mudd SUMMER 2022 THE MAGAZINE OF HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE HomeSustainabilityBringing
CLASS OF 2022 225 students 72% joining workforce (50% tech/software) 20% starting graduate programs 8% volunteering, studying on a Watson Fellowship, participating in internships, traveling Lucy Wong ’22 Nico Espinosa Dice ’22, Keizo Morgan ’22, Mariesa Teo ’22, Tona Gonzalez ’22 and Vibha Rohilla ’22 Henley Sartin ’22 with her parents Tonya and Blake P22. Noah Haig ’22 Naina Kaimal ’22 with her brother, Nikhil, and parents Sunil and Amrutha P22.
Download free images from HMC Flickr, bit.ly/gradimages2022 President Klawe and Commencement speaker Terence Tao Vadim Mathys ’22, Alex Bishka ’22 and Neil Beveridge ’22 Hugo So ’22
Kevin Hainline ’06 (physics)
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29 Mudd, Rocks and Gems
Bob Kelley ’67 (physics) Leigh HS ’63
I learned about the skills I have that overcame my natural lack of Raw Intelligence and Insight, skills like an ability to just keep trying, asking for help, and putting aside ego. A year later, when I reapplied to HMC, I requested an interview with the admissions committee, where I opened up about how glad I was to be given time to grow and mature. I told them what I'd done over the year to earn a spot with them. This time, they took a chance on me. I was accepted. I remember my mom calling me while I was working at the mall, and just bursting into tears in the back room, then having to collect myself and finish out my shift selling copies of Apples to Apples. So to be asked to talk about myself for the magazine is such an amazing honor, especially given how I was far from the best student there, but I was someone who tried despite poor grades, who was constantly in office hours, and who knew how important this opportunity was.
I wanted to pass on thanks to sophomore Kevin Kim for wearing his distinctive sweat shirt in the spring issue, page 15. I thought the logo looked familiar and now I know that at least one student from my high school, Leigh in San Jose, has made it to the big leagues!
Proud of Kim and Tsai for doing so well in the physics competition. I’m a regular juror for the Austrian Young Physicists Tournament and I know how hard they work.
The road to the perfect ceramics glaze began on Platt Blvd.
Letters to the Editor
4 College News 14 Research 16 Clinic 26 Mudderings 28 Class Notes
The facets of an HMC education inspire an original gemstone design.
Opinions about the content of Mudd Magazine are welcome.
HA R VEY MUDD COLLEGE MAGAZINE 2 CONTENTS Departments 24 20 HomeSustainabilityBringing Fernando Salud ’17 tackles sustainability challenges in the climate-change hotspot of the Philippines. 18 Heat Transfer is Everything An expert in the exchange of thermal energy between objects, Anne Hofmeister ’76 challenges assumptions.
Trail Glazers
LinkedInInstagramFacebook@harveymudd–@harveymuddcollege–@harvey_mudd–harvey-mudd-college
Letters may be edited for clarity and brevity.
My profile in the spring magazine brought up a lot of (good!) emotions, especially given the roundabout path I took toward getting into the College in the first place.
I wasn't the greatest student in high school, but I tried really hard and fumbled my way through. I knew, when I first heard about Mudd, that this would be a perfect fit for my brand of weirdness. However, they (and every other college I applied to!) rejected my application. And so I watched my friends all go off and start their college adventures and I just went back to working at The GameKeeper, a board game store in the Main Place Mall near my home in Orange County, California.
I took classes at Santa Ana Community College. I sulked for a bit. But I put that aside and learned about how sometimes if you want something, you may not get it.
Summer 2022 | Volume 22, No. 3 Mudd Magazine is produced three times per year by the Office of Communications and Marketing.
Hieu Nguyen Chief Communications Officer Timothy L. Hussey, APR Mudd Magazine (SSN 0276-0797) is published by Harvey Mudd College, Office of Communications and Marketing, 301 Platt Boulevard Claremont, CA 91711. Nonprofit Organization Postage Paid at Claremont, CA 91711 Postmaster: Send address changes to Harvey Mudd College, Advancement Services, 301 Platt Boulevard, Claremont, CA 91711.
Senior Graphic Designer Joshua Buller Associate Director Sarah Barnes Editorial Assistant Leah Gilchrist Intern Chase Siffert
Copyright © 2022—Harvey Mudd College. All rights reserved. Opinions expressed in the Mudd Magazine are those of the individual authors and subjects and do not necessarily reflect the views of the College administration, faculty or students. No portion of this magazine may be reproduced without the express written consent of the editor. Mudd Magazine staff welcomes your input: communications@hmc.edu or Mudd Magazine, Harvey Mudd College, 301 Platt Boulevard, Claremont, CA 91711 magazine.hmc.edu along with research, summer is often a time for campus improvements, including updates to several of our residence halls and, this year, beginning preparations for the College’s new generator to be installed by the end of summer 2023. A backup power generator will provide much-needed additional coverage in the event of future power outages so that we may better safeguard important research and lab work throughout our academic complex. As I observe the activity on campus, I look back at yet another remarkable academic year filled with special moments and extraordinary accomplishments, powered by the dedication and hard work of faculty, staff, trustees and families. Students enjoyed a full year of in-person classes and research, and our first-year and sophomore students were finally able to experience residential life at Harvey Mudd for the first time since they enrolled.Wenavigated a winter outbreak of the Omicron variant and the multiple subvariants that persist and were able to celebrate the 214 members of the Class of 2022, our third (and final) commencement ceremony of the year. I know that, like me, you look forward to hearing about their amazing accomplishments as they enter the next phase of their lives: some in the workplace and others in grad school. Still others will become entrepreneurs, and they have a strong set of resources in this area (page 8). Along with our graduates from the class of 2022, we’ve said goodbye to several colleagues in recent months. As you know, Lisa Sullivan (page 10) has left Harvey Mudd to become provost and dean of faculty for Mount Holyoke College after 32 remarkable years at Harvey Mudd. Engineering professor Ruye Wang retired after more than 30 years of leadership and teaching (page 9). We mourn the loss of two pioneering professors: Mack Gilkeson (engineering) and Hank Krieger (mathematics). Read more about their contributions and lasting legacies on pageThe9. challenges facing today’s world are enormous: climate change, social justice issues, infectious diseases, ongoing wars in Ukraine and elsewhere. Harvey Mudd College graduates make valuable contributions to addressing these challenges as well as to making key advances in science and technology. I know that wherever they go and whatever they do, they will make a difference. Given the increasing impact of technology on every aspect of society, the world needs Harvey Mudd graduates, their STEM knowledge, curiosity and joy of learning now more than ever.
Maria Klawe President, Harvey Mudd College
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
Director of Communications, Senior Editor Stephanie L. Graham, APR Art Director Robert Vidaure
Contributing Writers Kristin Baird Rattini, Brenda Rees, Jen A. Miller
Powered by Joy
Proofreaders Sarah Barnes, Kelly Lauer Vice President for Advancement
Contributing Photographers Hugh Chou, Shannon Cottrell, Sofia Gonzalez, Jeanine Hill, Anil Kapahi, Kim Neal, Jordan Stone ’24
The prize: Awarded each year at Commencement to a member of the HMC community for exemplary service to the College and its mission. Awardees receive $6,000, $3,000 of which is designated for use within the College at the discretion of the recipient. This year, funds were directed to the HMC makerspace. The recipient: Lisa Sullivan experienced many firsts during her career at Harvey Mudd College. In addition to being the first female chair of her department (Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts), Sullivan was the inaugural associate dean of academic affairs, the first associate dean for faculty development, the first Core Curriculum director and the first female vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty, a position she held since 2017. Sullivan, who left HMC in July to become provost and dean of faculty for Mount Holyoke College, joined HMC in 1990. She taught Economic History in the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts and, in addition to her many “firsts,” she administered a Mellon grant directed toward faculty career satisfaction, supported the successful reaccreditation of the College by the WASC Senior College and University Commission and was “a central and enduring presence on the College’s Pandemic Planning Team.”
SearchPresidentialProgress
Reelected for three-year terms
COLLEGE NEWS Trustee Update
HA R VEY MUDD COLLEGE MAGAZINE 4
Sullivan says: “It’s been an amazing, amazing three decades at this institution, and I’m so profoundly grateful for the collaboration, partnership, inspiration and affection that you’ve all given me.”
James Bean ’77, Jason Fennell ’08, Kathleen Fisher, Scott Fraser ’76, Laurie Girand, Rob Gould ’87, Shamit
Comments from the HMC community about the College’s next president have been reviewed by the Presidential Search Committee and consultant SpencerStuart, and the position specification is posted (bit.ly/hmcpresSearch2022). Here’s a tentative timeline (subject to change).
Sullivan Awarded Mudd Prize
Grover ’05, Bob Hulse ’96/97, Yvonne Wassenaar, Michael Wilson ’63 Rejoining the board John Benediktsson ’01 Advisory trustees Murray Goldberg, Bruce Worster ’64 Trustee emeriti Joseph Connolly, Wayne Drinkward ’73, Jocelyn Goldfein Received resolutions of appreciation for many years of service R. Miller Adams, Joseph Connolly, Murray Goldberg, Jocelyn Goldfein, Bruce Worster ’64 INTERVIEWSFIRST-ROUND Late August • Meet virtually with top candidates (6-8 individuals) • Identify top candidates to move forward to second-round interviews and commence formal referencing INTERVIEWSSECOND-ROUND TBD • Virtual meetings with top candidates to follow up on issues raised from the first round. DEEPER DILIGENCEDUE TBD • Additional referencing including off-list • Formal due diligence on top candidate(s) • Executive assessment of top candidate(s) if desired.
SUMMER 2022 5COLLEGE NEWS a new entrepreneurship course is part of HMC’s effort to strengthen and expand curricular and co-curricular activities to nurture the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Winning Startups
Ryan O’Hara ’24, Josh Jones ’98, Miles Bird CMC ’15, Ayman Abdellatif ’24 and Professor Kash Gokli
hmc.edu/entrepreneurship Other Startup Ideas from the Class
Ten student teams pitched startup ideas to venture capitalists/judges at the conclusion of the spring 2022 class, and two teams— Athena, a modern class registration app to help students graduate, and Terra Robotics, a direct air capture product—won the chance to pitch their concepts to well-known venture capitalists.Theclass, led by HMC engineering professor and the director of entrepreneurship initiatives Kash Gokli, is aimed at those who would like to launch a startup upon graduation or later, students who want to join established companies and apply their entrepreneurial skills and spirit, and students who would like to be social entrepreneurs. It had an enrollment of 63 students from each of the undergraduate Claremont colleges and CGU (73% from HMC). Mentors included Josh Jones ’98, co-founder of DreamHost and the startup incubator HMC INQ, and HMC trustees Sergio Monsalve P25 and Mar Hershenson P24. HMC alumni entrepreneurs and others shared their success stories and covered topics of interest during class sessions while 10 student teams came up with startup ideas and worked on them throughout the semester.
and operate
• A Slice of North– Build a North Dorm
• isoLearning– Hands-on tool for schools to help students learn complex 3-D concepts • MakeIt Pitch– Connect talented makers with creative customers • Free Market Freeway– An app that converts freeways into free markets • Vinci– Decentralize art • Community Marketz– Showcase local businesses selling sustainable and high-quality products • Goodchange– Easily donate to any number of charities in one centralized hub, streamlining the giving process • Roady– Road trip app with a social-media aspect plus guides and interfaces for hotels, camping and other stops
The Entrepreneurship Summer Fellowship program places students in early stage companies for summer internships. This summer, 18 students worked with a variety of startup
Entrepreneurship Class Inspires Startups
O’Hara, a sophomore transfer student double majoring in environmental robotics (IPS) and math/CS, says “The class gave me the push to put something into action: using science to make the world a better place and help those who’ll be most impacted by climate change. The guest speakers and Mar Hershenson P24 gave me valuable advice on how to move my idea from theory to reality.”
ventures.
woodfired pizza oven at
Athena Ayman Abdellatif ’24, CEO; Ammar Fakih ’24, CTO; Lucas Welsh CMC ’25, CMO/CFO; Andrew Faber ’24 (UC Riverside), senior software developer Athena is a modern class registration to help students graduate. With a focus on course preparation, student connection, on-demand tutoring and local community engagement, the Athena service would require colleges to pay a subscription per student. A key feature of Athena is Class Pages, which allows students to get more information like course syllabi and course recommendations in an organized mobileAbdellatif,app. an engineering major with a music concentration, says, “Having successful people who believe in my team and our dream has been a key aspect in our progress.” Terra Robotics Ryan O’Hara ’24, Devon Overbey ’24, James Barrett ’24 Direct air capture (DAC) technology pulls CO2—the primary greenhouse gas driving climate change—from the air and sequesters it away beneath the Earth so it can no longer warm the planet. The Terra Robotics product is a DAC robot that floats on the ocean and uses hydropower and biochar to sequester carbon dioxide. O’Hara says it is sustainable, cheap to produce, produces net negative carbon emissions and aligns with cutting-edge DAC science. Terra Robotics would target 154 coastal governments around the world. Within a year or two, they hope to have a prototype that achieves the desired parameters so they can begin to scale up.
“I was blown away by the level of student energy, the quality and the breath of projects students worked on,” says Hershenson. “This class is an important step to inspire our students to become great entrepreneurs.”
• A partnership with the HMC makerspace; stewards taught a twice-a-week class for five weeks
thanks to a generous donation from the Class of 1996, the HMC makerspace staff was able to purchase a Jacquard loom manufactured by Tronrud Engineering (Norway) in fall 2021. After traveling on a ship for about three months, the loom arrived on campus just before spring break. Artist and adjunct professor Christy Matson, who has a decade of experience working with such looms, helped set it up and provided a workshop to show the makerspace stewards best practices so they can help other students operate the loom. The fall 2022 HSA special topics class Fibers and Materials, taught by Lindsey Preston Zappas, will use the Jacquard loom as part of its curriculum.
• A summer residential experience for 21 rising juniors at UC San Diego with daily in-person internships in La Jolla at various math and science-based labs, hospitals and institutions.
Professor Ken Fandell, Aidan Nettekoven ’24, Liza Gull ’24 and Felix Murphy ’24 install the loom modules.
HMC’s Upward Bound program, which has helped low-income, potential first-generation college students for half a century, has been re-funded for five years. With funding for the summer guaranteed, program director Angie Aguilar-Covarrubias and her staff transitioned for the first time since the start of the pandemic into in-person services with some hybrid components. She said, “I am proud of the collective impact that we have all made in our community for the last 50 years, and I am excited we get to continue this important work at Harvey Mudd College through 2027!”
Digital Jacquard Loom
Upward Bound Funded Through 2027
Upward Bound students were offered these services and opportunities this summer:
• Six weeks of summer programming at HMC complete with 25 daily virtual internships at the Library of Congress and The Scripps Research Institute.
For 13 years, the College provided Homework Hotline (1.877.827.5462) to the community thanks to private donations. Now, recognizing the invaluable resource the hotline provides to the region, the College has made the program a permanent part of its overall operating budget, assuring that local and regional students will have access to free, quality math and science tutoring for years to come. The free over-the-phone tutoring service for K–12 students, open Monday through Thursday from 6–9 p.m. PT during the academic year, has averaged 3,000 calls per academic year. Most calls to the hotline come from students in junior high and high school, with over 60 percent of callers requesting help in trigonometry, geometry or algebra. The program primarily serves the greater Los Angeles area but is open to all students who have math or science homework questions. During spring 2020, when students across the country moved to online instruction in response to the pandemic, Homework Hotline extended its hours. Harvey Mudd tutors, who had also moved to online learning, staffed the hotline remotely from their homes in 12 states. Homework Hotline was conceived in 2010 by President Maria Klawe after she visited the successful Homework Hotline created at RoseHulman Institute of Technology. RHIT shared its system with Harvey Mudd, provided technical advice for its implementation and continues to be a valued“Thecollaborator.servicemeans so much to the surrounding schools,” says Gabriela Gamiz, director of community engagement. “Funding the program permanently is the College’s way of demonstrating its importance. Homework Hotline is part of our fabric and culture, what we believe in. We want to keep on sharing the amazing passion and talent that Harvey Mudd students have for math and science with the wider community.”
HA R VEY MUDD COLLEGE MAGAZINE 6 COLLEGE NEWS
Homework Hotline Here to Stay
• Twice-daily, four-week summer research lab opportunities with HMC professors Danae Schulz and Dan Stoebel
Leadership Award/Outstanding Staff Member Raissa Diamante, director of enrollment strategies and operations, Office of Admission, 15 years “In her role, she has encouraged the removal of barriers in the admission process to ensure that equity and inclusion are at the center. She has also served as a mentor for students, she has co-led decompression sessions and has spoken both at PRISM events as well as in social justice courses.”
Mary G. Binder Prize Award recognizes HMC support staff for exceptional service and collegiality.
The College recognized several dedicated and hardworking staff members with awards this spring. Here are the winners and comments from nominators.
Staff Service Awards
Leadership Award/Outstanding Staff Member Robert Kingston, director of IT infrastructure and systems, Computing and Information Services, nine years “A courteous, reliable and absolutely crucial member of CIS for years, [Robert] is genuine, diligent and determined, and the results of his perseverance and work have benefited the College significantly. With his facilitation, there has been incredible progress in goals to increase efficiency, security, knowledge and expertise for many essential CIS services affecting Harvey Mudd’s community.”
COLLEGE NEWS
Lorena Gonzalez, Department of Engineering Clinic Program Coordinator, 15 years “Lorena always goes above and beyond in her role. If she is met with a closed door, she finds a way around it. She is innovative, hardworking, dedicated and loyal. A true asset to HMC, she ensures that faculty and student needs are met and is always thinking/ planning 10 steps ahead. She is a pleasure to work with.”
Mary G. Binder Prize and Leadership Award/Outstanding Staff Member Guillermina “Gigi” Limon, building attendant, Office of Facilities and Maintenance, eight years “I have always found [Gigi] to be dependable, efficient and extremely reliable at any task given to her. She always goes out of her way to help and all with a kind and positive attitude. She loves people, works hard and always tries to lift the spirits of those around her. Gigi is a huge asset to the facilities and maintenance department.”
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The College is the headquarters for a new project to develop undergraduate-universal computing curricula. HMC, Claremont McKenna College and Caltech are working together on Computing-As-Literacy (CAL): Undergraduate Universal Computing, recently funded by the National Science Foundation as part of the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Education and Human Resources initiative. Zachary Dodds, LeonhardJohnson-Rae Professor of Computer Science, is CAL co-principal investigator at HMC, along with Lucas Bang
HSA Alfred Flores (Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies) has been appointed to a second, two-year term as associate professor. Flores researches race, settler colonialism and U.S. militarization in the island of Guahan (Guam). Mathematics Haydee Lindo, a commutative algebraist, has been appointed to a second, two-year term as assistant professor. Her research interests are in homological algebra and representation theory, and she is editor in chief and chair of the Publications and Publicity Committee for the National Association of Mathematicians. Faculty members elected Susan Martonosi to a three-year term as chair of the faculty. Martonosi, who joined the faculty in 2005, says, “The most important role of the chair of the faculty is to foster open and efficient lines of communication among faculty as well as between faculty and the administration.”
Katherine Van Heuvelen, associate professor of chemistry and associate dean of faculty, received the HMC Leadership Award for Outstanding Faculty Member. She is noted as being “a leader in promoting social justice work and has shown a consistent commitment to Mudd and principles of equity. Students benefit from her great care, support and dedication.”
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Mark Ilton has been appointed to a second, two-year term as assistant professor. He specializes in the dynamics of energy release in elastomers and impulsive biological systems. Researchers in his Physics of Soft Matter Lab study the physical principles of soft material deformation.
Research, Awards, Activities Faculty Updates
Researchers in David Vosburg’s lab have designed a new, environmentally friendly method to make lidocaine that is ideally suited for undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory courses. Vosburg performed the research with Michelle Lee ’22, Emily Shimizu ’20, Professor Rocío Gámez-Montaño and graduate student Alejandro Rentería (collaborators from University of Guanajuato) and Vosburg’s son, Nathan, a high school student. “Multicomponent Synthesis of Lidocaine at Room Temperature,” is published online by the Journal of Chemical Education. bit.ly/3AcoC1e Computer Science
Physics Outgoing Faculty Chair Tom Donnelly will serve as dean of the faculty and VP for academic affairs for the next two academic years, allowing the College’s next president to lead the search for a new VP. Donnelly will delay his leadership of the Hixon Center for Climate and the Environment, and Lelia Hawkins (chemistry) will instead serve as its director for the next two years.
Biology Daniel Stoebel, a faculty member since 2010, received promotion to full professor. He studies the genetics and evolution of bacteria, and his teaching interests span molecular and evolutionary genetics, from first-year to senior courses, in lab, seminar and lecture settings. Chemistry
HA R VEY MUDD COLLEGE MAGAZINE 8 COLLEGE NEWS
Katherine Breeden has been appointed to a second, two-year term as assistant professor. She uses eye tracking to investigate the human side of computer graphics. Her other research interests include applied geometry and advanced sampling methods. George Montañez has also been appointed to a second, two-year term as assistant professor. He explores why machine learning works from a search and perspectivedependenceandidentifies information constraints on general search processes. He leads the Artificial Machine Intelligence = Search Targets Awaiting Discovery (AMISTAD) lab, which researches problems in theoretical machine learning, probability, statistics and search.
Lucas Bang has been appointed to a second, two-year term as assistant professor. He applies principles from combinatorics and information theory to software analysis problems. Through a recent NSF grant, Bang and computer science researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara are seeking to improve software quality assurance techniques.
Engineering An unexpected discovery by Albert Dato and students in his Energy and Nanomaterials Lab holds exciting potential for creating robust water-repellent coatings using gas-phase-synthesized graphene and other nanomaterials. The research by Dato, Weston Miller ’21 and Makenna Parkinson ’23 was published in ACS Materials Letters and Chemical & Engineering News
In Memoriam
Engineering Professor Ruye Wang taught and mentored students at Harvey Mudd for more than 30 years.
Academic & Athletic Leader Mathematics Professor Emeritus
COLLEGE NEWS Spring
SUMMER 2022 9
A Tianjin University graduate and former lecturer at Peking University in China, he worked on ways to enable computers to “see” the world as well as humans do, specializing in image processing, computer vision, machine learning and remote sensing. In 2008, he traveled with college presidents and other leaders from The Claremont Colleges on an historic trip to Asia to introduce the consortium and to seek areas of collaboration with officials in Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. He returned to China each summer from 2011 to 2019, to run a program with the China Studies Institute at Peking University in Beijing that provided a unique study abroad opportunity for about 80 HMC students each year. As a NASA project principal investigator, he collaborated with other scientists and provided HMC students with the opportunity to develop a smart system to help NASA analyze the huge amount of multi-spectral data collected by various NASA satellites that could help better understand the geological evolution of early Mars. He worked with JPL’s Machine Learning Systems Group to find software solutions to hard problems requiring data mining, knowledge discovery, pattern recognition, and automated classification and clustering. He is the author of the textbook Introduction to Orthogonal Transforms: With Applications in Data Processing and Analysis Engineering Innovator
The Harvey Mudd community mourns the loss of Murray Mack Gilkeson who died in April. Known for his innovative ideas and kindness, Gilkeson taught engineering at Harvey Mudd for 26 years. Gilkeson was born Feb. 8, 1922 in Augusta, Kansas. He received chemical engineering degrees from University of Southern California (B.E.), Kansas State University (M.S., 1947) and University of Michigan (M.S.E., 1951, and PhD, 1952). Before HMC, Gilkeson worked for the U.S. Navy as an engineering officer, then became a research assistant at the Engineering Research Institute at University of Michigan. After serving as an assistant professor at Tulane University for 10 years, he joined the HMC Department of Engineering faculty in 1961 and retired in 1987. In addition to teaching, Gilkeson was instrumental in the growth and development of the engineering department. He is the co-founder and co-inventor of the Clinic Program, a hands-on approach to teaching engineering in which small teams of students are given real-life design problems to solve from industry partners. This program was controversial at first because its approach opposed conventional wisdom and went very much counter to then-prevailing thinking about engineering curricula. Even with these concerns Gilkeson proved it could work leading to other institutions using the Clinic Program model. In 2012, Gilkeson was co-winner of the National Association of Engineers Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education, given to those who create and disseminate innovations in undergraduate engineering design education to develop engineering leaders. Gilkeson served as a consultant for companies in the chemical and metallurgical engineering fields, assisted on legal cases involving metal failures and did industrial development work in Mexico, Brazil and India.
Hank Krieger, a beloved colleague and mentor, died on June 29. During his 37 years at Harvey Mudd College, Krieger held many leadership roles on campus, including chair of the Department of Mathematics and chair of the faculty. Within the math department, he was known for his kind, supportive and generous nature, as well as for his depth of knowledge across many fields of mathematics. He was a versatile problem solver who appreciated all areas of theoretical and applied mathematics.Heserved as an officer in the Naval Reserve and a mathematics instructor in the Advanced Sciences Division of the U.S. Naval Nuclear Power School. After receiving his PhD from Brown University, he became a Bateman Research Fellow then assistant professor of mathematics at California Institute of Technology before joining the Harvey Mudd mathematics faculty in 1968. An expert in probability theory and stochastic processes, he authored a college textbook, supervised countless Clinic projects and senior theses and mentored PhD students. He was also a legendary Claremont-Mudd-Scripps tennis coach and was named to the CMS Athletic Hall of Fame for his 22 years of outstanding leadership in the men’s tennis program. He was named an HMC Honorary Alumnus in 2005. Read more about Krieger and share a memory at hmc.edu/in-memoriam/hank-krieger/. Retirement
Two Harvey Mudd College seniors received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRF), and one senior was awarded an honorable mention. The NSF GRF program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions.Mathematics major Madelyn Andersen ’22 conducted her thesis research in commutative algebra. This fall, she’ll begin graduate studies in machine learning and statistics at MIT. Computer science and mathematics major Daniel Yang ’22 researched music information retrieval with a multimodal approach with engineering professor TJ Tsai. Yang will attend University of Southern California to conduct graduate research on foundational multimodal models capable of combining audio, text and image data.
STEM Research Recognition
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Outside of academics, Blackburn is a residential life mentor, works as an Academic Excellence physics tutor and helps plan student activities as a member of the Division of Student Affairs Muchachos. She plans to attend graduate school to earn a PhD in particle physics.
Celine Wang ’22 (chemistry/ chemistry of life processes) received the NSF GRF Honorable Mention.
Scholarship Supports CS-Earth Science Interest
Albany Blackburn ’23 is the recipient of a Barry Goldwater Scholarship, the most prestigious national award for undergraduate STEM researchers. The award covers the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board up to $7,500 per year. Blackburn is interested in pursuing a career in academia, teaching physics and doing research at the university level. She is doing research with physics professor Brian Shuve to demonstrate that their proposed search method has high potential to find dark matter particles in particle collider experiments. She also conducted research with engineering professor Leah Mendelson and Texas A&M University professor Jeremy Holt. With Mendelson, she wrote code to calibrate a camera array used for particle image velocimetry. With Holt, she used machine learning techniques to calculate the nuclear equations of state for neutron stars.
Inspired by his friends and professors, computer science and mathematics major William Yik ’24 decided to apply for a prestigious National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 2022 Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship, which he was recently awarded. The award includes a 10-week paid summer internship, a scholarship for his junior and senior years and funding to participate in two national scientific conferences. Yik is interested in interning with the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service or the National Weather Service. “I’m most excited to work with a senior NOAA scientist on a project related to computational earth science,” says Yik. His work with computer science professor George Montañez taught him to conduct and communicate computer science research, he says, and a climate change course with Lelia Hawkins, chemistry professor and director of the Hixon Center for Climate and the Environment, inspired him to look for computer science-oriented opportunities within earth science fields.
2022 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships
COLLEGE NEWS
Arya Mididaddi ’24 performs field testing.
Photos by Jordan Stone ’24 Students in the Department of Engineering enjoy a curriculum that is current, exciting and challenging. Broad-based, hands-on experiences allow students to develop an understanding of engineering judgment and practice, including ethics. The laboratory course Experimental Engineering (E80) acquaints students with the basic techniques of instrumentation and measurement in the lab and in the field. In the Mechanical Design class, taught by Leah Mendelson, students evaluate and find solutions to various engineering problems.
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Fieldwork: Spring Edition
Jordan Stone ’24, Brandon Bonifacio ’24, Nilay Pangrekar ’24 and Tristan Huang ’24 with their E80 robot.
Arpita Bhutani ’23 rides her team’s bicycle-powered blender.
SUMMER 2022 13 INSIDE INFORMATION Nathan Hasegawa 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 ACROSS 1 Space race loser 5 Immediately 9 See 55-Down 12 Red instructionlight 13 Popular Girl Scout cookie 15 Executed, as a program 16 One medicineoilsgood-smellingusingasalternative 19 Kind of punch or check 20 Kind of "Shark Tank" offer 21 Starts of binary trees 22 Lucy's landlady in "I Love Lucy" 24 Speaks hoarsely 26 Expensive camera type 27 president"Honest" 28 Website for lm geeks 32 Business casual staple 35 Lambast 37 Legendary M.L.B. team, scoreboardson 38 languageprogrammingMinimalistic 40 Syncopated jazz style 41 Tennis after 1968 43 Has a tantrum 45 actressHousewives""DesperateHatcher 46 Sounds heard meditationduring 48 Sound relaxationof 49 Urgent worker,carebrie y 51 Football coach Urban 54 computers?Analog 57 Seaweed that often wraps sushi 59 ___-mo 60 Keystone of the Harvey education...Muddor a hint to the circled squares? 63 PhysicslaureatestwocompanyComputerwithNobelin 64 Thus far 65 Zero 66 Its throughoutchangeslength the year 67 Let go of 68 "Night at WilsonMuseum"theactor DOWN 1 Electric measurementmeter 2 resistantCompression-brace 3 Prophet 4 Abbr.measurement:Tachometer 5 Regarding 6 World's largest desert 7 Receptive to feedback 8 "¿___ que?" 9 The Brothers,Jonase.g. 10 Oldest Harvey Mudd dorm 11 Ones marchingfollowingorders? 14 Grp. with senior editors? 17 Command in the court 18 Postulate 23 Large relativedeer 25 Ominous phrase to hear from a boss 29 postulatePessimistic 30 "Aw, shucks!" 31 Pleads 32 Cub creationscout 33 Promote, with "up" 34 New England sh dish 36 Like a porcelain item 39 Sandwich often served mustardwith 42 daughterBrother's 44 Land with the world's Abbr.swimmingworld'sbuildingtallestandthedeepestpool: 47 Wasn't pointless? 50 Costa ___ 52 Dodge 53 Like L and XL, but not XXL 54 It might cover all the bases 55 With eventsHarveyofferedtapioca9-Across,drinkatmanyMudd 56 Subject of management?"Risk" 58 Bat mitzvah, e.g. 61 The Trojans of the N.C.A.A. 62 Wild card game? Inside Information by Nathan Hasegawa ’25 COLLEGE NEWS After creating a crossword puzzle for The New York Times for his high school senior project (April 13, 2021), Hasegawa donated the payment to St. Anthony’s Dining Room in San Francisco, where he volunteered before the pandemic. He’s now a staff member of The Muddraker and is working on more crossword puzzles. Puzzle solution can be found online at magazine.hmc.edu/summer-2022
HA R VEY MUDD COLLEGE MAGAZINE 14 RESEARCH
Acevedo studied various voting systems and attempted to understand systems that ask voters for partially ordered preferences rather than complete ones.
Advisors: Michael Orrison, professor of mathematics; Darryl Yong ’96, professor of mathematics and Mathematics Clinic director Student: Mason Acevedo How do we make fair decisions as a group? Obviously, we put things up to a vote. Not-soobviously, voting is much more complicated than one might expect at first glance. Namely, different voting systems can produce wildly different results even with the same set of ballots.
These senior projects demonstrate some of the many academic achievements during 2021–2022. View more projects in the online document at hmc.edu/HMCCapstone22
2.MathematicsAnExploration of Voting with Partial Orders
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Forage Mapping Advisor: Matina Donaldson-Matasci, associate professor of biology Student: Tom Chenlian Fu
3. Improving Segmentation and Classification Scalability in Honey Bee
ProjectsCapstoneSelected
Lizard Habitat Advisor: Stephen Adolph, Stuart Mudd Professor of Biology Student: Ihlara Gray Desert night lizards rely on fallen Joshua tree logs and limbs for habitat. Climate change is likely to reduce Joshua tree populations, potentially threatening night lizards, but little work has been done to characterize habitat in more detail and determine the severity of this threat. Students measured living and dead Joshua trees in Saddleback Butte State Park and found that the majority of habitat is provided by living trees over 120 years old and equally long-lived fallen trees that only produce high-quality habitat for a small percentage of their lifespan and decay process. Their results imply that any reduction in Joshua tree lifespan would have negative consequences for night lizards, and it would take a long time for a newly established tree population to begin producing habitat.
Understanding how the spatial distribution of floral resources relates to honey bee foraging efficiency is important for expanding the global populations of honey bees, effective pollinators in agriculture.
To quantify such spatial distribution, Bee Lab members developed a pipeline that stitches habitat drone images into an orthomosaic, differentiating plants from the background (segmentation) and identifying plant species (classification). However, the pipeline does not scale well to different plant species and does not evaluate segmentation accuracy. This project improves scalability with a species-agnostic multifeature segmentation scheme and a deep-learning Mask R-CNN method. The project also provides the average precision metrics to comprehensively evaluate segmentation. 3
Mathematics/Computational Biology
1.BiologyJoshua Tree Demography and Decomposition: Implications for Night
6.PhysicsInvestigation of Dark Matter Interactions Mediated by Axion-like Particles
Advisor: Adam Johnson, professor of chemistry Student: Emily Y. Fok
The continual rise of greenhouse gas levels has made CO2 capture and reduction into other useful chemicals an important area of study. Since CO2 is a relatively inert molecule, a catalyst is required to overcome high activation barriers for binding and reduction. Transition metal complexes, especially those that are more earth-abundant and inexpensive, are being developed for potential applications in reducing CO2. Over the past year, copper catalysts were synthesized from methodology adapted from the literature. Recrystallization of these complexes was also attempted to determine their structures. Extensive literature review was conducted to better understand the possible mechanisms of CO2 reduction to better aid future catalyst development.
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4.ChemistrySynthesis of Copper, Magnesium and Zinc Complexes for Carbon Dioxide Reduction
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Advisor: Brian Shuve, assistant professor of physics Student: Benjamin Khoury Dark matter’s composition and behavior is largely unknown, as well as the origin of its abundance; it consists of 85% of recorded matter in the universe. Because the mechanics of the reheating epoch of the universe heavily restricts this abundance from naturally arising from the Big Bang, most models explaining dark matter’s abundance also predict interactions between dark matter and regular matter. Khoury investigated a different model in which this interaction occurs through an axion-like particle as a mediator particle. He calculated the theoretical reaction rates this mechanism would have since measuring this against observed values can serve as a test of the validity of this model. If correct, the model would aid in creating new detection methods of dark matter.
Advisor: Darryl Yong ’96, professor of mathematics and Mathematics Clinic director; Ilana Horn, professor of mathematics education, Vanderbilt University Student: Athena Li When teachers assign groupwork in their classrooms, they create an opportunity for the learning experiences of their students to diverge. How do teachers interact with their class during these groupwork times to ensure that relevant content is taught? Li applied techniques from acoustic localization to track how teachers move through their classrooms and pull from signal processing algorithms to automate this data visualization process.
5.MathematicsAcousticLocalization in Secondary School Classrooms
The Clinic Program continued for a 59th year with 46 teams and, despite the pandemic’s continued impact, adjusted to various challenges. Staff members prepared a special Projects Day website where viewers had access to pitch videos, final team presentations and posters. A Virtual Projects Day was held on May 3 and included three separate poster sessions, with each team participating in a Q-and-A breakout session.
Students: Anna Singer, Yury Namgung, Arun Ramakrishna, Kripesh Ranabhat (PZ), Mariesa Teo California loses up to $12 billion in property tax revenue every year due to Proposition 13, a 1978 law that limits annual property tax increases for unsold property. The Clinic team has built an interactive map that uses machine learning predictions and individual case studies to visualize property tax disparities across commercial properties in Los Angeles County.
1. A Mobile App to Engage Elementary-Age Students in Urban Forestry and Tree Health
Engineering Clinic
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Advisor: Ben Wiedermann Students: Elissa Hou, Jess Jacobs, Thuy-Linh Le, Hilary Nelson (PZ), Alex Nghiem, Avalon Vinella
3. Mapping the Disparate Effects of California’s Prop 13 TechEquity Collaborative Liaison: Matt Brooks Advisor: Xanda Schofield ’13
MoreandMapsApps,
Motiv Power Systems Liaisons: Jim Castelaz ’06, Joshua Sealand ’17, Henry Limm ’20, L. McKeehan
2. Stationary Energy Storage Using Battery Packs from Electric Vehicles
Computer Science Clinic
The California Urban Forests Council and partners aim to encourage urban forestry engagement of disadvantaged and low-income communities throughout California. The Clinic team created a mobile app that encourages elementary-age children to engage with nature in their local communities through lessons, games and activities. The app launched March 12 at a state-wide tree planting event celebrating California’s Arbor Day. Sponsors hope families continue to use the app after the event to monitor their urban forest.
Advisor: Erik Spjut Students: Michael Jang, David Miller, Jackson Castro, Cora Payne, Manuel Mendoza Manriquez, Bryn Schoen, Jessica Marvin, JT Griffin Motiv Power Systems, which designs and manufactures electric trucks and buses for fleets, asked the Clinic team to prototype a stationary energy storage system at HMC that uses their vehicle batteries and to evaluate its performance. The team created an automatically controlled energy storage system to power electric vehicle charging stations and smooth the peak power loading of the power grid. Computer Science Clinic
TechEquity hopes to use this map as a resource for the general public to increase awareness of the impacts of Proposition 13. 1 2
California Urban Forests Council Liaisons: Cynthia Chavez, Christopher Crippen, Joey Crippen, Deb Etheredge, Linda Mendez, Kanami Otani, Mike Palat, Andy Trotter, Tim Womick
Liaison: Leslie Field Advisor: Angie Lee Students: Olivia Hockley-Rodes, Gracie Farnham, Diana Contreras, Elena Anderson, Elena Anderson, Gracey Hiebert, Zooey Meznarich
4. Total Active Ions Sensor
Advisor: Jamie Haddock Students: Carmen Benitez, Cindy Lay (CMC), An Nguyen, Kobe Rico, Matthew Waddell
Arctic Ice Project is a nonprofit organization seeking to preserve and restore Arctic ice through safe and effective albedo modification techniques. The team sought to determine how hollow glass microspheres (HGMs) respond when exposed to harsh Arctic conditions. They tested the material properties of various HGMs, including solubility, crush strength and resistance to abrasion or freeze-thaw cycling. Results will help determine whether localized HGM deployment can be considered a low-risk means of climate intervention. 65
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SUMMER 2022 17CLINIC Engineering Clinic
Harvard’s Center for Computational Biomedicine designs methods and tools to aid scientists to discover, integrate and carry out meta-analyses over heterogeneous sources of data. The Clinic team built upon an existing prototype tool for semi-automatically mapping phenotype terms to controlled terms in ontologies. They implemented graphical user interfaces to use the tool and to interactively browse and verify the automatic mappings; tested and implemented NLP-based, semantic methods to improve the tool’s mapping performance: and created an automated testing harness. Global Clinic
Georg Fischer Signet seeks to provide a sensor to measure the concentration of total active ions in ultrapure water applications. Part of the sensor includes a novel algorithm, which compensates for shortcomings of the raw conductivity sensor output. The Georg Fischer Signet Clinic team has improved the algorithm itself and has developed a real-time implementation which is compatible with the existing conductivity sensor hardware. CS/Mathematics Clinic
6. Arctic Ice Project Deployment
5. Semi-automatic Mapping of Medical Data onto Ontologies Harvard Center for Computational Biomedicine Liaisons: Dr. Rafael Goncalves, Dr. Robert Gentleman
Advisor: Daniel Contreras Students: Ben Bracker, Leila Wiberg, Shreya Sanghai, Fionna Kopp, Anne Elliott
Georg Fischer Signet Liaisons: Chuck Gerner, Dr. Kelvin Frazier, Jeffrey Lomibao, Colter Downing ’19
Method Investigation Increasing Arctic Ice Reflectivity through Hollow Glass Microsphere Deployment
Heat Transfer is Everything
An expert in the exchange of thermal energy between objects, Anne Hofmeister ’76 challenges assumptions
HA R VEY MUDD COLLEGE MAGAZINE HAR VEY MUDD COLLEGE MAGAZINE
nne hofmeister ’76 still consults her first-year physics textbook: Fundamentals of Physics, by David Halliday and Robert Resnick. A pioneer in measuring heat transfer and challenging the status quo about how earth materials operate and how planets form, Hofmeister is quick to credit her time at Harvey Mudd College for having shown her the nuts and bolts of her profession. “I was taught to look at the basics, to look at assumptions and do my homework and to understand things from the bottom up,” she says. Hofmeister chose Harvey Mudd because she wanted to go to a small science school, “and California was very appealing,” she says, and very different from her home state of Ohio.
Writen by Jen A. Miller Photo by Hugh Chou
Nearly every day, Hofmeister is reminded of the lessons Harvey Mudd taught her about science and discovery. Instead of “dressing things up,” she goes back to the beginning and considers what an idea is rooted in and why scientists think about it the way they do. “My basic training at Harvey Mudd has led me to question a lot.”
To measure how heat moves through materials, Anne Hofmeister ’76 loads a solid sample into the laser-flash apparatus in her lab at Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to 2020, the university had the only geoscience department in the world with such a device.
A few years ago, she became involved in helping other women scientists and now coordinates the Distinguished Lecturer Program of the Association for Women Geoscientists.
In 2020, she published Heat Transport and Energetics of the Earth and Rocky Planets, which applies heat transfer to Earth, Venus, Mercury, Mars and rocky moons, trying to understand how they behave. At 68, she’s still working on that “final answer,” she says, while making sure to carve out time to play with her grandchildren, to swim and to refinish a 1985 Porsche, which she jokes “breaks down at the most inopportune times.”
Looking back on her career, she recognizes that she had a steeper hill to climb than her male counterparts because she was a mother of three children, which permitted focusing on research but not simultaneously on career-advancement.
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She was one of the few women in the physics department at the time and would often be the only woman in the room throughout her career. When describing Mudd from the 1970s, she said it was a different time, and not just when it came to the gender split. Unicycles were more popular on campus. Homework was more of a solo endeavor than it is today. Hofmeister knew before she got to Mudd that she wanted to study physics. “It’s fundamental and mathematical,” she says. She also had a concentration in literature, which she says helped hone her writing skills, become a better communicator and, later, an author. After graduating from HMC, she earned her M.S. in physics from the University of Illinois, then another M.S. and a PhD in geology from the California Institute of Technology. The physics degree got her interested in spectroscopy, the study of the absorption and emission of light. At Caltech, she was nudged toward Silicon Valley. She resisted because it “seemed rather boring,” she says. “I know other people wouldn’t feel that way, but it just didn’t appeal, so I moved over to earth science, and spectroscopy was the natural place to go.” She started her academic career at the University of California, Davis in geology before moving to Washington St. Louis University, where she’s been since 1994. Now a research professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, she’s focused on understanding heat transfer, the exchange of thermal energy between objects. “Heat transfer is everything,” she says. In 2006, she introduced laser-flash analysis—the gold standard of the industry— to measurements of Earth materials. This technique quantifies heat transport across semi-transparent materials like silicates and oxides. Using a steel-welding laser, “you hit the sample with a tiny heat pulse from a laser, and you record how the temperature changes on the back side from its emissions,” she says. The analysis also includes how quickly the transfer happens. The apparatus that does the analysis is in her laboratory in the Earth and Planetary Science department at Washington University, a one-of-a kind geoscience facility. Hofmeister decided to study heat transfer from the geophysics perspective in order to help draw a clearer picture of heat transfer inside the Earth. It hasn’t always been smooth sailing. Her work has been controversial in earth sciences and astronomy, she says, because she’s challenging basic assumptions formed prior to the 1930s that she believes are incorrect. One such assumption is that spinning stars and planets will contract and heat up. She compares this to Olympic figure skaters. As they spin,” they pull their arms in—they don’t catch on fire,” she says. “There’s this basic assumption that newly formed objects are so hot they melt, and that’s just wrong. They spin up. We can see that in the data on star spin rate.” Hofmeister’s work has been more embraced in material science because heat transfer is also critical in understanding and designing things humans build. It can help engineers determine how much and how quickly a bridge will expand in the heat, for example. Knowing heat transfer also helps with computer design, by determining how thin glass can be while still allowing a computer to cool down. “It helps us understand how the heat is moving and, as we develop new materials, we need to understand how they transmit heat,” she Insays.2019, she published Measurements, Mechanisms, and Models of Heat Transport, a textbook that offers an interdisciplinary approach to the dynamic response of matter to energy input. “It’s not the final answer, but it’s the summary of what I did for 20 years,” she says—not final because she’s still working, researching and exploring heat transfer.
Fernando Salud ’17 tackles sustainability challenges in the climate-change hotspot of the Philippines
Written by Kristin Baird Rattini Photos by Sofia Gonzalez for fernando salud ’17, climate change is not an abstract concept. He lives in the Philippines, which consistently ranks among the countries at greatest risk from climate change. “We’re a nation of more than 7,000 islands, so sea-level rise is going to be a huge problem,” Salud says. “We’re also in the danger zone for super typhoons, like Super Typhoon Odette that struck last December. It’s only going to get worse. That is driving my passion for sustainability.”
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Salud works in the Manila area as a data strategy consultant for Thinking Machines, a data technology consultancy that builds enterprise cloud data platforms and deploys custom AI, along with consulting, training and coaching. The company recently began building data products for climate change mitigation and adaptation for Southeast Asia.
HomeSustainabilityBringing
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“The class that opened my mind was Life Cycle Assessment,” he says. “It was the first time I was able to add rigor to my thinking around sustainability.”FormerHMC professor Tanja Srebotnjak, the inaugural director of the Hixon Center for Sustainable Environmental Design (now the Hixon Center for Climate and the Envi ronment), guided students through a product’s entire value chain, from its raw material source through production, distribution, use and disposal. “It’s a powerful tool,” Salud says. “You can quantify the environmental impacts across the different stages and see which stages are the worst offenders so you can be more targeted in yourDuringinterventions.”hissenior year Clinic project for the Mission Rubber Company, he installed internet of things sensors and created a unified dashboard to evaluate energy usage of the company’s huge aging molding machines. “When they put in new energy-reduction initiatives, they’d have a testing and tracking system to monitor its effects,” he says. “I liked it because it was a clear business case for sustain ability.”Heapproached sustainability from a different angle as part of the inaugural cohort for EnviroLab Asia. This 5C-wide initiative took the student and professor research fellows to Borneo and Singapore to study the proliferation of oil palm plantations and develop potential policy interventions to conserve forest cover and provide alternative livelihoods for farmers. At the end of 2019, Salud moved to the Phil ippines, where he was born and spent part of his childhood. “The Philippines has had a huge brain “The Philippines has had a huge brain drain. I’m helping reverse that a bit by bringing here what I learned at Mudd.”
Salud’s passion for sustainability has motivated his career and academic pursuits ever since he watched the Al Gore climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth when he was younger. “I was shocked,” he says, “but I was also shocked that other people weren’t as shocked by the facts as we needed to be.”He was drawn to Harvey Mudd not just by its exceptional academics but also by its mission of educating leaders who have a clear under standing of the impact of their work on society. “That was really important to me,” he says. He appreciated the synergy between the engineering department’s focus on problem solving and the need for green design solutions.
He joined the consultancy Business for Sustainable Development and worked on the Zero Waste to Nature by 2030 initiative. The Philippines is among the top countries contributing to ocean plastic waste. “The trash problem is very in-your-face in the Philippines,” Salud says. “We have these beautiful beaches, but there’s a lot of plastic trash on them.” When the Philippine government threatened to issue a sudden blanket ban on single-use plastics, multinational corporations and members across the waste value chain banded together to launch the initiative and develop a plastic credit exchange. “It’s modeled on greenhouse gas emissions trading,” Salud says. “If a particular company puts out 1,000 tons of plastic in one year, they have to pay another organization to collect and recycle an equal amount.” The proposal is still being reviewed by the Philippine legislature; there’s public pressure for its passage. In October 2021, Salud joined the growth team at Thinking Machines, which has a mission of solving high-impact problems with AI and data. Among its current projects is a climate smart aquaculture collaboration with Conservation International and Arizona State University School of Sustainability. They were awarded a research grant by Climate Change AI, a global nonprofit combatting climate change with machine learning. Thinking Machines will use its Eco-Intelligence Solution to produce open-source code, datasets, interactive maps, analyses and research to help identify the top 40,000 most suitable hectares in Southeast Asia for a “Climate Smart Shrimp” program. The initiative will help shrimp farmers produce more food using less land area, freeing up ponds to be replanted with mangroves, which are excellent carbon absorbers, coastline protectors, erosion controllers and havens for sea life.
“Thinking Machines reminds me of being at Mudd,” Salud says. “We’re a bunch of nerdy engineers who all want to apply our particular skills to solve problems that matter.”
SUMMER 2022 23 drain,” he says. “I’m helping reverse that a bit by bringing here what I learned at Mudd.”
HA R VEY MUDD COLLEGE MAGAZINE 24 gabriel takacs ’05 and his partner, ceramicist Andrea Wolf SCR ’05, had a frustrating problem. Wolf knew that the clay she was using required a glaze with specific properties unavailable in commercial products, so she’d begun making her own glaze using existing calculation software. But the software only helped to a point: It could tell a user what was in a glaze recipe, but it couldn't easily calculate how to adjust the recipe to achieve specific goals. After spending many fruitless hours guessing and testing, Wolf asked Takacs if he could think of a better way. Takacs, a Microsoft engineering manager, ceramicist and Harvey Mudd engineering alum, surmised that, yes, there probably was a more efficient method of making glaze recipes. After about a year of research and tinkering in their home studio in Santa Clara, California, Wolf and Takacs developed an initial glaze recipe tool that solved their problem. It was so effective that they decided to file a patent in 2018. Development continued until, after moving to Issaquah, Washington, the couple participated in HMC INQ, a mentoring program for startup companies founded by Josh Jones ’98 and Professor of Economics Emeritus Gary Evans. During HMC INQ, the pair formed an LLC and launched GlazeForge.com in 2020. “Glaze Forge gives you direct control over many aspects of glazes, not only the chemistry,” says Takacs, who earned a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University. “It enables artists to spend more time making art and less time being frustrated by poorly behaved glazes.”Takacs shares more about how college experiences helped mold their business and the process of making glaze.
How did your college experiences lead to creating Glaze Forge? You can almost draw a straight line from our education at HMC/Scripps to the existence of Glaze Forge. Andrea spent the latter half of her degree taking every ceramics course that the 5Cs had to offer while spending a bunch of time at HMC. The baseline knowledge/awareness of the technical fields of study are part of the spark that led Andrea to believe there was a better way to compute glazes. She also took web design at Pomona College, which has been helpful in building GlazeForge.com. From a ceramics perspective, Andrea became the studio technician for the Scripps and other 5C ceramics studios in the latter half of her degree, which gave her extensive experience mixing clay and glazes for classes. I entered the ceramics world by taking a beginning ceramics course at Scripps at Andrea’s urging. Having always been interested in the arts, I took an interest in the medium, but couldn't spend much time on it due to the HMC course load. (As a side note, I chose to attend HMC because of its balanced curriculum between the arts and sciences.) The engineering degree at HMC exposed me to a range of topics that later turned out to be highly applicable to ceramics in general and Glaze Forge in particular.Keyexamples: first-year chemistry laid the basics of inorganic chemistry and chemical computations; various lab-based classes taught how to keep a lab notebook; mechanical engineering taught the mechanics of stress and strain in bulk materials; materials engineering taught about crystal growth, thermal expansion and failure modes; and, obviously, computer science deepened my programming knowledge. In addition to knowledge from HMC, my graduate studies in control and optimization were also critical to the development of Glaze Forge.However, the most salient point is that Glaze Forge is exactly the type of interdisciplinary endeavor that is enabled by a 5C education. How does the Glaze Forge process work? Many ceramic artists end up needing to modify existing glaze recipes. There are many parallels between a traditional chemistry lab and a ceramic studio. Small-batch experiments are run to try a bunch of hypotheses, and notes are taken (with varying degrees of fastidiousness). The turnaround time for each experiment is at least eight to 12 hours because of the time it takes to fire a kiln. To save time, ceramicists will often perform a “line blend” wherein many variations are tried in a single batch. While this reduces the number of iterations, each iteration becomes more tedious, and it can be wasteful of expensive and often toxic materials. Glaze Forge allows the artist to specify what chemical and physical properties they want in the glaze and get the optimal recipe for achieving that result.
The road to the perfect ceramics glaze began on Platt Boulevard
Written by Sarah Barnes Photography by Anil Kapahi
Who uses Glaze Forge? Our current users are ceramic artists and educators who have access to glaze-mixing supplies. Some of our customers have signed up to help them fix a single problematic glaze, while others are using it as their primary glaze database. We have a lot of interest from people who want help with custom glazes, but don’t have the space or desire to set up a glaze lab. We’re actively working to expand our offerings to address this set of people. Today, the account model is for individuals, but we’ve had interest from a few institutions, and are looking to partner with early adopters to identify the right business model for institutional customers. Developing a specific glaze is one thing; repeating the process with the same result is another. Gabriel Takacs ’05 and Andrea Wolf SCR ’05 developed a glaze recipe tool to help ceramicists get the perfect result every time.
SUMMER 2022 25 While this doesn't eliminate the experimental process, it makes for far fewer and more accurate iterations. Like other glaze websites, GlazeForge.com allows artists to store their recipes along with photos and notes. Glaze Forge takes it much further by also understanding what materials a user has available and gives them controls to directly modify every aspect of the glaze within the constraints that they provide. We aim to be helpful to people who are just dipping their toes into glazing by offering wizards that walk you through the process and make good assumptions for expert settings. For expert users, we offer the “power console,” which provides direct control over every aspect of the glaze. As one user put it, “Your program has reenergized me in testing new glazes. I feel like I have my hands on useful dials, and I’m not just shooting in the dark.” Once glazes are formulated (or adjusted), we also offer views for easily and accurately comparing different glazes to understand what's changed. Here’s a typical user scenario: An artist sees a photo of a glaze that they really like, and they try it out by mixing a test batch which is applied on their clay. This recipe will often exhibit one of many potential flaws, including difficulty applying to the clay, cracking after firing or requiring an unavailable ingredient. In this case, the artist can load the recipe into Glaze Forge and adjust the problematic property while keeping the other properties as close to the desired recipe as possible. Are the color/texture possibilities endless when it comes to creating glazes? Yes and no. Glazes are basically glass that is applied in a powdered form to the unfired clay. This powder melts into a silica glass during the firing. The temperatures (>1200C) and atmosphere (oxidation/reduction) of the firing places limits on colors and effects that can be achieved. Some elements will become volatile and burn off during the firing. Some colors require toxic chemistry to achieve. Glaze Forge plays a key role in helping the artist to push the limits of the chemistry to achieve a wider range of colors while still producing safe, functional pottery. For example, old glaze recipes frequently relied on lead to achieve certain colors, but we’ve since learned not to poison our customers. Describe a time that you hoped for one result but ended up with another. If it was an improvement, could you recreate it? One thing that I learned from HMC was to take fastidious notes during experimentation. One of our biggest fears is to discover something but not have written down what we did. Even so, ceramics is a fickle process wherein the exact chemistry of the mined materials are not often known (and can vary slightly from batch to batch) and the firing process has a large effect on the outcome. Some effects, such as opalescence, are notoriously difficult to repeatedly reproduce. In fact, the catalyst for Glaze Forge was just such a fickle glaze experiment.Wehadbeen playing with modifying a recipe by adding some new ingredients when one of the tests came out as a spectacular result that resembled the waters of a Caribbean beach. Despite detailed notes, we could not reproduce the result. The process of tweaking the glaze chemistry to reproduce this glaze is when we were pushed to the limit of our patience with existing software and felt there needed to be a better solution. After literal years of fiddling around with this recipe, we've concluded that the reason the original came out the way that it did is that it wasn't fully mixed before application. We've also had a few other pleasant (and repeatable) surprises while experimenting. For example, we have found a glaze that produces a subtle range of pastel color that should not intuitively be the result of the chemicals in the glaze. We overlooked the result at the time, but years later noticed it in our test archives. When we looked up what it was in our notebook, we thought that we must have made a mistake. After remixing the glaze from our notes, we were able to reproduce the result. This is a testament to good note taking and archiving.
Robert Powell ’77 (math) The Robson Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley, he was considered one of the leading scholars on the application of game theory to international conflicts.
MUDDERINGS
Earned PhD in marine biology from UC Santa Barbara then joined the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, where he is a senior scientist. Educates the public about marine ecosystems through jellywatch.org, the Bioluminescence web page, online videos and presentations, and is an expert spokesperson on the envi ronmental risks of deep-sea mining.
Steven Haddock ’87 (independent studies) Applies the tools of biology, chemistry and engineering to advance knowledge of bioluminescence in marine organisms and of deep-sea envi ronment.
Scott Park ’87 (engineering) Recognized for leadership in business operations at a major corporation.international President and CEO of Doosan Bobcat since 2013. During a career spanning consulting to construction equipment, he furthered the practices of manufacturing excellence, total quality management, information technology and strategy development
Recipient of the Berkeley Faculty Service Award. He also was an American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow, a Hoover Institution National Fellow, and a Fulbright Scholar to the United Kingdom.
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Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (1999), American Physical Society Fellow (2006) and Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellow (2010).
Note: Bob passed away in December 2021 and was honored posthumously. Brenda Dingus ’82 (physics) Recognized for her outstanding scientific and technical contributions in the field of gamma-ray astrophysics. Earned a PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park and began her professional career in the field of high-energy gamma-ray astro physics as a researcher at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; included work on the Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope. Taught at University of Utah and University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she pursued a passion for gamma-ray astrophysics by working for the Los Alamos National Labo ratory on the Fermi Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope. Worked at Los Alamos as a scientist on the Milagro experiment, a ground-based Cherenkov radiation telescope.
These alumni are recognized for their commitment to improving society and for exemplifying the mission of Harvey Mudd College.
Received 2018 Ed Ricketts Memorial Award for exemplary career advancing knowledge in the field of marine science.
Author of two books: Nuclear Deterrence Theory: The Search for Credibility and In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Politics. Also author of numerous articles for the American Political Science Review, Interna tional Organization and American Journal of Political Science
MUDDERINGS
Gina Janke ’87 (engineering) Works as a quality engineer at Andis Company. Involved in a variety of programs supporting young people in STEM, including longtime involvement with the Society of Women Engineers. Administers scholarships for female engi neering students, presents workshops for Girls Empowered by Math and Science, represents SWE at Milwaukee’s STEMfest and judges at Future City Competitions for Milwaukee middle school students.
First U.S. spokesperson, deputy project manager during construction and operations manager for High Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory, a wide-field TeV gamma-ray observatory (2013 Los Alamos performance award for leadership on its construction).
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Helping train the next generation of engineers through Doosan Bobcat’s sponsorship of Clinic Program projects and by serving on HMC’s Engineering Leadership Advisory Board.
Meet the 2022 Outstanding Alumni
A 2020 HMC Outstanding Alumni Award winner, Hoffer developed Lungpacer, a better way to restore independent breathing that improved upon techniques invented almost 100 years ago. One of his most significant societal impacts came in 2020 when, facing sudden surges in patients requiring intensive care, the FDA authorized emergency use of the Lungpacer RESCUE system to help free COVID-19 survivors from long-term ventilator dependence.
Register now to celebrate in-person during the rescheduled Alumni Weekend, Friday through Sunday, Oct. 21–23.
Joaquin Andres “Andy” Hoffer ’70 (physics)
AABOG Spotlight Recognition Award
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Reunion celebrations will be held for class years ending in 2 and 7, but all alumni are welcome to join in any part of the weekend. We’ll also hold long-overdue 50th reunion celebrations for the classes of 1970 and 1971. We look forward to seeing many of you on campus for the first time since spring 2019! Register online at alumni.hmc.edu/aw2022_fall
The HMC Alumni Association selects inspirational alumni whose contributions embody the College’s visionary themes of innovation, leadership and impact through global influence and contributions to society.
In 2007, motivated by his mother’s tragic failure to wean from mechanical ventilation while in intensive care following pneumonia, he conceived a new therapy to restore independent breathing using a temporary transvascular stimulation catheter to activate the diaphragm muscle. He founded Lungpacer Medical Inc. in 2009 and served as the company’s chief scientific officer through 2016. To date, Lungpacer has raised over $80 million in private funding, received a dozen industry awards, has been granted 93 patents (of which Hoffer is the sole inventor in 31 and a co-inventor in another 44) and carried out pilot clinical trials in Paraguay, Europe and the U.S. With support from the FDA’s Expedited Access Pathway, a pivotal trial is underway in over 40 U.S. hospitals. Since 2017, Hoffer has redirected his research efforts to developing innovative, non-invasive methods to help golfers with tremors or focal dystonia to better control precise movements required for putting and chipping.
For his PhD (biophysics, 1975, Johns Hopkins) Hoffer developed implantable nerve recording electrodes that he subsequently used for postdoctoral research in Alberta, as staff fellow at the NIH and as a Heritage Scholar in Calgary. In 1991, he became full professor at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, where he continues full-time. His research has led to new clinical applications for controlling prosthetic limbs and for reanimating paralyzed limbs, innovations for which Hoffer and his team were awarded 22 patents. In 1997, Hoffer founded Neurostream Technologies to develop Neurostep, a fully implanted pacemaker-like device for hemiplegia, and served as chief scientific officer until the company was acquired in 2004. He then co-founded Bionic Power Inc., a company that develops biomechanical energy harvesters and powered exoskeletons to augment human performance and to improve the gait of children with cerebral palsy.
1963 Michael G. Wilson (engineering) and step sister Barbara Broccoli will receive the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation’s 2022 Pioneer of the Year Award at a Sept. 21 gala in Beverly Hills. The award recognizes leaders in the motion picture industry whose career achievements and commitment to philanthropy is exemplary. The siblings have produced nine of the 25 Bond films since taking over lead ership of the London-based Eon Productions, the company founded by their father, Albert R. Broccoli, and Harry Saltzman.
“Where does the time go?” asks Cybele Gabris (chemistry). It’s been 30 years since she graduated from HMC, and she’s lived in Upstate New York for over 20 years. She works at the Naval Nuclear Laboratory–Knolls Laboratory and is an advisor scientist, working on materials corrosion. Cybele’s two kids, Gus (11) and Cora (9), keep her and husband Steve busy. In their free time, they like to travel, ski, hike and partake in other outdoor activities in the beautiful Adirondack Mountains.
1985 David Campbell (chemistry) is the founder, president and CEO of Janux Therapeutics (Nasdaq: JANX) that is developing tumor-activated immune system modulators to treat cancer. He invented the underlying technology and has led the company from its origin as a platform technology company through the discovery and development of multiple therapeutics currently undergoing IND enabling studies to support the company's first two-drug programs.
1986 Bill Consoli (math) writes: “Last summer I had the honor of being one of Isaac Bruce's guests at his NFL Hall of Fame induction in Canton, Ohio. Had a great time with Isaac, and caught up with many former co-workers. Still enjoying my work at Edward Jones, and looking forward to retirement in a couple of years.”
1983 In an April 5 interview with NBC LX News, Amanda Simpson (physics), vice president of research and technology at Airbus Americas, describes the airline’s use of 100% sustainable aviation fuel, in particular, cooking oil and its potential to power flights. The company aims to have all of its aircraft approved to run on 100% sustainable aviation fuel by the end of this decade.
1978 Rich Holman (math) has been dean of faculty at Minerva University since 2019 (having been professor of physics at Carnegie Mellon before that, then dean of computational sciences at Minerva prior). He’s founding dean of the College of Interdisciplinary Studies, a joint venture between Zayed University in the UAE and Minerva Project. After having helped build two colleges, Rich decided to retire at the end of August 2022, and he and his wife, Prudy, will move to Alcobaça Portugal where they’ve bought a lovely house. “We can go to nearby Nazaré to watch the (VERY) big wave surfing competitions!”
1974 In May, the Mathematical Association of America featured Dan Kalman (math) on its website and described his love for writing and mathematics. He’s written over 50 articles for MAA publications, published two books and has written mathematical poetry. Dan has received the George Pólya Award, the Trevor Evans Award, the Carl B. Allendoerfer Award and the Paul R. Halmos-Lester R. Ford Award twice each, and the Beckenbach Book Prize.
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1969 Dale Stirn (math) recently retired after 32 years developing Stirnco Steel Structures Inc., an industrial general construction company. He and his wife, Gwen, recently traveled to the Galapagos for an eight-day diving trip. Favorite past times are traveling and bicycling, sometimes both at the same time, including a trip around France replicating a LeTour route with a good friend. He writes, “Somehow have managed to beat the odds and avoid COVID for two years. Probability anomaly, I suppose. Life is good, and we are thankful to remain so happy and healthy.”
1979 Joe Shanks (physics) reports from San Diego that he’s still working full-time as principal fellow at Raytheon, helping customers who need to look at clouds from both sides now and understand impact on target detection and other good things. “Big event for the family was arrival of our first grandchild Lana Alohi Shanks in August of 2021.”
1991 Rachel Watson-Clark (chemistry) is the R&D director at The Clorox Company. She oversees all global technical discovery efforts for the Clorox Cleaning businesses: Retail Domestic, International and Professional Products.
1984 Jay Foster (engineering) was on Jeopardy! Jan 28. He was an All-SCIAC soccer player and a senior on the 1983 Stags Soccer NCAA Division III runner-up team.
CLASS NOTES
1970 David Chandler (physics) taught physics and math at the high school and junior college levels from 1972 to retirement in 2012. During that time, he spent several years working at a charter school that supports homeschoolers. Seeing a need for higher quality homeschool math curriculum, he started recording the entire high school math curriculum to support the strongest standard textbooks. View his work— Algebra 1 through calculus and physics—at mathwithoutborders.com.
“Gem cutting is more of a craft than an art form. Stone design and presentation are artistic,” says Bruce, who earned a lapidary Master’s certificate from the United States Faceting Guild, the nation’s governing body for the art of stone faceting. Each year, the guild holds a cutting competition to determine certification at four levels of difficulty: Novice, Pre-Master, Master and Grand Master. A minimum score is required at each level to gain a certificate and move to the next level. Using his own designs and those of other lapidarists, Bruce has cut over a thousand stones of many sizes, ranging from a 4mm tourmaline which weighed .25 carats to a 17 mm cubic zirconia which weighed 45 carats. “I was reviewing some new and innovative designs when I came across one which displayed multiple images of the pavilion [the bottom tip of the cut gemstone],” he says. “These evoked thoughts of the College and how the base curriculum had interacted to form a foundation for all majors.”
12 24 3648 60 72 Physics<84> MathEngrChemHuman.Comp.BiologyHMC Physics Chem U W G1ChemMath Human.Physics PhysicsChemG1TLCP HMC Stone with symbolism Angles for R.I. = 1.540 68 + 28 girdles = 96 facets 7-fold radial symmetry 84 L/Windex=1.008 T/W = 0.353 U/W = 0.344 P/W = 0.452 C/W = 0.257 Vol./W³ = 0.263 PAVILION 44.00° 05-07-11-13- Cut to Center Point Also 17-25-29-31- 19,23,41,43,61,65,1,83 35-37-47-49- for reference 71-73-77-7953-55-59-67G1 90.00° 01-05-07-11- Make Even Girdle 73-77-79-8361-65-67-71-49-53-55-59-37-41-43-47-25-29-31-35-13-17-19-23Chem 42.10° 84-42 Cut to meet G1 42.76° 01-41-43-83 Cut to meet G1, P! Human. 41.86° 21-63 Cut to meet G1 43.37° 19-23-61-65 Cut to meet G1, P1 CROWN 50.00° 01-05-07-11- Cut Even Girdle 73-77-79-8361-65-67-71-49-53-55-59-37-41-43-47-25-29-31-35-13-17-19-23Physics 32.00° 48-60-7284-12-24-36HMC 0.00° Table P1 index 1, 19, 23, 41, 43, 61,65 , 83 should be cut to provide meet points.They will be cut off by later facets. C:\Users\bruci\OneDrive\Documents\hmc stone\hmc stone fusion 4 to 7 sixth version- for print.gem
Bruce began drafting a design for his HMC stone. “First efforts had a five-fold symmetry at the base. The base facets would represent the four original majors—chemistry, engineering, mathematics and physics—plus the humanities,” he says. “Finally, I realized that the key was the Core curriculum, and the result was the current six majors plus the humanities. I had no engineering classes until my junior year; the math, physics, chemistry and humanities formed the basis for the later engineering courses. So, the four form the basis for the seven. A four-fold symmetry, morphing into a seven-fold crown was the result.” So far, Bruce has cut approximately 20 HMC stones using varying materials and designs. Adding another layer of HMC symbolism, he’s used heliodor, cubic zirconia, citrine, sunstone and sapphire for their golden hue. “I toyed with laser etching the names of majors and/or the College logo onto the facets,” he says, though that idea is still evolving. Ironically, unlike the California desert, which is awash with geological treasure, Bruce says Pennsylvania, where he lives now, “is a desert for rockhounding,” unless you’re digging for fossils or coal. Fortunately, he can find all his favorite stones online. He most enjoys cutting cabochons of agates with colorful designs and chatoyant gems, such as opal, tiger eye, labradorite and star sapphires. For faceting, he prefers lightly colored stones, such as citrine, sky blue topaz and light spinel or sapphire.FortheHMC stone endeavor, Bruce envisions using lab-created sapphire to create a collection of gems etched with the HMC seal. He’ll make the HMC design public for any future lapidarist Mudders interested in cutting their own. For now, Bruce says he’s moved on from the competitive aspect of gem cutting. “Accomplishing Grand Master status would involve hundreds of hours of painstaking work,” he says. “At 76, I want to focus on the newer creative design creative projects, such as the Mudd stone.” Sarah Barnes
bruce argall ’68 has been a rockhound since he was first introduced to the concept as a teenager. Living in La Puente, California, he belonged to a Boy Scout troop led by a man with a keen interest in geology and rockhounding: hunting for various minerals and gems native to a geographic location. The troop leader and his son took Bruce along on expeditions to collection sites and mine dumps in California, and they eventually introduced him to lapidary; specifically, the craft of cabochon cutting, in which one turns a natural stone into a smooth convex shape. During his time at Harvey Mudd College, Bruce says his rock-related hobbies mostly took a backseat to college life. “Everyone was the top of their class, and I had to learn to fit in,” he says. “Studies, competitive swimming, water polo and the pursuit of girlfriends pretty well filled my time. However, my higher-level engineering courses and Engineering Clinic work focused on materials.”
A lot has happened since his college days, namely a 43-year career at Westinghouse, first as nuclear materials engineer and then as a marketing engineer for the nuclear services division. But in retirement, Bruce has dug back into his craft, expanded his skillset and, recently, has created a gem design inspired by the College.
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Mudd, Rocks and Gems ALUMNI PROFILE The facets of an HMC education inspire an original gemstone design Written by
SUMMER 2022 29CLASS NOTES
Jake Garcia (chemistry) went to medical school at UCSD and then the University of Washington for pediatric residency and an oncology fellowship. After several years in clinical practice in the Bay Area, he made the transition to pharmaceuticals and eventually immuno-oncology biotech. Jake has lived up and down the West Coast, currently residing in Seattle. He has continued singing since he graduated from Mudd, and music remains an essential part of his life. He has stayed in touch with others from his class, especially his former Case roommate, best friend and current Class of 1992 30th Reunion in California Co-written by Jack I. Houng, Ted Sjodin, Jim Patterson, Dave Nakayama Despite the cancellation of the 30th reunion of class of 1992, we were able to gather during this period of pandemic, war and huge inflation in small groups connected by emails and messaging.
1994 Marie Kao-Hsieh (chemistry) reports that after 17 years of working in private practice as an associate dentist in Maryland, she was fortunate to become the chief of dental clinic operation/hospital dentist/staff clinician at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the past 2.5 years. She’s participated in clinical research within the National Institutes of Dental Craniofacial Research. She loved her chemistry research years at Mudd with Professor Karukstis. To be able to apply her clinical experience with research at NIH has been a dream job for Marie. Her husband, Matt, has been a hematologist/staff clinician at the NIH focused on research in stem cell transplant for sickle cell disease for 20 years. They enjoy carpooling to work. Marie says they are a family of five with three children: Natalie (20), Joey (15) and Emily (11).
Jim Patterson hosted a gathering of HMC alums April 30 in Pasadena, California. We had lively chats reminiscing dorm life and collegiate volleyball and delicious homemade desserts by the kids. Pictured front: Amy Wakisaka holding Theo the dog, Jack Houng, Dylan Walker, Jim Patterson, Steve Wakisaka. Back: Cliff Stein, Melissa Aczon ’93, Greg Furumoto, Bailey Furumoto, Kathy Wakisaka Jack Houng flew into the Bay Area, and David Nakayama, Mark Faust, Gene Van Nostern and Bryan Reed met him for dinner and shared old stories of their times at Mudd.
1996 Philip Cheung (biology) writes: “After 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry, I've branched out and started my own bioinformatics/ scientific software consulting firm Refactor BioSciences. For the last three years, we have been working closely with leading biotechs and big pharma to provide custom software solutions from ML algorithms for generating new compounds to building target knowledge base tools for better target selection.”
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1995 In April, Chemical and Engineering News profiled Nancy Scott Burke Williams (chemistry), a chemistry professor in the W.M. Keck Science Department of Claremont McKenna, Pitzer and Scripps colleges, who has "redefined how inorganic chemistry is taught in colleges across the U.S. and—as a transgender woman—helped pave the road for future queer chemists."
It’s interesting that this was the class that first brought the world’s first free email in late 1990s and, we were able to use that archaic technology to pull together almost 1/4 of the class members including people as far east as Taiwan in East Asia and as far west as Boston, stretching over 12000 km across the globe. We are looking forward to returning to campus in 2027 for our 35th reunion.
Many thanks to our then-Physics Chair John Townsend for his generous time and sharing anecdotes throughout his life. While he was concerned about the political stability in East Asia, Jack reassured him that the Taiwan strait isn’t a river one just walks across and that concerns of degradation of education are more dire. We also discussed issues of incumbent theories and the tremendous burden of proof of new findings. John remarked at the end of the three hours that this was the best reunion he ever had. A group of North Dorm alumni gathered at the house of James Rudd and Jennifer Herstein in Pasadena. Activities included a morning run to Donut Man, reminiscing over yearbooks and the original facebook and general catching up. Pictured: Justin Stege, Ann Boriack-Sjodin, Barbara Simmons, Elan Katra Scripps, Katherine Schwind, Dan Crevier, Ted Sjodin, Jim Suggs, James Hardwick ’91, James Rudd, Jennifer Herstein, Becky Karlmann ’92/’93
2012 The Coastal Watershed Council announced the appointment of Laurie Egan Councilwithexecutiveanalysis)(environmentalasthecouncil’sdirector.Laurie,theCoastalWatershedsince2013,has been an integral part of the council’s work to revitalize the lower San Lorenzo River, serving most recently as the organization’s programs director. During her tenure, she led the organization’s program staff and grant writing efforts, including the River Health Day program, which engages hundreds of youth and adult volunteers annually in increasing biodiversity along the urban river. She’s also led community events, including the Ebb & Flow River Arts Festival. Laurie serves on the city of Santa Cruz Climate Action Task Force and the board of directors at United Way of Santa Cruz County.
faculty member Darryl Yong. Jake says his time at Mudd has benefited him tremendously. Jennifer Whiles (chemistry) has been working at Sonoma State University as a chemistry professor since 2003. She has been active in the California State University-wide program for Education and Research in Biotechnology as well as faculty and administrative leadership at SSU. She serves as the interim associate dean for undergraduate studies. Jennifer has two kids in 11th and 7th grade, two chihuahuas and two ducks!
1997 Jolene White (chemistry) is supporting health equity at Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute, a nonprofit biopharma developing drugs and vaccines for low- and middle-income countries and fully funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Her role is bioanalytical and safety lab testing, measuring drug immunogenicity and diagnostics in patient samples. The mission statement, “Our bottom line: lives saved,” deeply resonates with Jolene, and she is proud to be part of this effort.
2009 Autumn (engineering) and Benjamin Preskill (engineering) welcomed William (Liam) James Preskill on June 14. He was 8 pounds, 1 ounce. Autumn shared, “The whole family is so excited to have him, particularly his older brother Xander, who wants to take ‘his baby’ everywhere.”
2003 Alexander Bobbs (biology) is a professor at Ivy Tech Community College, after spending many years in the cancer research field. He lives in Kokomo, Indiana (north of India napolis), with his wife, Kathryn, and 2-year-old daughter Zelda. He also gives lectures on COVID-19 immunology, makes indie RPGs, and occasionally appears in off-off-off-way-off “Broadway” productions.
2014 Miranda Parker (CS) writes that she just wrapped up a postdoctorate at the University of California, Irvine and accepted an assistant professor position at San Diego State University, starting fall 2022. “I’m excited to channel everything I learned from my CS profs at HMC as I start teaching CS undergrads!”
2015 Brittany Borg (engineering) writes: “After spending five years in engineering after graduating from Mudd, I recently made the leap to business school. I’m currently enrolled in an MBA+MS program at Northwestern University, building business and design acumen to transition my career towards marketing and product management. This summer, in between school years, I am interning at Intuitive and developing their robotics platforms.”
2017 Philip Woods (biology) is working on a PhD in geobiology at Caltech. He’s in the Orphan lab studying the evolution of anaerobic methaneconsuming archaea that live on the sea floor and is looking forward to submitting a paper soon. Outside of academics, he participates in several small choral groups.
2001 After a few years out of work to be a stay-athome-mom, Gillian Allen (CS) reports that she recently rejoined Microsoft. “This time, I’m on the Bing Maps and Geospatial team implementing routing algorithms at scale.”
2005 Zajj Daugherty (math) is moving from the City College of New York, where she has been a faculty member since 2015, to start a new position as associate professor in mathematics at Reed College. The move comes as a very welcome return home to the Pacific Northwest, joined by her husband, Dawson, and their tiny muppet dog, Sophie.
Before joining the Coastal Watershed Council, she worked on a statewide campaign to reduce toxic chemicals with Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles and the Center for Environmental Health.
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2013 Kacyn Fujii (engineering) graduated with her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, where she was an articles editor for the Michigan Law Review. She also published articles on antitrust, big tech and administrative law in Michigan Law Review and in Yale Journal on Regulation. Kacyn will be a judicial law clerk for two years, first on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan and then on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Hawaii.
Kathleen Kohl (physics) and Tessa Kohl ’14 (physics) got married June 5, 2021 in a private ceremony and celebrated safely with a few local friends. They are so happy to share that they are wives! Tessa works as a product manager at Laserfiche, and Kathleen is heavily involved in local community organizing and mutual aid. They live in Long Beach, California, with their cat, Curtis, and retired racing greyhound, Korra.
James Hager ’72 passed away in April after battling cancer. Edwin “Ned” Earl Freed ’82 (engineering) passed away in May 2022 asNedfollowingcomplicationsfromsurgery.isbestknowntheco-inventor of modern email due to his work as the co-author of the important Internet MIME standard (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, 1992), which enabled email with multimedia attachments. MIME quickly became a core element of the World Wide Web HTTP standard, which also needed to handle and exchange media files. Ned was a longtime participant in organizations like the Internet Engineering Task Force, responsible for leading, guiding and participating in the writing of many important internet standards and RFCs (51 of which he directly authored). Ned co-founded Innosoft International Inc. in Claremont, California, along with Kevin Carosso ’82, Dan Newman ’85 and HMC mathematics professor Robert Borrelli. Ned worked at Innosoft through its acquisition by Sun Microsystems and later Oracle Corp. until his death in 2022. He was recognized as an Outstanding Alumnus by the HMC Alumni Association inNed2012.was passionate about theater (his HMC concentration), music, literature, art and social issues; he volunteered for years with several Claremont-area activism groups. Ned is survived by his wife, Tamara McDonald-Freed, and son, Thomas Freed.
2019 Guy Geva (physics) writes: oftheJETthroughbeengraduating,“SinceIhaveteachingEnglishtheProgrammeincoastaltownTomamaein
Paul, a 2005 Outstanding Alumnus, credited his liberal arts education with developing his interest in creative writing: he is the author of the novel Dry Water and Fathers of Nations In a 2003 interview for HMC’s magazine, Paul discussed his work with UNESCO and his time at Harvey Mudd, when he became the College’s first international student and the only Black student on campus: bit.ly/Vitta-HMCMag-win2003.
Dan Newman ’85, David Sonner ’80, Kevin Carosso ’82 and Kristin Hubner ’87 contributed to this submission.
In Memoriam
2018 Brendan Murran (math) works in investment research in Southern Cali fornia. He has been producing investment research for fixed income markets on asset backed securities to help companies and people finance airplanes, rental cars, shipping containers, home mortgages and more. “I have a passion for financial literacy and look for ways to demystify and break down language barriers to help all people become more financially wise and healthy.”
Hokkaido, Japan. I have enjoyed working with students of all levels, from first graders in elementary school to high school seniors, while learning how to be a more effective teacher. I have also used this time to improve my Japanese language abilities and received the Japanese Language Proficiency Test N2 certification last year. Starting in August, I will attend the University of Southern California and pursue an M.S. in quantum information science. It has been my goal to study quantum information further since taking physics professor Theresa Lynn’s class in the subject while at Mudd, so I am excited to return home to California and continue my education in the field!”
Founding Class member Ralph Carpenter’61 (engineering) died in April. After grad uating from HMC, Ralph worked one year destructiveinstrumentingtestsof hardware used in the space program at Wiley Labs in Norco, California, and another year doing analog computer simulations of air-to-air missiles at General Dynamics. During a two-year volunteer assignment for the LDS Church in Hong Kong, he learned Cantonese and taught refugees from China. For Lockheed Aircraft, he worked on simulations of the proposed supersonic transport on their analog computer. He later worked for Control Data Corporation on their CDC 6600, then the fastest supercomputer in the world. He helped advance computerized structural analysis and design that used the full power of the supercomputer and resulted in safer buildings, significant savings on steel and concrete and improved building codes. He left CDC to work for Mechanics Research and later became an adjunct instructor at Portland Community College. He is survived by his wife, Vivian, whom he met during his volunteer work in Hong Kong, five children and six grand children.
Ziyang Zhang (math) is working on supersymmetry research in Brown University’s physics master program.
Paul Vitta ’66 (physics) passed away Feb 4. He received his PhD in nuclear physics from Emory University and taught physics at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania for 11 years, during which time he served as chair of the physics department, dean of the science faculty and chief academic officer. He worked for the African Regional Center for Technology in Senegal, then moved to the International Development Research Center in Canada. Before he retired, he was Director of UNESCO’s Regional Office for Science and Technology in Africa.
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If you’ve already included Harvey Mudd College in your estate plan, kindly let us know so that we can welcome you as a member of the Planned Giving Legacy Society. To learn more, please visit hmc.planmygift.org, which includes information about ways to support the College today and after your lifetime. The website features easyto-understand videos, inspiring examples and interactive calculators to assist in exploring your giving options.
With the benefit of hindsight, Jim Campbell ’98 has come to see how his time at Harvey Mudd College positively influenced and broadened his worldview. As his career has progressed, he’s witnessed the ideals of the HMC mission statement come to fruition in ways he hadn’t imagined. Now, he sees his support of the College as an extension of that mission. Campbell has more than 20 years of experience developing and evaluating navigation and remote sensing systems with Raytheon Technologies and the Boeing Company. He is a systems engineer at Raytheon Intelligence and Space, and he’s a consultant with USC, performing research for the NASA Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System, a continuation of his PhD studies. In addition, Campbell volunteers with the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society to share his expertise and enthusiasm for science. Were you always interested in the natural world? I grew up in the Puget Sound area of Washington State, mostly Federal Way. I had a modest upbringing; two brothers and a sister. My father was a pastor of a small church and always had a great passion for serving and helping others. He graduated from Harvey Mudd in 1968 with a physics degree. Incidentally, my sister also graduated from Mudd, but later in 2007 with an engineering degree, and she married a Mudder, too. My father often spoke of Harvey Mudd and its challenging curriculum. I always had a natural interest in math and physics, and my father tutored me from an early age. I was doing calculus by 12. I also studied piano for many years. When I was looking at colleges, I had to decide whether to pursue piano or math and sciences. I wasn’t sure what I wanted as a specific career, but realized I didn’t have enough interest in piano, and I never got tired of math and science. Why HMC? My decision to attend Harvey Mudd was based mostly on its reputation for rigorous academics. I wanted a top-notch school. The low student-to-faculty ratio and the option to sample classes from the other Claremont colleges were also attractive. Mudd was also very generous with providing financial aid. Back then, the College had a program of pairing up donors with students receiving financial aid; I met regularly with my donor couple and really got to know them. They made a big impression. Why was that? The donors, Max and Hilda, weren’t even Mudders themselves. They lived in Claremont and had met Founding President Joseph Platt one day. They were so impressed with Platt’s humanist values that they made regular financial contributions so students like me could get an education. That was so foreign to me: to give without faith-based motives. Their generosity was genuine. And inspiring. Up until that time, all my ideals came from my upbringing in the church. My time at Harvey Mudd instilled scientific principles which eventually led me to reinterpret the world around me in more rational ways. I realized that I have a natural aptitude for the sciences and that there is a demand for these skills and services. By being an engineer, I could find meaning and a place in society. What about life after HMC? I took a job as a systems engineer in the defense industry, but I wanted to broaden my professional engineering experience, so I enrolled in night courses at Cal Poly Pomona for my master’s in applied mathematics, which I received in 2006. In 2014, I decided to pursue a PhD at USC.
Sometime after graduating from Harvey Mudd, I received a call from a Mudd student asking for support for the annual fund drive. It made me smile. When I was an undergraduate, I had seasonal work in the alumni office, calling up alumni asking for contributions; I was amazed at their financial responses. Of course, since I had been on the other end of the call many times, I had to make a donation, something I have continued to do ever since.
HarmonyMission: PHILANTHROPY Jim Campbell ’98 shares his planned giving journey.
How did your planned giving to Harvey Mudd come about? Like many other American workers today, much of my personal wealth is invested within qualified retirement plans. When I realized that colleges and universities could be designated as beneficiaries of these plans, I thought, “Here is a way I can make a bigger impact for Harvey Mudd.” It made sense to me since Mudd was so instrumental in shaping my early life and thinking. It all comes back to the Harvey Mudd mission statement with its emphasis on the humanities, social sciences and the arts in addition to understanding the impact of scientific work on society. When I was at Mudd as a student, that seemed secondary, but only later have I come to fully appreciate its intrinsic value. It’s a statement that is so in harmony with my personal values today.
Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Claremont, CA Permit No. 35 301 Platt Claremont,BoulevardCA91711 hmc.edu/magazine A loom has landed in the makerspace, thanks to generous donors. Read more on page 6
