Where Are They Now? Assorted Updates on ARCS Scholar Alums
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Where Are They Now? Assorted Updates on ARCS Scholar Alums Mr. Timothy Linn, 1995 ARCS Scholar, University of Colorado at Boulder. Timothy Linn was an ARCS Scholar at UC/Boulder while working on his Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering. He is currently a Senior Staff Engineer working within Systems Engineering and Guidance, Navigation and Controls (GN&C) at Lockheed Martin in Denver and has over 17 years’ experience in program and cost management, attitude control dynamics, spacecraft design and system engineering. He is currently the Systems Engineering Manager for the OSIRIS-REx program, which is an asteroid sample return mission, scheduled to launch in September of 2016, as well as the ACS lead engineer working on the GRAIL program, a program that launched two spacecraft that are currently orbiting the moon to determine its interior makeup and perform gravity mapping of the moon, over 100 times better than ever before. He is responsible for the technical oversight, cost accounting, scheduling and interfacing to project managements for both programs. Prior to his current positions, he was the GN&C lead for the Phoenix Lander Mission to Mars, which culminated with a successful landing on Mars and before this, he was the lead GN&C engineer in charge of spacecraft attitude control performance for NASA’s Genesis Mission. He has been very involved in new business acquisitions and has supported various proposal efforts with attitude control architectures and key requirement formulations. In 2012, Timothy completed his MBA at Regis University to enable him to transition to more business development areas and leadership roles. Dr. Deborah Kilpatrick, 1993-1996 ARCS Scholar, Georgia Institute of Technology. Deborah Kilpatrick, PhD, is currently Senior Vice President at a privately held genomic diagnostics company in Palo Alto, CA called CardioDx. Deborah joined the company in 2006 and currently has responsibility for multiple commercial functions, including product marketing and both sales and marketing for managed care organizations. In 2010, CardioDx was recognized in the Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Awards and in TIME Magazine's Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs, and the company recently won gold at the 2012 Edison Awards for product innovation for its Corus CAD product—the world’s first gene expression diagnostic for obstructive coronary artery disease. Prior to joining CardioDx Deborah spent 9 years at the Vascular Intervention Division of Guidant Corporation, where her roles included Research Fellow, Director of Research and Technology Development, and Director of New Ventures, with focus on incubating new therapy programs targeting atherosclerosis and structural heart disease. Early in her career, Deborah was a structural engineer at Pratt and Whitney focused on U.S. military aircraft engine programs, including the F22 Raptor. Deborah now serves on the Advisory Boards for the Georgia Institute of Technology and for its College of Engineering, and she is a frequent lecturer at Stanford University. She is on the Board of Directors for the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation, is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, and has received a Rising Star award from the Healthcare Businesswoman's Association. She holds multiple U.S. patents, a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering with a focus in cardiovascular bioengineering, and a B.S. in engineering science and mechanics from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Jonathon Kil, 1991 ARCS Scholar, Georgetown University. More than one in 10 Americans — an estimated 30 to 40 million people — have lost some hearing, many as a result of noise damage, treatment with drugs, or simply by getting older. Worse, that loss is permanent — once hearing is gone, it’s gone for good. Dr. Jonathan Kil, a 1991 ARCS Foundation Scholar at Georgetown University, thinks that doesn’t have to be the case. Dr. Kil and colleagues at Sound Pharmaceuticals, a Seattle-based biotechnology company, are developing drugs to protect people from hearing loss, and even restore hearing in those who already have profound impairments. The idea, he explains, is to reduce levels of a protein that keeps sensory cells within the ear from regenerating. That, in turn, could help hair cells crucial to hearing grow. The company’s first products are being tested among people with noise-induced hearing loss and will soon be tried in people with loss due to chemotherapy. ARCS Foundation support was important to his education, Dr. Kil says, but funding is even more crucial for today’s students. To support them, Dr. Kil recently established an ARCS Foundation fellowship at the University of Washington, where he completed his post-doctoral work in otolaryngology. “I thought it was an appropriate thing to do, having been awarded a fellowship 15 years ago,” he says. “The benefit that I experienced from ARCS Foundation was validation that I could make a significant contribution, and I think that’s important for all students in science.” Dr. Douglas A. Nitz, 1990 ARCS Scholar, UCLA. Dr. Douglas A. Nitz received a B.A. in psychology at the University of Cincinnati, where he performed experiments looking at the effects of cocaine and antidepressant medications on brain stimulation reward thresholds. Dr. Nitz received ARCS Foundation support while in the graduate program in neuroscience at UCLA. Working with Jerome Siegel, he received his PhD in 1995 for work uncovering the role of the neurotransmitter GABA in inhibiting serotonergic and noradrenergic neurons during rapid-eye-movement sleep. He then learned multiple single-unit recording techniques in freely behaving animals as a post-doctoral student at the University of Arizona. Since November 1998, Dr. Nitz has worked at The Neuroscience Institute in San Diego, California. Here he combines research interests from his graduate and post-graduate experiences. Presently, research focuses on the effects of sleep deprivation on neocortical activity patterns as well as the role of the parietal and frontal cortices in spatial navigation. He also travels each year to Bowling Green, Ohio, to maintain an ongoing collaboration in which the neural basis of homing pigeon navigation is examined. Kim Polese, 1983 ARCS Scholar, UC Berkeley. Kim Polese was a 1983 ARCS Scholar while at UC Berkeley. She is chairman, chief strategy officer and co-founder of Marimba, Inc., a leading provider of Internet infrastructure management solutions. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley, and studied computer science at the University of Washington, Seattle. Prior to co-founding Marimba, Ms. Polese spent more than seven years at Sun Microsystem and was the original product manager for Java. She has been named one of Time magazine’s Top 25 Most Influential People in America, one of Red Herring’s Top 20 Entrepreneurs, and one of Computer Reseller News’ Top 25 Executives. Ms. Polese is a member of the board of directors of TechNet, a bipartisan coalition of digital-economy executives focusing on strengthening America’s leadership in the new economy. She is also an advisory board member of W.I.T.I. (Women in Technology International), and GirlGeeks, the career and training community for aspiring young women in computing. Dr. Jeffrey P. Wilde, 1982 ARCS Scholar, Texas Tech University. Dr. Jeffrey P. Wilde was a 1982 ARCS Scholar while studying for a B.S. in Engineering Physics at Texas Tech University. He continued his education at Stanford University, where he earned a PhD in Applied Physics in 1992. He founded Quinta Corporation in San Jose, California, to develop hybrid magnetic/optical storage technology. Seagate Technology purchased Quinta Corporation in 1997, and Dr. Wilde became senior director at Seagate Technology and laboratory director for Seagate Research West. He is currently assisting several start-up companies in an advisory role and is considering a new venture in the area of optical networking. Dr. Ralph B. James, 1979-1980 ARCS Scholar, Caltech. Dr. Ralph B. James received his ARCS Foundation scholar award as a PhD student at Caltech in 1979-1980. Since 1985, he has worked to develop solid-state sensors based on semiconductors, particularly cadmium zinc telluride (CZT), whose use has allowed for an improved means to image radioactive materials. Instruments are now in use or under development to study gamma ray bursts emanating from deep space, detect heart disease, conduct high-resolution bone scans, and provide for better localization of cancerous tumors and other abnormalities. In 1997, Discover Magazine selected Dr. James as Innovator of the Year in the field of imaging. In 1998, R&D Magazine recognized his work to develop CZT-based instruments to enhance the safety and accountability of nuclear materials worldwide as one of the year’s top 100 products benefitting humankind. In 1999, he was again selected for this award, based on his research to improve the performance of solid-state radiation detectors for nuclear-medical applications such as breast cancer detection. He subsequently won the award two more times. Dr. James has authored or co-authored more than 400 scientific publications and has edited 15 books. Louise Kirkbride, 1973 ARCS Scholar, Caltech. On a July evening in 1969, 17-year-old Louise Kirkbride saw the televised image of Americans landing on the moon and knew that she wanted to pursue a career in science and technology. So, defying her parents, she ran away to join the first freshman class of women at the California Institute of Technology. She took with her only a promise of tuition support, $200 in cash, and a clutch of scholar awards including one from ARCS Foundation. “I knew I had to make enough money to live on,” says Kirkbride, who recently retired after founding three successful high- technology companies. “And that’s why the scholarships I got were so meaningful.” At Caltech, Kirkbride earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in electrical engineering and began her career at the school’s famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory.