WHERE ARE THEY NOW? - THE 1997 AMES ACADEMY
Do you consider yourself creative? Do you enjoy sculpting your
ideas into images that can be viewed by all? Are you interested in
an opportunity that would allow you express your creativity and further
strengthen the bonds between aspiring space leaders? If so, then
the perfect opportunity lies before you. The NAAA is seeking a webmaster.
If you are interested or have any questions please send an e-mail to ec@nasa-academy.org.
Board
of Advisors Working Group Update
by Ian Ruiz, NAAA President
president@nasa-academy.org
The Board of Advisors working group is responsible for solidifying a plan for the formation of a formal board made of up space leaders that can advise the NAAA. However, little progress has been made over the last month.
As of the latter part of July the advisory structure of several organizations
was investigated. Next, in order to better hone in on our desired
structure a list of questions to ask members of these organizations' advisory
boards was started. Additionally, a list that would comprise a sub-set
of these individuals was also started in an attempt to have a list of questions
that each member of the working group could ask of these distinguished
space leaders. However, no further input was provided and these lists
remain stagnant. As such, I implore all of you who have an interest
in seeing the NAAA form a board of advisors to put forth your additions
to these lists, which will be posted to the advisors list (advisors@nasa-academy.org)
once again during the first week of September. All are invited to
join this discussion and assist in this important work. To join,
simply send a message to me at president@nasa-academy.org
if you want to be added to the advisors list and to advisors@nasa-academy.org
to express an opinion on the subject.
NAAA Financial Update
by Joseph Mueller, NAAA VP-Finance
mueller@aem.umn.edu
Hello NAAA Alumni!
Your friendly VP of Finance here. I just wanted to drop yet another little reminder about the NAAA financial status. As you know, our primary source of funding comes in the form of member donations. "How are the donations looking this year?", you may ask. Well, take a look at this breakdown:
As you can see, we could really use some more support from the members, especially with the annual event coming up in just one short month. In case you are curious, average donations have been around $50, but people have donated as little as $5 and as much as $160. Every little bit helps!Year Donations Revenue from Donations
------------------------------------
1997 25 $ 1315
1998 13 $ 810
1999 1 $ 50
You can send your donations to:
NASA Academy Alumni Association
c/o Joseph B. Mueller
605 Ontario St. SE, #2
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Thank you! Let's keep the NASA Academy and the NAAA going strong!
N.A.P.A.L.M.
- The 1999 Goddard Academy Group Project
by Rob Lamontagne, GSFC '99
N.A.P.A.L.M. - Nasa Academy Public Awareness and enLightenment Mission
The purpose of NAPALM is to increase the awareness and understanding of the NASA Academy among students and educational communities within the Space Grant network.
NAPALM consists of four independent phases:
1. Develop a complete, all-encompassing briefing
for academy alumni to present to students and faculty at their colleges
and universities upon returning home.
2. Produce NASA Academy posters for distribution
to the Space Grant Consortia. In the past, such posters have been
produced, but in many cases only one poster was sent to each of the 770
Space Grant schools. In short, posters could have been more effective
in greater quantity.
3. Update the main page of the NASA Academy Web-site
to give prospective students the most accurate and up-to-date information
possible.
4. The final and most aggressive phase of NAPALM
is to produce and replicate a CD-ROM containing multimedia video clips
and digital photo galleries of the 1999 Academies, web-links, general information,
alumni testimonies, and miscellaneous materials to give interested students
a more in-depth look at the NASA Academy experience. These CD-ROMs
will be distributed to the Space Grant Consortia Schools and to the three
NASA Centers with active academies.
Through these four phases of NAPALM, we hope to make the NASA Academy
more visible in the future in order to reach more students, solicit more
applications per year, and to ultimately receive the highest caliber of
students to train as future leaders of NASA and the space industry.
The 1999 Ames
Astrobiology Academy
by Courtney Vanyo, Michael Obland, Heidi Hoffower, ARC '99
The 1999 Ames Astrobiology Academy brought together 13 students from across North America. Twelve students were sponsored by different state Space Grant Consortia, and one student was sponsored by the Canadian Space Agency.
When we arrived on June 20th, none of us had any idea of what to expect. When we left on August 28th, we all knew that we had a summer experience that we will never forget. The Academy gave the 13 of us, plus our 3 staff members, the chance to get to know one another through barbecues at our director's house (Dr. Doug O'Handley), team building exercises, our weekend excursions throughout California, and our group project.
Beginning with our second day at Ames we had the opportunity to see each other in action as we worked together for 8 hours to build a space shuttle and the International Space Station while under severe financial, component, and time stress. We succeeded, however, and amazed our enemies of the day (the staff who played out the roles of OSHA, customer, and supplier). This was our first introduction to the work we would be doing as a group this summer.
We started on our group project early by throwing out ideas over email before we even arrived in California. Once we got here, we wasted no time in getting down to business with group meetings. During the first week we narrowed down our ideas, and by the end of the second week we had decided that we wanted to plan a rover mission to the moon. We also discussed and researched a telescopic array for an Earth/Moon Interferometer; however, we realized that we were stretching ourselves too thin, and we decided to focus solely on our rover scouting mission. We began to research different areas that we wanted to explore with our rover and different questions we wanted to answer. We eventually came up with the mission to send a rover to one of the poles of the moon to search for water-ice and Helium-3. Branching off into groups, which changed throughout the following 6 weeks, we studied the history of He-3 and fusion, navigation and power systems, scientific instrumentation, rocketry, landing sites, and space policy. In the end, we produced a paper that described our mission in detail and posted it on the web. One of the highlights of our paper is that we were able to draw upon some of the technical expertise of the 1998 Goddard Academy and the lunar mission that they designed as their group project. The group project was a success for us. We were all able to work together with everyone working on their individual aspects of the project. We finished with a product of which we are all proud, and we are still talking to each other so something must have gone right when we picked our project, group leaders, and decided to tackle our mission.
We also worked on our individual research projects, all of which related
to Astrobiology. Astrobiology is an interdisciplinary field that
is attempting to answer the three fundamental questions: How did life begin
and evolve? Does life exist elsewhere in
the universe? What is life's future on Earth and beyond?
We all learned from our projects, and we were able to learn about each
other's projects at both our 15-minute midterm presentations and our 40-minute
final presentations.
But who said that the Academy is all work and no play?! We had numerous speakers every week. Tuesday evenings were filled with dinner speakers at La Maison Francaise (our residence at Stanford), and Thursdays always included a lunchtime lecture. There was an assortment of additional speakers added throughout the summer. We had the opportunity to hear from some of the top scientists in Astrobiology and other science fields. Some of our speakers included Dr. Alan Binder, Dr. Chris McKay, Dr. Jill Tarter, and Dr. Harrison Schmidt.
We also traveled most weekends to different parts of California. Our first weekend gave us the chance to see San Francisco. For the 4th of July Doug invited us to stay at Lake Tahoe with him. Friday was white-water floating (it did not qualify as rafting, but it was a lot of fun) for team building, and the rest of the weekend was filled with relaxation: waterfalls, water-skiing, and snow skiing and hottubbing at Squaw Valley. Our other weekends included camping at Yosemite with the Dryden Academy (14 of us hiked Half Dome--so awesome!), driving down to southern California to visit the Dryden Academy and coming back via the Pacific Coast Highway, sightseeing in Sonoma for some of us, camping at Sunset Beach and visiting Monterey Bay, and spending the night in Reno and then camping at Lake Tahoe again.
During these trips, we got to visit numerous space facilities. These included Lick Observatory, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Space Systems LORAL, the Desert Research Institute, Lockheed Skunkworks (where the X-33 is being built), Edwards Air Force Base, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. We were offered numerous jobs, and our heads were filled with all of the space information that we could handle.
The summer was an incredible one, and one that we are going to miss.
Many of us are anxious to get back to school, as a few people have had
to miss the first week of their classes to end the Academy here. Others
are looking forward to sleeping and traveling. And still others are getting
ready to go abroad and work for a year. Though we will be spread
out all over the world, we know that we have a group of friends including
our wonderful director, Doug, to whom we can turn for expertise and interest
in all different areas. And who knows...maybe someday we will get to say,
"Hey, I know the commander of the first mission to Mars--we were in the
1999 Ames Astrobiology Academy together."
NAAA goes to Vienna: Stories from the United Nations
Space Generation Forum
by Loretta Hidalgo, ARC ‘98
I had never been to a space conference where an orchestra played Strauss as part of the opening ceremonies, or where the dress of the conference was business or the traditional costume of your country, or where they handed out headphones because the proceedings were taking place in five languages.
Then again I’d never been to a United Nations Unispace conference.
It felt a little like a scene out of “Star Wars.” But we, the 160 young delegates of the Space Generation Forum (SGF), watching from the back, were all born here on Earth. The Forum was organized at the request of the U.N. They really wanted something different, something visionary for this pre-millennial Unispace conference (the last one was in 1982).
After Secretary General Koffi Anan spoke at the Unispace III opening ceremonies, the Space Generation Forum broke off from the main conference and began brainstorming. We worked for three days building and then refining our ideas and at the end of the week we boiled down to ten specific ideas to present to the U.N. Each recommendation had to be passed unanimously by all countries to be included in the Vienna Declaration, the summation of actions to be taken by the U.N. as a result of the meeting.
Our young organizers and delegates often stayed up late into the night drafting ideas, and getting things ready for the U.N. Working hard brought us closer together, and we certainly had the rush of coming together under pressure as a team. It was an incredible time, being in Vienna, talking to young professionals interested in space from all around the world, and realizing that we were being given the chance to make a difference.
NAAA Alumni KEVIN HAND (Ames ‘97), ANDREW HOPPIN (Goddard ‘94) and a few others mobilized in real time to include a “Mars Forum” for Delegates to SGF to hear about the current human Mars mission ideas and to discuss Mars from a global perspective. It was really interesting to hear each person in the room explain the one word they would use to describe what the mission would mean and to see what words young people, from some of the poorest areas, thought about Mars. It also reminded us that things that really happen are the result of people just making it happen.
The results of the Mars Forum were published in our proceedings along with everyone’s ‘word’ and the declaration to go to Mars that many of the delegates signed. We hope to get it on-line so that everyone can see it!
During the second week we were overwhelmed to hear that 5 of our recommendations were adopted unanimously for inclusion in the Vienna Declaration. Stunning. It really felt like the world had said, “Hey, these kids don’t have an agenda,” and maybe supported our ideas more because of who we were. We realized that perhaps we were in an ideal position to change the world and it moved us perhaps in a way we weren’t expecting.
One of our recommendations was to continue the role of youth in the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPOUS). Currently we are working with the U.N. to define this role and are most excited about continuing this network of friends around the globe as well as expanding it by bringing in new people through our web discussions and follow-on events. We hope to be able to organize more Space Generation Forums in the years to come, without necessarily waiting until the next Unispace Conference, for those crazy youth who will soon be taking on our roles and hopefully having just as much fun.
The web site is www.space-generation.org
– it may take us some time to get it all updated post-conference but keep
checking in, or email one of us to keep up with the action, like the debrief
to the White House! Rounding out our gang of NAAA delegates were
JOHN FEIGHERY- Goddard ’98 (now at JSC), and STEPHANIE GLIEGE- Ames ’98
(now at ASU Law) (Stephanie also covered Unispace III and the SGF as a
member of the press.)
WHERE ARE THEY NOW? - THE 1997
AMES ACADEMY
Name: Melissa Leigh Baker
Email: mbaker@softwareresearch.org
Current contact info: 1154A Rivershore Drive, Pleasant Valley,
WV 26554; 304-368-1183
Work company or school: Institute For Software Research, Inc.
Work title and/or major and degree sought: Project Manager
Work/school contact info: 1000 Technology Drive, Suite 1110,
Fairmont, WV 26554; 304-368-9300
Major work/school project(s): Project with Dryden Flight Research
Center to develop fault tolerant flight control system, etc
Discussion (2-3 paragraphs, can be personal and/or work-related):
During summer '98 I spent two months living
in Russia and working at a company called Tsnimash-Export (founded by the
Russian Space Ageny and located in their mission control center).
I took a trip to Costa Rica with a class in the biology department over
spring break - rainforests are simply amazing! I graduated from Fairmont
State College in May '99 with a degree in biology. Since last August
I've been working at the ISR, first as an intern andnow as a full-time
project manager. With one of my two projects I will get to take several
trips to Dryden during the next year. In the next couple years I
hope to find an area that I want to study in grad school, but until then
I'm enjoying my job.
I have a great apartment right on the Tygart
River in Fairmont. I'm hoping in a year to move to a big city somewhere
in the U.S., but only time will tell which one...
Name: Eric Bean
Email: ebean76@hotmail.com
Discussion (2-3 paragraphs, can be personal and/or work-related):
After graduating from U.Va. with a B.S. in
Aerospace Engineering I moved into the O'Handley Hilton in June of '98.
I had been verbally offered a job at Ames, but my start date was ambiguous
and the paper work never came through. I was shocked that the U.S.
Government was anything but efficient and organized :). But a job
only gets in the way of triathlon, so I was very happy without one.
I spent the summer racing, hanging out with one or more members of the
'98 Academy, and getting acquainted with the part of California that I
now call home. I had a superbly rewarding, memorable, and enjoyable
summer that is now a proud square in the quilt of my life.
My triathlon season began with the San Jose
Mountain Bike Sprint Triathlon, which I won in course record time.
Other highlights include a commanding win at the Alcatraz Triathlon, an
age group course record at the Half Vineman, where I qualified for the
Hawaii Ironman, and winning the elite division of the Pacific Grove Triathlon.
My season culminated and climaxed with a surprise win in the 18-24 age
group at the Hawaii Ironman; and I was the 18th American overall.
After Ironman, I began working at Space Systems/Loral.
This full time job severly cut into my temporal freedom and hindered my
athletic development. I began racing professionally in '99, but wasn't
finishing well enough to make money.
I quit Loral at the end of June and am now
at Stanford working on my research with my advisor. I begin classes
September 22. Stanford is great and I can't say enough about how
much I enjoy it. I have a research assistantship under the Gravity
Probe-B project, which will launch next year to verify (or disprove) Einstein's
theory of frame dragging. I consider myself lucky as it is rare to
be funded at the Master's level.
This year's racing news: I have traveled
and raced frequently this year, perhaps too much. My only win overall
has been the South Bay Sprint Triathlon where I narrowly missed the course
record. Other results: PowerMan Honolulu, 8th; St. Croix, 14th;
USTS Los Angeles, 11th; Corralitos Duathlon, 2nd; San Jose International
Triathlon, 7th;Escape From Alcatraz, 12th. Recently in the Donner
Lake Triathlon (very close to Lake Tahoe, so everyone has a feel for this
area) I was leading by a good minute 2 miles into the run, ran off course,
got lost, made a big loop, and ended up back where I was 15 minutes later!
I don't know how this happened. At the Half Vineman I hoped to qualify
for the Hawaii Ironman as pro. There were 2 pro slots available for
a very deep field, including Jimmy Riccitello, Chucky "V", Wolfgang Dittrich,
Louis De LaTorre, Greg, Whitley, Greg Thompson, Tim Monaco, Kirk Framke,
other assorted pros, and last but not least Eric Bean. I had a decent
swim and a tremendous bike. Wolfgang, Jimmy, Chucky, and myself came into
the bike/run transition together. I flew through the transition and
was first onto the run course. To make a long story short, I bonked and
faded to 7th.
Yesterday I competed in the state road race
championships (cycling). The course was 3 loops of a very hilly 22
mile course with two 1 mile and one 3 mile climb per loop. On the
second loop, myself and 5 other riders got a gap on the long climb and
worked very well together to increase our lead. One of us was certainly
going to win the race. on the back stretch of the loop some riders
in front of me bumped, the rider directly in front of me slammed
on his brakes, and I rear ended him. The crash broke my shifting.
It took me a few minute to fix, by which time I had lost that group and
been passed by a few more riders. I began to hammer the course, I
was making up considerable time on anyone I could see in front of me. I
was foaming at the mouth. Half way through the third lap I bonked,
I could barely move up the hills. I placed 6th. I plan to do
some more road cycling in the near future and to race with the Stanford
cycling team.
Name: Andrea Fori
Email: afori@hotmail.com
Discussion (2-3 paragraphs, can be either or both personal and work
related):
While participating in the Ames Academy, I
realized that I wanted to spend more time in CA. So, after the Academy
ended, I spend a few months working for the US Space Camp, CA (right
outside Ames' main gate) teaching young kids about the US space program.
I am currently working for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space in Sunnyvale
as a payload integration systems engineer for the TIROS program. This summer
I spent 10 weeks in Thailand at the International Space Univeristy (ISU)
learning a wide range of space subjects through lectures, workshops and
a group design project. The international aspect of ISU is a real
eye opener! I intend to return to Lockheed in September.
Name: Kevin Hand
Email: khand@mail.arc.nasa.gov, khand555@yahoo.com
Home contact info: Earth
Work company or school: humanity
Work/degree title: physics/astro/psych
Work/school contact info: 21cm
Major work/school project(s):
Discussion (2-3 paragraphs, can be either or both personal and work
related)
Come October I will be finishing up at NASA
Ames where I have worked for the past year on Mars Surveyor landing site
selection. My current plan is to travel around Europe (and perhaps further
east) talking to schools, businesses, etc. about space, life in the
universe, and mars (...hopefully generating support for the SETI Institute
and the Mars Society).
If you live outside the US (or have non-US
friends) and have a couch and a classroom, please let me know. Currently
I have no funding for this plan - all I have is a plane ticket to London.
Any ideas or thoughts on how to fund this project are greatly appreciated!
After my travels I may go back to school.
Name: Kim Lichtenberg
Email: kimberly.lichtenberg@jhuapl.edu
Home contact info: (410) 997-2751
Work company (or school): Johns Hopkins U. Applied Physics Laboratory
Work title: Associate Professional Staff (boring,
I know!)
Work contact info: (443) 778-7092
Major work project(s): Missiles!!!! Scary, eh?
Discussion (2-3 paragraphs, can be either or both personal and work
related)
Hi all! A lot has happened in two years...
Let's see- recently I climbed halfway up Mount Everest to rescue a baby
gorilla that had been kidnapped by the KLA, carrying only a water bottle
and a Rubicks Cube. When I finally got up there, Kevin Bacon congratulated
me and... oh wait, that was the dream I had last night...
All right, in the real world not much has
happened in two years! I graduated from UVA's Engineering School
in May '98 (same as Eric) and spent one last summer herding 13 year-old
kids around camp. Amazingly, it was easier than being a staff member
for NASA Academy!! However, I seriously missed breaking records for
the number of people in Doug O'Handley's pool (hottub?) and possibly the
most obnoxious drunk singing??? After very little recovery time,
I started my job at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
If anybody needs a job, I know my group must have the lowest average age
of any group here at the lab!! Anyway, I've been here for almost
a year, and I think I'm just now getting used to being out of college.
Anybody else having this problem?? Other than that, I'm healthy and
happy, and I hope you all are too!
Name: Patrick McKenna
Email: pmmckenn@students.wisc.edu
Home contact info: 644 N Frances St.; Madison, WI, 53703
Work company (or school): University of Wisconsin
Work title: unfortunately it hasn't changed....still an undergraduate
student
Work contact info: n/a
Major work project(s): attempting to string together enough credits
to graduate next year
Discussion (2-3 paragraphs, can be either or both personal and work
related)
As the young one of the Ames bunch back in
'97, I am still bogged down in the swamp of undergraduate academia.
Following the Academy summer, I returned to the land of ice and snow for
the fall semester during which time I was selected to join the JSC Coop
Program. I spent Jan. 98-Aug. 98 in Houston working first with the
Mission Operation Flight Dynamics Division and later with the Mission Ops
Advanced Projects Office (APO). Working in the APO was a great time
and I was exposed to both high-level mission planning and future program
possibilities (e.g., manned Mars mission). I came back to Madison
last fall before returning to Houston again this past spring to work with
the systems integration group for the
X-38 ISS Crew Return Vehicle. After spending 5 months down south,
I left Texas in May and am now enrolled in the summer term at UW.
I'm currently working on a project team that is going to take a small robot
aboard the KC-135 (vomit comet) this August for 2 microgravity flight days.
These two trips on the K-bird will be my 6th and 7th...I'm hoping to keep
the motion sickness at bay. My last 2 trips were good, but on the
one before that I revisited my breakfast...twice. Also, while I'm
taking classes this summer I'm also working part-time for Dr. Harrison
"Jack" Schmitt researching technologies with lunar exploration applications.
After this summer I'll be plodding along toward
a BS in engineering mechanics and astronautics next May. As for after
that, the jury is still out. I plan on taking the GRE this fall and
will be applying to grad schools for ME or AE programs. However,
I'm also leaving my options open and will be interviewing as well.
If anyone out there knows of any unique
opportunities for a spring grad next year, let me know!
On a final note, I recently got my private
pilot's liscense which has kept me fairly busy, and bankrupt, for the last
few months. If anyone can swing up to Madison, I'd be happy to give
them an aerial tour. (Can you believe they let me up in the skies!
Think about that the next time you fly somewhere....)
Name: Don Olinger
Email: dolinger@pcisys.net
Webpage: http://www.pcisys.net/~dolinger
Discussion (2-3 paragraphs, can be either or both personal and work
related)
After the academy ended, I had a six month
rest at my parents home in Montana while looking for a job. In February
1998, I started work for Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Colorado Springs.
While I waited for my resume to be approved by the Defense Department,
they put me on a paper pushing job with the Titan Centaur. In late
March 1998, I learned that the job they hired me for (writing software
for a radar) did not exist because the contract fell through.
In May 1998, I started working for the Lockheed
Martin Astronautics ASAS Block II project in Denver. I commuted back
in forth between Colorado Springs and Denver for eight weeks until I could
get settled in Denver. ASAS, which stands for All Source Analysis
System, is a battle field station for the army that collects and analyzes
information on the battle field. Its ultimate goal is to save lives
of soldiers on the field by giving commanders a detailed and timely view
of the battlefield.
I started my work on ASAS by writing database
accessors with two other people. Database accessors are functions
that are called by other functions/code to query the database. In
January 1999, after seven months in the group, I took over full responibility
of the group, which now was down to two people due to some of the tools
we developed to produce accessors quicker. Since then, I have been
the lead of the group and have had the responsibility of overseeing all
accessor development and deliver and ensuring that they get generated in
a timely manner. In July, I went down to working part time in the
accessor group and started working part time for another group with the
same project. This group is responsible for parsing all messages that come
into our system.
In January 1999, our whole program was transferred
to Lockheed Martin Mission Systems. In March 1999, I received my
top secret security clearance. I am still waiting on my SCI (sensitive
compartmentalize info) clearance, which is the highest possible clearnace,
and will finally allow me access to the secret information our program
deals with. That should be coming any day now, but knowing the gov't
it could take a while. :-) My plans for the future are to stay
with ASAS in Denver for at least a while until something better comes along
(if it does).
Name: Nellymar Puig
Email: npuig@guidant.com
Discussion (2-3 paragraphs, can be either or both personal and work
related)
(Transcribed from phone conversation with
Joe Tamer.) After the Academy Nellymar got married to Ramon
(Tato) and they moved to California. Ramon started working for Guidant
(a company that makes medical devices) and Nellymar was working for an
Environmental Consulting firm. After a few months, Nellymar took
a better position that also happened to be at Guidant and is now working
as a Quality Control Engineer. Things are going very well for them
and they are thinking about buying a house within the next year.
Name: Kathy Sienko
Email: sienko@mit.edu
Discussion (2-3 paragraphs, can be either or both personal and work
related)
What has been going on since the Academy:
Name: Christen Struck
Email: struckles@yahoo.com
Discussion (2-3 paragraphs, can be personal and/or work-related):
After the Ames Academy in 1997, I spent three
glorious months hanging out with my new academy friends, traveling the
area, and working at space camp. The following three months I moved
home to make some money (instead of spending it) and apply for school.
Since June of 1998, I have been working on my Master's in Physical Therapy
at the University of Louisville. I will finish that degree in Dec
of 2000. I currently have a research grant to develop postural devices
for the elderly.
Name: Joe Tamer
Email: jtamer@mail.arc.nasa.gov
Contact info: 313 Washington Drive, New Hartford, NY 13413;
315-797-0246
Discussion (2-3 paragraphs, can be personal and/or work-related):
After the 97 Academy I returned to the University
of Rochester to finish up my fifth year as part the Take Five Scholar's
Program. It was a really neat program where tuition is waived in
order to study something that is in a different discipline from your major.
I got participate in an honor's program in Environmental Policy and Management
as well as play one more year of hockey.
After graduating in May I returned to the
Academy as a staff assistant following in the footsteps of Hank and Kim.
Being a part of the 98 Academy was a lot of fun and I got to see the Academy
from the whole other side. I had a great time and really enjoyed
working with the new crew, the California weather, and of course Doug and
Christy's generous hospitality.
Following the 98 Academy I decided to take
some time off from school and work for a year or two before graduate school.
I got a job for a consulting firm called Approach Inc, just north of New
York City. I learned a lot at that job and had a lot of fun being
so close to NYC. I went to a bunch of Yankees games and my crowning
achievement was standing in line for 14 hours to get tickets to Game 2
of last year's World Series.
Just before Christmas the company that I was
working for took a major downturn and laid off 1/3 of their employees.
I kept my job, but after the lay off it became a miserable place to work.
In February I met Doug in LA while I was at a conference and he invited
me to come back to the Academy and be his Deputy Director and help prepare
the program for his retirement. Looking at my current situation,
I gladly accepted.
In the meantime I had petitioned to un-defer
(is that a word?) a scholarship that I had won in May of 1998 at graduation
that pays for up to a year's internship in Europe, and the petition was
accepted. I made plans to do Astrobiology-related research in Russia
and Germany.
This past summer I have been working with the 1999
Academy and making plans for Europe. The 99 gang was an awesome group
and just blew away all our expectations. The Academy has just ended
and it was very successful. Unfortunately, the Russia thing fell
through about five weeks ago due to government bureaucracy, but that's
ok. It turns out that I will now go to Germany to study extremeophiles
at the University of Regensberg in Bavaria from Oct.1st to April 1st.
The good news about it is that my sister is pregnant and her due date is
the last week in March so everything works out in the end.
I hope you are all doing well and continue to stay in touch. Take
care.
Name: Jeffrey Wills
Email: jeffrey_s_wills@yahoo.com
Current contact info: 608 Harmon Cove Towers Secaucus, NJ 07094
Work company or school: Andersen Consulting
Work title: Consultant
Work/school contact info: 1345 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY
10105
Major work/school project(s): Technology Consulting and Systems Implementation.
Clients consist of AT&T
and currently Bristol-Myers Squibb
Discussion (2-3 paragraphs, can be personal and/or work-related):
After my wonderful experience at the Ames
Astrobiology Academy in the summer of 1997 I began my career with
Andersen Consulting to learn more about the technologies that are not
only enabling but are truly creating our future.
During my time at AC I have been given the opportunity to work on projects
both at AT&T and Bristol-Myers Squibb. My work consisted of both
design and implementation of custom systems using technologies such as
Java, Power Builder, and Oracle. So far I have been enjoying my experience
at Andersen Consulting and look forward to what lies ahead in my
future.
On my personal time I try to stay active playing
golf, skiing(water and snow), tennis, and basketball.
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