C L A S S N O T E S

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1 9 9 2 Douglas Pesak attended grad school at Michigan after HMC but was soon moved to Illinois after his adviser took a position there.

In 1997, he received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and took a position at Thiokol (now part of ATK). Douglas was a real rocket scientist for about four years, formulating thermoset resins for composite rocket cases. Soon after, he took the opportunity and moved back to his na- tive Connecticut to work for Bedoukian Research as a process chemist in their R & D labs. He now spends his days trying to find economi- cal routes to flavor and fragrance chemicals and insect pheromones. Outside of work, Douglas lives in Oxford, Conn., with his wife, Stacey, and their 5-year-old, Sarah, and 2-year-old, Aubree. If your travels ever take you to southwestern Connecticut, Douglas welcomes your visit.

1 9 9 3 Zach Mason received his Ph.D. in computer science from Brandeis and is currently principal scientist at Efficient Frontier, a

Silicon Valley start-up. He just published his first novel, “The Lost Books of the Odyssey” which has won prizes and was reviewed in the Los Angeles Times on March 15, 2009.

Jennifer Nichols welcomed daughter Anna Louise into the family on July 3, 2009. She quickly wrapped her big brothers Joshua, 13, Timothy, 8, Nathan, 5, and her daddy, Mike Nichols ’90, around her tiny little finger.

1 9 9 4 Marie Kao-Hsieh is living in North Potomac, Maryland. She is expecting her third child to join 8-year-old Natalie and 4-year-old

Joey. Marie is working as a private practice dentist with current em- ployer, Robert Kelly, D.D.S. and Associates. Her husband, Matthew, currently works as a staff clinician at NIH working on clinical trials/ research in blood stem cell transplant in sickle cell anemia. He was published in the Dec. 10, 2009 edition of the New England Journal of

Medicine.

1 9 9 5 REUNION YEAR

After a long slog through various bits of academia—the University

of Washington, the Institute of Cancer Research in London, and UC Davis—and an abortive stint in the medical device industry, Susannah Bloch has found her true calling in a totally different arena. She is currently an editor/analyst of health care reports at the Government Accountability Office. She lives with her husband, Daniel Dulay, and daughter, Caroline (3 going on 17!).

1 9 9 6 Nikki Bailey has been teaching for 14 years and still enjoys it. For the last seven years, she has worked at Long Beach Poly High School. She

has two little boys, a 7-year-old and a 6-month-old.

Abigail Brown-McLellan married Dan McLellan in June 2009. They live in San Diego, where Abby teaches math at Torrey Pines High School. Dan is the sportswriter for www.sandiego.com. Abby and Dan recently traveled to Europe and China. While there, Abby was a keynote speaker at several conferences where she discussed the work she and her students do using the computer software, Mathematica.

2 0 0 0 REUNION YEAR

Megan Hall has, after two and a half years in London, returned stateside

and to New York where she continues to work as a writer in a pharmaceuti- cal advertising agency.

Carissa Wecker Heinreich and her husband, Santosh, welcomed a daughter, Lorelei Grace, on Dec. 8, 2008. Carissa is currently on leave of absence from her position in project management at Boeing.

2 0 0 2 Nathaniel Dirksen is a character technical director at PDI/Dream- works. He reports that he is now setting up characters for “Shrek 4.” “We

set up the skeleton that allows the character to move, define all of the controls the animators use to position them, set up muscles and skin so that it deforms in a believable fashion, and create simulations to give life to hair and clothing. So there’s a fair bit of math and quite a lot of coding, but also a strong artistic aspect,” he said. Nathaniel was a character technical director on “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa,” setting up a variety of char- acters and props. He prepared the setups for the lion manes for several characters. He and his wife, Jennifer (Sherman) Dirksen developed a new, visual

and manipulative-based approach to introducing proofs to high school students called ProofBlocks. Nathaniel says, ”It’s in use in many schools in California already, and we’re still spreading the word! This year, Jenni is presenting it at National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ annual meeting, which is the largest and most prestigious national conference for math teachers.”

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