Tech Topics - Spring 2009 - (Page 30) BURDELL & FRIENDS Neukam is employed as a production manager with Philip Morris USA. The couple live in Richmond, Va. Michelle L. Rogers, EE 93, joined Drexel University in Philadelphia as an assistant professor in the School of Information, Science and Technology in September. Rogers previously worked with the Department of Veterans Affairs as a research scientist in the Getting At Patient Safety Center. John Selbie, CS 95, and his wife, Sandra, announce the birth of a son, Joel Parker Selbie, on July 12. Selbie is a software project manager at Microsoft. The family lives in Kirkland, Wash. Laura LeAnn Slate, ID 99, married Zachary Shope on Oct. 3. The couple live in San Francisco, where Slate works as a freelance designer and yoga teacher. Jason Speck, ChE 98, and Kristin Dennison Speck, ChE 01, announce the birth of their daughter, Lorelai Susan, on Oct. 17. Jason works as a research and development manager at Pearl Therapeutics, and Kristin is a group manager at the Clorox Co. The family lives in Dublin, Calif. S.K. Sundaram, PhD CerE 94, has been selected as a professional fellow of the Society of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. Sundaram is chief materials scientist of the energy and environment directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Jeanine Teague, IE 98, and Beau Teague, STaC 97, MS IDT 99, announce the birth of a daughter, Faith Claire, on Nov. 30. Faith joins her brothers, Silas, 3, and Luke, 5, at the family’s home in Marietta, Ga. Donald L. Walker Jr., EE 98, has been promoted to associate partner with the firm of Newcomb & Boyd in Atlanta. K. Elizabeth “Liz” Harriss York, Arch 90, M Arch 95, has been appointed chief sustainability officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. York, who joined the CDC in 1999 as a construction manager and project architect, was named acting CSO in January 2008. York, her husband, Chris, and their three children live in Atlanta. Matthew Yungwirth, CE 97, has been appointed a partner in the trial practice group of Duane Morris LLP. Yungwirth practices in the areas of intellectual property and commercial litigation, with an emphasis on patents, trademarks and unfair competition. He is a 2000 cum laude graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law, for which he served as the managing editor of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law. Somewhere Out There By Leslie Overman T he son of a Kennedy Space Center engineer, Jon Jenkins watched a lot of launches growing up. In March, the Merritt Island native returns to Florida for the launch of a spacecraft on which he’s been working for nearly 14 years. “I thought about this when I was a child looking at the stars: Are there other places where there are other children and other beings like me looking up into the sky and wondering whether there are other beings up there around the specks of light?” asked Jenkins, EE 87, AMath 88, MS EE 88, PhD EE 92. Jenkins, who has worked for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in California since 1992, is a co-investigator for NASA’s Kepler mission. The first space mission to search for Earth-size and smaller planets in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars, Kepler could help scientists determine how common terrestrial planets like the Earth are — and the likelihood that other beings dwell on them. “We have no idea if earths have formed around any other star. We have no information whatsoever. And when this mission flies, then we will know the answer to that question,” Jenkins said. He described Kepler as a telescope about the size of a minivan. With a focal plane of 42 charge-coupled device cameras, Kepler functions like a very large digital camera with 96 megapixels. Trailing the Earth’s orbit, the spacecraft will continuously monitor about 170,000 stars in the Cygnus and Lyra regions of the Milky Way galaxy looking for “transits,” periodic dips in stellar brightness that indicate a planet has crossed in front of its star. Taking brightness measurements every half hour, Kepler will send data monthly to the science operation center at NASA Ames Research Center, where Jenkins and other investigators will analyze it. Jenkins, who designed and developed the software and algorithms used to process the data, said Kepler’s findings could put Earthlings one step closer in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. “The answer could be that planets like the Earth are very plentiful, and what that means from a SETI perspective is that the chances that there are communicating civilizations out there is much higher than if we find the other extreme answer, which is we could find that there are very few earths and that earths are extremely rare,” he said. “That would actually be a more profound result, because our understanding and our models for how the solar system formed, and how Earth, Venus, Mercury and Mars formed, would seem to imply that planetary formation of terrestrial planets should be common and plentiful.” Jenkins’ fascination with the heavens started early. For his first science project, he constructed a diorama of the solar system in a cardboard box. “Perhaps that was an early indication that I would Jon Jenkins is a co-investigator for NASA’s Kepler mission, which may put humans one step closer in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. go into planetary science, but when I entered Georgia Tech, I had no idea that was the path I would take in the end,” he said. A President’s Scholar, Jenkins chose to study electrical engineering, believing it would prepare him “to do just about anything,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine an enterprise in industry that doesn’t require electrical engineering, and it also appeared to me that it was a quite challenging major and required a lot of math. I like math quite a bit.” Jenkins got involved in planetary research out of necessity — he needed rent money. His roommates introduced him to Paul Steffes, a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, for whom he began working as an undergraduate assistant in planetary atmosphere research. After earning his PhD, Jenkins joined SETI as a planetary scientist, studying the atmospheres of planets like Venus and Jupiter. He signed up with the Kepler research team in 1995. The Kepler mission will last three and a half years, enough time for the team to witness three transits from planets with Earth-like orbital periods of a year. Jenkins said the discovery of Earth-like planets could lead to follow-up missions in search of biomarkers, like oxygen or water vapor, indicating the presence of biological processes. Regardless of its findings, Jenkins thinks the Kepler mission is “one of the most important missions NASA has done in a long time, because it answers a question for which we have so little information,” he said. “We have no guesses as to what the answer will be. Anything we find is going to enrich our knowledge and inform us of our place in the universe.” 30 TechTopics | Spring 2009
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