Summer 2002

CLASS NOTES

CLASS OF 1983
--Steven Shafer, Ph.D., (CS1979, '83) and Kelly Nolan Shafer gave birth to twin daughters, Helen Grace and Olivia Rose, May 14, 2002. At 7 lb 3 oz. and 6 lb 13 oz., respectively, both were full-size and healthy. Steve writes, "Helen looked almost exactly like me at that age (especially her nose), but as she grows she looks even prettier. Olivia emerged into the world cooing instead of crying, and we hope she'll continue! We're starting to save money now for them to become future CMUers!"

CLASS OF 1985
--Kathleen Romanik (Appl.Math/CS) and her husband Vince Romano welcomed a new son, Jeremy James Romanik Romano, on April 28, 2002. He joins brother Ryan (age 5) and sister Rebecca (age 2) in the family. Kathleen works part time as a senior software engineer for White Oak Technologies, a small contracting company.

CLASS OF 1987
--Amelia Hauth (age 5) daughter of Karl Hauth (Appl.Math/CS) and Amy (Kryder) Hauth will be starting kindergarten this fall in Middleton, Wisc. . Her brother, Daniel (age 2) will miss having someone to play with, but will enjoy not having to fight over the toys. Karl continues to work as Lead Consultant with Tara Software where he's worked since 1998. Amy will be presenting a paper at ISMB-2002 in Edmonton, Canada and hopes to complete her Ph.D. work in computational biology this December. To touch base with Karl send email to karlhauth@hotmail.com. You can also visit his website http://www.karl.hauth.net.

--Sergio Sedas-Gersey, Ph.D. (CIT1987, Robotics '92, Robotics '93) is President and Owner of NewPlus Technologies, a firm dedicated to the engineering and manufacturing of industrial automation systems using state of the art technologies. Sergio is also involved in creating an environment for "learning through experience", a project initiated while a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon that resulted in LABRIM, the first robotic integrated manufacturing laboratory funded by Sun Microsystems in Latin America (1993), and over 30 seminars and courses on learning through experience throughout different universities.
Actively involved in contributing to the development of Mexico and Latin America through Technology has led him to initiate a program to affect education, development and export of technology that involves government, universities and industry worldwide. Sergio has three children: Daniela Alejandra (15), Ana Cristina (11) and Sergio Arturo (10).

CLASS OF 1988

--Robert Sansom, Ph.D., (CS) currently lives in Cambridge, England where he works as an angel investor, in Cambridge, England. His email is rds@elerds.net. Please feel free to contact him if you are visiting Cambridge.

CLASS OF 1990

--David Bishop (Appl.Math/CS) writes that he and wife
Jane Boies (H&SS '90) have been married since 1995. David and Jane are busy raising son Marin (20 months) in Sewickley and have 1 son, Marin, who is 20 months old. David works as the Director of the Human Sciences Groupat MAYA Design, Inc. (http://www.maya.com) in Pittsburgh. He is responsible for a team of usability experts who work with clients across industries to design technology products based on consumers' needs and capabilities.

--Keith A. Chapman (Math/CS) married Shari L. Buckner in August 2000. They live in Germantown, Md.

CLASS OF 1991

--Raul Valdes-Perez, Ph.D., (CS) is president and co-founder of Vivisimo Inc., headquartered in Pittsburgh. Vivisimo targets corporate intranets and online publishing as its main markets. Raul explains, "We're a small company, but have customers on three continents and have won a variety of awards, most recently for the search service and technology showcased at Vivisimo.com." Raul is currently on leave from his faculty member position in the School of Computer Science.

CLASS OF 1992

--Mark Madsen (MSE) has co-authored the book titled "Clickstream Data Warehousing," published by Wiley & Sons. The book describes how to design computer systems to integrate web data with other corporate data and analyze the results. The book is available for purchase at bookstores and on-line.

--Dave Gillen (Math/CS) still lives in Kennewick, Wash. with his wife Mary Sue and three kids Chris, William, and Halley. To view the Gillen family photo album go to http://community.webshots.com/user/dsgillen1. Dave is a founding member of mobileFOUNDATIONS Inc., a D.C.-based company involved in developing innovative wireless technologies (http://www.mobilefoundations.com). David is leading the company's West Coast operations from the Kennewick office.

CLASS OF 1993

--Vernon Harmon (CS) accepted a Senior Programmer position at LucasArts in San Rafael, Calif. where his responsibilities include game development. His first game for Lucas was "Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds,", which was released last holiday season. He also writes that he married Wendy Wallace on Sept. 1, 2001, in a small outdoor ceremony in upstate New York. Finally, Vernon wrote an article for the book "AI Game Programming Wisdom," published by Charles River Media. Further information about the book is available at AIWisdom.com website, http://www.aiwisdom.com.

CLASS OF 1996

--Amy McGovern (CS), completed her Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in May 2002. She is now a senior postdoctoral research associate at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Class of 1997

--Since graduation, Alec Flett (CS) has worked on the Mozilla browser project at Netscape (now part of AOL Time Warner). He states "We just celebrated our "Mozilla 1.0" release, which was well-recieved by both the open source community and the industry press." On a personal note, Alec started competing in triathlons in the summer of 2000 by raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Through them, he completed Ironman Canada in the fall of 2001. In 2002 Alec started his own triathlon club, with over 30 active members! He currently lives in the mission district of San Francisco near CS alumnus Ross Fubini (CS '98). Ross also participates on the triathlon team, and according to Alec "provides me with some great competition." If this isn't enough, Alec also volunteers at a local high school tutoring kids in math.

--Richard Volyes, Ph.D. (Robotics) returns to his faculty position in the computer science department at the University of Minnesota, after a leave of absence at a start-up company called Avanti Optics. Richards says "At Avanti, we are trying to revolutionize the manufacturing techniques of the photonics industry. With the crash of the telecommunications sector, life as a start-up has been rough, but Avanti still looks promising." Richard returns to his research on the TerminatorBot -- a miniature 2-armed robot that crawls around on the ground by dragging itself with its arms. The arms are dual-use as they also can be used to manipulate things in the environment.

--Aveek Datta (CS) remained in Pittsburgh after graduation and has been married for over five years. He currently works as an e-business Project Manager for IBM Global Services. He enjoys travelling frequently for both business and leisure.

--Manu Kumar (CIT 1995, MSE '97) is currently involved in running his second startup company called iMeet, Inc. which is based in Pittsburgh. Prior to starting iMeet, Inc., Manu founded SneakerLabs, Inc. in 1996. SnerakerLabs was later acquired by Octane Software and then acquired by E.piphany, Inc. (Nasdaq: EPNY). Manu will be returning to academia this fall to pursue a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford University. To read a profile about Manu, visit the SCS alumni stars webpage at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/stars/2001/08/mkumar.html. You can also read his recent biography by visiting iMeet's website, http://www.imeet.com/teambio.html.

--Murali Haran (CS) enters the final year of his Ph.D. program in Statistics at the University of Minnesota. Murlai writes, "My CMU connection stays strong as I meet CMU (Statistics) faculty at conferences regularly." In non-academic news, Murali's U.S.T.A. tennis team qualified for the Midwest regional playoffs this past season. He also continues to take tabla (Indian drum) lessons To get in touch, Murali asks colleagues to send him an e-mail at mharan@stat.umn.edu.

CLASS OF 1998

--Peter Stone, Ph.D., (CS 1995, '98) recently accepted a position as an Assistant Professor of Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. For the past three years Peter worked as a Senior Researcher in the Artificial Intelligence Principles Research Department at AT&T Labs Research. Meanwhile, Peter and wife Tammy are expecting their third child this October. It's going to be a busy fall for the Stone family!

--Cindy Hwang (CS) continues to live in Cambridge, Mass. working at Sapient Corporation as a Sr. Associate of Technology. She has survived 3 rounds of layoffs and is celebrating her fourth year at the company. Her travels within the past year include Nicaragua, New Delhi (India), Zurich (Switzerland), Munich (Germany), and Washington D.C. During those trips Cindy says she "…has eaten lots of plantains (prepared in more ways than the hairs on your head), seen more than enough cows for a lifetime, and had the pleasure of driving an Audi in the backroads of Bavaria." The number of weddings she attended in 2001 totaled 9 which does not include the other 5 she was invited to attend. Cindy writes, "She has no intentions of being engaged or married within the time of this update and then next, but she will gladly register for gifts if her friends would like to return the gesters."

--Astro Teller, Ph.D., (CS) has kept busy since his graduation four years ago. His professional and personal endeavors include

• Started a company, Sandbox Advanced Development, where he served as the company's CEO for 1.5 years.
• Spun-off BodyMedia, Inc., a wearable body monitoring
  company, where he has held the position of CEO for 3 years. BodyMedia has taken in $15M in venture funding, has 20 employees, and can be found online at www.bodymedia.com. Recently BodyMedia, Inc. received a 2002 IDEA gold award (see the story in the "Alumni in the News" section of the e-Zine).
• Astro and wife Zoe had their first child, Aurora Francoise
  Teller, on November 10, 2001. Astro says, "Aurora is now 7 months old,
  doing great, and the joy of our lives."

CLASS OF 1999

--Bemina Rohde (Atanacio) (MSE) married her boyfriend/fiance of 7 years, Michael Rohde, on May 18. The couple spent 8 days in Hawaii on their honeymoon. People can view a few pictures from the happy couple's reception at http://www.geocities.com/proggoddess/MandM/pics.html. Megan Burns (MSE 1999) served as one of the bridesmaids. Bemina continues to work as a software engineer at Clearwire Equipment LLC in Buffalo, N.Y.

--Robert Watson (CS) married Leigh Denault on July 14, 2001. Robert recently became a DARPA Principal Investigator at Network Associates Laboratories, where he works on the DARPA CHATS research program. The DARPA CHATS program explores security extensibility and composition in the context of open source operating systems. According to Robert, "The program's $1.6 million research grant is focusing on compile-time and run-time security extension of the FreeBSD operating system, permitting new security policies to be introduced into the operating system kernel without prior adaptation of the operating system to the security model."

--Kyle Jennings (CS) lives in Cambridge, Mass. and works at CitySkills (www.cityskills.org), a non-profit focused on bridging the gap between urban IT skills training programs and employers, leading to more upwardly-mobile career opportunities
for disadvantaged inner-city residents. To touch base with Kyle, send email to kyle@kylejennings.com.

--After Matthew Sheby's (CS), "…tumultuous graduation," he arrived at USC where he received his M.S. in creative technologies. He is now a researcher at Avica Technology
in Santa Monica, Calif., where he says, "…we work on digital cinema toys -- I mean tools. If you saw _Star Wars_ digitally projected, the film was probably streamed
from our servers." In his free time, Matthew still mixes audio for small film projects. His job is only a few blocks from the beach, "…so I have the California lifestyle working as long as I can learn to avoid the sharks."

--Tim Shirley (CS) married Georgianne Schuessler on Oct. 27, 2001. Georgi, a 2000 Duquesne University graduate, is employed as a Market Maker at Freemarkets. Tim is a Chief Technology Architect for iMeet, Inc. (http://www.imeet.com) in Oakland. They reside in Squirrel Hill.

CLASS OF 2000

--Jennifer Mulligan (CS) and Jordi Albornoz (CS '00) are engaged to be married in 2003.

--Anthony Watkins (CS) sends his greetings to all fellow SCS alumni. Since graduating from CMU, he has successfully completed his Masters of Engineering in Computer Science at Cornell University. He currently works for a company developing custom software for colleges and universities and says "…maybe one day my software will replace OLR :)." He is living in Atlanta until August, after which time he will be calling Maryland home. Anthony has also taken up the activity of golf since he left CMU and is currently trying to get his scores below triple digits"… (almost there)." Anthony writes, "If you're ever in the area and want to look me up, shoot me an e-mail (I'm in the SCS directory). I hope all is going well for the rest of you and I look forward to reading your
notes."

--Marsal Gavalda, Ph.D., (HSS 1996, CS '00) and Jiaxing Weng (Heinz '00) are the happy parents of a baby boy, Mingdao Weng Gavalda, born in Stamford, Conn., on January 21, 2002 . Marsal is now working on speech recognition for the venerable (founded in 1888) Dictaphone Corporation (founded in 1888) and Jiaxing is a software engineer at UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland).

To submit your class notes send email to tcarr@cs.cmu.edu!