Ever wonder what your fellow residents have been up to since MIT?  Well, now is your chance to catch up!  Whether moving across the globe or just down the street, making films or computer apps, teaching engineering or learning circus arts, we think you’ll agree that Sidney-Pacific alumni have been leading fascinating lives.

Compiled and edited by: Chelsea He

• Amy Bilton (PhD ’13, Course 16) had a busy fall.  She defended her PhD in September, got married to her long-time boyfriend Andreas in October, and spent most of November on her honeymoon in Southeast Asia.  She is currently a postdoc at MIT and is searching for academic jobs.

• Timothy Chan (PhD ’07, Operations Research) and Laura Cham (SM ’05, Transportation) met at a dance party at SP and were members of SPEC in 2004-2005.  After getting engaged on 07/07/07, they married on 08/08/08 and currently live in Toronto, Canada, where he is a professor and she is a transportation planner.  They are living proof that being on SPEC has benefits beyond Dottie’s cooking.

• Allison Chang (PhD ’12, Operations Research) spent the summer after graduation doing a mix of research and traveling. She also moved out of SP after five glorious years in 3-South, and in September started as a new member of the research staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. She still lives near Central Square, and enjoys being a part of many of the same communities (ballroom dance, musical theatre, church) as before.

• After taking a two-year post-PhD detour that involved work at a pharmaceutical company, a non-profit hospital, and a startup, Leonid Chindelevitch (PhD ’10, Applied Math) decided to return to academia in September and started a position as a postdoctoral fellow at the university down the road’s School of Public Health. He also tried the role of a street musician earlier this summer, playing classical guitar in some public areas in Boston and Cambridge. Lastly, he just launched a blog, mathophilia.com, where he discusses the role of mathematics and mathematicians in our society.

• Lillian Dai (PhD ’08, Course 6) has a 1.5 year old who is starting to put sentences together, and a 3.5 year old who wastes no time in exerting her influence on her sister’s first few sentences. In an interest to keep her kids bilingual, she and a few friends got together to build a second-language learning app for young kids. Her first Kickstarter campaign for the app was just recently launched. Come by and take a look!

• Chuck Eesley (PhD ’09, Course 15) has been enjoying all that the Bay Area has to offer after being hired as a faculty member three years ago in the Stanford School of Engineering, teaching technology entrepreneurship.

• Andrea Gabert, Esq. (PhD ’07, Chemistry) passed the Massachusetts Bar Exam and will continue to work at Wolf Greenfield in Boston as a patent attorney. Her husband, Daryush Mehta (SM ’06, EECS and PhD ’10, HST), continues to work as a research scientist at the Massachusetts General Hospital Voice Center to better understand why some people develop voice disorders while others do not. Soon they hope to say, “We have an app for that!” Andrea and Daryush send their best wishes to the entire SP family!

• Marc Haddad (PhD ’08, Technology Management and Policy) joined the School of Industrial Engineering at the Lebanese American University (LAU) as Assistant Professor of Systems Engineering and Management.

• Qiang Han (MBA ’09, Course 15) spent 2 years living at SP, first in 441A, then in 712 and as one of the officers.  His girlfriend was a classmate and fellow SP alum, having lived in 537B during her first year at Sloan.  They fell in love during their first month in SP, and after five years, got married this past summer! They know at least 6 other Sloan classmates (3 couples) in the Class of ’09 who stayed at SP while at MIT and eventually got married to one another.  SP provides a place not only of warmth and care, but of romance as well!

• After graduating from MIT, Sriram Krishnan (PhD ’07, Course 2) headed to the windy city of Chicago for a couple of years. In 2009, he got married to Sowmya Balasubramanian, then moved to San Antonio for a couple more years before landing back in Boston. He is currently a market analyst and strategy consultant focused on the solar industry. On a personal note, Sriram and Sowmya are thrilled to be welcoming their first child in January 2013.

• George Lan (SM ’12, Course 15) recently started working at Elsevier in their global academic relations division.  In his free time, he enjoys plotting (not-so) secret SP reunions (#SPAlums_NYC).  The things he misses most about SP are: 1) the crazy, exciting bustle of preparing monthly brunches, 2) the creative, culinary creations of House Cup food-related events, 3) a free gym inside the building, and 4) Dottie’s homemade carrot cake.

• Joseph Laracy (SM ’07, Engineering Systems) received the STB degree from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in June 2012, and was ordained to the transitional diaconate by Archbishop John J. Myers at the altar of the chair in St. Peter’s Basilica on October 4, 2012.  He will be ordained to the priesthood at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, New Jersey on May 25, 2013.

• After leaving MIT in August 2011, Jeff Mo (SM ’10, Course 10) headed to Paris, France for an internship at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).  After spending six months there studying the fiscal impact of immigration and eating a pastry every afternoon, he went backpacking around China for three months before moving to London, UK for a second master’s degree in Economics at the London School of Economics.  Let him know if you’re in town!

• Arthur Musah (SB ’04, MEng ’05, Course 6-2) went back to school in 2009 to study filmmaking in Los Angeles. He is now back in Cambridge making his first feature length film, a coming of age documentary about 5 African youths on a quest for knowledge at MIT. Shot over 4 years as their lives meander between North America and Africa, the film is chronicling how they discover engineering, the world and their adult selves. Arthur is keeping a production blog about making this film on the website www.onedayitoogofly.com. He hopes you check it out and send him your thoughts on your own life and times at the Institute as he attempts to capture the essence of the MIT undergrad experience.  Additionally, you can read an interview with Arthur recently published in The Tech.

• After finishing at MIT, Robin Stewart (SM ’08, Course 6) moved to Seattle and developed Mac and iPad apps for several years. He now works for Tableau Software, designing and prototyping ideas for their suite of data visualization products.  In his spare time he’s learning aerial circus arts!

• Chia-Hung Wu (PhD ’09, Chemistry) is currently doing a postdoc in the “division” of Biology at “the other Institute of Technology.”  Proud to be an MIT beaver, he likes to wear his MIT hat and sometimes gets peculiar looks from people on campus.  One day, while waiting in a line for a free food tasting (a postdoc is just 1.5 graduate student) at a festival hosted by a local business, a guy behind him tapped his shoulder and kindly reminded him that it could be dangerous to walk around Pasadena wearing an MIT hat.  The conversation drew some laughs in the crowd, probably from some other beavers.  Despite the warning, he still proudly wears his MIT hat around.

Like what you see?  We invite you to add your story to the next issue by emailing: sp-alumni-news [at] mit [dot] edu