Comings & goings

Emma Shepherdson '01 (PhD) and Eric Gimon were married on Aug. 18, 2001, in the spectacular setting of the groom's grandfather's ranch outside of San Jose, CA.

Acknowledgments

New CEE Prof. Ruaidhri (Rory) O'Connor extends his thanks to the many students, staff, and faculty members who gave him support and comfort after the sudden death of his mother, Zoe O'Connor, on July 30 on Achill Island, Ireland.

Deaths

Mameet P. Khanolkar of Bombay, India, who received the MEng in Civil and Environmental Engineering this June, collapsed and died of a massive acute pulmonaric embolism in Waltham, MA on July 30, 2001. He was 24 years old, and had been waiting for a work permit in order to start a job as an information technology consultant in Cambridge.

Mr. Khanolkar, who was born in Mumbai (Bombay), India, had a degree in chemical engineering from Mumbai Univ., and had worked as a project engineer in India before arriving at MIT in September, 2000. As an undergraduate at Mumbai, he played cricket, table tennis, lawn tennis and badminton.

"He loved cricket," said Sebastian Boegerhausen '01 (MEng), who worked with Mr. Khanolkar on the IT group. "He taught me about the game and we watched matches together on the Internet." Mr. Khanolkar was his mentor in other areas as well. "When I had a question he'd work it out and give me the answer. It came to a point where I could look at a program and figure it out just because he was there with me. He was my best friend at MIT."

Mr. Khanolkar is survived by his parents, Prafull and Nayana Khanolkar of Bombay, and a sister in Waltham. He and Rachna Jotwani, a graduate student in computer science at the State University of New York/Buffalo, had planned to marry in India in February. At the time of his death, she was in India planning the wedding.

Abridged from a tribute written by Kenneth, Johann and Kate Kruckemeyer:
Ann Seaman Kruckemeyer passed away at home on Aug. 8, after a spirited 13-year struggle with breast cancer. Throughout her illness she embraced life, so much so that she rarely seemed ill at all.

After graduating from the Univ. of Cincinnati in 1963, she married Ken Kruckemeyer and they moved to Boston, settling in the South End in 1967. Both of them say that they "grew up" in the South End, learning and gaining strength from their neighbors and from the neighborhood.

In the 1970s, Ann taught first aid and became an emergency medical technician. She helped to establish the Boston Community Ambulance, a volunteer service headquartered near Dudley Square. She worked there as an ambulance driver and primary attendant, and served on the board of directors. To advance her medical understanding, she successfully sneaked into anatomy lectures at Harvard Medical School for an entire year.

Believing firmly in public school education, Ann was active as a parent at the Bancroft/Rice School and was part of the Community Board that planned the new Blackstone School in the 1970s. For several years, Anne drove school buses on runs across the city. This followed her fascination with big machines and helped her learn the city's network of streets to be prepared to respond more quickly on the ambulance.

Ann's activism in the South End began by working on the political campaigns of Alex Rodriguez, Chris Hayes and Mel King, and she was an effective organizer against the South End Bypass and the Southwest Expressway (never built). She served on the board of the Thom clinic and WalkBoston, volunteered at the Harriet Tubman House, and served lunch at Rosie's Place.

Ann leaves behind her husband Ken, son Johann, daughter Kate, a brother, and many friends in the South End, across the country, and around the world. Donations in Ann's memory may be made to the Boston Women's Fund (a foundation promoting social, political and economic justice for women and girls) at 14 Beacon St., Suite 805, Boston, MA 02108.

News has arrived that James (Jim) R. Simpson, '55 (SM, Sanitary Engineering), died on August 23, 2001 in England. "Jim was one of the first of three grad students we had from England and was very well liked by everyone. I feel lucky to have been with him for a short time," said Ross McKinney '49 & '51 (SM & ScD, Sanitary Engineering).

Publicity

Intrigued by the meticulous work done by Prof. Martin Polz's group in Parsons Lab, the MIT News Office circulated a summary: "How tedious is Martin Polz's research with harmful microorganisms? 'Not only are we looking for needles in a haystack, but we want to quantify the needles in the haystack, too,' notes the assistant professor in MIT's CEE Dept. While incidences of marine-related illnesses and harmful algal blooms are increasing, the explanation for such rises is unclear. This is at least partly due to the difficulty of quantifying critical changes in small populations of microorganisms in the marine environment. Although there are programs to monitor a variety of pathogens, little is understood about the onset, duration, and general causes of conditions that allow the growth of microorganisms that cause illness in marine life and/or humans. To help remedy this, Polz and colleagues are studying the life cycles of these microbial pathogens. The research, which involves the development of new molecular techniques that detect and quantify small microbial populations, is funded by MIT Sea Grant, through a two-year Doherty Professorship. Polz's collaborators in the project are from Temple University, MIT, and the joint program between MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution." A more detailed description of the work appears in the Spring 2000 issue of Two if by Sea, the newsletter of the MIT and WHOI Sea Grant programs.

With dramatically escalating property values in formerly less choice areas of Boston, any available parcel of vacant land starts looking like a little gold mine to the owners. A photo in the April 27, 2001 Jamaica Plain Gazette shows a group of students with Prof. Ken Kruckemeyer studying one such controversy in a rapidly gentrifying area. The caption explains, "Ken Kruckemeyer, a former MBTA assistant project manager who now teaches at MIT, points out to his students during a walking tour of the Southwest Corridor last week that the original plans for the project called for lot 53a at Brookside Avenue, Amory and Green Streets to be used for community benefit. The T now wants to sell the lot to the highest bidder. Kruckemeyer is a strong advocate for disposing of the land under the original agreement, which expired in 1995. The city is now negotiating with the T for a community process that will assure residents have a say in how the lot is used."