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In Perpetual Motion

In Perpetual Motion

Growing up in Tabriz, Azerbaijan, Alireza Khaligh (Ph.D. EE ’06) sometimes accompanied his father to his job at the local electric power plant. The sight of the generators, smokestacks, and spinning turbines along with conversations he had with his father made such a profound impact on Khaligh that he turned to constructing circuits and electronic components as an adolescent hobby. With an aptitude for mathematics and physics, Khaligh had scored an academic trifecta by the time he received his doctorate: He ranked first in both his bachelor’s and master’s power engineering programs at Sharif University of Technology, and first in the Ph.D. qualifying examination in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Illinois Tech.
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Paige Mass

With Her Heart and Mind

From her laboratory within the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation at Children’s National Health System in Washington, D.C., Paige Mass (BME ’17) can see the SkyBear medical helicopter delivering critical patients, from infants to teenagers. While Mass is not likely to meet any one of them in person, she could conceivably change the lives of some of those patients through her design of a cardiac device specific to their individual needs. In a telephone interview from Children’s National, Mass, an R&D development operations engineer, recalls being allowed to observe a surgery in which one of her 3D-printed models was being tested.
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Miwa Aki

Into the Sky

By most any company’s standards, erecting the world’s tallest tower—the TOKYO SKYTREE®, at a height of 2,080 feet—would be an insurmountable architectural feat. But for the Obayashi Corporation, it was merely a warm-up. In 2012 the global construction, civil engineering, and real estate development conglomerate announced that it had begun research so that it could assemble a 96,000-kilometer (59,652-mile) carbon nanotube cable that will extend from Earth into the cosmos to support a space elevator. Akihisa “Aki” Miwa (M.S. OR ’83), general manager of Obayashi’s Technical Division, says that the company, where he has been employed since 1974, has always had one eye just beyond the horizon.