebecca Young—now Becky Kelcher— (engineering) was the consultant project manager of an interchange reconstruction project (I-10/Monroe Street in Indio, California) that was recently awarded $20 million in federal earmark funding.

2008

Rosemary Dodson

(engineering) travels across the United States working as a test engineer for various companies. After graduation, she spent five years in Hawaii at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard testing non-nuclear systems on naval submarines. She writes, “I met my future husband there while he was serving as a submarine officer and followed him to Los Angeles, where I was a production test engineer at SpaceX testing rocket components for manufacturing defects. We moved to Orlando for my husband’s medical school, and I spent three years at L3Harris Corporation testing communication systems. Currently, I am a system integration and test engineer for Northrop Grumman in San Diego while my husband is doing his residency at Naval Medical Center San Diego. Test engineering has allowed me the flexibility to change jobs because the principles and experience carry over to completely different systems and types of testing. I find testing engaging because it is active work and requires great communication and coordination.”

Abbygail Foster (engineering) and her husband, Andrew Foster, welcomed their second child, Naomi Grace, on Feb. 24.

Ben Stanphill (engineering) gave a Mudd Talk about “Career Paths in Environmental Remediation.” He described public repositories of hazardous waste cleanup projects in California and gave an overview of environmental remediation with a focus on toxic chemicals in soil, groundwater and indoor air. He discussed careers in consulting and how Harvey Mudd’s unique educational philosophy prepares graduates for careers that straddle multiple disciplines. Ben is a senior civil engineer focusing on environmental remediation with Arcadis, a global design and consultancy firm based in the Netherlands.

2009

Tony Evans married Masha Kleshcheva on July 24 in Veneta, Oregon. Andy Wong, Eric Peterson and Sam Gordon served as groomsmen. Claire O’Hanlon officiated. Other Mudders in attendance included Adrian Sampson, Scott Smith, Ginna Kim, Catherine Bradshaw, Shannon McKenna and Ryan Quarfoth. Pictured are Shannon, Ryan, Scott, Tony, Adrian, Claire, Eric, Ginna and Andy.

University of California, Merced natural sciences professor Aurora Pribram-Jones (chemistry) has received an NSF grant partnering with Harvey Mudd and University of South Wales that will give some firstgeneration undergrads a collaborative research experience, including a summer of research in Australia.

2010

Physicists at Stanford, Princeton and other universities say that they have used Google’s quantum computer to demonstrate a genuine “time crystal,” an object whose parts move in a regular, repeating cycle, sustaining this constant change without burning any energy. Vedika Khemani (physics), a condensed matter physicist at Stanford, co-discovered the novel phase while she was a graduate student and co-authored a paper with the Google team.

Joshua Swanson (math) finished his postdoc at UCSD and is starting a second and final one at USC.

2012

Jessica Kurata (biology) works as a senior bioinformatic scientist at Guardant Health developing a blood test to detect if a patient’s cancer has been completely removed by surgery or if they should still receive therapy.

Kristen M. Warren (engineering) has been a research engineer at a startup company called Embr Labs since 2016. She says, “Our first product, the Embr Wave, generates sensations of warmth or cold on the inside of your wrist, stimulating your thermoreceptors with precise temperature profiles we call thermal waveforms. Our device and patented thermal waveforms have been shown to alleviate the intensity of hot flashes for women going through menopause and help users with general temperature regulation problems to sleep better and feel less stressed.”

2013

Katarina Hoeger (math) writes: “This past year was my second year studying in the Intermedia department at UMaine. I have created audio and visual artworks, in the media of VR, sound, visuals, webpages and booklets. A few of the pieces required mathematics and algorithms (efficient sorting, efficiently choosing a spot to place the next virtual object, etc.). One specifically was a partial exploration of wallpaper groups.” In August, Katarina hosted a Mudd Makers: Co-Create session, which celebrates and nurtures the Mudd community’s creativity, curiosity and dedication.

Andrew Hilger (engineering) completed an M.S. in electrical engineering at Stanford in 2018. He did research with a glaciology professor mapping basal conditions under Antaractic ice using synthetic aperture radar. He also worked at Sandia National Labs on software that processes remote sensing data and is currently working on autonomous vehicle maps at Zoox.

2015

Josh Sanz (engineering) worked for three years at MIT Lincoln Laboratory on radar signal processing. He’s now in year three of an EECS PhD at UC Berkeley working on machine learning for wireless communications. In his spare time, he likes to rock climb, run, ski and play Age of Empires with friends during social distancing.

During 2020, Kyle Shan (math) finished a master’s degree and moved to Boise, where he’s a data scientist at Micron. He and Kristina Ming married in July.

Helen Woodward (CS) lives in the Bay Area and works for Akamai on their real-time user monitoring product, mPulse, to collect data at large-scale and present meaningful analysis of it in real time.

2016

Ramy Elminyawi (engineering) works at a startup in San Diego that creates satellite payloads. “Since we’re a startup, I wear many hats, but my main two involve writing embedded software and integrating the individual electronics into a fully functional system.”

Shannon (Wetzler) Quevedo (chemistry and biology) recently married and also defended her chemistry PhD from the University of Michigan. She accepted a tenure track position that begins in fall 2021 at the Virginia Military Institute, where she will be Major Shannon Quevedo, PhD.

Maddie Weinstein (math) graduated from UC Berkeley with her PhD in math in May and has started a postdoc at Stanford. She is an AAAS IF/THEN Ambassador, a STEM role model for girls. She and her dog, Pumpkin Pi, were featured in a video on the GoldieBlox YouTube channel about debunking stereotypes about mathematicians.

2017

Lakshay Akula (math) made a math visualization of Penrose tilings that other math-lovers might enjoy! Visit penrosemoire. com to view it.

Marc Finzi (physics) is working toward his PhD in CS at NYU (transferred from Cornell). His recent projects are either physics-inspired, such as LieConv—arxiv.org/abs/2002.12880 —where he develops neural networks with symmetries to Lie groups or projects that are at the intersection of physics and ML, such as (arxiv.org/abs/2010.13581), where he devises networks with better inductive biases (from classical physics) to learn from physical systems like the dynamics of a jointed robot. He has done work with two ex-theoretical physicists, Roberto Bondesan and Max Welling, on probabilistic numeric convolutional networks using tools from the physics toolbox like Greens functions and GPs to model discretization errors in CNNs probabilistically. He’s also working on a project to use neural networks to express solutions in numerical relativity to simplify some challenges with adaptive mesh refinement.

Immediately after graduating, Kathryn Jones (engineering) took a position as a graduate engineer for IMI Precision Engineering. The position entailed four six-month placements in different locations with different roles at each one, including one six-month international placement and two international training sessions. She says, “It was a great way to see the country while also learning business side engineering roles and production processes. At the end of my two years with the company, I decided to go back for graduate school since I had always planned on getting an advanced degree.” She’s enrolled at UCI to earn a PhD in civil engineering with a focus on concrete additive manufacturing for wind turbines.

Lydia Scharff (engineering) works at Aurora Flight Sciences in Virginia and spent most of the last two years working on the Boeing Passenger Air Vehicle.

2018

During the summer, Shailee Samar (CS) led short yoga sequences and guided meditations for Mudd Meditates, as part of the Alumni Virtual Hangout series. Participants learned simple breathing, yoga and meditation techniques that can be done at home to find comfort, lower anxiety, increase energy and support health.

Sarah Silcox (engineering) is the distribution integrity management engineer at Dominion Energy Utah, Wyoming, Idaho. She analyzes the possible risks to the low-pressure natural gas pipeline assets in these states. She reports that she’s finished two 200-page comics and picked up fishing. “I began fishing in July 2020 when I realized I was an adult and could fulfill my wildest dreams.”

After graduating, David Kwan (engineering) worked for Georg Fischer Signet (his Clinic sponsor) as a firmware engineer and then as a project manager. Since then, he moved to the Bay Area to work as an engineering program manager at Apple. “I’m excited to be around many of my Mudd friends in the Bay Area!”

Kristin Lie (engineering) works on satellites in El Segundo. “I’ve also kept busy during COVID by building a climbing wall in my garage and am enjoying my newly purchased power tools!”

2019

Camille Goldman (biology) is pursuing a PhD in biomedical science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She joined a lab that uses organoids (3D cell models) to study Parkinson’s disease. “We are particularly interested in using our model to study geneenvironment interactions as most cases of PD have environmental causes that are not fully understood. Before COVID-19, I was taking full advantage of living in New York City. Now that I’m more confined to my tiny apartment, I spend my free time reading and baking. And yes, I do have a sourdough starter!”

Jingnan Shi (engineering) has been working toward a PhD in robotics at MIT AeroAstro. His paper “Optimal Pose and Shape Estimation for Category-level 3D Object Perception” earned the Best Paper Finalist award at the 2021 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference. He’s working on robust robotic perception systems and the intersection between theory and practical systems.

Hannah Slocumb (chemistry) writes: “I’m about to start my third year in UCI’s organic chemistry PhD program, where I’ve been working in Prof. Vy Dong’s lab. This year, I’ve been awarded the NSF GRFP, had a paper published on the asymmetric hydroamination of dienes with pyrazoles in ACIE and earned my chemistry M.S. degree.”

2020

Danielle Michaud (engineering) writes, “This year has given me time to learn about myself in a way that I couldn’t have at Mudd. I’ve found many new things that I enjoy doing and am surprisingly good at—cutting hair, woodworking (I made the couch and planters in the photo!), painting, cooking and bothering my cats just to name a few. Now that work ends at 5 p.m. and there are no problem sets, I have many creative personal projects to devote my time to. On top of that I also have thought about what kind of impact I want to have in my work and how to accomplish it. It took some digging to find a career path that I could apply my skill set from Mudd to, and I’ve decided to go into science writing and communication, starting with a life science writing internship now and moving to a patent writing position in the spring.”

2021

Lucila Grinspan (engineering) has been relaxing with the family in Miami and Asheville, North Carolina, and working on getting a Salesforce administrator certification.

IN MEMORIAM

Richard Llewellyn ’68

Richard Llewellyn ’68 (engineering) passed away on June 6 of pancreatic cancer. He worked at Westinghouse Corp., which became Northrop Grumman, for more than 30 years and pioneered work that went into radar and targeting systems for the military but also found its way into today's vehicle sensing technologies. “Rick was an innovative thinker who contributed to the design of computer hardware for the AWACS radar system and led the development of the first fully programmable airborne processors for the Electronically Agile Radar, the F-16 fighter, and B-1B bomber,” says his wife, Julia Wagner, in a June 2021 Baltimore Sun interview. “Generations of computing systems flying today can trace their heritage back to some of Rick’s original concepts.” During their extensive travels, Richard and Julia (married nearly 46 years) captured many images and videos of animals and birds. In addition to Julia, a retired dentist, survivors include a brother, John Llewellyn of Pasadena, California; a sister, Ann Evans of Knapp Island, Canada; and nieces and nephews.