Class Notes

Fall 2015

Academy Award-winner John Melanson (ElEngrCompSci’74) has received 278 U.S. patents, and has another 91 patent applications pending. His work has contributed to breakthroughs in the fields of audio- and mixed-signal processing and LED controller technologies. The part-time Boulder resident has worked for 15 years at Cirrus Logic in Austin, Texas, and he serves as the company’s senior technical fellow. He won an Academy Award in 2004 for digital audio editing in film. He also has received the Outstanding Inventor Award from the Austin Intellectual Property Law Association.

President Barack Obama named Adrian Chavez (MCompSci’05) a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. This award is the highest honor the U.S. government gives scientists and engineers who are beginning their careers. An Albuquerque native, Adrian works for Sandia National Laboratories. His focus is on cybersecurity for critical infrastructure such as power grids, oil and gas refineries and water pipelines.

After retiring from Microsoft in February, Louis Flint Ceci (MCompSci’88) plans to write more stories and novels about the residents of Croy, Okla., a fictional town in the south-central part of that state and the setting of his 2008 novel Comfort Me. At Microsoft, Louis served as a senior software engineer and worked on Skype for Android, specializing in adapting the user interface for use by the visually impaired.

Mick Correll (CompSci, MCDBio’00) is chief executive officer of Genospace, which provides a platform for genomic and other biomedical data. He has worked in genomics for more than 15 years. Prior to Genospace, Mick co-established the Center for Cancer Computational Biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He lives in Cambridge, Mass.

In April Sean Smiley (Math, CompSci’02) joined Cimation, a consulting firm serving the energy industry, as operations director for the Denver office. Among other duties, he is responsible for establishing the regional business unit’s vision and execution strategies.

Spring 2015

Congratulations to Martin Burtscher (PhDCompSci'00, advisor Ben Zorn) and Marcos Gruteser (PhDCompSci'04, advisor Dirk Grunwald) on being honored as 2014 ACM Distinguished Scientists!

Eric Schweikardt’s (CompSci, EnvDes’98) Moss robot-construction kits gained great support after a crowdfunding campaign began last year. Eric is co-founder of Boulder-based Modular Robotics. The campaign brought in $77,000 in pledges in the first seven and a half hours, according to an article published in BizWest. The kits include different plastic modules, such as sensors or motors with magnets embedded in the corners, for connection points.

Fall 2014

Mark Lewis (MAstro’98, MCompSci’00, PhDAstro’01) was recently promoted to full professor in the computer science department at Trinity University. Lewis lives in San Antonio.

Spring 2013

Lucy Sanders (MS CompSci '78), CEO of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), was selected to receive the 2012 A. Nico Habermann Award. Lucy, along with colleagues Robert Schnabel and Telle Whitney, were given the award in recognition of their joint efforts to establish and sustain NCWIT, a national resource dedicated to encouraging greater participation of women in the development of computing technology.

Kyle Way (ElEngr/CompSci '84, MS ElEngr '87) sent his triplets (Dylan, Taylor, and Adrienne) to CU this fall where they are enjoying their freshman year. Dylan plans to major in electrical engineering, Taylor in aerospace engineering, and Adrienne in film studies.

Pamela Drew (Math '87, MS CompSci '87, PhD '91) was appointed president of the Information Systems business area at Exelis, based in Herndon, Virginia. Pam previously was senior vice president of strategic capabilities and technology at TASC, Inc., where she led a team that provided systems engineering and integration, cybersecurity, financial and business analytics, and test and evaluation solutions to address intelligence, defense and federal-civilian customer needs.
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Herb Morreale (CompSci '91) was selected to receive the college's 2013 Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award. Herb currently is the founder and CEO of 6kites, Inc. and chairman of Topplers, a charitable organization that annually gives the Domino Award to computer science students.

Tadayoshi Kohno (CompSci '99) was featured on PBS's NOVA scienceNOW in October in an episode that examines whether science can help solve crime. Kohno serves on the CS faculty at the University of Washington. His work includes showing how cars, medical devices and other interconnected gadgets can be hacked. 

Leah Buechley (MS CompSci '03, PhD '07) will present "Learning to Love Technology by Making Arts and Crafts" on April 10 as part of the ATLAS Speaker Series at CU-Boulder. Leah is an associate professor at the MIT Media Lab where she directs the High-Low Tech research group and is an expert in electronic textiles.

Scott Carpenter (CompSci '03) has spent the last year and a half helping grow Skytap, Inc., a Seattle cloud computing startup.

Aaron Cephers (CompSci '10) has started his own tech business.

Since graduating, Doug Stillings (CompSci '12) started a job at Ricoh, moved to Longmont, and had a baby, born in August 2012