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MIT Club of New York | Spring 2012 | 1

MIT Club of New YorkNewsletter for the Alumni and Alumnae of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Spring 2012

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Letter from the President Gary BrackenridGe ‘97 MGUpcoming EventsMore events are always being added! For details on these and other events, please visit www.mitclub.org. Happy New Year! I hope you are off to a great year. Looking back on 2011, I once again must say

thank you! It was another wonderful year for the Club with Cambridge speakers, professional programs, cultural activities, athletics, and many other great events and networking opportunities. Looking ahead to 2012 we are pleased to see Professor Binzel coming to the Hayden Planetarium and Nobel Laureate Peter Diamond on our Speaker Series roster. Our opportunities to volunteer within the community are also under full steam with VP of Community Service Michael Johnson leading numerous opportunities including Meals on Wheels. Please take a read through the newsletter to find out about past events and get a glimpse of our upcoming events. Remember, this is your Club. Join; get involved; suggest ideas for events. We can’t wait to see you in the new year.

JanuaryJay Scheib, World of WiresToast to IAPFinance BrunchCecilia d’Oliveira, OpenCourseWare

FebruaryEnergy C-Suite Series: Energy Efficiency & Quantum Dot Nanomaterials Sebastian Seung, Connectome

MarchLego League Regional Competition MIT Comes to NYC: Peter DiamondMIT Public Service Center IDEAS/Global ChallengeFinance Series with Courant InstituteFinance Brunch

AprilMIT Comes to NYC: Richard BinzelBrooklyn Bridge Park Walking TourEnergy C-Suite Series: Energy & Cleantech InvestmentFinance Brunch

MayView from the Top

News from the Club

Gary Brackenridge ‘97 MG, President of the MIT Club of New York, will be relocating overseas before the end of this year. We want to thank Gary for all that he has done for the MIT Club of New York and MIT overall. Through June 30, 2012, Scott Morrison ‘86 EE will take the position of President, MIT Club of New York, and Michael Johnson CP ‘97 and Liora Sukhatme ‘98 MG will take the positions of Executive Vice President, MIT Club of New York.

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President Gary Brackenridge ‘97 MG

Immediate Past PresidentKaren Ho ‘94 EE

Executive Vice PresidentScott Morrison ‘86 EE

Vice President of Educational and Cultural ProgramsYu-hui Lin ‘97 LI

Vice President of Social Programs and Inter-Club RelationsDominic Ricci ‘99 PH

Vice President of Professional ProgramsLenora Suki MG ‘97

Vice President of Service ProgramsMichael Johnson CP ‘97

Vice President of Communications and MembershipCharlene Chuang ‘05 BCS

SecretaryAaron Koffman CP ‘03

TreasurerJeremy Gerstle ‘99 EECS

Club CounselArthur Katz ‘61 MG

Nominating Committee ChairGregory Arenson ‘70 EC

DirectorsCristina Dolan MAS ‘94 Liora Sukhatme ‘98 MGThomas Halket ‘70 PHKenneth Wang ‘71 EC

2011-12 MIT Club of New York

officers

newsletterEditorCharlene Chuang ‘05 BCS

Graphic DesignerAlice Tao ’08 CEAmy Kim ‘91 AR

websitewww.mitclub.org

eat • play • volunteer • celebrate

Have you ever mentored or provided career advice to students? Are you interested in making a positive impact on the life of a young adult? Do you value the importance of providing direction and guidance to tomorrow’s leaders? If so, the MIT Club of New York has an opportunity for you to give back high school students in New York City. A research study by Public/Private Ventures on the Big Brothers Big Sisters program discovered that students who meet regularly with their mentors are 52 percent less likely than their peers to skip a day of school and 37 percent less likely to skip a class. Mentoring leads to better performance at school and an opportunity for students to set career goals and paths.

Through a partnership with City-As-School High School, the MIT Club of New York will pursue a yearlong program that will connect students and MIT alumni to career opportunities and life-changing experiences. The MIT Alumni Lecture and Learning Partnership will offer MIT Alumni an opportunity to share their career experiences and passions while offering insight and advice to young adults on how to pursue their own dreams.

City-As-School (CAS) is one of New York City Department of Education’s alternative high schools. It was created in 1972 and organized to serve the needs of children who learn by doing. Its students are 11th and 12th graders who come from any of the public, private, or charter schools within the five boroughs. The school utilizes the facilities of over 400 New York City businesses at which students participate in professional activities. These internships, along with classroom learning, form the basis of learning in math, history, English, science, and other academic areas. Many students who come to CAS were struggling in their former schools, and believe that continued struggling will not change behavior positively. The school’s emphasis is on starting fresh and moving forward. The question is not how much better a student does than someone else but rather how well that student performs in pursuit of his or her own life goals.

Interested MIT alumni will meet once a month during the school week for no more than two hours and will have roundtable discussions with 25 to 30 students. Alumni will provide a snapshot of their experiences, including their pursuits at MIT and current endeavors. The roundtable will allow both alumni and students to engage in an interactive dialogue, where feedback, ideas and inspiration can be exchanged. If you are interested in participating in the program, please reach out to me through the Club website www.mitclub.org. Don’t miss an opportunity to help our youth and our future.

Oxygen, not choking ozoneA deep breath of crisp January air clears my headBuzzing pressure subsides and focus returns.Nourishing calm saturates familiar environsNot a maelstrom but a hurricaneI stand in the eye, if but for a few weeks. Reminisce and reconnect with your MIT community at the annual Toast to IAP on Wednesday, January 18, 2012, brought to you by the MIT Club of New York and the MIT Alumni Association. The Independent Activities Period has always been a time to try new things and meet new people, whether through academic courses or traditions like Charm School and the Mystery Hunt. Toast to IAP connects you with the fellow alumni who remember the refreshing pause from the fire hose that IAP can bring. Embrace the spirit of IAP and join other MIT graduates in New York City in raising a glass to celebrate those days—we hope to see you there!

Looking Ahead Michael Johnson cP ’97

Mix and Mingle

We had two inter-club social events in the fall of 2011. On October 13, MIT joined 14 other schools in hosting a grand party at Bar Basque to welcome new graduates to the city. There were more than 450 combined alumni in attendance. On November 3, we held an intimate happy hour with New York alumni from MIT’s neighbors Harvard University and Wellesley College. In 2012, we will continue to participate in mixers with multiple schools. We will also be planning several small-scale socials in partnership with one or two schools each time, focusing on different schools and professional groups, allowing our Club members with varied interests to participate and mingle. The next inter-club social happy hour is expected in late January. Please stay tuned and see you in 2012!

Comfort in the Calm: Toasting an MIT TraditionXiXi chen cP ’06 doMinic ricci ’99 Ph

Twelve alumni volunteered with City Meals on Wheels on December 10, 2011, at Stanley Isaacs Senior Center to deliver meals to homebound elderly.

Call for Volunteers

As Executive VP of the MIT Club of New York, volunteer engagement and connection with the Club programs is one of my key areas of focus. In this newsletter, I would like to explore a different angle of volunteering and MIT Club of New York membership: networking.

Across all industries, we are actively engaged in building internal networks—relationships within our companies or those with our direct customers. Strengthening our external networks may be a bit more difficult. Why is building the external network so important? Building relationships within and across industries, with academia, government, for-profit, not-for-profit sectors and others can be valuable for many reasons, including the following:

• Finding business opportunities• Finding solutions to difficult problems; identifying other problems• Sharing good practices• Benchmarking• Connecting to others whom you want to know• Advancing your career• Advancing your personal mission and vision• Influencing others towards a particular position

External networking can take time, though. One of the most effective ways to strengthen the external network is through MIT Club of New York programming. Thought leaders among speakers/panelists and other alumni are on-hand at a variety of different types of events and venues (professional programs: finance, career development, etc.; social programs/happy hours; community service opportunities; and so forth). Every program provides informal and, many times, formal networking opportunities. If you haven’t signed up for an MIT Club of New York program recently, do so now—not only for enriching content, but also for the networking. Volunteering with the Club offers still additional networking opportunities, as you will work with other alumni and speakers to plan and execute events and other Club activities. Response to our call for volunteers has been very positive, but there remain available volunteer roles across all of the Club’s program and operations areas. Please contact me at smor@alum.mit.edu if you would like to broaden your external network and volunteer with the Club.

scott Morrison ’86 ee

The MIT

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professional programs

Finance Professional Programs kicked off its fifth year of the Finance Brunch Series with two brunches this fall on sovereign debt crises in Europe and on the regulation of high-frequency trading. Our series is set to continue starting January 29, 2012.

These brunches offer a regular, topical, small-scale and informal way to connect and exchange ideas on common interests in finance. We choose event topics within a month of each brunch to make sure they’re current, varying the topics to reach as many alumni as possible. You don’t have to be immersed in the topic to come, contribute, enjoy and hear what your fellow alumni have to say. The conversation is always lively and engaging—a great way to meet other alumni in the industry.

If you have a brunch venue to recommend or a topic to put forward, we welcome your contributions and look forward to keeping the series fresh and appealing.

Thank you for your interest in and support of the Finance Professional Programs. We look forward to seeing you at one or more of our events in 2012.

On October 4, 2011, MITCNY Professional Programs continued its tradition of great architecture events with “Designing the Bank of America Tower,” which focused on the process behind the first LEED Platinum skyscraper in the world. Cook + Fox Architects hosted the audience in its own LEED Platinum interior—the first in New York—with a presentation by Serge Appel, the Associate Partner responsible for the project.

Appel focused on nature’s inspiration for the tower’s design and function: “People feel good when they’re connected to nature.” Appel shared the sustainable design elements in the tower, including a co-generation plant that generates about 65 percent of the building’s energy and reduces daytime peak electricity by 30 percent; ice storage that provides 25 percent of the building’s cooling requirements; and the city’s first 100 percent waterless urinals system which saves about three million gallons of water a year.

Bank of America’s primary concern, however, was and is the bottom line, so the tower had

On October 18, 2011, MITCNY’s Professional Programs’ popular urban and sustainability programs continued with “Rising Tide: NYC Infrastructure and Climate Change.” This program brought together two exceptional presentations on the risks faced by New York’s infrastructure in coming decades as sea levels rise and climate events may become more destructive. Dr. Klaus Jacob, Senior Research Scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, shared his insights from the Mayor’s NYC Panel on Climate Change as well as from the New York State Energy Research Development Authority-funded ClimAID report, an effort in which Professor Jacob participated

MITCNY Finance Professional Programs

- Jay daMask ’90 ee

Designing the Bank of America Tower

- steven Jackson ar ’02

Rising Tide

to be a worthwhile investment. By adding personal air diffusers at each workstation, distributing cleaner air, optimizing natural light with 9’6’’ floor-to-ceiling low iron, ultra clear glass windows, the tower increases employee productivity by about 1 percent by reducing sick days. This saves the company about $10 million dollars a year.

The event included a tour of the Cook + Fox office renovation by communications associate Allison Bobman, which featured waterless urinals, a natural dimming system, and a green roof for stormwater collection. In paving the way for achievement in green architecture, Cook + Fox truly practices what they preach.

“The building is not just about technology,” Appel said about the tower, also known as One Bryant Park. “It’s about the human beings in it.”

Many thanks to Serge Appel and to Cook + Fox for hosting the event.

- lenora suki sM’97

On November 10, 2011, more than 45 alumni and guests enjoyed our sold-out event, “Stepping Up: Managing the Challenges of a New Leadership Role.” Volunteer organizers and moderators, Lauren Clement ’05 EE MA and Lyne Bernard CP ’95, brought together a panel of executives from diverse backgrounds — Ajit Kambil ’85 EE ’93 PhD, Global Director for Deloitte’s CFO program; Jean Moroney ’85 EE, President of Thinking Directions; Simon Taylor, Principal of Questant Corporation; and Matt Wilkerson ’04 EE, co-founder of AHAlife.com — to talk about this time of tremendous opportunity, along with the new problems and stress that come with the new responsibilities.

The panelists discussed the big differences between a great leader and a good manager. They helped the audience identify specific milestones, behaviors, and management processes, offering tools and pointers to prepare for the role and manage the transition. Some of the questions included: how do you build credibility and cultivate the respect of your team and everyone around you? How do you deal with being elevated above former peers? What if you start your own company?

Among the takeaways, we learned that leaders, however passionate and visionary, have to do the hard work of team-building, which requires trust, discrimination and consistency. Leaders have to find and retain people who give the organization strength and avoid those who drain energy from the team. Especially at the beginning, the challenge is to cultivate reputation and deliver success, taking care not to make unrealistic promises. Treating

Professional Development: Being a New Leader

-lyne Bernard cP ’95

ABOVE The Bank of America Tower presented by Serge Appel

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November 15, 2011 - MITCNY Professional Programs drew a sold-out audience of nearly 100 MIT alumni and friends of our co-producer, The Hub New York City, for “Technology Meets Social Enterprise,” an inspiring discussion about how technology-driven business models are delivering social and environmental impact all over the world. Neal Lesh, Chief Strategy Officer for Dimagi, and Giulia Stellari, co-founder of AgSquared, talked about how technology drives their software applications for rural health in the developing world and small farms in the United States, respectively. Jalak Jobanputra, venture capital investor and former Director for Omidyar Network, shared the challenge of identifying a pipeline of companies with both appropriate return potential and capacity to do good. Mike Van Patten, co-founder of Mission Markets, focused on the next level where technology

Technology Meets Social Enterprise: Platforms and Applications

alongside prominent scientists from Columbia University, CUNY, and Cornell. Christopher R. Zeppie, the Director of Environmental and Energy Programs at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, highlighted the Port Authority’s various energy, environmental, and sustainability initiatives aimed at mitigating and adapting to climate risks and their impacts.

Professor Jacob’s striking data, graphs, and photos presented the latest findings on climate change impacts, focusing on temperatures, sea level increases and the impact of storm surges in the coming decades. Recent hurricanes have illustrated that the challenges of managing even our current infrastructure in extreme climate events are substantial. This makes planning for decades into the future all the more daunting. Professor Jacob’s models showed the physical, spatial, and economic dislocations that would occur as a result of New York’s enviable but vulnerable coastal position.

Christopher Zeppie focused on measures being taken to protect and manage the Port Authority’s transportation infrastructure in New York and New Jersey’s, including several airports, ports, bridges and tunnels, and the PATH, all of which are vulnerable to flooding as well as a range of other risks not related to climate change and weather. The Port Authority’s risk mitigation and adaptation portfolio is planning for future climate challenges while also promoting sustainable local economies. For example, energy efficiency projects and the procurement of more sustainable and renewable energy promote both resilience and a smaller carbon footprint.

Many thanks to Carla Avila MG ’97 for the use of Baron Capital’s breathtaking meeting space.

-ruBi raJBanshi ’04 ch

people as their values, not their responsibilities, understanding your team and co-workers, mentoring future leaders—these are the hallmarks of successful leaders.

In the end, all panelists agreed that failure is a reality, but when good leaders fail, returning to the work at hand as quickly as possible is the best route, for both the organization’s morale and its competitiveness in the marketplace. Look forward, keep the team focused on the work at hand and your vision of the future, and plan to invest in those around you as much as yourself.

has the potential to facilitate investment through information, matching, filtering and rating impact investments in the context of the organization’s alternative investment exchange.

All the panelists highlighted the way that technology could deliver ground-breaking social change by making enterprises scalable, services replicable, operations more efficient and costs much lower than conventional service delivery methods. Dimagi’s mobile phone apps allow health workers in Africa and India to get information in and out of the field and improve outcomes. AgSquared is reaching the small farms with the thinnest margins—the farms that produce the majority of our food—through their online management software. Just as mobile phones are currently changing the landscape of poverty in many countries, smartphones will represent yet another leap forward.

Even so, technology and impact don’t necessarily make a clear investment proposition. The challenge for those on the investor side, as Jobanputra and Van Patten pointed out, is to be disciplined enough to recognize that, however visionary, certain enterprises should be non-profits with grants rather than profit-seeking enterprises. Despite the promise and excitement, everyone agreed that the line between serving the disadvantaged and generating business from those target groups is the hardest one to walk.

Many thanks to Liquidnet for their sponsorship and the beautiful gathering space, and to our co-organizers, the Hub-NYC, a global social enterprise incubator and co-working space, for its support.

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On the evening of October 20, 2011, a small group of MIT alumni in New York City gathered in a meeting room atop the Credit Suisse Tower overlooking Madison Square Park for an intimate conversation with Professor Ian A. Waitz, the new Dean of the School of Engineering at MIT. Formerly Head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Professor Waitz assumed the deanship earlier in 2011, and has since begun a series of initiatives to enhance the education experience for both MIT students and students of all ages around the globe. The evening began with a presentation by Professor Waitz; he examined the new trends and imperatives in engineering education and showcased some achievements of MIT students in their endeavors to apply knowledge to real-world problems. Professor Waitz then discussed a number of projects in various stages of development. These projects aim to further engage the general public, improve the image and prestige of engineering disciplines, foster the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship among MIT students, and advance the education of science and engineering in grades K–12. Alumni responded with great support and enthusiastic questions and discussions. We thank Professor Waitz for sharing his visions and also Credit Suisse for providing the wonderful venue.

educational & cultural programs

Dean Ian Waitz

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a joyful holiday season! I would like to thank Connie Yee ’08 ME for organizing two wonderful MIT Comes to NYC Speaker Series lectures. Professor Ian Waitz delivered a stimulating discussion on initiatives that he is undertaking as the new Dean of the School of Engineering. Professor Thomas Levenson shared with us insightful stories about Isaac Newton as the great detective of currency counterfeiters. This calendar year, we will start with a special presentation by OpenCourseWare (OCW) on January 31, 2012. To celebrate its ten year anniversary, OCW will share with us its goal for the next decade: to reach a billion minds! The Speaker Series will continue with Peter Diamond EC ’63 PhD, Professor of Economics and 2010 Nobel Prize Winner, in March, and Richard Binzel, Professor of Planetary Sciences, in April. We also had two great cultural events last year. We visited Math Midway, a traveling interactive math exhibition, together with the MIT Club of Northern New Jersey. Special thanks to Harold Clark ML ’82 PhD for giving us a private tour of Liberty Science Center where the exhibition runs until the end of January. Mark Harvey, Lecturer in the Music and Theater Arts Section, and the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra gave a delightful concert in November at the beautiful St. Peter’s Church. The ensemble included Samuel Jay Keyser, Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) and former Associate Provost. In January, we attended World of Wires, a performance by Jay Scheib, Associate Professor of Theater Arts.

This spring, there will be a walking tour of the new Brooklyn Bridge Park given by Nikki Springer ’04 AR. She will speak about the park’s ongoing construction and design, and its future look. Yumi Oshima ’98 NU will be organizing additional cultural events this season. Liora Sukhatme ’98 MG and Anshu Sinha ’98 EE led the Book Club discussion last fall with The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore and plan to read another book in February. Please stay tuned for updates! Feel free to email me at yuhuilin@alum.mit.edu if you like to get more involved or have suggestions.

-huan ZhenG ch ’10 Phd

Looking Ahead

-yu-hui lin ’97 li

- connie yee ’08 Me

MIT Comes to NYC

ABOVE Aardvark Jazz Orchestra: Spirit Soundings

LEFT Yu-Hui Lin ‘97 LI, Professor Mark Harvey, Professor Jay Keyser and Yumi Oshima ’98 NU

Isaac Newton, the great physicist and mathematician, was also a career changer.

Roughly forty MIT alumni and guests gathered in a packed conference room on November 8, 2011, for a lecture given by Professor Thomas Levenson, who has studied original documents that chronicled this little-known corner of Newton’s life. London in the 1690s was a crime-ridden and plagued town with no professional police force. England’s currency and its system of high finance were under increasing strain, much like the current economic crisis we are facing today. At the same time, Newton was given the job of Warden of the Royal Mint, for which he left quiet Cambridge in 1695. He also had other duties, such as policing and prosecuting those who faked or undermined the King’s coins. The peak of his investigations for the Mint involved the case of a long-standing and gifted counterfeiter named William Chaloner.

Professor Levenson is the Program Head and Director of the Graduate Program, Writing and Humanistic Studies. Read his most recent book, Newton and the Counterfeiter, for more insight on Newton’s unknown career and the epic game of cat and mouse between Newton and Chaloner.

The Club would like to thank Joseph Angland ’71 GM EC for generously donating his office space at White & Case LLP for this event.

Professor Thomas LevensonIsaac Newton: Mathematician, Physicist, Economist?...and Cop!

MIT Comes to NYC

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MIT Club of New York

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