Class Notes

Pianist, teacher and composer Deborah Yardley Beers (DMus’84) serves on the piano faculty at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass. She launched her own website, deborahyardleybeers.com to post video clips of her performances, as well as information for prospective students and about the music she has composed for pianists and students. She lives in Lexington, Mass.

Freelance journalist Murray Carpenter (Psych’85) mostly covers stories about science and the environment, reporting for the New York Times, theBoston Globe and NPR, among others. Murray lives in Belfast, Maine.

The Boulder Chamber honored Catherine Underhill (Art’85), executive director of the Colorado Music Festival, as one of five “Women Who Light the Community.” Catherine was instrumental in the music festival merger with the Rocky Mountain Center for Musical Arts in 2009. Today the festival reaches more than 20,000 individuals. She lives in Louisville, Colo.

Solatube International’s Neall Digert (ArchEngr’87, PhDCivEngr’99) has been promoted to vice president of product enterprise. Solatube International manufactures “Tubular Daylighting Devices,” energy-efficient natural daylighting systems. Neall focuses on new design and application tool protocols to support the company’s integration of optical daylighting products into commercial, industrial and residential buildings. He lives in Carlsbad, Calif.

In July 2010 Susanne Skyrm’s (DMus’88) Anthology of Eighteenth-Century Spanish Keyboard Music (Wayne Leupold) was published. The volume is a significant resource for Spanish keyboard works as many of the pieces in the volume have not previously been published in the United States. Susanne has been on the keyboard faculty at the University of South Dakota since 1988. She maintains an active recital schedule and lives in Vermillion, S.D.

After 18 years with clothing company The Territory Ahead, Matthew Cooper (IntlBus’89) launched Carbon2Cobalt, a Santa Barbara-based men’s clothing company. He oversees all aspects of the business, from design and manufacturing to marketing. His line is about trying “to blend rugged with refined” in casual clothes, he told the Santa Barbara News-Press in a feature earlier in the year. He lives with his wife and children in Mission Canyon, Calif.

Boulder resident Jim Kasic (EngrPhys’89, MChemEngr’93) is president and CEO of Boulder-based Sophono Inc. The company has received federal approval for its new Otomag Alpha 1 Bone Conduction Hearing System. It is designed for patients with conductive hearing loss and replaces the functions of that part of the ear. Magnetic discs hold the device in place, eliminating the need for a titanium abutment.

Dumpster diving is an adventure for Aaron LaPedis (Soc’90) every spring because of the huge amount of valuable items thrown away by university students and skiers alike. As a guest columnist for theDenver Post, he wrote an article about the treasures that can be found in trash bins near ski resorts and college campuses. Aaron is an art and collectibles dealer and author of The Garage Sale Millionaire (A Beautiful Media). He lives in Denver.

Carmel, Ind., resident Kevin Seibert (ChemEngr’90) works at the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. He received the 2010 Excellence in Design award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers for his contribution to Quality by Design for Drug Substance to advance smarter approaches to drug development. He was one of the award’s first recipients.

Last winter Louisa Stark (PhDEPOBio’92) received the 2010 Governor’s Medal for Science and Technology from Utah’s governor Gary Herbert. The award recognized her leadership as director of the Genetic Science Learning Center at the University of Utah.

Twins Emerson and Atticus Walsh were born to parents Kerri and Matthew Walsh (Film’92) last spring. Matthew writes that the babies received their first CU gear, matching Buff wool hats, when they were three months old. The family is a Pac-12 family as Kerri graduated from the University of Southern California. They live in Glendale, Calif.

Last summer Sarah Welton (Law’93) and her wife Courtney Mitchell were at the forefront of an important milestone in Nepal’s history. They were the first lesbian couple to be married in Nepal, although same-sex marriages are not legal there. They told The Denver Post they were happy to contribute to the campaign for gay rights in Nepal. The couple lives in Denver with their daughter.

The flute became a lifelong passion for Peggy Bruns (MMus’94) after she received her first $50 instrument. She wanted to share her love for music with others and in 1995 started a music school, the Rocky Mountain Center for Musical Arts, with Kathy Kuscan (MMus’90, PhD’95) who she met at CU. The school serves 600 students a week and is a joint organization with the Colorado Music Festival, which gives people more opportunities to follow their musical dreams. Peggy lives in Longmont, Colo.

Climber Jeff Evans (Anth’94) and his team made it to the finale on last summer’s adventure show Expedition Impossible, which aired on ABC. It featured 13 teams racing through the deserts, rivers and mountains of Morocco. His longtime friend and blind teammate Eric Weihenmayer have been climbing together for 20 years, with Jeff acting as his friend’s eyes on the mountain. They have participated in other adventure races around the world and climbed Mount Everest together. Jeff lives in Boulder.

At CU Janet deGrazia (MChemEngr’94, PhD’98) teaches a course about cutting-edge areas of science with applications in health and society. The course, “Creative Technology/Social Impact,” enrolls more than 400 students a semester. She lives in Boulder.

Brett Duryea (EnvSt’94) is co-owner of PC Autotune, a software application that tunes and updates personal computers automatically. Users pay a small yearly price for the program. Brett lives in Louisville, Colo.

Cancer researcher Kevin Mills (MCDBio’94) was promoted to associate professor at Jackson Laboratory. He studies the fundamental processes relating to the stability of the genome, focusing on understanding the mechanisms that manage genome instability and how the failure of the mechanisms leads to diseases. He is working on “genetic chemotherapy” to develop precise, targeted cancer treatments that induce cancer cell self-destruction. He also is developing new drugs for treating cancers. Kevin lives in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Denver resident Salvador Quintana (Bus’94) opened the Quintana Law Firm, which provides legal representation in the areas of business/corporate law, real estate law, wills and trusts drafting and estate planning. Before starting the firm, he was an associate attorney at a Denver law firm and practiced real estate law and contracts law. He also served as counsel for Mines & Associates and has worked in public relations, fundraising, management and marketing for corporations and nonprofit organizations.

Entrepreneur Henry Schloss (Comm’95) created the “Energy House” in Denver as a space that allows people of different career backgrounds to share work space by buying memberships for the house. He told The Denver Post his hope is entrepreneurs will be able to feed off of each others’ ideas to start successful businesses. The 7,000-square-foot-building at 15th and Delgany streets includes Internet access, a kitchen and a conference room. Henry’s plan is to open 100 co-working locations nationwide. He lives in Boulder.

Former Alumni Association staffer and doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia Leasa Weimer (Comm, Psych’95) received a Fulbright grant and an American-Scandinavian Foundation grant in support of her dissertation research on international student fees. The grant allows her to spend the 2011-12 academic year in Finland.