Readers' notes

Members of old Course 17, Building Construction and Engineering, dressed formally and lined up for this picture from around 1930. Last names only were provided, from left: Giller, Perkins, Korenblitt, Drake, Jandris, Lovejoy, Cleary, Riley, Anderson, and Ackiss. (Photo provided by Reginald Bisson '30)

Demetrious Koutsoftas '71 (SM) & '72 (CE) will receive the American Society of Civil Engineers' prestigious Ralph Peck Award for his paper, "Post Preload Settlements of a Soft Bay Mud Site," which was presented at the Ladd Symposium at MIT in Oct. 2001. "I have been practicing geotechnical engineering for nearly 32 years," summarizes Koutsoftas. "I spent practically all of my career with Dames & Moore until it was acquired by URS in 1999. Recently I joined Arup (aka OVE ARUP) headquartered in London, where I am associate principal based in the San Francisco office, and responsible for developing Arup's geotechnical practice in the western US. I have published over 30 articles dealing with soil behavior and project case histories. In 1998 my paper, "Test Fill at Chek Lap Kok, Hong Kong" won the Thomas Midddlebrook Award from ASCE. The paper was co-authored with my old friend and classmate Dr. Roger Foott '73 (ScD), who unfortunately passed on in 1994 after a long battle with cancer. In 2000 I was awarded the Martin S. Kapp Foundation Engineering Award from ASCE. One of my recent projects, the MUNI Metro Turnback project in San Francisco, won the Grand Conceptor Award (in 1998) from the American Consulting Engineers Council, in a national competition that included over 400 entries."

Does anyone remember using the MIT seismograph at Camp Tech in Machias, Maine? Harold Nelson of the Maine Dept. Of Transportation believes that it went into use in the early 1930s, judging by the dates of the many crumpled newspapers scattered around the attic of the MIT Seismograph building. "I find that the last use of the seismo was 1940, and it was a Wenner instrument that used photographic registration on light sensitive paper. I would like to hear from students who used the seismograph and the observatory," especially if they remember what they did. As of a few years ago, the building and seismograph pad were still intact. Nelson can be reached at harrydeb@gwi.net. (Photo: Harold Nelson)

One of the participants in this year's Institute for Georgia Environmental Leadership is Ben Jordan '95 & '96 (MEng). The statewide group hopes to foster learning and collaboration among the state's environmental leaders. Jordan is Environmental Manager for Coca-Cola North America, supporting the company's supply chain in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico. Prior to his current position, he worked in Coca-Cola's global organization, traveling to over 15 countries helping to drive improved environmental management systems.
        In his current role, Jordan works on internal operational issues as well as relationship-building with key stakeholders who show an interest in Coca-Cola's environmental programs. These groups include environmental organizations that the company sponsors and supports, as well as organizations that engage Coca-Cola on key issues through outside activism.

The ENR Construction Facts of November 2003 lists Ross McKinney '49 & '51 (SM & ScD from old Course 11, Sanitary Engineering) in their World's Construction Leaders section. The little description on p. 72 reads, "McKinney's research at Kansas Univ. into the little-understood activated sludge management process advanced understanding of microbiology's role. His theories were controversial but his breakthroughs mad possible many refinements that advance the process' efficiency in meeting modern wastewater treatment needs."
        Lecturer Pete Shanahan '73 & '82 (PhD) sent in a clipping from WE&T (Water Environment & Technology), April 2003, with an article by McKinney and Gary DeKock on "The 1950s: The Decade of Research." The authors describe university, government, and industrial research during the decade. In 1950, MIT was one of only five universities that carried out major sanitary engineering research. By 1960, the number had expanded to 33 universities. As the first US university to offer a sanitary engineering degree, the Course 11 faculty at MIT in 1950 included Rolf Eliassen, Clair Sawyer, Murray Horwood, and William Stanley. "Much of their research dealt with the chemistry and microbiology of the activated sludge and anaerobic digesting processes. They also studied treatment concepts for removing radioactive materials from water, water stabilization in distribution systems, and the operating characteristics of biological treatment systems."

In the alumni notes published by Technology Review, Dick Feingold '43 (old Course 17, Building Construction & Engineering) figures prominently in his class's 60th reunion celebration on Cape Cod in deplorable weather.

Breaking many decades of silence in response to requests for news, Paul (Pablo) Brosens '59 & '60 (SM) announces, "About five years ago, I invented a new sport which is a combination of deck-tennis, badminton, tennis and paddle-tennis. 'Brosens' is a volley game (like badminton) played with the same paddle that is used for playing paddle-tennis; the court, about 40 feet by 20 feet, has two neutral (forbidden) zones on both sides of the net (as in deck tennis); the rules and counting of the points are similar to tennis. The ball is made of a special sponge rubber, and the sport can be played on any type of surface, either outdoors or indoors. There are two versions of the equipment: beach (light and portable), and club (stronger and permanent).
        "At present, I am building a website in Spanish (brosensargentina.com) for this game, but I plan to add English and French later on. Patents for the equipment are pending in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Spain and the United States. I shall start marketing it next June, in Buenos Aires (Argentina) where I have spent most of my life. If anyone has any questions about the new game of brosens, I shall be glad to answer, now that I retired at the age of 65 and have plenty of time."
        During his junior year at MIT, Brosens recalls building a balsa wood scale model of the Bridge over the River Kwai, of book and movie fame, with Bill Jobin '59. "Pablo and I presented it to the faculty at the end of our junior year, 1958, telling them that we had built it during Reading Period since we had so much spare time," fondly recalls Jobin.

Bill Jobin (left) and Paul (Pablo) Brosens put the finishing touches on their Bridge Over the River Kwai scale model in 1958. )Photo sent by Paul Brosens '59 & '60)

Now spending the academic year as a Visiting Fellow at the School of Civil Engineering at the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand, Jonathan Richmond '91 (PhD) speculated that he "was possibly punished for telling my students that I'd brought the 'Institute Screw' from Cambridge for them to experience in Bangkok.
        "A week into my appointment, my second massive homework assignment at the ready, I was screaming with agony and taken to a local hospital. After three tortured hours on a stretcher without painkillers, my yells putting the building's foundations to a stress test, an ambulance removed me to a more auspicious institution, where a manic-eyed doctor promised to remove a painfully trapped kidney stone.
        "Fearing not only this procedure but, aware that Bangkok was the sex-change capital of the world and concerned that more might be missing upon waking from the anesthetic than just the kidney stone, I delayed surgery for three days of IV drips, non-stop shots in the muscle of the rump and unbelievable anguish, relieved only by much-appreciated visits from AIT faculty, staff, and students, and by the flowers and other goodies they kindly brought. The pain subsided enough for me to find the surgeon an hour before the scheduled operation, and cancel. The doctor instead gave out kidney stone dislodging/dissolving pills (why hadn't he done this earlier?), the stone made its own exit, and I am now back terrorizing my students at AIT."
        In addition to offering graduate courses in transportation with a focus on development issues, Jonathan is exploring transportation problems and planning processes in Bangkok and attempting to come up with recommendations for improving them.

Inventor and entrepreneur Mathias Craig '03 (SM) announces that his new company, blueEnergy, was officially incorporated on November 19th, in the District of Columbia. The company's primary mission is to "provide a low cost solution to the energy needs of underdeveloped communities in Central America and Nicaragua in particular. These underserved communities are typically isolated from their national grids and beyond the service sphere of their national governments. blueEnergy will meet their energy needs by providing low-cost micro wind turbines and related energy services and equipment." This project involving little wind turbines, designed to be produced locally, was described in the Vol. 17:1 CEE newsletter.

Now a grad student, Arthur Fitzmaurice has received the Buddy Messing Award for the Most Outstanding Undergraduate Brother of Zeta Beta Tau Fraternity for 2003. He adds, "This is the most prestigious award offered to an individual brother of Zeta Beta Tau; it recognizes one brother from among all chapters who best lives out the precepts of the fraternity."

On Sept. 10, 2003, Master Sergeant Don McCusker returned home from Kuwait to an enthusiastic greeting by friends, neighbors, and his wife Joan, an administrative assistant in Bldg. 1. Activated at the beginning of February and initially assigned to be a Food Service Supervisor, he found that his job had been contracted out under the new military policy. He eventually ended up doing Logistic Status Reports on the people and equipment vital to run a mission. Sent home on emergency leave after the death of his mother, "sometimes, I feel guilty that my unit is still over there. But it is a wonderful feeling to be home with my family!" (Photo from Joan McCusker)

From 1985 to 1987, Gary Jones was a Fulbright postdoc fellow at Parsons Lab, working with Prof. François Morel. Gary is now the chief executive of the Cooperative Research Centre for Freshwater Ecology (CRCFE), and professor of aquatic science at the Univ. of Canberra in Australia. The CRCFE is a collaborative venture between 19 partners, with labs and resources distributed across the eastern states of Australia. It specializes in river system ecology, river restoration and sustainable river management, and provides the latest ecological knowledge needed to help manage rivers sustainably.

Among the articles in the September issue of the Maine IS Technology Newsletter is "25 Years of Geodetic Route Surveying" by newsletter correspondent Harold Nelson of the Maine Dept. of Transportation.

Stephen Tay '98 (PhD) sends greetings from Nanyang Technological Univ. in tropical Singapore, and the good news that he was part of a research team "that recently bagged the prestigious National Technology Award 2003. The award is administered by A-STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore's equivalent of NSF)." He adds that he and his wife Angie have four daughters now

Having heard about the glories of the new Zesiger athletic center, Frank Hesselton '34 wrote in, "I wouldn't be able to find my way about today's MIT campus. All that was there in my day were the main building completed in 1916, a few dormitories, and some 'temporary' wooden structures left over from World War I activities, most of it between Mass. Ave. and the street just east of the Walker Memorial, across which then was the President's dwelling, plus a couple of buildings across the street north of the main block.. Swimming pool? What swimming pool? The only college pool I ever was in was while visiting a friend at Yale! The wrestling squad, of which I was a very minor part during freshman year, in order to avoid regular PT, worked out on mats placed in the corner of the basketball court in the old field house, which was one of the aforesaid structures left over from World War I. Existence at MIT was quite Spartan in those days. Incidentally, starting at about when I was 10, my mother took me to MIT Open House each year, until finally she came alone to see me proudly operating one of the testing machines as an exhibitor."

In an aside about the pioneering studies in wind energy done in Vermont in the early 1940s, Charles Carver '49 (SM) & '55 (ScD) recalls, "Prof. John Wilbur did the structural analysis, Von Karman the aerodynamics and Den Hartog the vibration analysis for the tower. When it threw a blade which flew off into space, the story goes that Von Karman tried to calculate its trajectory in order to recover it. It was never found the terrain around the mountain is impossible."

We thank Paul Petitmermet '33 for offering to send us his 1931 Benchmark (Camp Tech summer yearbook). While we already have a copy from that year in the Newsletter collection, the MIT Museum appreciates donations of MIT memorabilia. Your discards are their treasures! If you ever want to give them your MIT-related photos or artifacts uncovered during a frenzy of attic cleaning, please contact curator Debbie Douglas (ddouglas@mit.edu).

Mystery pictures
"The fellow seated next to Chuck Ladd is Mohsen M. Baligh, my PhD thesis supervisor and mentor," writes Andrew Whittle '87 (ScD). "He left MIT in 1988 to return to Egypt, although he visited us for the Ladd symposium in October 2001. In the picture they are examining x-ray images from the directional shear cell." In the picture of students milling around in the Parsons Lab yard, Whittle also recognized Juan Pestana '94, one of his former PhD students.
        Adding technical details from Switzerland, Walter Steiner '77 (SMCE) & '80 (ScD) remembers that Mohsen Baligh taught theoretical soil mechanics and studied several topics including cone penetration testing, piles and three dimensional slope stability. "Mohsen supervised my master's thesis in 1977. They did a true triaxial test with x-ray machines, imaging some lead bullets and finally presenting strain and displacements within the tested true triaxial sample. I suspect that Ladd and Baligh are looking at some of the results."
        Charles Ladd '55 (SB, old Course 17), '57 & '61 (SM & ScD, Civil Eng.) recalls that he and Mohsen Baligh were looking at radiographs of strains in a unique shear device. "That was the topic of Jack Germaine's doctoral thesis in 1982, an SM thesis by Deirdre O'Neill '81 & '85, and an ScD dissertation by Tian H. Seah '90.

Another of Baligh's ScD students, Mike Kavvadas '80 (SM) & '82 (ScD), speculates, "The photograph was taken in 1980 or 1981, in the third-floor room where the Directional Shear apparatus was being developed by the (then) visiting Prof. Arthur, Chuck Ladd and Jack Germaine. Judging from the setting of the photo, I believe that Chuck and Mohsen are discussing the influence of principal stress rotation in the directional shear apparatus (a big thing at the time). The square they are looking at is probably a photo of the cross section of the specimen used in the apparatus showing the particle displacement vectors.
        In addition to teaching and doing research at the National Technical University of Athens where he is associate professor of civil engineering, "I am involved as geotechnical consultant in several major infrastructure projects in Greece, such as the tunnels of the north-south highway, railway links and the Egnatia highway, the Athens Metro, and several hydroelectric and water supply earth dam projects. I am also geotechnical consultant for Archirodon Overseas S.A., a major international civil works contractor operating in the Middle East, North Africa and South East Asia." He includes his website with more detailed information: http://www.civil.ntua.gr/kavvadas

Prof. Emeritus Bob Logcher '58, '60, '62 (ScD) suggests that the person with Chuck Ladd is Mishac Yegian, "a cousin of my son-in-law. A doctoral student in Geo in the late 70s who went to Northeastern, he was Dept. head for many years and recently stepped down from that position."

Looking at the scene from a different viewpoint, technology historian Brian Chase immediately identified the computer in the picture as an early TRS-80.

Parsons Lab in Exile (Bldg. NE20, 3 Cambridge Center) held onto the pumpkin carving tradition and attracted a crowd of artists and partygoers on Oct. 24. (Photo: Yousef Jafarpour)

Arts
CEE students found prominent positions in the MIT Musical Theater Guild's production of "West Side Story" in November, starting with the doomed romantic couple of Maria (Ana Albir '04) and Tony (grad student Ethan Butler). Alex French '05 was technical director, and grad student Dan Amano played the complex score on violin and piano for rehearsals. Grad student Todd Radford was A-rab (a gang member) and assistant technical director.

During the busy fall musical season, administrative assistant Ginny Siggia sang in two concerts in November. The Concord Chorus concentrated on a variety of early baroque pieces with original instruments, and the New World Chorale presented the Bach Magnificat and Durufle Requiem.

Grad student Arthur Fitzmaurice has been selected for the Boston Pops Holiday Choir. "While the rest of MIT is at home enjoying Christmas vacation, I will spend my days in lab and my nights on tour in New England and singing at Symphony Hall with the Boston Pops and Keith Lockhart."

Administrative assistant Carolyn Jundzillo exhibited paintings in the Dept. of Architecture Fine Arts Fair in November, including a exquisite little oil of a gazebo overlooking the sea. Janni Moselsky, formerly an administrative assistant at Parsons Lab and now with the Architecture Dept., displayed a variety of gem stone jewelry.

Sports
As a graduate student in transportation, Mark Schofield takes his running seriously. Having run the Chicago marathon twice, he completed his first New York City marathon on November 2. "The weather was great for the spectators, but a bit hot for the runners. The course was amazing, starting on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, covering all five boroughs, and finishing in Central Park. I got in just under the four-hour mark with a time of 3:59. Most importantly, though, I beat hip-hop star and celebrity marathoner P Diddy! The Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, DC is next on my list... I still have quite a ways to go before I qualify for Boston!"
        Despite the MIT stereotype of the nerd whose only exercise comes from pushing computer keys, an extraordinary number of students play varsity or intramural sports. According to an article in the Boston Globe, "'We have more varsity sports than any other school in the NCAA Division 1, 2, or 3,' says MIT's assistant athletics director, John Benedick. 'We get no respect. People just think we're a bunch of geeks.'" Several student athletes look vigorous in the accompanying photos, including Dave Lohrey '05 with the water polo team.

Query
Does anyone remember using the MIT seismograph at Camp Tech in Machias, Maine? Harold Nelson of the Maine Dept. of Transportation believes that the MIT seismograph went into use in the early 1930s, judging by the dates on the many crumpled up newspapers found in the attic of the MIT Seismograph building. "I find that the last use of the seismo was 1940, and it was a Wenner instrument that used photographic registration on light sensitive paper. I would like to hear from students who used the seismograph and the observatory," especially if they remember what they did. As of a few years ago, the building and seismograph pad were still intact. He can be reached at harrydeb@gwi.net