Fall 2019

Bauhaus and a Side of Black Beans

Local designer Charlie Vinz (ARCH ’04) shares how his time at Germany’s Bauhaus-Universität Weimar inspired his recent restaurant projects
From Dentist to Attorney to Health Care Executive

Bruce Bloom (LAW ’88), former CEO of Cures Within Reach, continues to reinvent himself by working in the arena of repurposed drugs

Inside this Issue

President’s Message

Letter from the President

Now, as we are deep into fall, I find myself thinking back to a celebration that coincided with the beginning of the season: the Illinois Institute of Technology Homecoming & Reunion Weekend 2019. The event’s two days of activities for alumni, students, faculty, and staff included a 50th Reunion Breakfast, trolley tours, athletics events, and the Homecoming Carnival. In addition to welcoming members of the Golden Society as well as alumni who graduated in 1969, 1994, 2009, and 2018 back to Mies Campus, we held the Alumni Awards ceremony and reception.

On Campus

Letters

George Bob (TD ’63), Grand Rapids, Michigan, shared his copy of the spring 2019 issue of Illinois Tech Magazine with James R. Carr, a professional engineer who sent the magazine a letter about his slide rule memories that were prompted by the article “Giant Slipstick Returns to Mies Campus.” Carr says that his father (who worked with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as a contractor) gave him his first K&E slide rule in about 1939. His wife sent him a 7-inch K&E Doric Model 9069 in 1951 while he served with the United States Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 3 Seabees in the Aleutian Islands; he still uses it today as a retiree. Carr recommends that slide rule fans read the article “Lament for the Slide Rule” by Robert Kanigel, which first appeared in Johns Hopkins Magazine in the late 1970s.

On Campus

Transitions

Illinois Institute of Technology welcomed four new deans to the university this past summer.

On Campus

Design Thinking Outside the Box

In late 2018 Institute of Design Studio Professor Martin Thaler asked his product design students to create something for a client one mile from Illinois Tech’s Mies Campus. The class devised a system of modular, box-shaped seats for Boxville—a seasonal food, retail, and community space built from shipping containers at 51st Street and the CTA Green Line—that debuted over summer 2019.

On Campus

A New Light

Mohammad Shahidehpour, Distinguished Bodine Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of Illinois Institute of Technology’s Robert W. Galvin Center for Electricity Innovation, seems to think so. As a part of Galvin Center’s evolving microgrid project—a self-sufficient and environmentally sustainable energy system on Mies Campus—Illinois Tech has installed a system of photovoltaic panels on the roof of S. R. Crown Hall.

On Campus

Illinois Tech Headliners

“It’s long been thought of as an indicator of how bad the air in a space might be.” Brent Stephens, associate professor of architectural engineering, commenting on carbon dioxide levels in a room in a New York Times article about studies on the importance of indoor air quality.

On Campus

Ernie Iseminger Is New VP for Institutional Advancement

Illinois Institute of Technology welcomed Ernie Iseminger as vice president for Institutional Advancement on September 16. A leader in development and fundraising for more than three decades, he joined Illinois Institute of Technology from the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute, where he was involved in garnering a transformational gift of $70 million this past year.

On Campus

Illinois Institute of Technology Welcomes New Faculty

New faculty joining Illinois Tech in 2019–2020 include researchers and scholars in Armour College of Engineering, Chicago-Kent College of Law, the College of Architecture, the College of Science, and the Institute of Design. You can read about the university’s new deans—Professor Lance Fortnow, College of Science; Professor Reed Kroloff, College...

Philanthropy News

Career Path Plus

“Having a scholarship gave me the freedom to do what I’m doing today because I’m not sitting on a mountain of debt,” says Margaret Lee (ME/EGMT ’17), a former Camras scholar [below] now living and freelancing in New York. This is a common sentiment from students in Illinois Institute of Technology’s scholarship and leadership programs; not only are students better prepared for positions of leadership, but the philanthropy that provides full-tuition scholarships enables them to fearlessly set their sights high, pursuing career paths both planned or unplanned. Meet some young alumni who rose to the opportunities they received as students:

Athletics

Howell a Home Run on the Field, in the Classroom

The traits that make Ted Howell stand out on the baseball diamond for Illinois Tech are the same reasons he excels in the classroom, so it's not hard to understand why Howell became the Scarlet Hawks' first Division III Google Cloud Academic All-American.

Athletics

Men’s Tennis Aces Test

The Illinois Tech men's tennis team won the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference tournament title in May to earn an NCAA Division III tournament berth. Photo: Jordan Benson/Concordia-Wisconsin Athletics Making the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III national tournament was a needed first step for an Illinois Tech men’s tennis program...

Research Briefs

Growing Crystals Onboard the ISS

Nuclear radiation on Earth may soon be more easily detected thanks to investigations launched into low Earth orbit on the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory (ISS). Aleksandar Ostrogorsky, professor of mechanical and materials engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology, is the principal investigator of an ISS research project dedicated to studying the effects of microgravity on the production of single semiconductor crystals.

Research Briefs

From Apnea to Zzzs Relief

An IIT Research Institute (IITRI) scientist and Illinois Institute of Technology biology professor is working to provide convenient relief to some of the estimated 22 million Americans who suffer from sleep apnea. David McCormick, IITRI president and director, is collaborating with University of Chicago Harold Hines Jr. Professor of Medicine Nanduri Prabhakar to develop a sleep apnea pill that becomes active in about 15 minutes and lasts for 7 to 8 hours.

Features

Cultivating Change

Craig Rupp (M.S. EE ’94) recalls walking into a RadioShack in northwest Iowa as a child and discovering the thrill of tinkering with electronic components. His appetite for understanding how things work would allow him to engineer his dream job—reimagining agriculture technology. Today Rupp is co-founder and chief executive officer of Sabanto, an Iowa-based, farming-as-a-service company using autonomous planting equipment.

Features

In His Own Sweet Time

Chocolate holds a special place for Dan Kazmierczak—in his mind, in his stomach, and in his heart. A veteran of this delectable food industry for nearly a decade and a half, Kazmierczak says chocolate doesn’t just make him happy—it’s part of who he is.

Features

A Fortuitous Bend in the Road

Sanchez has blazed a trail at CPD by creating, and now piloting, a new crisis intervention model designed to reshape how Chicago police interact with people with mental illness by placing community outreach and treatment front and center.

Features

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.

Features

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.

Features

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.