DARTMOUTH WINTER 2012

Engin­­­­­ ­­­THE MAGAZINE OF THAYER SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING eer­­­­­­­­

COLD TRUTHS FROM THAYER’S ICE LAB TO THE EARTH’S POLAR REGIONS, THAYER RESEARCHERS UNCOVER WHAT SNOW AND ICE REVEAL ABOUT THE WORLD.

COOL COMPANIES BY YOUNG ALUMS A SUSTAINABLE FAMILY PROJECT

PERSPECTIVE DARTMOUTH ENGINEER VOLUME 8 / NUMBER 1 INVENTIVENESS ON DISPLAY

BY DEAN JOSEPH J. HELBLE

INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP HAVE BEEN Editor core components of a Dartmouth engineering educa- Karen Endicott tion for half a century. From the pioneering efforts in the Design late 1950s and early 1960s of Thayer professors James Wendy McMillan Browning, Merle Thorpe, and serial entrepreneur Bob Dean—who’s pushing ahead with his latest entrepreneurial Assistant Editor venture at age 83—we have reached the stage where 25 Kathryn LoConte Lapierre percent of our faculty members have started a company in Alumni News Editor the past decade alone. While our absolute numbers may be Theresa D’Orsi small, on a per capita basis this is one of the highest levels Online Manager of engineering faculty entrepreneurship in the country. Alison Findon This spirit of entrepreneurship, of identifying press- ing, real-world problems and then building solutions, is Contributing Editors pervasive within our student body and alumni community. Anna Fiorentino, Elizabeth Kelsey, It is a natural outgrowth of a liberal arts-based engineer- Catharine Lamm, Lee Michaelides ing education that encourages students to think broadly Editorial Board about all aspects of a problem, yet use their technical Joseph J. Helble (ex officio), Ian Baker, skill to explore solutions deeply. It is a spirit and philoso- Carolyn Fraser ’86, Th’87, Harold Frost, phy that we routinely associate with the Introduction to Elsa Garmire, Karl Griswold, Marcia Craig Engineering course, ENGS 21, that all majors (and another Jacobs, Peter Robbie ’69, Jeanne West 10 percent of Dartmouth students who are non-majors) Office of Communications take every year. It is the core focus of our interdisciplin- Thayer School of Engineering ary Bachelor of Engineering capstone sequence. It is the 14 Engineering Drive reason the Ph.D. Innovation Program was created nearly Hanover, NH 03755 four years ago to develop greater numbers of doctoral-level technology entrepreneurs. Contact Us It is this spirit that also underlies the Wall of Patents [email protected] Tel: 603.646.3521 Fax: 603.646.9133 newly on display on the second floor of Cummings Hall at the Thayer School of Engineering (see page 33). Spanning Dartmouth Engineer Online four decades of innovation, the patents have color-coded dartmouthengineer.com frames to indicate whether they were the product of work Thayer School Website by faculty, staff, students, or collaborative teams. Over the engineering.dartmouth.edu past few years, we have seen tremendous growth in the levels of invention, with the number of patents awarded Report Address Changes in the 2000s more than twice that of the 1990s. And if the engineering.alumni.records@ first 18 months of the 2010s are any indication, another dartmouth.edu doubling is well within reach. As we have told our entering DARTMOUTH ENGINEER is engineering graduate students and freshmen alike, we are published twice a year for the on track to completely fill the current patent display corri- Thayer School community. dor by 2015. It is their challenge to make this happen. © 2012 Trustees of Dartmouth College Printed by Villanti & Sons, Printers Inc. 14 Contents

6 Cold Truths From the microstructure of snow to the massiveness of ice sheets, from fundamental science to 2 practical applications, from Thayer’s ice lab to the earth’s polar regions, Thayer researchers are uncovering what snow and ice reveal about the world. BY ELIZABETH KELSEY, LEE MICHAELIDES, AND 6 KAREN ENDICOTT Good Sports DEPARTMENTS 14 Judy Geer ’75 Th’83 and her family combine national-level athletic 2 The Great Hall 20 training with sustainable living practices. 24 Alumni News BY KRISTEN LAINE 32 Inventions 18 Cool 33 Random Walk Companies COVER Recent grads—including Marc Professor Erland Schulson directs Fenigstein ’01 Th’04 and David Thayer’s ice lab. Drennan Th’09, left to right in Photograph by John Sherman photo at left—bring nerve and verve to their startup ventures. BACK COVER BY ANNA FIORENTINO Thayer’s Yeti robot at the South Pole. Photograph by James Lever

THIS PAGE Snow photograph by Si Chen Th’11 18 THE

Great Hall>>NEWS FROM AROUND THAYER SCHOOL

CHALLENGE organizations have come in and the $300 House project, includ- built houses,” says May, “but ing having them assist workshop nobody wants to live in them” attendees in the CAD lab and Engineering a because they are too close to machine shop. May and Wilson ▲ each other and lack features are covering the $300 House in $300 House that Haitians prefer, such as their course ENGS 2: “Integrated separate cooking structures Design: Engineering, Architec- SHELTER FROM THE STORM THAYER SCHOOL IS OFFERING engineering design and large porches. According ture, and Building Technology.” Thayer professors expertise to the $300 House challenge to develop to May, people welcomed the During spring term, students in and students are new housing solutions for the world’s poorest. prospect of houses built with May’s course ENGS 71: “Struc- helping to create The challenge began with a Harvard Business alternatives to local materials and according tural Analysis” will test house the tents Haitians Review blog post by Tuck School of Business Profes- to community specifications. prototypes. In addition, a group still occupy in the sor Vijay Govindarajan proposing that the world’s “They said, ‘we will build the of Bachelor of Engineering Port-au-Prince area poorest population centers could be rebuilt into safe houses ourselves if you can tell students has devoted its ENGS two years after the earthquake that and dignified communities for only $300 a house. us how,’” she says. 89/90 design course project to decimated the The post went viral, and the resulting Open Design For the rural site, May and developing a composting latrine country. Challenge generated more than 300 entries. Wilson settled on Fond-des- for the Haitian houses—an effort The six winning teams were invited to a design Blancs, a community in the sponsored by the Dartmouth workshop, organized by Thayer Professor Vicki mountains outside Port-au- Class of 1980. May and studio art senior lecturer Jack Wilson, at Prince. GHESKIO, a Haitian Can each house really be Thayer in January to collaborate on prototypes for humanitarian organization, built for just $300? Probably not, the first houses. helped May and Wilson select says May, but the target focuses May and Wilson, who have been consulting with an urban site in Port-au-Prince. effort on the real challenge: Govindarajan, spent a week in earthquake-damaged The goal is to build a prototype developing clean, safe, and ap- Haiti in September searching for rural and urban in each setting in June. pealing houses that Haitians can sites for the first houses—and talking with Haitians May has found several ways afford. to find out what they want in a home. “Other for Thayer students to help with —Annelise Hansen

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“The goal is for people to understand that design is interdisciplinary, it is

solving real problems, making real stuff.” ▲

STUDENT GROUPS kudos

Design for America >> Professor Lee Lynd Th’83 Th’87 has been named a fellow of the ASK LUCAS YAMAMURA ’14 where he sees Dart- American Association for the mouth’s recently established Design for America Advancement of Science for his con- studio in three years, and his reply is immediate: tributions to research, technology “On the cover of The New York Times.” development, and policy work on It’s a vision he shares with Sean Hammett ’14 renewable cellulosic biofuels. and Alison Polton-Simon ’14. Design for America The Minerals, Metals & Materials (DfA), founded by Elizabeth Gerber ’98, is a nation- >> Society has named Professor Ian al network of student groups focused on making a Baker a fellow for his “pioneering local impact with creative design solutions. After contributions to the characterization attending a DfA workshop at Thayer School last of microstructure and mechanical spring, Yamamura, Hammett, and Polton-Simon properties of metals and materials.” started a DfA chapter at Dartmouth. Jason Stauth, left, and Ulrike Wegst “The goal is for people to understand that design FACULTY >> Professor Eugene Santos has been is interdisciplinary, it is solving real problems, mak- named a fellow of the Institute of ing real stuff,” says Polton-Simon. Electrical and Electronics Engineers Each of the three co-founders is leading a two- Two New Professors for his “contributions to decision term group design project. Polton-Simon’s group is support systems and reason- partnering with the Veterans Affairs Medical Center Join Thayer ing under uncertainty.” He also in White River Junction, Vt., to improve education received the Best Paper Award and employment for veterans reintegrating into ci- >> ASSISTANT PROFESSOR JASON STAUTH TH’00 at the International Defense and vilian life. Yamamura’s group is working to improve joined the faculty in October. He received his Ph.D. Homeland Security Simulation dental health for pregnant women. Hammett’s in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley in 2008 Workshop last fall for “Modeling group is working with students at the Richmond and also holds an M.S. from UC Berkeley, an A.B. and Simulating Dynamic Healthcare Middle School in Hanover to gain insight into in physics from Colby College, and a B.E. from Practices,” a paper he coauthored sources of and solutions for middle-school stress. Thayer School. His research interests include dis- with Ph.D. candidates Keumjoo “Our focus for the first term is on asking the right tributed energy systems and power electronics. Kim and Fei Yu, Deqing Li Th’11, questions—not just, ‘how can we reduce middle- Elizabeth Jacob ’11, project assistant Phoebe Arbogast, and Adjunct school stress,’ but questions with greater specificity, >> ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ULRIKE WEGST Professor Joseph Rosen, M.D. like ‘how can we make a classroom more inclusive, joined the faculty in January. She studied phys- how can we encourage all styles of learning,’” says ics at at the University of Göttingen in Germany, The U.S. military has turned to a team received her Ph.D. in engineering from the Univer- >> Hammett. of researchers led by Professor Fridon sity of Cambridge in the United Kingdom in 1997, Dartmouth’s DfA chapter includes students Shubitidze to help develop technol- from a wide range of majors beyond engineering, worked at the Institut National Polytechnique de ogy for tracking buried, unexploded including economics, history, government, and stu- Grenoble in France and the Max Planck Institute bombs. “The goal is to dig up all dio art. The founders say they hope to expand DfA for Metals Research in Germany, and taught at the explosives—100 percent—and beyond the undergraduate level, hold annual inno- Drexel University. Since 2005, she has also been a leave behind 75 percent of the clut- vation workshops, and pursue more projects. Faculty Guest Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley ter,” Shubitidze told Innovation News “It’s exciting to know that you don’t have to feel National Laboratory. Her research interests include Daily (innovationnewsdaily.com/ powerless. You can make use of the knowledge you the mechanical performance of natural materials, unexploded-bombs-detector-2415). have been accumulating in class,” says Yamamura. biomaterials and tissue engineering, novel materi- The Department of Defense gave “To see the world, to be critical, and to know that als for nuclear fuel applications, multifunctional the team a Project of the Year Award you can have an impact—nothing in my day is as hybrid materials, eco-design, and science education and a $1.4-million grant for a new fulfilling as this.” through interdisciplinary projects linking music, three-year effort to boost detection of

OPPOSITE PAGE: BIGSTOCK. THIS PAGE: PHOTOGRAPH BY KAREN ENDICOTT; ILLUSTRATION BY JAMES O’BRIEN JAMES BY ILLUSTRATION ENDICOTT; KAREN BY PHOTOGRAPH PAGE: THIS BIGSTOCK. PAGE: OPPOSITE —Annelise Hansen arts, and sports. smaller and deeper-buried explosives.

DARTMOUTH ENGINEER WINTER 2012 3

The Great Hall

“If you have all the engineering but you don’t have the human part, it doesn’t work. That’s why this

project is an incredible success for our group.” ▲

STUDENT PROJECTS HUMANITARIAN ENGINEERING

I Want One of Those! ▲ Students Single-Firefighter Aerial Ladder Operation Upgrade EVERY FIRE STATION COULD USE THIS: a sensing device Hydropower attached to the front of a fire truck ladder that measures distance from a building and relays the information to a System in computer below. The system makes it possible for a single operator to position a rescue ladder without the use of a Rwanda spotter, an advantage during smoky, noisy emergencies. The Norwich, Vt., fire department gave it a successful test STUDENTS FROM DARTMOUTH run at MacLean Engineering Sciences Center at the end of Humanitarian Engineering fall term. Inventors Frances Davenport ’13, John Mascari (DHE) returned to Rwanda last ’13, Noam Rosenthal ’13, Maya Viavant ’12, and Brynne summer to continue bringing Weeks ’12 earned the Phillip R. Jackson Award for best small-scale hydropower systems “People recognized CARE performance in ENGS 21: “Introduction to Engineering.” to rural villages. Half the group International and were happy to Their teaching assistant was Emily Mason-Osann ’11. went to Banda to check on the see us,” says Ted Sumers ’12. He system installed by DHE in and Joey Anthony ’12 assessed 2008. The other half worked in 30 sites before they earmarked and around Kigali to assess sites one for a future turbine installa- for building more hydropower tion—which won’t happen until systems so people don’t have to DHE is certain that the new tur- walk long distances to charge bine design in Banda is reliable cell phones and batteries. and maintainable and therefore Since a previous student-built worth duplicating. welded turbine had rusted away, Porter believes that DHE’s the Banda team replaced it with work in Rwanda has already a cast turbine that was made by had an impact. “The fact that Emily Porter ’10 Th’11, Caitlin we came and did our best and Johnson ’10 Th’11, and Nicholas showed our support for them Edwards ’10 Th’11 as an ENGS as engineers inspired people,” 89/90 design course project. she says. “If you have all the The Banda team built a casing engineering but you don’t have to protect the new turbine and the human part, it doesn’t work. electrical wiring from spray and That’s why this project is an in- leakage. The team also wrote a credible success for our group.” trouble-shooting and procedural She’s not the only one who manual for the hydropower sys- thinks so. DHE’s pico-hydro tem, which Kigali Institute of project won one of five Out- Science and Technology students standing Student Humanitar- translated. ian Prizes in the 2011 Institute Meanwhile, the Kigali team of Electrical and Electronics partnered with CARE Interna- Engineers (IEEE) Presidents’ tional to install hydropower sys- Change the World Competition. tems in other parts of Rwanda. “Out of 209 entries your project

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kudos

>> An international consortium led by Thayer Professor Margaret Ackerman and Galit Alter of the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT, and Harvard has been awarded approximately $8 million to develop a new type of HIV vaccine. Funded PUBLICATIONS by Partners Healthcare through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Faculty Books Foundation-sponsored Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery, the proj- ect will focus on inducing produc- >> Introduction to Geophysical Fluid Dynamics tion of antibodies that would recruit (Second Edition) by Professor Benoit Cushman- cells of the innate immune system to Roisin and Jean-Marie Beckers (Academic Press block HIV infection soon after viral 2011). The greenhouse effect, global warming, transmission. The innate immune and El Niño are some of the phenomena covered system is an early-response system in this introduction to the principles governing that keeps pathogens in check atmospheric and oceanic flows and numerical until the more specialized adap- methods for computer simulations. Aimed at tive immune system can respond. From left, Ted Sumers ‘12, students and scientists, the book won the 2010 Ackerman and Alter have teamed Wouter Zwart ‘14, Emily Porter ’10 Th’11, Joey Wernaers Prize from the National Fund for Sci- experts from Beth Israel Deaconess Anthony ‘12, and Rwandan entific Research of Belgium. Medical Center, Tulane University, students at Kigali Institute University of Oxford, and Germany’s of Science and Technology. >> Long Shot: Vaccines for National Defense Friedrich-Alexander Universität by Kendall Hoyt (Harvard University Press 2012). Erlangen-Nürnberg to collaborate captured the true spirit of the Troubled that the rate of vaccination innovation on the vaccine. competition ‘to develop a unique has been falling despite the rise of biotechnology, solution to a real world prob- Hoyt, a Thayer lecturer and Dartmouth Medi- >>Thayer School, DMS, and injury- lem using engineering, science, cal School professor, argues that “as man-made prevention company Simbex will computing and leadership skills biological threats proliferate and new diseases investigate brain injuries in contact to benefit humanity,’ ” the IEEE continue to emerge naturally, we urgently need to sports with a $1.3-million grant from stated in a letter to DHE. The understand the conditions that foster timely inno- the National Operating Committee prize includes $1,000 for future vation.” Her book examines the history of—and on Standards for Athletic Equipment. DHE projects. “This is a great opportunity to answer today’s obstacles to—vaccine development. For more about DHE, visit important questions related to the engineering.dartmouth.edu/dhe. link between head impact biome- Q&A about Long Shot —Annelise Hansen dartmouthengineer.com chanics, brain tissue motion, and

neuroimaging findings,” says Simbex ▲ president and Adjunct Professor Rick Greenwald Th’88, a principal investi- gator with Professor Songbai Ji. ONWARD AND UPWARD >>The National Science Foundation’s Thayer School is Partnerships for Innovation program expanding again, adding 3,000 square has awarded $600,000 in academic feet to the third floor of support to students in Thayer’s MacLean Engineering Ph.D. Innovation Program, which Sciences Center. The provides skills for commercializing $1.7-million extension includes offices for 11 research findings. faculty members and FRASER. ABOVE: COURTESY OF DHE. THIS PAGE, BOTTOM: DOUGLAS FRASER DOUGLAS BOTTOM: PAGE, THIS DHE. OF COURTESY ABOVE: FRASER. two administrative >>The Dartmouth Aires singing group, assistants. including engineering major Will DOUGLAS Hart ’12, finished second on NBC’s The Sing-Off. Hart discusses links between music and engineering at youtube.com/thayerschool, search

OPPOSITE PAGE: OPPOSITE dartmouth aire.

DARTMOUTH ENGINEER WINTER 2012 5

Cold

TruthsFROM THE MICROSTRUCTURE OF SNOW TO THE MASSIVENESS OF ICE SHEETS, FROM FUNDAMENTAL SCIENCE TO PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS, FROM THAYER’S ICE LAB TO THE EARTH’S POLAR REGIONS, THAYER RESEARCHERS ARE UNCOVERING WHAT SNOW AND ICE REVEAL ABOUT THE WORLD.

BY ELIZABETH KELSEY, LEE MICHAELIDES, AND KAREN ENDICOTT

FROZEN ASSETS Professor Erland Schulson directs Thayer School’s ice lab, which houses a unique multi-axial loading system

JOHN SHERMAN JOHN for testing ice.

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❭ COLD TRUTH: ICE CREEPS AND FRACTURES RESEARCHER: PROFESSOR ERLAND SCHULSON

Professor Erland Schulson opened his ice lab in the basement of Cummings Hall 29 years ago to study the basic physics and mechanics of ice. “The object is to understand the physical processes that lead to creep and fracture,” says Schulson. “But this is not done in isolation of the world’s issues. Issues are driving the work.” Shortly after arriving at Dartmouth, Schul- son, who has a doctorate in metallurgical engi- neering, was intrigued by the work being done a few miles north at the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) and decided he wanted an ice lab at Thayer to do complementary research. Funding from Mobil Oil and the Army helped establish Dart- mouth’s Ice Research Laboratory (IRL), and a $7.2-million grant from the Navy funded a major upgrade in 1987. Schulson still directs the IRL, which is cur- rently outfitted with eight custom cold rooms, various presses, a cold-room machine shop, an electron microscope, cameras, an X-ray micro- CT scanner, and a multi-axial loading system that remains unique in the world. What changed over the years are the issues driving the work. Originally the IRL worked on problems related to oil exploration and national defense. “The Navy was very concerned about submarines surfacing through the ice,” says Truths Schulson. Research related to the oil industry, dormant for a while, is back in the forefront. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) recently awarded the lab $500,000 to study how Arctic sea ice breaks as it flows and pushes against en- gineered structures. Through micromechanical modeling and experimentation, the IRL will iden- tify physical characteristics of ice conditions and quantify the rate at which ice becomes fractured and weakened. “The U.S. Geological Survey es- timates that about 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and about 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered gas are located above the Arctic Circle—most of which is beneath the Arctic Ocean. The ice forms a thick 1–3-meter mobile cover on the ocean, and therein lies the challenge to recovery,” says Schulson. Part of his research focuses on climate change. Given that polar regions are canaries in the global climate coal mine, scientists want to know what will happen as polar ice sheets melt and crack. Climate-change questions also circle

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­SCHULSON / CONTINUED ❭ COLD TRUTH: ICE RESEMBLES METALS RESEARCHER: PROFESSOR IAN BAKER

back to the work done for BOEMRE: as ice frac- Professor Ian Baker doesn’t mind admitting that tures, what will be the impact on the industrial he fell into ice work at Thayer. “I started read- infrastructure? ing about dislocations in ice really because of Schulson’s ice expertise has interested NASA Erland Schulson’s work here, and then I got in- over the years. After the 2003 Space Shuttle terested in this question about how ice deforms Columbia disaster, NASA consulted Schulson on a fundamental level,” he says. “Nobody has about ways to prevent ice from building up on answered it yet. Nobody knows for sure.” the external fuel tanks. Now the space agency Baker applied what he did know—the phys- is funding Schulson to study the icy surfaces of ics of various metals and intermetallic com- Europa, Jupiter’s largest moon, and Enceladus, pounds—to ice. the second moon in the Saturn system. He began by using transmission electron mi- It seems amazing that research done on croscopy to study how ice changes over time. ice blocks at Thayer applies to the ice crust of Despite using liquid nitrogen (a frigid -346ºF) to Europa some 367 million miles from earth. But keep the ice from melting, Baker encountered comparing photos of ice in his lab, Landsat satel- a technical problem. “Ice suffers tremendous lite photos of Arctic ice, and photos of Europa, beam damage in the electron microscope,” he Schulson sees similar fracture patterns. His con- says. “Ionization damage breaks the bonds in clusion: “Patterns of fracture are independent the ice, and the bonds reorient themselves. You of scale.” end up with voids that form very rapidly in the As with many emerging areas of knowledge, ice and change the defect structure.” not everyone agrees with Schulson. “Some geo- Next he tried synchrotron X-ray topogra- physicists are skeptics,” he says. phy. “The X-ray technique images the defects But NASA wants to learn more about the ice like the electron microscopy, but it doesn’t use on Europa because “the conditions are there electrons, so it’s less of a problem. You do need for a form of life,” says Schulson. “NASA has en- a synchrotron, so I used the Brookhaven Na- gaged the IRL to get more information about tional Laboratory’s synchrotron,” he says. “We the creeping, fracturing, and frictional sliding of could do real-time experiments, deforming the ice because underneath the ice there may be an ice and looking at how the defects moved in ocean. And where there is an ocean, the poten- the ice. That led me to look at the effect of im- tial exists for a form of life.” purities on the dislocations’ motion. We added Schulson, coauthor with Paul Duval of Creep dopants, like hydrofluoric acid and hydrochlo- and Fracture of Ice (Cambridge University Press ric acid, to pure ice to see how they affected the 2009), the first complete account of these me- velocity at which these defects moved.” chanical properties, brings his appreciation He moved on to studying the effects of an for ice into the classroom. “Ice is a wonderful impurity that abounds in nature: sulfuric acid teacher,” he says. “Ice is a transparent material, from decomposition, volcanic eruptions, and and you can see cracks in ice, whereas you can’t other phenomena. “It turns out that sulfuric acid see cracks in other brittle materials. We can un- has a really dramatic effect. It makes ice softer derstand ice and relate it to other materials, like and more ductile, which means you can deform rock.” (In fact, the National Science Foundation it more before it cracks,” Baker says. “Then the is funding Schulson and Dartmouth earth sci- question was: We can show this in the lab, but ences professor Carl Renshaw to study faulting does this have any relevance to ice out in na- in ice for insight into how faults form and earth- ture?” quakes develop in the earth’s crust.) For answers he looked at ice cores. “Natural “For someone learning about materials sci- ice consists of individual crystals that make up ence, the clarity of ice allows students to see a big block of ice. A lot of people think that the inside ice as it deforms under pressure,” says impurities end up in the interfaces between Schulson. “This has been one of the most intel- the crystals. We found that the impurities are lectually satisfying parts of this whole thing—to both in the interfaces and in the crystal itself,” be able to relate what we see in ice to other ma- he says, giving credit to Daniel Cullen ’86 Th’02, terials and then what we see in ice in the lab to who was then his graduate student and is now what we see in ice in the field.” a lab manager at Thayer. —Lee Michaelides The work necessitated creative lab tech- niques, including new ways of preparing ice

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specimens for scanning electron microscopy look at trapped gases to determine past cli- and using a confocal scanning optical micro- mate. One question is: When were those gases scope. “Instead of shining a light over some- actually trapped?” he says. “Pores are open to thing, you scan a beam over the surface. At the atmosphere to quite a depth, so as the wind each point you can get a signal; you can get the blows over the top of the ice sheet, the air goes IMAGE MAKERS Raman spectrum from it so you can determine into these pores and exchanges with what’s in Professor Ian Baker and the impurities in the ice,” Baker says. “Later we there, so the pores generally are much younger Ph.D. student Kaitlin were able to get the electron backscatter pat- than the ice surrounding them. The pores are Keegan use a technique Baker developed to scan terns from ice. We were the first people to do not all closed off at the same time. Some are snow and and ice crystals that.” probably closed off close to the surface and without damaging them. The work put Baker’s ice lab on the map. some are closed off 70 meters down, so we’re “We’ve got a lab that can characterize ice mi- trying to figure that out by relating permeabil- crostructurally in the same way that people can ity measurements to the microstructure.” do metals. We’re pretty much the only lab in Meanwhile, Baker works on metals as well, the world that does that,” he says. “We’ve had including iron oxide nanoparticles for use in a lot of collaborators in the last couple of years cancer treatments and magnetic materials for who come along because we can do things that energy applications. nobody else has got that setup for.” There’s no disconnect for him. “When I work A member of the ice core advisory group on ice or snow I come at it from a materials sci- for the National Ice Core Laboratory in Denver, entist point of view,” he says. “I look at things Baker is now studying ice from Greenland to at the microscopic level to understand what’s learn more about the microstructural changes going on. The metallurgical literature feeds into that occur when ice sheets flow. He’s also col- a lot of the behavior. The details are different, laborating with Professor Mary Albert on gases but the overall concepts are similar.”

JOHN SHERMAN JOHN in firn, old snow that hasn’t become ice. “People —Karen Endicott

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❭ COLD TRUTH: ICE RECORDS CLIMATES RESEARCHER: PROFESSOR MARY ALBERT

To understand climate conditions today, sci- entists can measure carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases in the atmosphere. To know what the earth’s climate was like thousands of years ago, researchers can consult a natural ar- chive: air bubbles trapped in polar ice sheets. Professor Mary Albert studies those an- cient gases in ice cores from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. “I’m really interested in how we can decode the climate record that is in ice sheets to learn about atmospheric gases and their role of abrupt climate change from the past,” she says. “We can better understand the present if we know what happened natu- rally in the past.” Albert, executive director of the U.S. Ice Drilling Program Office, does a lot of her work on firn, accumulations of old snow. She focus- es on how the physical aspects of firn affect gas trapping. “The entrapment process affects what gases get trapped. How air mixes de- pends on the structure of firn,” she says. “Un- derstanding the snow physics and the mass transfer and the chemical transport allows us to figure out how the gases were trapped and what the gas concentrations mean.” When Albert and her students drill an ice core, they look for a site that is so cold that it is dry, has a lot of snow accumulation, and has the atmospheric circulation patterns to answer the problems they are trying to solve. “The atmospheric pattern from North Amer- ica goes over Greenland,” she explains, “so the Greenland ice sheet is a good indicator of chemical pollution from North America and from China. For gases that are globally mixed, for army applications.) They view the cores on a we might go to Antarctica for carbon dioxide, light table to detect annual layering. They also for example, for records we know are in the measure the layers’ density and permeability, atmosphere.” assessing the interconnected pore space in the CORE FOCUS The depth of the drilling also depends on snow and firn, which is related to the transport of Professor Mary Albert summers the question being asked. If the questions gases. Her group also does gas diffusion experi- in Greenland to drill ice cores. are associated with industry, Albert and her ments and microstructure analysis at Thayer. Al- team only need to drill 100 to 200 meters. If bert’s partners at other universities measure the they want to know what happened at the end content of the bubbles for carbon dioxide and of the last ice age, they must drill down two mercury levels. Interpreting ice cores “is a team miles. “The oldest ice we’ve had in an ice core effort because it’s a complicated problem,” Al- so far is 800,000 years,” she says. “But we think bert says. there are other sites in Antarctica that go back “It’s really amazing that snow and ice that a million years.” falls in the polar regions in Greenland and Ant- After Albert and her team drill ice cores— arctica can serve as an archive of climate for samples one meter long and 10–20 centimeters over hundreds of thousands of years,” Albert across—they bring them back to CRREL’s cold says. “The snow and ice on the polar ice sheets rooms for analysis. (Albert previously worked at give us the highest-resolution climate record CRREL on snow physics and modeling of snow that exists.” —Elizabeth Kelsey

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COLD TRUTH: ICE AMPLIFIES CLIMATE CHANGE ❭ RESEARCHER: PROFESSOR DONALD PEROVICH

Donald Perovich’s 32 years of Arctic ice study cess known as albedo feedback: the amount very good reflector to a very poor reflector,” have taken him cruising on U.S. Coast Guard of light reflected off its surface. He studies he says. “The ocean absorbs more sunlight, icebreaker ships for weeks on end in the Beau- ice-albedo feedback through models, satel- more water gets heated, more ice is melted, fort Sea, diving under sea ice, and walking on lite data, and field experiments in the Arctic, the albedo lowers, and you get a feedback ice floes. where he walks on ice floes to take measure- system that is really significant.” Perovich, a glaciologist who works at CRREL ments. “You get a detector, you measure how Perovich, whose projects are funded by and has been a longtime visiting professor at much sunlight is coming in, you measure how the National Science Foundation, NASA, Thayer, studies sea ice as both an indicator and much is reflected, and you divide. It’s impor- and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric a potential amplifier of climate change. tant because the driving force of the earth’s Administration, says, “The polar regions re- Sea ice cover is a strong proxy indicator climate is the sun, and how much of that sun- ally give a lot of insight into climate change. of climate change, Perovich says, “because it light is reflected by the surface, the albedo, is They offer a prism to the past, present, and covers millions of square kilometers—but it’s the key parameter in climate change.” future. My ultimate goal is to understand thin. In a warming climate we’d expect the ice Snow-covered ice reflects 85 percent of climate feedback processes, because what to retreat. In a cooling climate we’d expect it to the sunlight, Perovich explains, but melting happens in the Arctic doesn’t necessarily advance. By keeping track of how much area is ice results in open ocean that reflects only stay in the Arctic.” covered by sea ice, month by month, year by seven percent of the sunlight. “You go from a —Elizabeth Kelsey year, we can get an idea if there’s a net warm- ing or net cooling in the Arctic.” For the past 30 years, satellites have moni- tored the sea and can show which areas are composed of ice or water. Predictably, Arctic ice expands in the winter, covering around 15-million square kilometers and retreats in the summer, shrinking to 5–8-million square kilometers. But Perovich and his colleagues aren’t in- terested in the change of seasons; instead, they want to know how the amount of ice has changed over time. “The satellite data tell a really great story,” he says. “If we look at the overall trend, there’s been a decline. And what makes it really inter- esting is that the decline is accelerating.” The acceleration doesn’t mean that the ice reliably decreases each year; just like harsh New England winters, Perovich points out, there can be variations from year to year. In 1980, Arctic sea ice covered 7.8-million square kilometers, roughly the size of the continental United States. In 2007 Arctic sea ice was at a record low of 4.2-million square kilometers. “In 2007 it was as though the entire U.S. east of the Mississippi had melted away along with all the states from Minnesota south to Louisiana, plus North Dakota and part of South Dakota,” says Perovich. “That’s a really strong signal that the area covered by ice is decreasing.” And of the ice that does remain, he says, records show that it is getting thinner. “As an indicator, the sea ice is sending a pretty strong signal that there’s warming going on in the SUN AND SEA ICE Arctic,” he says. Professor Donald Perovich measures Perovich explains that sea ice is also an ice-albedo feedback in the Arctic to assess rates of climate change.

OPPOSITE PAGE: COURTESY OF MARY ALBERT. THIS PAGE: COURTESY OF DONALD PEROVICH DONALD OF COURTESY PAGE: THIS ALBERT. MARY OF COURTESY PAGE: OPPOSITE amplifier of climate change through a pro-

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❭ COLD TRUTH: ROBOTS MAP CREVASSES RESEARCHER: PROFESSOR LAURA RAY

ON THE ANTARCTIC MAP Two sites in Antarctica officially bear the names of members of the Thayer community.

❭ MOUNT ARCONE (81º43’S, 161º2’E), ROBOT ON ICE Professor James Lever tests a horseshoe-shaped mountain in the Yeti’s crevasse-detection Nash Range, honors Steven Arcone abilities in Antarctica. Th’77 for the ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and airborne radar surveys he Enabling technology. That’s the key to un- almost like taking an X-ray of the ground. A radar conducted during six seasons on the derstanding why Professor Laura Ray started operator working as long as 10 hours per shift ice. Having recorded and interpreted thinking about robots for polar environments must interpret the radar,” says Ray. If the opera- thousands of kilometers of GPR data, in 2004. Previously she did pure research on tor detects danger ahead, “you have a couple of Arcone, a geophysicist at CRREL and artificial intelligence for robots. Then, she says, seconds to stop the vehicle.” former Thayer adjunct professor, has Thayer colleague Mark Lessard brought her But a 10-hour shift is nothing for a robot. It not only kept research convoys from an idea for “a solar-powered rover that could never gets tired. Moreover, when Yeti spots a falling into crevasses, but has also be on the ice sheet all summer under its own crevasse, its software can direct it to execute published numerous papers on the firn power and carry instruments for what others a series of turns to map the direction of the and ice stratigraphy GPR reveals. want to study.” Lessard, now a professor at crevasse. the University of New Hampshire, wanted to Lever wasn’t available to speak with Dart- ❭ ACKLEY POINT (77º47’S, 166º55’E), gather data for studies of the ionosphere and mouth Engineer about Yeti because he and the an ice-covered point near McMurdo the magnetosphere. Ray got interested in en- robot were busy surveying the old South Pole Sound, honors Stephen Ackley, an ad- gineering a robot that could do the job. Station. The abandoned station is covered with junct professor at Thayer from 1985 to “They do their work in Antarctica where 30 feet of snow and people now need to tra- 1999, for his extensive work on sea ice the observation points are so few and far be- verse it. Lever and Yeti are mapping the hollow in McMurdo Sound and the Southern tween it’s like having the biggest lake in the spaces under the snow. The Dartmouth team Ocean. The former CRREL researcher is world and putting a thermometer in one place was called after another survey team working a now a professor at the University of and saying what the temperature is,” says Ray. with a PistenBully tractor found a void by falling Texas at San Antonio. “You can’t just do that.” into it. The situation then got worse. “They sent You can, however, build a robot to do the another vehicle out to rescue it, and that one job. She secured a National Science Founda- fell in,” says Ray. “They said, ‘We need another tion grant to develop a proof of concept for a way. Can we borrow your robot?’ ” robot that could rove the ice sheet 24/7. Ray Yeti has also gained attention in Green- and Thayer Adjunct Professor James Lever, a land. Last spring Popular Mechanics sent a mechanical engineer at CRREL, concluded that writer to the Greenland Summit Station to they could build a prototype for about $15,000. watch the robot being tested. The magazine The result—known as the Cool Robot— ran a story about Yeti in July and posted video looks like a box on wheels. “For the Cool Robot of the robot to its website. In August Cool Ro- our ultimate goal is to demonstrate that it can bot and Yeti both made it into The New York go several hundred kilometers trouble-free Times. and collect scientific data that are useful. The Ironically, Ray herself hasn’t seen either roving scientific platform would be a signifi- robot in action in either Greenland or Antarc- cant achievement,” says Ray. tica. “I have four kids at home. It is a little hard Ray’s lab built a second robot, called Yeti, in to get away for three or four weeks. Someday conjunction with CRREL, to negotiate around maybe,” she says. crevasses, a danger to anyone working on ice This spring Yeti heads to Greenland again sheets. Traveling in front of a convoy, Yeti takes with the National Science Foundation’s the burden off human interpretation of ground Greenland Inland Traverse team to ensure the penetrating radar (GPR) measurements. “GPR is team’s safety and map crevasses. Follow Yeti’s ICEBREAKER Professor Victor Petrenko develops progress at yetibot.blogspot.com. technologies for changing the bonds

—Lee Michaelides MILLIMAN CHRIS PAGE: OPPOSITE EARTH. GOOGLE OF COURTESY MAP ARCONE; STEVEN OF COURTESY PHOTOGRAPH PAGE: THIS between ice and other materials.

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the wonderful semiconductor physics for that dirty stuff—ice?’ ” Nevertheless, Petrenko spent 15 years working in both fields. But that was then. Today the science of ice physics is a mature subject in part because of discoveries made by Petrenko and former Thayer researchers Valeri Kozlyuk, Michiya Higa, and Cheng Chen. Because of that, Petrenko has turned his research toward practical applica- tions. He found that by applying short pulses of electricity across an ice-coated surface it is possible to break the bond between the ice and whatever material it covers. The process, which Petrenko calls pulse electrothermal de-icing (PETD), can be used to de-ice car windshields, airplanes, ships, power lines, bridges, and many other structures. There’s a complementary aspect to Petren- ko’s de-icing research. By reversing the polarity of the electrical current, the grip between ice and the material gets stronger. It is possible to make shoes that won’t slip on ice, skis with brakes, and car tires that can handle ice as if it ❭ COLD TRUTH: ELECTRICITY FLIPS ICE’S GRIP were dry pavement. RESEARCHER: PROFESSOR VICTOR PETRENKO Petrenko’s work has yielded 60 domestic and international patents, and 100 more are in the pipeline. Research funding has come from “I’m a semiconductor physicist, not an ice the military, the National Science Foundation researcher,” says Professor Victor Petrenko. and Fortune 500 companies such as BFGoodrich That statement is something of a surprise and GE. coming from the coauthor of Physics of Ice, the Some of Petrenko’s inventions have moved authoritative text on the subject. out of his lab and into the field for trials. Tests Petrenko entered the field of ice research for de-icing power lines are run in China be- by coincidence 25 years ago. He was working cause that country has two key elements: a at the University of Birmingham in England problem with ice on power lines and a state- while on sabbatical from the Soviet Academy of-the-art power grid that enables PETD tech- of Sciences. He saw a door marked “Ice Physics nology, something the older U.S. power grid Lab” and opened it. Inside he met ice researcher can’t handle. Most recently, Petrenko’s work John Glen. Glen told him three things about ice has been in refrigeration, a technology that has that changed Petrenko’s career. First, ice is a seen only incremental advancement in the last semiconductor. Second, ice is a protonic semi- 100 years. Petrenko estimates that his de-icing conductor—protons, not neutrons, transport technology can cut the electric bill of commer- electrical current. Finally, and this was the game cial users by 40 percent. Since Petrenko’s sys- changer for Petrenko—the physics of ice, unlike tem provides uninterrupted cooling rather than the semiconductors he had been working on in cycling between warmth and cold, residential Moscow, was still being discovered. Petrenko users would benefit from better food storage wanted in on the new discoveries. as well as lower electrical costs. Making the switch, however, wasn’t easy or Petrenko sees a hot future for de-icing tech- quick under the Soviet system. When Petrenko nology. “The applications based on ice physics returned from sabbatical he asked his lab di- have not been finished,” he says. rector about shifting his focus to ice. “He sug- —Lee Michaelides gested I apply ice to my head,” Petrenko recalls. “He said ‘Victor you are crazy. You want to trade

DARTMOUTH ENGINEER WINTER 2012 13

GOOD SPORTS

MASTER STROKE Former Olympic rower Judy Geer prepares the way for a new breed of athlete at Craftsbury Outdoor Center.

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN SHERMAN

GOOD SPORTSJUDY GEER ’75 TH’83 AND HER FAMILY COMBINE NATIONAL-LEVEL ATHLETIC TRAINING WITH SUSTAINABLE LIVING PRACTICES. BY KRISTEN LAINE

DARTMOUTH ENGINEER WINTER 2012 15

IN THE SUMMER OF 2009, a half-dozen elite collegiate cross-country skiers embarked on the sort of grueling training regimen required of any Olympic hopeful. In two- and three- a-day workouts, the young men and women cranked through five hours of roller-skiing on mountain roads, double-poled sprints on a Ski- Erg machine, and had their maximal oxygen consumption tested by their no-nonsense Bul- garian trainer. Among them, they’d captained teams, earned top-10 finishes in Eastern Inter- collegiate Ski Association races, stood on medal stands at winter carnivals, been named NCAA All-American. None wanted to stop there, though. All had raised their hopes higher: the World Cup in 2012, the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014. They were committed in ways that went beyond skiing. Their base was Craftsbury Outdoor Center, a rough-hewn former boys’ academy along the shores of Lake Hosmer in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. When they weren’t training, members of the ski team could be found drawing up plans for a commercial-size composter or meeting with wildlife managers to protect a critical habitat corridor. They called themselves the Green Racing Project. They’d come to Craftsbury for intensive training and an equally intensive in- ternship in environmental stewardship. In the world of driven, focused, national-level com- petitors, they represented a unique take on an emerging concept: the green athlete. The visionaries behind the project, Judy Geer ’75 Th’83 and her husband Dick Dreis- sigacker, had bought the outdoor center in 2008 through their family foundation, turned it into a nonprofit, and immediately expanded its purpose. (The nonprofit status “allows us to be more driven by mission” yet still follow a strong business plan, says Geer.) To its well- known summer rowing camps and annual ski marathon, Geer and Dreissigacker added a threefold mission of nurturing lifelong sports, community, and the environment. The Green Racing Project was their first attempt at that kind of cross-pollination. Geer and Dreissigacker understood that athletes in endurance sports such as rowing ENERGIZER and Nordic skiing rarely reach their full po- Geer encourages athletes tential before their late 20s. They had been in- to pursue environmental as troduced to the competitive world of Nordic well as personal bests. skiing while their three children raced in the

16­­­­ DARTMO

Geer with son Ethan and daughter Hannah

junior program at Craftsbury. And both had munity and regional scale. “The challenges been Olympic rowers. Yet after college, they facing our world are way too big to bite off,” knew, little infrastructure in the U.S. support- she says. The work going on at Craftsbury felt ed full-time training. Geer, in particular, who like “the right size.” had been a pioneer in women’s rowing and By 2011, the Green Racing Project was a three-time Olympian, knew how difficult it a regular fixture on the national and inter- was to piece together a life that had to include national ski-racing circuit. GRP skiers—in- both work and training. She and Dreissigacker cluding Susan Dunklee ’08 and Ida Sargent believed their foundation could fill the gap— ’11—earned spots on national and World provide room and board, pay for instruction, Cup teams. Hannah made the national biath- travel expenses, even health insurance—and lon team in 2010 and competed at the U-26 help develop great athletes. More than that: a World Championships in Estonia. Ethan, still mission-driven program could help develop “THE CHALLENGES a member of the Dartmouth ski team, trained great citizens. FACING OUR WORLD ARE with the Craftsbury skiers on the way to earn- The couple were no strangers to innovat- ing a spot on the 2012 U.S. Junior Champion- ing. Dreissigacker and his brother, years ear- WAY TOO BIG TO BITE ship Biathlon Team. lier, had taken bicycle parts and metal frames Craftsbury’s rowing program has also and fashioned a machine called an ergometer OFF,” GEER SAYS. THE produced results. Half of the rowers from that simulated the slide and pull of a rowing WORK GOING ON AT the small-boat training program, including shell in water. Geer joined them as their com- Emily Dreissigacker, made the 2011 National pany’s sixth employee and, using her Thayer CRAFTSBURY FELT LIKE Under-23 Rowing Team. master of engineering degree, helped develop “THE RIGHT SIZE.” The World Cup and the Olympics are still the business into the world’s premier provider out there, still possibilities. of rowing exercise equipment. They called the But when Geer says, “They’ve picked up company Concept2, a name that reflected its also a skier, continued working with his father speed,” she means that the GRP’s environ- philosophy. In engineering, rarely is the first on a woodchip-burning furnace for the family mental work has gained momentum. Ski idea the final idea: “Concept 1” can always be home, an outgrowth of a high school project racers with forestry degrees work on the improved and refined before fully taking shape. on biomass energy. center’s trails. The team broke ground on the They carried that philosophy over to their Getting the Green Racing Project under- composting project and presented a case for family life, too. Geer and Dreissigacker didn’t way, Geer, the team’s employer and mentor, improving the energy efficiency of the cen- talk about their hands-on, creative problem- occupied a role familiar to her from Concept2. ter’s buildings to Geer and Dreissigacker. solving approach that much, or even try to She served as translator between problem and Hannah’s update of the team’s carbon foot- demonstrate it, but Hannah ’09 Th’11, Emily solution, between analysis and the messiness print spreadsheet helped frame the decision ’11, and Ethan Dreissigacker ’13 absorbed it of getting something done. Racing season to install snowmaking equipment for the anyway. Ethan, an engineering major, lists began, and the big composter existed only in center’s trails. Ethan, who had conducted some of the lessons he picked up from his blueprint. Grappling with the huge carbon a thermodynamic analysis of his woodchip parents: “not settling for the first idea that footprint of flying to the national champi- furnace in an independent study at Thayer, comes to mind, not making assumptions or onships in Alaska, the team decided to send helped tweak the snow-delivery system as jumping to conclusions, thinking outside the only their coach and three skiers. If the ski- yet another winter got off to an unseason- box, looking for simple, efficient, and sustain- ers needed any reminder of the importance of ably warm start. able solutions.” their mission, the earliest spring on record in Five-hour roller-ski loops around Lake The Green Racing Project is a family case in the Northeast Kingdom forced them to cancel Willoughby continue as before. The center point. Hannah, a committed environmentalist a final weekend of races in which they’d also sometimes feels like a European Nordic vil- who had just graduated with a combined ma- planned a talk by global-warming activist and lage, with its state-of-the-art systems—or, jor in engineering and studio art and wanted writer Bill McKibben. when sustainability projects are underway, to compete internationally as a cross-country Through all the delays and disappoint- an environmental institute. Looking closely skier, had helped form her parents’ ideas for ments, Geer could see the team working at some of the hands-on problem solvers, you the new program. For her contribution to the through the iterative process, learning how might think you are also watching a family team’s sustainability goals, she analyzed the to identify problems, then improving the so- business, and a family mission, taking shape. team’s carbon footprint—the impact of their lutions. She recognized that, even at its early travel to ski races, of applying petroleum- stage, the program gave her “a way to do more Kristen Laine has written about environmental based ski waxes to the bases of their skis—and than I ever could on my own,” solving more issues for Yankee, AMC Outdoors, and other catalogued ways to offset those impacts. Ethan, problems and reaching more people on a com- publications.

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COOL COMPANIES RECENT GRADS BRING NERVE AND VERVE TO THEIR STARTUP VENTURES.

YOUNG ALUMNI ARE FOUNDING COMPANIES THAT OFFER INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS TO A RANGE OF CHALLENGES, FROM SHRINKING UTILITY BILLS TO PROVIDING EMERGENCY LIGHTING, FROM RECYCLING CARBON DIOXIDE TO STORING WIND AND SOLAR ENERGY. THEY ARE DELIVERING HIGH-PERFORMANCE ELECTRIC MOTORCYCLES, EXPOSING COUNTERFEIT PILLS, AND CHANGING THE WAY WE PURCHASE ART.

“TOO MANY GOOD IDEAS THAT HAVE REAL POTENTIAL FOR HELPING PEOPLE END UP ON A PIECE OF PAPER IN A LIBRARY,” SAYS ASHIFI GOGO TH’10, THAYER’S FIRST PH.D. INNOVATION PROGRAM GRADUATE AND FOUNDER OF THE DRUG-AUTHENTICATION COMPANY SPROXIL.

IN THE FOLLOWING, GOGO AND OTHER ALUMNI TELL HOW THEY TURNED THEIR GOOD IDEAS INTO GREAT COMPANIES.

BY ANNA FIORENTINO

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CHARGED UP Marc Fenigstein ’01 Th’04 wants to make BRD Motorcycles the COMPANIES Honda of the 21st century. RECENT GRADS BRING NERVE AND VERVE TO THEIR STARTUP VENTURES. COURTESY OF BRD MOTORCYCLES BRD OF COURTESY

DARTMOUTH ENGINEER WINTER 2012 19

BRD MOTORCYCLES By the time Sand, now chief design officer, got the ball rolling with BRD Motorcycles, he’d LIGHT TOUCH Cofounders: Marc Fenigstein ’01 Th’04 Anna Stork ’08 designed David Drennan Th’09 already invented Switch step-in snowboard LuminAID to be a compact faster-faster.com bindings, created the Sutro Vision line of eye- inflatable solar lantern. wear, and designed furniture featured in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Dorresteyn, Marc Fenigstein ’01 Th’04 compares the moment chief technology officer and a former profes- he first rode the BRD motorcycle prototype to the sional motorcycle racer, owned and operated a first time he rode shaped skis instead of straight high-end machine shop manufacturing every- skis, or used an Apple iPod instead of an MP3 thing from fine architectural pieces to industrial player. “I knew on paper that it was extremely mining equipment. Mechanical engineer David capable. What completely surprised me was just Drennan Th’09, who built hybrid race cars for how easy it was,” he says. Dartmouth Formula Racing during his Thayer One taste of the bike’s combination of perfor- Master of Engineering Management studies, be- mance and design erased his initial concern that came the fourth cofounder. riders weren’t ready for a high-performance— “We expected a backlash because it wasn’t a and quiet—electric motorcycle. loud, gas bike, but there has been an overwhelm- “All great motorsports brands, from Honda ing positive response not just to the bike’s aes- to Porsche, were built on high-performance rac- thetic but to the bike itself,” says Fenigstein. ing first, and eventually they reach beginners,” With the goal of producing bikes that are faster says Fenigstein, BRD’s chief executive officer. and more powerful than anything else on the mar- “There is a $50 billion market of existing riders ket, Fenigstein eyes a global road. “We’re looking just waiting to transition to electric motors.” to build the next great motorcycle company, to In August 2011, BRD Motorcycles released become the Honda of the 21st century,” he says. the RedShift, a second-generation fully function- ing prototype, now in field testing. The RedShift’s instant throttle response and flat, endless torque curve makes the bike easy to ride and fast—an LUMINAID expected 90 miles per hour, which matches the Cofounder: Anna Stork ’08 tions, including the WalMart/Net Impact Better most powerful of gas equivalents. And at about luminaidlab.com Living Business Plan Challenge and the Global 250 pounds, this 40-horsepower bike weighs Social Venture Competition. about 150 pounds less than most street legal A student strains to see her schoolwork inside “It’s just a solar panel with a thin rechargeable bikes. “It will have the power and the battery a dim Guatemalan classroom. A hiker runs out battery connected to LED lights, with the circuit capacity to outperform most of its gas-powered of flashlight batteries on the Appalachian Trail. integrated into the plastic. The innovation is the equivalents,” says Fenigstein. Both scenarios could benefit from an inexpen- combination of the solar with the inflatable,” Based in San Francisco, BRD Motorcycles has sive, compact, solar solution: a hand-held inflat- says Stork, who filed for a full patent under the already received more than 700 pre-order inqui- able, rechargeable LED lamp called LuminAID. offices of Columbia Technology Ventures. ries, and plans to be in production by late 2012 Anna Stork ’08 and Andrea Sreshta devel- LuminAID produces four to six hours of light with a 2013 model. Several motorcycle dealer- oped the LuminAID solar light prototype while and can be recharged in five to six hours. The ships are already lined up to sell the bikes. With a classmates at Columbia University’s Graduate device can be recharged up to 800 times and has price tag of approximately $15,000, the RedShift School of Architecture. Designed in the wake of a total shelf life of two to three years, says Stork, MX and SM models cost more upfront than most the Haitian earthquake, LuminAID is the world’s who first began thinking about merging sustain- gas bikes, but less once additional expenses for oil first inflatable solar light. Waterproof and easy to ability and design while at Thayer. changes, maintenance, and gas are factored into ship, it lasts longer than a battery-powered flash- “I took away a lot from my course in materi- the equation. According to Fenigstein, the bike light, is safer than a kerosene lamp, and doesn’t als science at Thayer. I also learned about solar has piqued the interest of top-tier investors, in- require expensive rechargeable batteries. and renewable energy,” says Stork, who incor- cluding Mike Donoughe, formerly of Tesla Mo- “At the time there was a lot of clean water, porated LuminAID Lab in 2011 with the intent tors and now chief operating officer at electric shelter, and food being shipped to Haiti, but most of providing an immediate lighting solution for vehicle startup Bright Automotive, and advisors people in informal settlements were without a individuals in regions affected by natural disas- from Ducati motorcycles and Google. light source,” says Stork. “There were many cases ters and wars. Her goal has since expanded as BRD Motorcycles was the brainchild of Jeff of rape and kidnapping because it was so densely more and more hikers and campers want the Sand and Derek Dorresteyn, who approached populated. We saw a need for a portable light solar lights for outdoor recreational use. Fenigstein in 2009 while he was at frog design source to improve safety of people living in tents.” The LuminAID Lab “Give Light, Get Light” in San Francisco. Fenigstein was an established Stork and Sreshta’s LuminAID Lab has since campaign on the crowd-funding site IndieGoGo, product design consultant, with mechanical en- received more than 2,000 pledges to donate which was launched in late 2011, combines the two gineering and startup experience. “Derek and the solar lights to community partners in Haiti uses. For $25, customers pre-buy one light and Jeff were looking for someone to evaluate their and also Nigeria, Peru, Ghana, India, and Bo- send a gift of another light to a partner founda- design and create a viable business, someone livia, and pre-sold about 1,000 additional lights. tion in a developing country. Another LuminAID who knew outdoor and action sports as well as The simple solar technology earned LuminAID Lab partner, Solar Sister, equips budding female design and engineering,” says Fenigstein. awards and startup cash from business competi- entrepreneurs with the marketing and sales skills

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REALITY CHECK Ashifi Gogo Th’10 founded Sproxil so people can tell if medicines are real or fake.

to sell LuminAID solar lights in Uganda. Elephant company won’t be doing large-scale production Consultants, cofounded the Switch Renewable Energy follows a similar model in Namibia, and for several years, it has made a handful of key Energy company, and became a consultant for Pencils of Promise is outfitting schools with Lu- breakthroughs in catalysis that can eventually the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency minAID lights in Laos, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. lead to improving energy security and reducing (DARPA). “My experience with DARPA taught According to Stork, the two-for-one ap- oil imports and greenhouse gas emissions. me there are a lot of interesting technologies that proach makes sense. “We’re combining smart Liquid Light has successfully made 20 house- have not yet found commercial application for design with simple solar technology to provide hold chemicals from carbon dioxide, including one reason or another,” says Teamey. solutions for developing countries as well as for butanol, which contains four carbon atoms. Ac- The DARPA approach helped Teamey create other markets,” she says. cording to Teamey, other companies pursuing ar- Liquid Light. “Instead of waiting for a startup to tificial photosynthetic routes have generally only come to us like most venture capitalist firms, like been able to make single carbon atom products. DARPA we went looking for scientists to solve a LIQUID LIGHT “Our catalysts allow us to lower the activation technical challenge,” says Teamey. “A great team Cofounder: Kyle Teamey ’98 energy for carbon dioxide reduction and initiate is often one of the key missing pieces for solving liquidlightinc.com it very near the thermodynamically reversible po- very hard problems in science.” tential. This gives us a huge advantage in energy As entrepreneur-in-residence at Redpoint Ven- consumption,” says Teamey, who is president of tures, Kyle Teamey ’98 wanted to find a way to the company. “We’ve been able to make a lot of ba- SPROXIL make fuels from renewable energy without rely- sic building blocks for doing industrial chemistry.” Founder: Ashifi Gogo Th’10 ing on biological feedstocks. In 2009 he cofound- As an undergraduate, Teamey broke into lab sproxil.com ed Liquid Light, an early-stage startup based on work at Thayer under Professor Lee Lynd, whose discoveries in the fields of catalysis and artificial research on cellulosic ethanol launched the re- In the United States you might end up with a photosynthesis stemming from research by Em- newable fuels company Mascoma Corporation. knock-off bag or a non-organic piece of fruit, but ily Cole in the lab of Professor Andrew Bocarsly “Even though I was researching a biological pro- in developing nations, the implications of pur- at Princeton University. Liquid Light licensed cess, I was able to do chemistry and biochemistry chasing a counterfeit product are often much the technology and began research and develop- that gave me a feel for how labs operate,” says more grave. ment in Central New Jersey with Bocarsly, Cole, Teamey, who also holds a master’s in finance and “The growing trade in fake pharmaceuticals and nine other scientists from around the world. energy policy from Johns Hopkins University. is of great concern in the developing world be- Liquid Light uses energy from light or any “The hands-on experience I received at Dart- cause of the large impact it has on human life,” electric power source to convert waste carbon mouth was hugely important to my career.” says Ashifi Gogo Th’10, the first graduate of dioxide into industrial chemicals and trans- That career includes six years as an active duty Thayer’s Ph.D. Innovation Program. More than portation fuels, in a process similar to artificial officer for the army, with a year in Iraq. He served 700,000 deaths a year result from fake and sub-

ABOVE: COURTESY OF ANNA STORK. RIGHT: COURTESY OF ASHIFI GOGO ASHIFI OF COURTESY RIGHT: STORK. ANNA OF COURTESY ABOVE: photosynthesis or reverse combustion. While the as director of renewable energy at Dunia Frontier standard tuberculosis and malaria drugs alone.

DARTMOUTH ENGINEER WINTER 2012 21

While at Thayer, Gogo says, he was shocked IBM Global SmartCamp in Dublin. The company analyzing costs for running individual appliances. to find out that the most populous city in Africa— has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The “Many companies offer energy monitoring Lagos, Nigeria—reported that 80 percent of pre- New York Times, and The Boston Globe. and feedback, but we’re the only company out scription drugs available in 2003 were fake. He set Gogo oversees employees across three conti- there that figures out appliance usage without up Sproxil to combat counterfeiting through a cell nents from Sproxil’s headquarters in Cambridge, having a homeowner put a monitor on every ap- phone-based product verification service. Thou- Mass. To date, consumers have sent more than pliance,” says Fishback, PlotWatt’s chief execu- sands of people are already using this technology a million messages to Sproxil to verify that they tive officer. “Instead of just telling you usage in to verify the authenticity of their drugs. are not buying fake products. With the global unhelpful units like kilowatts and kilowatt hours, “Sproxil empowers consumers to make smart pharmaceutical industry losing $200 billion an- we can tell you exactly how much you can save decisions so they don’t buy fake pills unknow- nually to the counterfeiting epidemic, Sproxil tomorrow if you turn your thermostat down one ingly,” he says. “Our goal is to reestablish trust has established itself as a healthy antidote. degree, for example.” between patients and their pharmacists and Cunningham, PlotWatt’s chief scientist, make counterfeiting more challenging for rogue helped create the algorithms the company uses retailers.” today. When a customer signs up for PlotWatt SMARTER METER In 2010 Sproxil became the first large-scale, Luke Fishback ’02 Th’03 online, the company’s cloud-based software crowd-sourced, anti-counterfeiting text mes- set up PlotWatt to analyzes data from their energy meter to trace sage system deployed in Africa. When people lower electric bills. appliance-level energy cost without monitor- buy medications, they can scratch off a label on ing individual appliances. The PlotWatt Energy the blister pack containing the drug to reveal a Dashboard has already given feedback and per- unique PIN, which they text to Sproxil’s secure sonalized, money-saving recommendations to short code free of charge. The consumer then re- thousands of customers. ceives an instant response from Sproxil’s Mobile “Once we started to get word out, we had Product Authenticationtm technology confirm- a community of early adopters who gave us a ing or denying a product’s genuineness. Sproxil’s warm reception,” says Fishback. The current cloud-based computing service automatically beta version of PlotWatt is free for residential checks the code and provides the right response users who have an enabled smart meter. to the end user. Pharmaceutical companies pay- With $1 million in seed funding led by Felicis ing for the medication verification service can Ventures and $100,000 from General Electric’s then send relevant targeted offers to the consum- GE Ecomagination Challenge, PlotWatt is scal- er, and benefit from brand protection, real-time PLOTWATT ing up to serve a larger residential customer base market insight, and increased sales. Cofounders: Luke Fishback ’02 Th’03 and expand into commercial markets. Sproxil currently operates in Ghana, Kenya, John Cunningham ’02 “We are solving real problems that don’t just Nigeria, and India, and is already working with plotwatt.com apply to geeks like us,” says Fishback, who likes pharmaceutical giants such as Johnson & Johnson, to joke that PlotWatt has even saved a life. “Our GlaxoSmithKline, and Merck’s distributor in Ni- Luke Fishback ’02 Th’03 was looking for a viable system once diagnosed a faulty heater on fish geria. Merck’s Glucophage global sales, which had business plan after building monitoring systems tank. A customer was slowly cooking his fish fallen 75 percent since 2008 due to loss of profits for missiles and satellites at Lockheed Martin. and didn’t even know it.” from counterfeit drugs, increased by more than 10 He had just purchased his first house. “I wanted percent in just 100 days of working with Sproxil. to save money on my monthly electric bill and “We helped rescue Merck’s Glucophage brand in coming out of a great lab and engineering envi- SUSTAINX Nigeria, and today four additional Merck products ronment, I was used to building whatever tools I Cofounders: Dax Kepshire Th’06, ’09, have been added to our service,” says Gogo. needed,” he says. Ben Bollinger ’04 Th’04, ’08, Troy McBride The Ghanaian native says that the Ph.D. In- So he created a monitoring system that photo- Th’01, Professor Charles Hutchinson novation Program prepared him for running graphed his own electricity meter every 30 seconds sustainx.com Sproxil. “Thayer gave me the entrepreneurial over the course of a day, and then converted the training I needed,” says Gogo, who in the past pictures into a spreadsheet. By auditing his own Renewable energy struggles to compete with fos- started a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) electricity use through a real-time lens, he tweaked sil fuels in part because the wind doesn’t blow company in Ghana. “The program fosters a new his appliances and systems to save money. and the sun doesn’t shine on demand; storing pedigree of engineers who are capable of solving He knew he was onto something. “Who energy for use on demand can improve the eco- global problems through tangible solutions.” wouldn’t want to reduce their utility bills by as nomics of renewable energy. By the time Gogo graduated, his enterprise much as 50 percent—especially if it was as simple A group of Thayer alumni has created an iso- had received global accolades. In 2009 Sproxil as turning off the auxiliary heat on your thermostat thermal compressed air energy storage (ICAEStm) won an Outstanding Commitment Award in or cleaning dirty refrigerator coils,” he says. system that can do just that. SustainX is the first to Global Health—and a $10,000 grant—from the Fishback sent the data from his webcam to his develop a fuel-free compressed air system to effi- Clinton Global Initiative University, and a year friend and former classmate John Cunningham ciently capture and store inexpensive power gener- later Gogo shared the stage with Bill Clinton in ’02, who was finishing his Ph.D. at Stanford. “I ated during off-peak hours to use on the electrical front of world leaders to highlight the progress told John there was cool stuff to be gleaned from grid during peak hours—capable of acting as a sort Sproxil had made since receiving the grant. In this crude initial data set,” Fishback says. of renewable energy reserve. 2010 Sproxil won IBM’s SmartCamp competition In 2008 he and Cunningham launched Plot- “If we can store excess wind and solar energy, in Boston and received honorable mention at the Watt, a company that helps reduce utility bills by we can allow these resources to become more

22 DARTMOUTH ENGINEER WINTER 2012 dartmouthengineer.com

PICTURE THIS Jason Gracilieri Th’00 created TurningArt as a Netflix for art.

reliable and predictable,” says Dax Kepshire sulfur batteries. “Most people working on this He responded by founding TurningArt, an art Th’06, ’09, who cofounded SustainX in 2007 with problem are focused on batteries, which don’t rental service with the option to buy—a business fellow engineering Ph.D. graduates Ben Bol- last long and use toxic substances,” says Kep- he now refers to as a Netflix for art. In August linger ’04 Th’04, ’08, and Troy McBride Th’01, shire. “We’re the first company in the world to 2010, Gracilieri became his own first customer. and Thayer Professor Charles Hutchinson. go after this approach with a system using almost On turningart.com, Gracilieri rents limited SustainX is positioned to make a significant exclusively steel, water, and air.” edition quality prints for as little as $10 a month market impact over the next decade, according This technological distinction has helped to individuals for their homes and offices. Each to Cleantech Group, a company that evaluates SustainX gain funding from the National Sci- dollar spent on this monthly fee earns his cus- new approaches to sustainability. By 2013 Sus- ence Foundation and General Electric’s GE Eco- tomers a dollar in credit toward the purchase of tainX, which recently relocated 24 employees magination Challenge, as well as $24 million in an original work of art. from Lebanon, N.H., to a 42,000 square-foot private financing from several investors, includ- Today, Boston-area-based TurningArt is ex- building in Seabrook, N.H., plans to roll out a ing Polaris Venture Partners, RockPort Capital periencing strong growth after raising $750,000 commercial prototype system for large power Partners, Cadent Energy Partners, General Cata- in funding, led by NextView Ventures. Gracil- producer AES Energy Storage, using $5.4 million lyst Partners, GE Energy Financial Services, and ieri’s eight-person “dynamic coalition of art- in funds from the U.S. Department of Energy. Angeli Parvi. loving geeks and technology-loving artists,” as So far SustainX has eight patents protecting its “Dax is the one who suggested we actually he calls his colleagues, includes chief technology technology. start a company instead of taking an academic re- officer Matt Hodgson Th’06 and director of mar- According to Kepshire, what sets SustainX search path. He brought on Ben, an extremely tal- keting Jason Pavel ’04. Gracilieri’s wife, Julie, a apart from the few existing traditional com- ented engineer, and Charles Hutchinson, a highly painter and former gallery owner, helped recruit pressed air energy storage (CAES) facilities is successful entrepreneur and invaluable mentor,” some 300 artists whose work now constitutes the the company’s ability to eliminate inefficiency says cofounder McBride. “Our goal is to develop company’s growing collection.

BOSTON GLOBE BOSTON that had been caused from gas heating up when the best energy storage system out there—and in After earning his Master of Engineering Man- compressed and cooling down when expanded. the process make a difference in the world of re- agement degree from Thayer, Gracilieri worked SustainX controls the temperature in its com- newable energy for generations to come.” for an aerospace startup called SpaceDev, a social pression and expansion cylinders through heat network for high school students called Sconex, transfer by injecting a constant mist of water, and a consumer deposit search engine called which captures and then returns the heat. TURNINGART BankFox before founding TurningArt. SustainX’s patented isothermal megawatt- Founder: Jason Gracilieri Th’00 “The ultimate driving mission of TurningArt scale storage system has several advantages over turningart.com is to connect people with artwork they love and other approaches. It doesn’t require additional do it in an innovative way,” says Gracilieri. “Like fuel input and is cheaper than large-scale clas- Jason Gracilieri Th’00 was 28 when he purchased engineering, art is about individuals creating sic systems that require natural gas. It isn’t re- his first home and felt he had matured past most things. I’d rather have the work of today’s artists strictive geographically, whereas traditional air of the art he owned. “I was done with framed on my wall than mass-produced reproductions.” storage options rely on limestone or salt caverns. posters, but like many people my age, I didn’t SustainX’s ICAES is also lower maintenance and have the money, time, or knowledge to buy origi- Anna Fiorentino is a contributing editor at

OPPOSITE PAGE: COURTESY OF LUKE FISHBACK. THIS PAGE: PAGE: THIS FISHBACK. LUKE OF COURTESY PAGE: OPPOSITE has a longer lifetime than energy-storing sodium nal artwork,” says Gracilieri, now 34. Dartmouth Engineer.

DARTMOUTH ENGINEER WINTER 2012 23

Alumni News the upper- and lower-limb function has been developing increasingly so-

▲ of stroke survivors, was cited for “out- phisticated robot toys that interact standing contributions to the clinical with children. CNNMoney named two spotlights translation of neurotechnology for of the firm’s creations—an interactive stroke rehabilitation and leadership in dragon named Skylee and a series of rehabilitation research.” alien robots called Mechatars—to its U.S. Army Lt. Chris Koppel ’09 Th’10 2011 list of “7 Toys You Gotta Have.” is stationed at Camp Buehring in “Mechatars are robot toys that are Kuwait, after serving in Iraq, The really fun to play with as a standard Dartmouth reported in November remote-control toy,” says McCarter, (thedartmouth.com/2011/11/11/ “but they are also connected to a free news/kuwait). “I’m very proud to online game. The whole concept is to serve my country and am very thank- have a toy that evolves as you play with ful for the opportunity to serve as a it, so kids play the game online, fight platoon leader,” Koppel, commander battles, complete missions, and level of the Dartmouth ROTC during his up their character online. But then senior year, told The Dartmouth. everything they do with their physical Catalin Picu Th’96 has recently been toy is also stored on flash memory and elected a fellow of the American Soci- uploadable to the game so you earn ety of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). experience and credits for completing Picu is a professor and associate de- missions and battles offline as well!” partment head for undergraduate William Davidow ’57 Th’58 warns of studies in the mechanical, aerospace, the downsides of being online in his Trumbull Barrett ’96 Th’98 and nuclear engineering department recent book, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Overconnected: Consumer rating service Angie’s List Boulder County residential center for ASME cited him for his research in The Promise and has named Trumbull Barrett ’96 Th’98 agricultural workers, since last March. the field of mechanics of materials: Threat of the one of the “Top Ten National Best “I was introduced to the program by “His work on multi-scale aspects of Internet (Del- Contractors.” The owner of Barrett Kristen Lurie ’08, who mentored a LEGO deformation and fracture has been phinium Books Tree Service East Inc. (barretttreeeast. League team at an elementary school published in over 100 journal articles 2011). The for- com) was chosen from among 18,000 in Lebanon, N.H., in 2006. She liked and book chapters. He made advances mer senior vice contractors in the country. He started the program so much that she reached in the understanding of the nature of president of Intel his business three years ago in Somer- out to other students at Thayer School rate sensitivity in metals and polymers argues that while being connected ville, Mass. “I enjoy the challenges of to set them up mentoring local teams,” and of stress production in polymeric has made systems more efficient, it tree care in an urban setting,” says the Wagner says. In 2008 he and Caitlin materials.” has also intensified risk. “It is becom- certified arborist, who has both cared Johnson ’10 Th’11 organized Thayer’s Hanover, N.H., selectboard chair ing evident that markets have become for individual trees and managed large first LEGO League regional qualifying Brian Walsh ’65 Th’66 announced that more volatile, financial innovations wooded tracts. tournament for more than 200 kids. after 15 years of service he was step- mushroom in size and become dan- Phil Wagner ’09 took the Shuffling “That day remains one of my favorite ping down from the board so that, as gerous, computer viruses and junk Transformers to Denver, Colo., to help Thayer memories,” he says. Although he told the Valley News, he and his email are beyond control, identity them set their robot, Thing 1, loose in his team didn’t bring home a trophy wife, Linda Patchett, can “take a big theft is rampant, social networking the state competition of the FIRST from the state competition this year, bite out of life.” During his 36 years in has the potential to cause big prob- LEGO League. The team of eight stu- Wagner says that one student “told me Hanover, Walsh served on more than lems. The Internet, the world’s most dents faced off against 60 teams in a that he wants to be an engineer when 15 boards and committees for organi- powerful interconnection technol- challenge in which each group pro- he grows up.” zations throughout the Upper Valley. ogy, facilitates all of this,” he says. grams a robot to accomplish various John Chae Th’86, M.D., a professor and A businessman and engineer who re- “It is an unindicted co-conspirator.” tasks. “There’s no remote control, and vice chair of physical medicine and tired in 2003, he founded FUJIFILM During a lecture at Thayer School in that’s what makes it so interesting,” rehabilitation and a professor of bio- Dimatix in Lebanon and holds three October (youtube.com/thayerschool, says Wagner, a chemical engineer- medical engineering at Case Western U.S. patents. search overconnected) and at the ing research associate at startup OPX Reserve University, has been elected Jake McCarter Th’09 admits to having Aspen Ideas Festival last summer, Biotechnologies. “The students have to the Institute of Medicine of the Na- “the most fun you can have at a job.” Davidow elaborated on the hazards to make use of motors and sensors so tional Academies and to the College Since he started working as the head of and challenges facing governments, that the robot can find its way around of Fellows of the American Institute business strategy with Bossa Nova Ro- social institutions, businesses, and the playing field. Once you push ‘Go,’ for Medical and Biological Engineer- botics (iloverobots.com) a few months economies. His solutions include re- the robot is on its own.” This isn’t the ing (AIMBE). Chae, whose research ago, he has been spending a lot of time designing systems to function more first LEGO competition for Wagner, focuses on the use of functional elec- playing with toys. The San Francisco- effectively, increasing regulation, and who has been volunteering with the trical stimulation for reducing post- based company, a spinoff from the taxing certain activities such as finan- students at Casa de la Esperanza, a stroke shoulder pain and improving Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute, cial transactions.

24 DARTMOUTH ENGINEER WINTER 2012 dartmouthengineer.com

USS NAUTILUS Lloyd Smith ’47 Th’48 helped ensure safe operation of the U.S. Navy’s original nuclear- powered submarine.

to insure proper installation and op- eration of the handling equipment. —Robert D. Eckerson ’48 Th’49

Our company melts and refines and produces alloys of copper, tin, lead, zinc, nickel, aluminum, manganese silicon, antimony, silver, and iron. We sell the copper-based alloys to found- ries to make valves, plumbing goods, pumps, bushings and bearings, glass ­ ▲ molds, bells, bronze sculptures, pole just one question line hardware, plaques, and ship pro- pellers. Our tin- and lead-base alloys Q. What is the coolest, most exciting, and products are used in plating, sol- dering, extrusions, sound attenuation, or most fulfilling job you’ve ever done? X-ray shielding, and counterweights, among other end products. My nuclear experience began in 1951 and nuclear safety was of paramount control machine functions. The com- What is fulfilling about 55 years of in the desert near Idaho Falls, Idaho. consideration. My last task involved pany was Rockwell International and doing this: About 90 percent of our raw The facility consisted of a pressurized, nuclear and public safety issues, since the division I was in was Goss, which material feed is recycled from scrap. water-cooled and moderated power a radioactive isotope was part of a manufactured newspaper printing Reuse of scrap bypasses mining and reactor as a heat source contained in a power supply designed specifically for machines and all the related handling smelting to produce metals, thus sav- huge “sea tank” simulating conditions the Galileo satellite launch to Jupiter. equipment. A press produces news- ing energy, the landscape, and the at- at sea, coupled to a “half mock-up” The launch required a stable, long-life papers at 48,000 per hour, almost a mosphere. It supports the scrap-metal steam-turbine powered engine room power source because the interplan- blur as they stream off onto convey- industry and provides high-quality for the Nautilus, our first nuclear- etary transit time was slightly greater ing equipment to take them to an area finished products more efficiently and powered submarine. The facility and than two years. Jupiter’s distance from where they are bundled for distribu- at lower cost and with less waste to programs were operated by the Bettis the sun precluded the use of solar tion. The spacing between newspaper landfills. Through the years I estimate Atomic Power Laboratory (BAPL) power. The power supply, a radioac- “noses” is two to three inches. To cre- about 7,000 truck/rail carloads of scrap under Hyman G. Rickover, the “Fa- tive isotope thermoelectric generator, ate a bundle to convey to a truck, a have been converted to useful alloys ther of the Nuclear Navy.” The facility contained fuel pellets of plutonium stacker intercepts the flow on the con- and products at our plants. We were was designed to confirm the ability to 238 oxide encapsulated with iridium veyor to collect one second’s amount in the “green” sector long before green safely operate a nuclear power reactor to contain the fuel. The thermoelec- of papers. For many years, sensors entered the vernacular. as a heat source for steam generation, tric generator converted the isotope were mechanical devices that bumped —Jack Avril ’53 Tu’54 Th’54 and subsequent use of the steam, in decay heat into usable electric energy. along the stream and sent a signal to a steam-turbine powered propulsion Extensive research and measures were relays that controlled the stacker op- Computer modeling of a close-in plant. Another purpose of the facility undertaken to assure integrity of the erations. I developed a stacker design weapon system for the Swiss firm was to provide skills and training of capsules under all plausible condi- that had software-compatible sensors Contraves in 1986–87, when I worked the submarine personnel. This experi- tions. Since the space shuttle was used sending information to a computer in Switzerland with Computer Sciences ence lead to similar roles in providing in the launch, these included any fail- to control motorized devices, thereby Corp. (CSC). Because of my expertise nuclear power to the first nuclear- ure during ascent that could lead to operating the stacker more smoothly in modeling weapon systems (such powered aircraft carrier, Enterprise, dispersion of the capsules, either over and on a one-second cycle. After the as the Mark 50 torpedo) for the U.S. the first nuclear-powered cruiser, any thickly populated area or possible bundle is tied, it is conveyed to a truck Navy, I was able to fill the position for Long Beach, and several subsequent immersion and corrosion in salt water that distributes it and other bundles CSC there. A close-in weapon system nuclear-powered attack and ballistic should the shuttle fall into the ocean. to areas of the city or outskirts. This is a gun that is used to shoot down missile submarines. I spent 17 years I spent many fulfilling years with may require that a given truck have sea-skimming missiles. The Mark 50 with BAPL and the naval reactors the AEC, retiring after 20 years of ser- bundles with different news or adver- torpedo became the latest lightweight programs. vice. All of my experiences were both tising content that would be produced torpedo for the Navy. The greatest I subsequently joined the U.S. exciting and challenging. on a different press, a different stack- challenge was being able to conduct an Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), —Lloyd Smith ’47 Th’48 er, a different conveyor that probably accurate evaluation of the torpedo vs. which allowed me to apply my ex- doesn’t go directly to the truck. I de- very capable foreign submarines. pertise to many other types of reactor I worked for six companies during my signed a bundle distribution system —William Pierce ’54 Th’56 designs and moderators, including 40 years of employment. There was that used a computer to identify a fluidized bed cooled and moderated something significant at each compa- given bundle and send it to the appro- I have had quite a few exciting and gas reactors, liquid-sodium-cooled re- ny in completing the various projects; priate truck. Goss had installations in fulfilling jobs in my 35-year career in actors, and various organic-moderat- however, the one at the last company many countries, and I was fortunate telecommunications/datacom, but

OPPOSITE PAGE: LEFT, COURTESY OF TRUMBULL BARRETT; RIGHT, COURTESY OF WILLIAM DAVIDOW. THIS PAGE: COURTESY OF U.S. NAVY U.S. OF COURTESY PAGE: THIS DAVIDOW. WILLIAM OF COURTESY RIGHT, BARRETT; TRUMBULL OF COURTESY LEFT, PAGE: OPPOSITE ed types. In all these endeavors, public was the first time I used software to to be able to travel to those locations the most interesting assignment took

DARTMOUTH ENGINEER WINTER 2012 25

Alumni News

EASY RIDER Bob Mighell ’85 Th’86 recently completed a 3,200- mile trip with the tilting front end he designed for his Harley Davidson.

place in the early 1980s: the creation of brand information system at Procter a worldwide market analysis/forecast & Gamble was one of the first inter- common language guide for ITT, simi- active uses of computers in a practical lar to the guide used by every comp- business application. The technology troller worldwide to speak the exact was called “time sharing,” and utilized same financial language. (A comptrol- a teletype machine as a terminal. The pounds lighter than the 427, which the creation of islands extending for ler in Germany could phone a comp- terminal communicated with a main- Shelby used when he finally beat the almost half a mile into the sea and is troller in the United States and, when frame using dial-up telephone lines. Porsche on a race track back in the designed by our architects and engi- referencing an item on page 8, line This was a precursor of the personal mid-1960s; and a small block engine neers in collaboration with the French 22, they would be working with the computer, Excel, and the Internet is much easier to work on under the marine master planner Xavier Bohl. It same definition.) At the time, prod- revolution. I implemented it for the hood. I used a brand new T-5 Ford combines elegant residences and a uct managers and market forecasters advertising department at Procter & Mustang five-speed manual transmis- state-of-the-art marina with an entic- from each country had their own set Gamble 45 years ago. It was used by sion with a short Hurst gearshift, and ing mix of restaurants and shops to of definitions and methods of analysis brand managers to manipulate sales I cut a normal Mustang driveshaft create a lifestyle uniquely shaped by and forecasting. My friends and associ- and market-share data by regions and down to a length of about 12 inches to “living on the sea.” Our Greek heri- ates said, “It will never happen!” Not time periods using a matrix-oriented connect the Ford 8.8-inch differential tage is reflected in the sunlit terraces, discouraged, I created a first draft of programming language called Matran to the transmission. I did the project in the flowering pergolas, and the el- the common language guide. I visited (a matrix-oriented version of Fortran, an old two-car garage on jack stands. egant stone work. Combined with the our international units to improve it, proprietary to P&G.) Today I have a cool nine-car garage breathtaking views of the sparkling and it was implemented worldwide on —Dennis Crumbine ’62 with two parking lifts and a work- Mediterranean this is the most chal- a confidential basis. Two or three years ing scissors lift. I’ve restored a 1971 lenging, demanding, and inspiring later, the Korean Telecommunications My current role as a professor of sus- VW Beetle convertible, 1966 Ford work I have recently undertaken. Research Institute wished to determine tainable business practices at the Ohio Mustang, 1972 Jaguar V-12 XKE 2+2 Trying to create islands and build- the future of telecommunications and State Fisher College of Business. Eight coupe, and 1997 Jaguar XK-8. ings in the middle of the sea is a daunt- data for the country in 2000. Billions years ago I was given the opportunity —Tom Brady ’66 Th’68 ing engineering project, in which of dollars in sales would be awarded to design a course for M.B.A.s. I now many challenges have to be met and to the supplier whose forecast was have a package of five courses that I of- The best was as venture manager of overcome. As the consultant compa- accepted, and I was selected to be the fer to both M.B.A.s and undergraduate a new thermoplastic composite for ny you must deal with a great many team leader for the ITT proposal. My business students. This experience has the auto industry. In the late 1980s I people from different trades on a daily strategy for winning was simple: Share allowed me to combine everything I headed a team of engineers and sales basis; as an engineer you must never the common language guide method- have learned in my career into a timely folks to introduce a plastic composite underestimate the problems that can ology with the Koreans and let them curriculum to which students are not to auto companies in the Detroit area. be created by forces of nature; as a do the forecast (with our guidance). It exposed in other courses. Next year We built a team of sales and techni- project manager you have the respon- worked. We got the business. In ITT, Ohio State is launching a campus-wide cal folks, moved sales from nothing sibility to make the quick, right deci- that was the true measure of success. major in sustainability that will incor- to commercial volumes, established a sions based on your experience and —Joel Ash ’56 Th’58 porate two of my courses. Another technical center with testing of these training in order to keep the project plus to this experience is the sense of materials for automobile specifica- moving. Designing the buildings to The most significant work I did in legacy that it creates. tions, and eventually built a commer- withstand earthquakes and differential my career was at Los Alamos in 1964, —Neil Drobny ’62 Th’64 cial manufacturing plant in Virginia. settlement of the newly created islands a time when the mechanism of the Along the way our technical team won was one of the most challenging issues monoclinic-tetragonal phase trans- My coolest project: building from several awards sponsored by the Soci- faced. Reclaiming the land from the formation in zirconium dioxide was a scratch—every nut and bolt—a replica ety of Plastics Engineers for part de- Mediterranean Sea was a first for me as matter of wide controversy. We made a of the 1966 Shelby Ford AC Cobra. I sign. It was a great experience, one that an engineer and a first for our country. movie showing the rumpled surface of have more than 2,000 hours in this I’ll always remember fondly. We anticipate that the end result will the formerly smooth surface of a sam- car. I completed the project during a —Rick Burkhart Th’66 be a beautiful and inviting marina that ple of zirconium dioxide. The movie, single calendar year while running my will reflect the warmth of our Greek along with other data, confirmed that company, Plastic Technologies Inc., One of the most challenging and ful- hospitality and cultural heritage com- the mechanism of the transformation during the day! I purchased a rebuilt filling projects I have undertaken is bined with innovative engineering and was so-called “martensitic” or shear- 1969 Ford 351 ci Cleveland engine. that of the first marina on our island of state-of-the art technology. type. I was a lieutenant on active duty Because the 351 is a 302 cc with larger Cyprus. As the owner and managing The broad engineering spectrum at the time, serving at the Air Force cylinder diameters, it generates a lot partner of my firm, A.F. Modinos and and also the valuable general educa- Materials Laboratory, Wright-Patter- of heat, so I installed a double-sized S.A Vrahimis, I am the project engi- tion received from Thayer has been son Air Force Base in Ohio. radiator and wired the cooling fan to neer in charge of the design and super- instrumental in shaping my actions —Loren Jacobson ’60 Th’61 run all the time. The 351 is a perfect vision team of the Limassol Marina. and career from the very beginning engine for the Cobra because it is a The Limassol Marina is an exclusive of my professional life. The education In 1966 implementing the interactive small block V-8 that is several hundred waterfront development that involves received has been pivotal in the way

26 DARTMOUTH ENGINEER WINTER 2012 dartmouthengineer.com

EASY USER Krispin Leydon ’99 Th’01 designed the graphical user interface and sound scheme for the Tesla Roadster.

I manage people from different fields sequentially as the red, green, and blue and in the way tasks are completed— portions of the image are put on the from the smallest project to the largest The material is wonderful and the peo- help me with some design work on my display. “Persistence of vision” causes complicated design. ple I work with are great. I recommend project. I completed a 3,200-mile trip the viewer’s brain to reassemble the —Saverios Vrahimis ’71 Th’73 teaching high school science as a career to the Harley-Davidson Sturgis gather- three in a full color. Turning on the after an engineering career. ing last August. More information and LEDs for only part of the time (when The construction of a veterans monu- —Richard Cavanaugh ’81 Th’83 video of my bike in action can be found their corresponding monochrome ment (soledadmemorial.com) on Mt. on my Tilting Motor Works website, color image is on the display module) Soledad in La Jolla, Calif., is one of Working on the construction of the tiltingmotorworks.com. means that they can be dramatically those projects that had a lasting im- Channel Tunnel between England and —Bob Mighell ’85 Th’86 overdriven in order to get high bright- pact on my life. A lawsuit was filed by France. I worked on the construction of ness. While the LEDs are “off” (and atheists seeking to have the original the Channel Tunnel in the early 1990s. Probably the coolest job I’ve done re- other colors are “on”), the silicon die monument to Korean War veterans It was my first construction project cently was one my company, Focus has time to cool enough to make driv- torn down. (It is in the shape of a cross where I had commercial responsibil- Embedded, picked up a couple of years ing them with about four-times over- and was located in a city park—it was ity, and I spent quite a bit of time in ago to design the guts of a handheld current possible. Additionally, most of a question of separation of church complex negotiations to settle massive video projector for 3M. What made it the time none of them is on, and the and state.) The organization that I contractor claims on behalf of the own- fun was the fact that it came with the viewer’s brain, which is only record- head submitted a bid to purchase the er, Eurotunnel. The cultural challenges interesting technical design challenges ing peak brightness, thinks they’re still property from the city and develop it were interesting, and I drew upon my that go with making electronics run at on and fills in the “gaps.” As a result, as a multi-faceted, world-class veterans French language skills acquired dur- video speeds, the economic constraints the power-hungry lamphouse is only memorial. We won the bid and came ing my foreign study program in Tou- that go with knowing it would be pro- sucking down electrons (at the 500mA up with a great design that fits into the louse while at Dartmouth. I attended duced for the consumer market, manu- rate required to drive the LEDs) for a landscape and includes about 3,200 Eurotunnel board meetings that were facturing issues related to building the small fraction of the time the device black granite plaques, each a tribute conducted in a mixture of French and things offshore, and the overall “wow” is perceived to be running. Since the to an individual veteran. Each plaque English, which led to frequent misun- factor of designing a cool product that rest of the unit only consumes about includes a photograph of the veteran derstandings! There was a great deal of would stop people in their tracks when 25mA total, battery life is extended to etched into the granite along with de- complex litigation—a whole new world they saw it. the point where a single charge on a tails of his service record. Annually we to a young engineer. When we finally Technically what made the job such cell phone battery will allow the unit hold services for veterans during Vet- reached a commercial resolution that fun was that the entire projector runs to play a feature-length movie. erans Day week and on Memorial Day. enabled the project to be completed, on something of an optical illusion. 3M came to us originally asking We also hold private flag-raising ser- it seemed like a miracle. I learned that The imager module is a small reflector for the logic design for a chip to get vices for the families of veterans hon- commercial considerations can be made of a polished silicon substrate the video content out of a small fast ored on the walls. This project has been much more complicated than “simple” covered with an array of ferroelectric memory, deliver it to the imager, and incredibly meaningful to thousands of engineering and construction. material that can rotate the polarization synchronize the R, G, and B portions families who want to have their veteran —Mike A. Adams ’83 state of incident light from zero to 90 of the picture with the lighting of the R, remembered for posterity. degrees. If you held the imager in nor- G, and B LEDs. But when we got that —Bill Kellogg ’73 Right now I am working to bring to mal room light and looked at it, even working in simulation and it needed production a two-wheeled tilting front with an image displayed on it, all you’d to be tested on a real circuit board, we Leading and successfully turning end I designed for motorcycles. The see is a roughly 1-by-1.25-centimeter were asked to design the printed circuit around a small (less than 150 employ- front end was designed to be a bolt-on mirror. But inside the projector, the board as well. We were further given ees) heat exchanger company based conversion for a standard motorcycle. lamphouse shines incident light onto the job of developing the switch mode in Toronto, Canada. The job was a The additional wheel up front sig- this imager only after it’s been through power supplies to run the device at ex- rare amalgam of challenges: financial, nificantly improves the motorcycle’s a polarizing filter. And as the focused treme high efficiency. engineering, procurement, customer braking and traction. The two wheels image exits the projector through the We were pleased that when 3M relations. The memories of a diverse up front steer, lean, and handle just imaging optics, it passes through a sec- decided to do the next generation of workforce and a great city are price- like a standard motorcycle. I have been ond polarizer. Pixels that haven’t been projectors with higher resolution and less as well. working on this project for the last sev- rotated pass right through. Ones that faster refresh rates, they could reuse all —Mike Onderick ’73 Th’74 en years and currently have two issued have are stopped cold if they’ve been of our code and recompile our work patents (7,487,985 and 7,967,306) and rotated 90 degrees. And anything in with nothing more than a few changes. I spent 20 years in marketing and sales a third patent pending. I was originally between goes through at some inter- Our lasting gift to them was that their for the telecom industry. Recently I told by the head of the vehicle design mediate luminance. next projector was designed in about have been teaching high school phys- program at a local university that my The imager module is also mono- one-third the time the first one was, ics for eight years, and it’s the most en- idea had been tried before, would chrome. The image you see is full since we’d set things up with a devel- joyable job I’ve had. I work with high be unstable, and would not work. A color because the lamphouse contains opment path ahead. Their lasting gift school juniors and seniors, helping to couple of years ago I worked with a three LEDs (one red, one green, and to us has been a lot of repeat business. OPPOSITE PAGE: COURTESY OF BOB MIGHELL. THIS PAGE: COURTESY OF KRISPIN LEYDON KRISPIN OF COURTESY PAGE: THIS MIGHELL. BOB OF COURTESY PAGE: OPPOSITE launch them into college and beyond. student engineering team at Thayer to one blue, or R, G, B) that are turned on —Eric Overton ’87 Th’89

DARTMOUTH ENGINEER WINTER 2012 27

Alumni News

WINDFALL Harley McAllister ’94 Th’95 (in light blue shirt) and his ninth-graders built a windmill in the Dominican Republic.

My first job in a micro-sized startup. a room from Dr. Myric Wood in Leba- It was the combination of inventing non during medical school and became a technology, winning formal recog- close friends with him. He was a gen- nition for the technology (R&D 100 eral practitioner for 45 years. He was Award), and then exploring com- one of the most amazing physicians I mercialization options, all under the have ever worked with, and I learned security of a steady paycheck. The a lot about general practice from him. commercialization attempt required His wife, Lois Wood, was one of the me to learn about marketing and ven- past Thayer School magazine editors. ture capital funding while maintaining The Dartmouth community is a very a small operations side of the business special place to learn, for which I am to generate revenue numbers for in- about lasting, needed, and meaningful cally generated bids on ads from thou- grateful. vestors. All in all, it gave me a broader changes that will benefit Dominicans at sands of advertisers. Right now my —Derek Jenkins ’02 DMS’06 end-to-end view of what it means to be all socioeconomic levels. job involves understanding issues as an entrepreneur. The job made me feel Being a teacher is the most chal- big as how data flow from company Banging my helmeted head against I can make a difference. As I moved lenging job I have had. Sure, some to company all the way down to how a concrete pillar to calibrate an early into more defined roles in larger com- other jobs demanded more intellec- the HTML needs to be modified. And head impact telemetry prototype with panies, I never had the same experi- tual rigor and training, but no other figuring out how we can work together a mouthguard accelerometer. It oc- ence again. job has required constantly putting as efficiently as possible to make this curred at Brown University in the sum- —Sumit Guha Th’88 my own needs second, being patient happen! It’s been crazy at times, but mer of 2002, for a summer internship with students who are at times disre- definitely exciting. with Simbex LLC (and Adjunct Profes- The coolest, most exciting, and most spectful or lazy, or simply seeking to In contrast, the job that got me the sor Rick Greenwald Th’88). It helped fulfilling job I had was 10 years ago. I serve others in the way that teaching most “cool” points from people I’ve shaped my graduate studies in ortho- became an architect after finishing my has. Doulos utilizes the expeditionary talked to was working on Microsoft’s pedic biomechanics. I’m currently an B.E. I had my own firm, and I spent form of learning pioneered by Kurt Flight Simulator game for five years. assistant professor of mechanical engi- two years with two close friends de- Hahn, founder of Outward Bound. It It seems like everyone you meet over neering at Montana State University. signing a brand new university, Ashesi is hands-on learning with a service fo- the age of 25 who has ever played a My lab studies cartilage, osteoarthritis, University in Ghana. The project in- cus. Recently my ninth-grade science computer game has played that one at and how mechanical loading is trans- cluded the campus master plan and class built and installed a windmill us- some point during its 25-year history. duced into biological signals. all the buildings. It just finished con- ing materials that cost less than $150. Getting to see some of those planes in —Ron June ’02 struction this year. We made very little It gave our students a good taste for real life was pretty fun, too! money (we did receive earned income renewable energy. —Susan Ashlock ’00 I would have to say my current job, credit) and worked an insane amount —Harley McAllister ’94 Th’95 developing the new BMW X5 in Mu- of hours, but we had so much fun and Each day medicine provides interest- nich, has got to be the coolest project it was a fantastic opportunity. Designing the graphical user interface ing and unique challenges. The most I’ve worked on. Between the design in —Sofia Veniard ’93 Th’94 and sound scheme for the Tesla Road- recent challenge for me was deliv- context and vehicle validation process- ster—and seeing it out there, “in the ering a baby in an elevator. (Go to es, there is always something interest- The most fulfilling job I have ever had wild.” (I worked alongside Matt Senesky lenoxhillhospital.org/press_releases. ing going on. is where I am working currently, as a ’98 Th’99 and Diarmuid O’Connell ’86.) The aspx?id=2224 to read about the un- —Matt Wallach Th’09 high school math and science teacher narrative surrounding electric cars has expected delivery.) I’m currently a at Doulos Discovery School in the Do- changed so much during the past five chief resident in orthopedic surgery at My most fulfilling project so far is the minican Republic. The country has the years. It was exciting to be at the cen- Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. I’ve process improvement project for my lowest investment and performance ter of the action and rewarding to feel been here for the past five years train- Lean Six Sigma Black Belt training in academics of all of Latin America like I was making a (small) impact on ing since I graduated from Dartmouth with Professor Lasky and Dr. Cheung and the Caribbean, with the possible oil dependence, climate change, and Medical School in 2007. Next year I’m at the radiology department at DHMC. exception of its island neighbor, Haiti. national security—while honoring headed to the Mayo Clinic in Minne- Goal: process at least one more patient The need for education here is des- the legacy of an undersung inventor sota for a yearlong arthroplasty (joint through the radiology department. perate. That is why Doulos Discovery who died penniless, talking to pigeons replacement) fellowship. When I was Challenges: lots of details in the pro- School, a Christian school, seeks not (Tesla). an undergraduate engineering major, cess to capture in mapping. Highlight: only to equip the kids here with a first- —Krispin Leydon ’99 Th’01 Dr. Mayor and Professor Collier were finding data captured by the software rate education, but also train them to very influential in my pursuit of a ca- that the department had been using become leaders who have a servant’s The job I have now: working at Google reer in medicine and orthopedic sur- to track patient check-in and process- heart. In this way, when their hard as a software engineer on a to-be- gery. After the fellowship I hope to find ing info. Result: found the solution to work and preparation enable them named project that aims to handle an attending surgeon position where I processing two patients through the to rise into positions of leadership, hundreds of thousands of queries can combine my interests in engineer- department. they will use this influence to bring from online ad exchanges for dynami- ing and medicine. As an aside, I rented —Wei Peng Th’11

28 DARTMOUTH ENGINEER WINTER 2012 dartmouthengineer.com

SHIPSHAPE Miral Anoop Shethia Th’08 built a large-capacity barge at his family business, Shethia Enterprise, in India.

­ ▲ er and four online books, maintain Thrun and Peter Norvig (ai-class. the PoeticLimericks.com website, and com). There are 160,000-plus students thayer notes send out my “Poem of the Month” to enrolled from 160 countries. Some ob- more than 200 friends and poetic lim- servations: The artificial intelligence ericks lovers via e-mail. I have been an paradigm has changed completely 1940s by the 9/11 event and subsequent amateur magician since the age of 8, from 20-plus years ago, and it con- Sam Florman ’46 Th’46: I have my sev- wars. There may be about 1 million and after moving to New Hampshire tinues to evolve. It’s much more data- enth book coming out in March. It’s people who have died, but hundreds of in 2002 I founded the Wizards of the driven and engineering oriented, so as a bit different from my others, a per- millions have been traumatized; some Upper River Valley magic club, which to leverage cheap, pervasive comput- sonal memoir telling of a career in by fear, some by anger, some by guilt, I run. I am documenting all of this in ing and more readily available data. I the construction industry. The title some by the loss of loved ones, some an opus titled Diary of a New Hamp- am in awe of the amount of energy and is Good Guys, Wiseguys, and Putting by damaged body parts, some by being shire Wizard. Other activities include sense of community created in various Up Buildings: A Life in Construction. labeled terrorists. From an engineer- running the Dartmouth at Eastman class forums—such as social media— I speak briefly of the early experiences ing perspective, the human being is men’s group, fishing, and acting as especially when an assignment is due that set me on my way—Dartmouth, structured of hardware and software; secretary for the class of 1956. or a post-lecture quiz proves prob- Thayer, and the Seabees—and then tell either or both can be traumatized, i.e., Em Houck ’56 Tu’58 Th’58: After I retired lematic. The instructors have taken of adventures that followed, mostly in physically and mentally. The therapy from Eli Lilly and Co. as executive the Khan Academy paradigm—short New York City. can be approached from a structural director of engineering, I have writ- videos that are typically example driv- Bob Craig ’47 Th’48: I have been retired engineering point of view. Based on ten two books and enjoyed signings en—and moved it to a new level with for 36 years. Just when I want to do personal experiences, I know there are all over the states of Indiana and in quizzes, homework, and exams. I am things, my body says, no way, pal. I expedient structural therapies such as Illinois. The first book, Go Huskies! very impressed by the multilingual tal- sing with a group of people at nursing muscle activation technology and Beat Felix the Cat!, tells the story of ent out there in the world. Dartmouth homes in the area, do Meals on Wheels rapid therapy for mental anxiety pain. unique high school mascots around needs to get on this bandwagon. once a week, and read on Sundays at These therapies address the basic root the country. The second, Hoosiers All, Richard Livingston ’68 Th’69: I am an ad- my church. I have a female friend and cause rather than doping the systems tells the story of Indiana high school junct professor of materials science in we eat out a couple of times a month. with medical and media remedies. My basketball from the beginnings of the the department of materials science Hjalmar Sundin ’47 Th’47: I retired from wish is to get help from other profes- sport in this state. I would argue that to and engineering at the University of Baxter & Woodman, a civil and en- sionals to develop supplementary understand Indiana you must under- Maryland (UMD). I will be teaming vironmental consulting firm, in 1989. therapies based on this approach to stand basketball. The experience has up with the Smithsonian Institution’s I am thoroughly enjoying retirement heal the scars of the 9/11 event and been great fun. Museum Conservation Institute for a in Glenwood Springs, Colo. (near subsequent wars. My effort may be feasibility study of a device that could Aspen), skiing December into April the result of a Dartmouth humani- 1960s be used to assess buildings, monu- and hiking in the Rocky Mountains ties education that was etched in my Jerry Greenfield ’61 Th’62 Tu’65: Retirement ments, and artifacts in danger of dete- the rest of the year. I have been writ- granite brain. has been almost too busy! I have a rioration from the effects of moisture. ing a biweekly opinion column for the Joel Ash ’56 Th’58: I spend the largest slug part-time job serving and selling wine Funded by a UMD/Smithsonian Seed local newspaper for the past 13 years of my time pursuing my lifelong proj- at a local winery, Kiona, in Benton Grant, I’ll help develop a portable and recently published a book, Law & ect of stock market forecasting and City, Wash. I’m active in Kiwanis, hav- prototype system that uses prompt Disorder in Crested Butte, chronicling managing my investments. While I ing served in several officer positions gamma neutron activation for the the humor, satire, and ribaldry that ap- was pursuing my 35-year career in through time in my club, division, nondestructive measurement of mois- peared in the newspaper in the town telecommunications I worked on the and district. I’m an amateur historian ture in porous construction materials marshal’s reports during the 1970s side on the Pytho Project (a reference and have been asked to give lectures such as brick, sandstone, and marble. “hippy” era, when Crested Butte was to the oracle at Delphi) and when I re- on various topics. After I got off the We’ll use test samples representative the center of an unconventional, free- tired in 1992 at the age of 57 I was able Richland City Council, I joined Toast- of the masonry used in the museum’s spirited lifestyle in which no one took to devote proper time to this effort. masters to learn how to speak better— buildings. This matters because mois- themselves or anyone else very seri- I have two Dartmouth sons (class of I guess I do things in reverse order. My ture is a threat to the preservation of ously. It was fun to compile. ’85 and class of ’88) and hope to bring wife, Corky, and I try to go to Victoria, both art and architecture. Corrosive On a sadder note, after nearly 56 the project to the stage where they will B.C., three or four times a year to see chemical reactions, cracking, staining, years of marriage, my wife died in want to carry on my life’s work. our daughter Katrina and her family. erosion, and the growth of bacteria 2006, followed by my son and daugh- With an undergraduate degree in She has two small boys, Willem (5) and mold represent some of the seri- ter in 2008. modified art and a postgraduate de- and Tyler (2), and her husband, Jay, is ous and sometimes irreversible dam- gree in engineering, I view myself as an in the Canadian Navy. age it causes. The ability to accurately 1950s arts and science guy. My arts project is Mark Tuttle ’65 Th’66: I’m the teaching as- measure moisture in an object over Abdul Bahrani ’53 Tu’54 Th’54: Lately I am poetic limericks. I have written close to sistant for what is probably the largest space and time is crucial to conserva- up to 9/11 trauma therapy. There are 600 poetic limericks, most with four, cyberspace class in the world—Stan- tors’ need to understand the source of many children, citizens, and soldiers five, or six five-line stanzas and some ford’s online “Introduction to Artifi- the moisture, how much it has pene-

OPPOSITE PAGE: COURTESY OF HARLEY MCALLISTER. THIS PAGE: COURTESY OF MIRAL ANOOP SHETHIA ANOOP MIRAL OF COURTESY PAGE: THIS MCALLISTER. HARLEY OF COURTESY PAGE: OPPOSITE of many nations who are traumatized longer. I have published two hardcov- cial Intelligence,” taught by Sebastian trated, and the mechanisms by which

DARTMOUTH ENGINEER WINTER 2012 29

Alumni News

GROUP PROJECT Brian Mason ‘03 Th’05 and Jocelyn Mason ’05 display Lynn, their newest joint venture.

it causes damage. Our strategy is to im- on the Minnesota Forest Resources bilities (with earth, landscape, etc., serted between vertebrae in a collapsed prove a device called a neutron probe, Council, probably the most organized rendered) for weather presentation state, then expanded using hydraulic which uses prompt gamma neutron and effective statewide forest sustain- software. That can still be seen on pressure and locked in place. This type activation for elemental analysis. The ability effort anywhere. To understand many TV weather shows (including of device gives the surgeon certain ad- device is able to provide a visual repre- a bit more about our forestry and for- The Weather Channel). Then I went vantages during the procedure, while sentation of the gamma ray spectrum est products, feel free to go to my blog: on to do business development and improving the patient’s outcome as produced by the subject. This spec- northwoodsnotebook.blogspot.com. general management for various com- well. The upside for me is that I get to trum can be analyzed for the character- Every five or so years a group of panies. There have been successes and work with exotic materials and use lots istic peaks revealing the composition, ’88s comes to visit and enjoy fishing failures along the way. One memorable of high-tech assembly methods, while condition, and moisture content of the and relaxation at our most prized prop- thing I did was lead a U.S. business in (I hope) advancing medicine and help- material. Our ultimate goal is to pro- erty, Wolf Lake Camp. That group of China to influence and guide the entire ing patients. The methods of problem duce a portable, prototype instrument dear friends represents medicine, law, TV broadcast industry to transition to solving that I first learned at Thayer are calibrated for moisture measurement technology, and finance. I have drawn digital services. Since 2005 I have been the foundation of everything that I do. in porous materials. heavily on the experience of these guys trading securities using algorithmic Larry Clifford Gilman Th’95: Since 2000 I’ve and little do they know how they have techniques for myself and some other lived in Sharon, Vt., with my wife, Pris- 1980s both directly and indirectly aided our people. I now live in China. cilla ’94, an artist. I use skills from my Laurie Hartman ’80 Th’80: I have moved efforts at being a positive contribu- I would like to use this opportunity engineering background—as well as from solving mechanical problems to tor to better forestry and significant to share some lessons I have learned in my M.A. in English from Northwestern helping with people problems. I am a employer to our rural community. life. One thing is what you probably (1996)—in my work as a freelance edi- pastoral counselor at a large church. I’ve employed the software created by can call a success formula. Obviously tor and writer for technology compa- Many people have commented that Smartsheet founder Brent Frei ’88 Th’89. success has different meanings to dif- nies, architects, and medical-research I think like an engineer, being able We work together regularly, with his ferent people, but regardless of what clients, typically on grant applications, to step back and see a person as part organization providing solutions to it means, one’s overall successfulness patents, and articles for publication. of a system as well as move in to see mine, and my organization providing (OS) can be expressed in terms of a Dartmouth connections have been es- the various components of that indi- real-world critical feedback to his. few other factors. OS = SR * ASM - FR sential to developing my business. For vidual’s challenge. Some of my most My daughter Sarah is applying to * AFM, where SR is the success rate, years in grad school, I lived across the exciting interactions are working with Dartmouth. My dream is that someday ASM is the average success magni- river in Norwich, and many winter couples who are in open conflict. I also I can lend my resource and real-world tude, FR is the failure rate, AFM is the mornings shortened my walk to cam- find great satisfaction in helping peo- wood engineering knowledge to the average failure magnitude, and SR + pus by walking over the frozen river to ple with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Dartmouth/Thayer community. Dart- FR = 1. This formula is key in trading Ledyard. There can’t be many campus John Graves ’85 Th’86: I was recently pro- mouth has a significant timber resource successes, but I think it can be general- commutes more beautiful. moted to senior engineer at General in northern New Hampshire, and I’d ized to anything we do in life. The fun- Johan Tegin Th’99: I became clinical inno- Electric Co. I am a materials applica- love to provide our experiences to the damental thinking behind this is that vation fellow at the Royal Institute of tion engineer in the materials and pro- people who manage it. everyone does a million things in life Technology and Karolinska Institutet cess engineering department at GE and no one does them without failures. in June 2011. The project is inspired Aviation’s facility in Lynn, Mass. I am 1990s The formula tells us that increasing SR by the Stanford biodesign program. I involved with industrializing aircraft Ron Faith ’90: I have been a software en- is not your only way of achieving more married Anna Pia Beckerman in 2010 engine components manufactured trepreneur living on the West Coast for OS. You might as well focus more on and am now the father of two, André from ceramic matrix composites for the past 20-plus years. I am the CEO of increasing ASM and reducing AFM, and Idun. military and commercial applications. Datacastle in Seattle, Wash. Datacastle which perhaps can be done more eas- John Rajala ’88: I went back to the provides cloud-based data protection ily. The second thing is: don’t pay too 2000s 100-year-old family forestry and saw- to companies for their employees’ lap- much attention to your fears. Common Robbie Barbero ’01 Th’02: I just finished mill business shortly after graduating. tops, desktops, and mobile devices. knowledge is that fear is a mechanism my Ph.D. in biological engineering at Our family owns and manages 25,000 Prior to Datacastle, I was the VP and of the brain that naturally protects for MIT. I’ll be staying at MIT as a post- acres of timberland in northern Min- general manager of mobile and broad- our safety. However, the “safety” there doctoral researcher for a few months nesota. We also operate two sawmills, band commerce at Qpass (acquired by only relates to that in the wild, not in to transition my projects while I look two planing mills, a veneer mill, and a Amdocs) and also was at Apple. I am the modern world. So, whenever you for jobs in biotech or cleantech. MIT millwork facility. We are trying to be the former president of the Dartmouth have a thought about doing some- has been great, but I’m really excited world-class stewards of our lands. I’m Alumni Association of Silicon Valley. I thing, ignore the fear and think only for the next step. proud to say that Minnesota forests live with my wife and three children in rationally. Brian Mason ’03 Th’05: Jocelyn and I wel- are in many ways the model for better Woodinville, Wash. Damien Shulock ’94 Th’95: I’m a mechani- comed our daughter Lynn Heather forestry in the world, and that through Xilin Jia Th’93: After Thayer, I have cal engineer in the medical device field. Mason on July 29. She was born a few our private business and our involve- worked in the greater IT industries. For the last three years I have worked weeks early at 5 pounds, 15 ounces, a ment in broader efforts, my family and Initially I was involved in software on a project that has been both chal- beautiful little wide-eyed girl. Every- I have played a significant leadership development in various companies. lenging and exciting. The project is a one is doing well. We are still living role in that effort. I currently serve One job was developing 3D capa- lumbar spine implant that can be in- in Menlo Park, Calif., where I work as

30 Dartmouth Engineer WINTER 2012 dartmouthengineer.com HELPING HAND Jeff Forsyth Th’11 programs the robotic arm of MAKO’s knee and hip surgical system.

a mechanical engineer in our medi- retrofits for existing buildings. I just commercial aircraft interiors at C&D Anson Moxness Th’11: I spent the summer cal product business. Jocelyn teaches received my LEED certification and Zodiac in Huntington Beach, Calif. working at Kathmandu University in first grade. We look forward to taking will be taking my P.E. exam this spring, Jatin Nema Th’10: This year has brought Nepal teaching SolidWorks basics to Lynn to a Dartmouth homecoming so let the studying begin! I completed a lot of changes. I took up the senior students and professors and conduct- soon! my first two century rides and my first business analyst position with TE Con- ing research into the efficiency of im- Keith Dennis ’03 Th’05: After leading the triathlon this year, and I also had the nectivity (formerly Tyco Electronics) proved wood cooking stoves for rural Policy and Guidance team for a $3.2- pleasure to return to Thayer this fall to within its global procurement func- areas of Nepal. billion stimulus program at the De- participate in the B.E. Advisory Com- tion. I worked there for seven months Christian Ortiz ’11 Th’11: I have a couple partment of Energy to implement mittee meetings. To no one’s surprise, before I decided to step back and find of projects in progress. I just finished clean energy across the country, I am I was impressed by (and jealous of) the opportunities more aligned with my organizing and running Dartmouth on detail to the White House Coun- stunning changes to the facilities in career ambitions. After searching for LEGO League, which hosted more cil on Environmental Quality, where Thayer as well as the continued quality about a month, I found a temporary than 200 elementary and middle I work on energy and climate issues. of coursework and projects. I always to-hire position with Harsco Corp. as school students, educators, families, Miral Anoop Shethia Th’08: I left my job get a little nostalgic being back there! a global supplier relationship man- and visitors. I think that it was a great as project analyst at Kantar Retail at Andrew Jean-Louis ’09 Th’10: I’m working ager. I enjoyed working on two busi- success and a lot of fun! I am helping Wilton, Conn., last year and moved at Navigant, and the primary client I ness process improvement projects. I to run Dartmouth Formula Racing to Mumbai, India, to join my family work with is the U.S. Department of worked with them for three months. in what is expected to be a great year. business. My family business, Shethia Energy. I’ve been working on their Recently, I took up a full-time job with We already have had the entire team Enterprise (shethiaenterprise.com), ENERGY STAR verification program a data analytics consulting group, Mu drive the car and feel how it handles. is one-stop shopping for all marine testing household appliances to ensure Sigma, and relocated to the Seattle, The team is months ahead of sched- equipment and materials for all ma- they meet required performance speci- Wash., area. My current title is as- ule compared to years past. I am very rine vessels. When I joined I saw that fications. I am also working to update sociate, and I solve clients’ problems excited about the enthusiasm and am- few clients have barges (mini-ships) the old test procedure for residential through my Indian offshore team. I bition that this team has. As a Thayer with 1,000-metric-ton capacity with refrigerators to account for new com- have enjoyed this year and it has been design fellow, I have created several a draft of 3.3 meters (the minimum pressor and heater technologies that a great learning experience. I cherish side projects for professors or research height needed near the coastline of have emerged recently. In an effort to the time I spent at Thayer and with my groups, including an earthquake sim- India is 3.6 meters). We decided to create cost-efficient curves, I also get friends during school. I am planning a ulator for Professor Vicki May and an build a larger-capacity barge (2,700 the chance to tear appliances apart to trip with my Thayer friends Kartik Vittal all-in-one laser instrument for Pro- metric tons) with a draft of 3.3 meters find out how manufacturers put their Th’09, Kaushik Prabhakar Th’09, Akhil Gokul fessor Brian Pogue’s research group. to help in fuel savings, as more mate- products together. We have this 6-foot Th’10, and Ramkumar Jayasankar Th’10 to Finally, I had the pleasure of assisting rial could be carried per trip. The main crowbar that we find any excuse to use! the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, and San all of the project-based, design courses purpose of this barge is to carry cargo Kyle Sherry ’09 Th’10: I moved to Somer- Francisco. (ENGS 12, 21, 76, 89) with everything from big-bulk carrying ships, which ville, Mass., from New Jersey in Janu- Jeff Forsyth Th’11: Since graduating from from mock-ups to CAD work, presen- cannot come close to shore since the ary to take a process development Thayer, I have begun my engineering tations, and research papers. Overall, water is too shallow, to the port. This engineer position at Midori Renew- career at a medical device company, I think that this kind of help was barge was designed in such a way that ables, a startup developing a new MAKO Surgical (makosurgical.com), beneficial for the teams and can only even during monsoons it will be able technology for converting lignocel- in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. MAKO is a increase as the design fellow position to transport cargo from the carriers to lulosic materials into renewable fuels fairly young company that markets a becomes more defined over the years. port and vice-versa. All materials, such and chemicals. I’m very excited! robotic arm system for knee and hip Wei Peng Th’11: I have been working as the steel, engines, gearbox, pumps, surgery. The resurfacing procedure with ZS Associates in Philadelphia, and anchors were procured by us and 2010s is less invasive than a full knee or hip Pa., since March in sales and market- fitted/assembled on a labor charge ba- Shahen Huda ’10, Th’11: I’m in grad school replacement and often reduces recov- ing consulting. I have found my skills sis. Hence the costs of the barge came at the University of Colorado at Boul- ery times. At MAKO I have joined the (optimization, statistics, marketing down substantially. The barge was der, studying the mechanisms by electrical engineering team and am re- and sales strategies, etc.) from the built in a record time of seven months which streams incise into bedrock. In sponsible for embedded programming M.E.M. program to be highly appli- with a cost of around $1.5 million. addition to appreciating the breadth and customer support. The robot runs cable and useful in my current posi- We plan to offer this barge on a hir- and depth of education I received in C code and is interfaced via MATLAB tion and in a way have been making it ing basis to the ports at a steady rate of Hanover, being here for a semester scripts, so I have been programming more enjoyable. $1,700 per day. Assuming a 12-month has made me appreciate even more the in both languages. In the case of robot Garrett Simpson ’11: I just got an engi- hiring period, the return on invest- openness to resources, the faculty, and issues in the field, I work to trouble- neering fellowship with PharmaSe- ment for this barge is approximately the collaborative spirit that defines the shoot by phone and, when necessary, cure in Delhi, India. I’m going to be three to four years. The life of this Thayer and Dartmouth student body. travel to resolve them. My company there starting January 7 for six months barge is 25 years. More than expected, I miss late nights feels small and its culture allows good to a year, traveling around to factories Laura Weyl Th’08: I’m continuing my ed- in the CAD lab and Couch and the interaction between people of differ- and helping get PharmaSecure’s code- ucation daily as I design earthquake- radiantly heated floor in the Atrium. ent backgrounds, including electrical, printing machinery installed in the OPPOSITE PAGE: COURTESY OF BRIAN MASON. THIS PAGE: COURTESY OF JEFF FORSYTH JEFF OF COURTESY PAGE: THIS MASON. BRIAN OF COURTESY PAGE: OPPOSITE safe, high-tech facilities and seismic Benjamin Meigs ’10 Th’11: I am designing mechanical, systems, and quality. automated packaging assembly lines.

Dartmouth Engineer WINTER 2012 31

THERMOBLASTER James Browning ’44 drilled through Antarctica’s inventions 1,400 feet-thick Ross Ice Shelf in nine hours.

THERMOBLAST A. Browning ’44, was success- ing of the principles governing Army Cold Regions Research FLAME-JET DRILL fully field tested on the polar the ‘cutting’ action of jet flames and Engineering Laboratory in ice. In 1977 Browning’s high- and to evaluate burning designs Hanover. As he gathered data, >> INVENTOR: temperature rocket drill pierced already available,” as he reported Browning computed the most JAMES A. BROWNING ’44 the 1,400-foot-thick ice shelf so in a paper, “Use of Internal efficient combinations of fuel, scientists could study the ocean Burners for Working Permafrost mass, and jet size for drilling in Scientists drilling into the Ross underneath. Drilling time: nine and Ice” at the 1963 Permafrost ice and frozen earth. After his Ice Shelf of Antarctica can look hours. International Conference. The success in Antarctica, he secured back at millions of years of Though the drilling was idea was that once the process nearly $240,000 in funding from the frozen continent’s history. quick, the development of the was better understood, burn- the National Science Foundation Probably few researchers, how- invention took a few decades. ers could be customized for the to develop a suspension core ever, know of a more recent bit As early as 1955 experiments task. Browning, who had already drill that would make it possible of ice shelf history. were being conducted to speed founded Thermal Dynamics to use flame-jet technology for Thirty-five years ago a new up drilling in frozen material with Thayer colleague Merle another tricky task: studying kind of drilling technology, using flame jets. Browning began Thorpe Th’53 to produce plasma rock formations under ice caps dubbed “Thermoblast” by its a series of experiments in 1962 torches, ran tests on blocks of and glaciers.

inventor, Thayer Professor James “to gain a better understand- ice and in frozen silt at the U.S. —Lee Michaelides COURTESY RIGHT, BENTLEY; R. CHARLES OF COURTESY LEFT, PAGE: THIS LAPIERRE LOCONTE KATHRYN PAGE: OPPOSITE BIGL. ROBERT OF

­32 DARTMOUTH ENGINEER WINTER 2012 dartmouthengineer.com DARTMOUTH ENGINEER VOLUME 8 / NUMBER 1

RANDOM WALK A walk along the second floor of Cummings Hall is now also a stroll down memory lane. A Wall of Patents documents the flow of inventions from research and course project work done by Thayer School faculty, students, and staff since the 1970s. The first, U.S. Patent 3,605,843, was granted September 20, 1971 to former professor and pro- lific entrepreneur Robert Dean Jr. and Hypertherm founder Richard Couch Jr. ’64 Th’65. Their inven- tion: a cashew nut sheller. The most recent, U.S. Patent 7,994,786 B2, granted August 9, 2011 to Professors John Weaver, Ian Baker, and Eric Hansen, protects an innovation aimed at treating cancer: System and Method for Use of Nanoparticles in Imaging and Temperature Measurement. From a total of 134 U.S. patents, 94 are held by faculty, 20 by students, and 20 by teams of faculty, students, and staff. Another 39 patent applications filed since 2009 are awaiting their place in Thayer history. THAYER SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING NON-PROFIT DARTMOUTH COLLEGE U.S. POSTAGE 14 ENGINEERING DRIVE PAID HANOVER, NH 03755 DARTMOUTH COLLEGE