Class Updates

Class Updates is a place where you can learn about the latest developments in the lives of your fellow alumni. If you have something exciting to announce to your classmates, such as the birth of a child, a wedding, or a new job, please send your class update to us at ini-alumni@cmu.edu.

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Alex Nizhner (MS15) announces the birth of his son Kai, who was born at 6:23 pm on Sunday, September 23, 2007 at NYU Medical Center in New York City, weighing in at 7 pounds 6 ounces, and measuring 20.5 inches head to toe. Alex reports that he and his wife Nozomi are in a state of "exhausted sleep-deprived happiness."

Engagement!

Abhijit Deshmukh (MS16) writes happily to announce his engagement to Ankini Shah (MS17). Abhijit went to great heights, literally, to pop the question via an air banner and coordinated the making of a scrapbook from family and friends in honor of important events in her life. The couple first met at the INI in 2005 when Abhijit was a senior and Ankini a junior, and they later dated. Both were recruited by Microsoft upon their respective graduations. The two INI alumni became engaged on October 20, 2007 in Redmond, Washington.

The INI wishes the couple much happiness for this new chapter of their lives!

Sriram Subramanian (MS14), with wife Smriti.

Rudolph Araujo (MS14) was recently awarded a Microsoft Visual Developer - Security MVP designation. The award recognizes Rudolph's thought leadership and contribution to the application development and software security communities.

Rudolph is a Senior Software Security Consultant and trainer at Foundstone . At Foundstone, Rudolph is responsible for creating and delivering the threat modeling and security code review service lines. Rudolph is also responsible for content creation and training delivery for Foundstone’s Building Secure Software and Writing Secure Code – ASP.NET class. Rudolph has many years of software development experience on both UNIX and Windows environments. Prior to Foundstone, Rudolph led the checks development team at BindView . He has also worked as a software developer at Morgan Stanley . Most recently, Rudolph has worked as a researcher at Carnegie Mellon CyLab investigating virus and worm threats over peer-to-peer networks. Rudolph holds a Masters Degree from Carnegie Mellon University with a focus on information security. He is the author of Foundstone’s .NET Security Toolkit, SSLDigger and Hacme Bank tools.

Yoshisato Takeda (MS13) with daughter Una, now 1 year and 6 months old

Chris Lord (MS13) and Trudi Lord of Natick, Massachusetts welcome Nathaniel Leone Lord, born June 1st, 2005 at 4:34pm at Newton-Wellesley Hospital. Nathaniel was 8 lbs, 9 oz and 23 inches long. Everyone is happy, healthy and doing well. Pictures are available at www.chrisandtrudi.com .

Chris is an engineering manager with Softricity in Boston where he leads a team developing application streaming and virtualization software for Windows. He received his Masters in Information Networking from Carnegie Mellon in 2003. His thesis, An Emergent Model of Immune Cognition, explored reinforcement learning and associative memory in an agent-based model employing property-based types. Trudi is a researcher at the Concord Consortium where she studies the use of modeling software to teach science to high school students. She received her Masters in Education from Harvard in 2000.

Benicio Sanchez (MS11) and his wife are expecting a baby girl, Camila, around the end of October. This picture shows his son Benny.

A paper that Benicio wrote at the INI with Michelle Berger, Servio Lima, Alexandros Manoussakis and Juan Pulgarin titled "A Performance Comparison of TCP Protocols over Mobile Ad Hoc Wireless Networks" was just approved for publishing at the 2006 Electronics, Robotics and Automotive Mechanics Conference (CERMA 2006). They are currently looking for sponsorship to allow Servio to travel from Ecuador to present at the conference. The paper will be published in IEEExplorer.

Bohan Chen (MS10) graduated from the INI with an MSIN in 1999. He is currently a Senior Member of Technical Staff at Oracle. Bohan recently passed the Oracle certified master practicum and has become an Oracle Certified Master (OCM) . The OCM is the highest certification/honor an Oracle database expert can obtain, and there are currently only a handful of people worldwide who have achieved this certification.

Javier Macchi (MS09) is currently working at IBM Business Consulting Services after IBM acquired PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting. Javier has been doing consultant work for the past five years since graduating from the INI. Javier got married last August and currently resides in Santiago de Chile.

Michael G. Bruce (MS06) is the President and CEO of inScope Technologies, a technology services firm targeting the government and commercial sectors. inScope is selectively acquiring small and mid-sized IT companies that possess innovative solutions but need strong sales and marketing leadership.

Mike began his career at Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) in seventh grade and continued through high school as Bellcore's youngest full-time intern. As an undergraduate, Mike attended both MIT and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he graduated with honors in Computer Science. In 1995, he received a Master's degree from the Information Networking Institute of Carnegie Mellon University where he serves as Chair of the Dean's Leadership Council.

Mike is an energetic entrepreneur and an active member of the local and regional community, where he sits on various academic,economic, and social boards. Mike and his wife Sarah live in Leesburg, Virginia with their four children.

Michael Spartz (MS03) is a senior engineer at Qualcomm . He joined Qualcomm in late 1994 and was involved in the system design and development of the Globalstar satellite system. Globalstar is a low-earth orbit satellite system using 48 satellites to provide coverage to almost all parts of the globe. Michael started working on the switching system design and later was responsible for leading a large team to develop the switching subsystem. Michael was also involved in Qualcomm's efforts to use Globalstar to provide voice and high speed data to commercial and corporate aircraft, including to support improved safety capabilities following 9/11/01.

In 2001, Michael moved into the chip division, Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT), where he began working on the system design for the WCDMA/GSM/GPRS modem chips for mobile phones. WCDMA offers efficient voice and high speed mobile data capabilities and is just beginning to reach commercial maturity in several parts of the world (Japan, Europe). Prior to Qualcomm, Michael spent three years at Bell Communications Research (Bellcore - now Telcordia ) in Red Bank, NJ. His responsibilities were to assist in developing network element requirements for the Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN), including developing a lab AIN network with features such as voice activated dialing, for demonstration to Bellcore clients and to validate the requirements development. Michael spent the last year at Bellcore applying AIN capabilities to the wireless subsidiaries of the regional Bell companies.

After graduating from the INI in 1991 and working for Bellcore (Telcordia ) for a number of years, Michael Souryal (MS02) spent a year in Cairo, Egypt on a language fellowship to study Arabic. Upon returning to the U.S., Michael enrolled in doctoral studies at The George Washington University and graduated with his Doctor of Science in electrical engineering in May 2003.

In March of this year Michael was awarded a National Research Council postdoctoral research associateship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland. During this two-year associateship, he will be conducting research on wireless ad hoc networks in NIST's Wireless Communication Technologies Group.