Alumni 1997 Newsletter
It was with a good deal of apprehension that I took over the directorship of the ISP in January of this year. Rob Linsenmeier had headed the ISP very ably for the past three plus years. Replacing Rob and learning all the details that are just part of this job was daunting. I have been very pleasantly surprised that with the capable and skilled help of our program assistant, Diane Kessler, and with much advice from Rob Linsenmeier, I have managed to survive my first eight months. Working with the ISP students has been rewarding as they are a unique group of students who enjoy being challenged and who have challenged me on several occasions. There is still much I have to learn about this job so I hope that everyone will be patient with me.
Recruitment for the entering class of 1997 has been a real learning experience for me. A large number of high school students who are very well qualified for careers in science applied to Northwestern. I am amazed at the level of participation in math, science, school and community activities in which these students are involved. This year’s entering class will have 33 students which brings us closer to the normal average of 31 students per class than the last two years which each had a class near 40 students. The smaller classes allow us to hold most of the introductory lectures in the ISP house, which improves the community spirit among the ISP students. The average SAT scores for the entering class are the highest (715 verbal and 763 math) of any of the ISP classes since ISP was started. Some of this increase is due to the "recentering" of the grades that occurred two years ago, but it does indicate that ISP still is getting some of the brightest and best science and math students in the country.
There have been a few changes at the ISP house. In addition to the presence of a new picture board of another class and a few newer pieces of furniture, there are now more computers available on the second floor. We have used funds contributed by alumni and the very generous gift from Tim Krauskopf, EC81, to add three new top of the line PC’s and a scanner. All these PC’s are running Windows NT and are connected to the university ethernet network. These have the usual suite of office products but also have current versions of Mathematica, Maple, Mathcad and Matlab. The scanner has been added to enable the students to improve their documentation.
ISP maintains Internet WEB pages that include a lot of useful information about the program but for the most part this is aimed at incoming students. I hope that very soon these web pages will be supplemented with information that is of value to the existing students. The ISP course syllabi should soon be located on these pages.
In the July 27, 1997 edition of The New York Times, George Johnson wrote about The Unspeakable Things That Particles Do. He suggests that quantum mechanics can help you solve "the word problem."
He writes, "Physicists, exasperated at trying to explain to puzzled laymen the meaning of that weird cornerstone of reality called quantum mechanics, complain about what they call 'the word problem.' The counterintuitive manner in which subatomic particles behave couldn't be clearer to those who can sight-read the mathematics, nature's symphonic score. But try translating these truths into language and the trouble begins.
"Experimenters at the University of Geneva recently revealed that they had established, more firmly than ever, that two photons separated across great distances remain 'correlated' in some funny mathematical way that defies common sense.
"For unfathomable philosophical reasons, the very substrate of reality appears to obey a logic utterly foreign to the one that holds sway in the everyday world. People naturally think of a particle, like a photon or an electron, as occupying a certain place at a certain time, or traveling along a specific path.
"But if scientists are surer than ever about the truth of quantum mechanics, they are not any closer to explaining what it means. There is no reason to expect that our linguistic toolkits will contain tweezers fine enough to grasp the slippery concepts that hold in the subatomic realm.
"Language evolved to help people get around on earth, not down inside atoms. The deeper mystery is why the language of mathematics seems to work so well on that distant realm. Physicists don't even pretend to have an answer."
The Dearborn Observatory (original home of ISP) made the front pages of the August 26, 1997 edition of the Chicago Tribune. "With gears humming and cables straining, a massive crane on Monday ever so delicately - and so very precisely - lifted a shiny new 8-ton dome atop Northwestern University's century-old Dearborn Observatory, the home of what was once one of the world's premier telescopes and today one of the most historically significant." The scope, which dates to the Civil War, is historically significant because its lens is one of the few refracting telescope lenses still in use. The $280,000 aluminum dome is part of a $350,000 repair job which will include a new computer, camera, and electronic gear system that will position the dome and telescope.
As we turn 22 years old we'd like to keep in touch with our ISP family. We love hearing from and about you. Keep in touch and let us know more about you.
David A. Buchholz,
Director
info@isp.nwu.edu
Current Students
We're so proud!!
Several of our current students received Erwin Macey Scholarships in the Life Sciences: They are Amy Au (EC95), Stephen Lin (EC94), Samuel Pan (EC95), Andrew Su (EC94)
Four of our first year students were awarded the PEW Scholarship and spent the summer at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa and Northwestern. Congrats to Will Grande, Jeff Tran, Jenny Wilson, and Jonathan Parkhurst. Jonathan also won the CRC Freshman Award from the Chemistry Dept.
This February ISP sent two of its students - Jimmy Hougland (EC94) and Sunil Patel (EC94) - to Seattle for the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science to experience integrative science outside the University. Jimmy and Sunil had a great time and later gave an ISP seminar on their reactions. ISP plans to make this an annual offering.
This Year's Graduates
In June ISP graduated 13 students from Entering Class 1993 - Todd Borro, Jason Elk, Chris Gandhi, Kris Haman, Donny Quan Hoang, Elbert Lee, Rebecca Levin, Tim Long, Todd Melton, Tom Mendoza, Sangwoo Pak, Tasos Papaioannou, Maris Zivarts, and three from Entering Class 1994 - Sunil Patel, Olin Silander and Paul Strasma. Two more students - Jimmy Hyunil Kim and Mike Mesleh - will finish after the Fall Quarter.
Tim Long won the Chemistry Department's Marple-Schweitzer Memorial Award, was an Oliver Marcy Scholar 1996-97, received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Honorable Mention and an NDSEG Fellowship Program Honorable Mention. He will study chemistry at MIT. Kristina Haman won one of the Chemistry Department's Scholar Awards, received an NSF Honorable Mention and will study chemistry, with an emphasis on bio-organic chemistry at UCalifornia-Berkeley. Michael Mesleh was named a Charles D. Hurd Scholar. Chris Gandhi plans to study neurobiology at UC Berkeley. Chris also won a UC Berkeley Graduate Opportunity Fellowship. Maris Zivarts will be studying biology at Yale. He was also awarded Biology Departmental Honors and will have a paper published in Nucleic Acids Research. Tasos Papaioannou plans to attend UWisconsin-Madison, Physics Department. He has a paper submitted to the Journal of Chemical Physics with Prof. George Schatz. Todd Borro plans to work for RDI Software. Paul Strasma will work as an analyst in the Information Management Division of Arthur D. Little. Sangwoo Pak plans to attend MIT studying aerospace in the Department of Aeronautics. Tom Mendoza, who also graduated with an Chemical Engineering degree, plans to pursue a Masters Degree in Biotechnology at NU.
Four ISPs graduated with ISP honors. Olin Silander's honors project with Kelly E. Mayo was "Establishment and Characterization of Cell Lines which Express Growth Hormone-Releasing Hormone Receptor", Michael Mesleh worked with Kenneth Spears on "Synthesis and Characterization of Various -V(C0)-6 Charge-Transfer Complexes," Chris Gandhi's research with Lawrence H. Pinto was titled "Probing the Pore of the M2 Ion Channel with Cu2+, an Independent Test of a Proposed Model Based on Cysteine Scanning Mutagenesis" which is in press (PNAS, 1997, Pinto et al.) and Donny Quan Hoang's work with Rob Linsenmeier was entitled "Stereology of the Mitochondria of Mammalian Cones."
Other NU graduates from EC93 who did not graduate with ISP degrees but who responded to our inquiry are: Craig Savage graduated with an Applied Math and Mechanical Engineering degree and plans to attend graduate school at UArizona-Tucson in Applied Math with a concentration in Atmospheric Sciences. Tanya Bryja graduated with a Chemical Engineering degree and will work for Mobil Technology Co. in Paulsboro, NJ as a product engineer. Mary Cholis graduated with degrees in Math and Economics and will work as an actuarial analyst with Towers Perrin in San Francisco.
Alums
Another ISP Wedding! Tim Klitz (EC87) and Jane Caldwell (EC88) married on June 28. She is currently at UWisconsin-Madison (jane@nmrfam.wisc.edu) in the Department of Biochemistry in the Biophysics Program. Jane expects to get her PhD around October 1 and plans to go on to Tufts University in Boston for a postdoc. Tim will receive his PhD in early '98 from UMinnesota in the Dept. of Psychology studying vision. (klitz@eye.psych.umn.edu)
Marty Smith (EC85) wrote in December that he and his wife Jamie were expecting their first child on Christmas Eve. Marty is now in the PhD physics program at U of Illinois -Champaign.
Trudy Christiansen (EC87) tells us that she plans to get her PhD in Biology at UCSD in 1998. She can be reached at tchristi@sdcc3.ucsd.edu
Thanks to Bob Maki (EC81) for keeping us up to date on several of his classmates. Bob is currently an Oncology Fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston seeing oncology patients and doing research on helper t cells in the laboratory of Dr. Abul Abbas at Harvard Medical School. (maki@mbcrr.dfci.harvard.edu)
Daryl Chrzan (EC81) is at dcchrzan@garnet.berkeley.edu. He does research in solid state physics in the department of material sciences at UC Berkeley. Jeff Goldman (EC81) is a gastroenterologist in NYC. Bob Kaufman (EC81) is a computer consultant in the Chicago area.
This spring we heard from John McLaughlin (EC80) who writes that after leaving NU he completed a PhD at Stanford in Biology (concentration in Population Biology). After several postdocs he is now an assistant professor (Environmental Science, specifically - terrestrial ecology) at Western Washington University. The University is close to his study areas in the North Cascades mountains. He writes that "I was sorry to learn of the demise of the Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at NU, and the absence of ecology from the ISP curriculum. My own experience in ISP has been instrumental to my own work bridging empirical and theoretical traditions in ecology. For examples of application of ISP math and physics course to biology, see Theor.Pop.Biol. 41:277-299 (1992) and Theor.Pop.Biol. 40:148-172 (1991). In my present position within a college of environmental studies, I work with other faculty to integrate several scientific disciplines and social sciences. ISP continues to serve me as a model for a successfully integrated undergraduate curriculum. Does anyone have suggestions for how to entice biology majors into taking more mathematics courses?" jmcl@cc.wwu.edu
We heard from Dennis "Mike" Connolly (EC82). Says he completed his PhD at NU's Med School in molecular biology and biochemistry. Did a postdoc at UIllinois Medical Center with Dr. Chakrabarty in microbiology. "After finishing my postdoc in 1994, I completely changed gears. I will be graduating from Cornell Law School in the spring (of '97). I found that I enjoyed legal and business aspects of science much more than the bench work. However, my ISP training will still come in handy, since I am focusing on legal issues associated with high technology. I am presently with Nixon, Hargrave, Devans and Doyle in Rochester and will work with their technology and intellectual property group after graduation. I can be reached at mconnolly@nhdd.com."
Last year Steve Townsend wrote that he received his PhD and will be teaching physics and conducting the brass and wind ensembles at Delbarton School in Morristown, NJ. st33@cornell.edu
On November 11, four ISP alums came to give us their comments on life after ISP, and to chat with the current students. Suzi Casement, (EC85) finished a PhD in Astronomy/Physics at UCLA and is in a one year postdoc at UC Riverside. She is looking into government and industrial jobs at the moment, and feels that the practical skills she developed in order to build a special infrared camera for her thesis might be the ones that actually land her a job. She advised ISPs not to marry someone in their own field because of the difficulty of landing two jobs in the same place. (Suzi has followed this advice herself.) Suzi's PhD work has been published in The Astrophysical Journal 1996 (462:797-803). Kirsten Frank (EC85) got her MS from the University of Chicago, but because not one but two of her advisers left the university, she was unable to do her PhD there. Consequently she is now in the program in chemical physics at the U of Maryland, but is actually doing all of her thesis work, which is on protein folding, in a lab at NIH. A paper of hers came out in December, 1995 in Protein Science (4:2605-2615). Get this, ISP/bio majors: Kirsten said how important it was that she knew QUANTUM MECHANICS, because she needs it in her work, not to mention the fact that she is a biologist in a physics department, so she needed to take grad level physics. Kirsten came with her husband, Tim Harline, (EC87) who did a year of ISP before getting a degree in political science. Like many current ISPs, Tim worked at ACNS as an undergrad, and now supports a large sales force, for whom he provides technical support while they are in the field. This appears not to be his ultimate career goal, but they need to see where Kirsten goes before he takes the next career step (see above under advice from Suzi). Colleen Lehane (EC97) was a surprise guest. Colleen also started in ISP, but graduated with a chemistry degree. For several years she worked as a chemist for Allied Signal, and obtained several patents and her MS. Recently she made a career switch to forensic chemistry, and now works for an organization near here whose lab supports over 40 police forces. She uses a wide range of techniques to do interesting things like analyze a bit of human skin to see if it has an accelerant on it, and then testifies in court. It was great to have the whole group here.
Faculty News
The Academic Committee of the Associated Student Government announced the 1996-97 Faculty Honor Roll. Our very own Craig Bina (EC80) (geological sciences) and Heidi Schellman (physics) received high ratings from students for their individual classroom performance and for their activities with students outside the classroom.
Thank You So Much
We wish to thank the following ISP Alumni and friends who have contributed to ISP in the last year. These funds provide an important source for upgrading ISP computers and other facilities:
Mark Bollman (EC82), Sara Bretlinger-Walters (EC78), Dr. David Darwin (EC79), Dr. Randal Hoke (EC76), Dr. Joseph Hora (EC81), Dr. Philip Kaldon
(EC76), Timothy Krauskopf (EC81), Dr. David E. Matheson (EC81), Mr. and Mrs. Mark Pauli (EC88), Nancy Pergament (EC84), Beth Rees (EC83), Dr. Paul Kenji Seo (EC79), Nathan Viles (EC90). We were very touched by the kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Berger.
Special thanks are also due to CAS Acting Dean Neena Schwartz and Dean Eric J. Sundquist who have provided a special yearly discretionary fund to ISP in addition to our regular budget.
When the College of Arts and Sciences asks for your support this fall, please remember the needs and accomplishments of our faculty and students and designate your gift to ISP. Just write "Integrated Science Program" in the memo area on your check.
