Features

Fall 2019
When Life Happens

When Life Happens

It took two decades for Michael Retsky to realize that he had missed out on the “Wild West” era of physics. By the mid-1980s Retsky (PHYS ’61) had collected a series of patents related to electron microscope technology while working at Hewlett-Packard in Colorado Springs, Colorado, but he also came to recognize that the age of rapid discoveries and astonishing breakthroughs in his field had ended. For Retsky, the study of physics had matured, becoming a little less fun in the process.
Fall 2019

Bauhaus-Inspired Verve

Charlie Vinz (ARCH ’04), founder of the Adaptive Operations architecture studio, is building a reputation as a top restaurant architect, thanks to his work at culinary hot spots such as Chicago’s Parachute restaurant, whose chefs earned a 2019 James Beard Foundation Award. Yet Vinz isn’t drawn to restaurants per se as much as he is to working with fellow artists who see architecture as part of a larger creative vision. Chef-owned restaurants fit that bill.
Fall 2019
Unstoppable

Unstoppable

Beatrice Lumpkin (M.S. MT ’71), 101, will not stay still. The petite, gray-haired dynamo fusses over her visitors, pouring cups of golden oolong tea and serving a bowl of artfully arranged cookies and chocolate drops in the living room of her home in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. She whizzes into the kitchen, opening drawers, before stopping briefly for a photo while standing atop her balance board. She then takes her guests on a tour of her top-floor senior co-op with its 270-degree views overlooking the city and Lake Michigan.
Spring 2019
Changing the Culture

Changing the Culture

As a high school student, Susan Blessing (PHYS ’82) was enthralled with physics and the way it could explain exactly how the universe worked. “Physics is everything,” she says. But at the same time, after she enrolled at Illinois Tech, she realized that physics wasn’t everything—it wasn’t gender equal. From the time she began studying physics, she was surrounded by men. “There were very few women,” she says. “I knew I had to get used to it because that is what the future would hold.”
Spring 2019
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.
Fall 2018
Built by Barcode

Built by Barcode

It’s 90 degrees on a late June day as Edward L. “Ed” Kaplan (ME ’65) bounds into IIT Tower dressed in navy walking shorts, a navy plaid polo shirt, and fluorescent yellow athletic shoes. While his chronological age may be 75, his spirit and enthusiasm appear to be no less diminished than when he was a 26-year-old entrepreneur who, along with the late Gerhard “Gary” Cless, began to fabricate the machines and processes that would eventually form Zebra Technologies Corporation, a pioneering asset-identification company that earned $3.72 billion in revenue during fiscal year 2017.
Fall 2018
Apoorva Shenoy

The I’s Have It

Through her design of a custom-fit athletic shoe, Apoorva Shenoy (M.Des. ’18) says that she is “bringing back a more human way of running.” That Shenoy chooses to emphasize the human aspect of her startup idea is no surprise considering her educational pedigree: Illinois Tech’s Institute of Design (ID). Now housed in the Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship, ID—founded as the New Bauhaus in 1937 under visionary László Moholy-Nagy—is recognized as a leading institution for its methods-based, human-centered approach to global challenges, inspiring students to place people first, and sometimes even feet first, as in the example of Shenoy.