Inside this Issue

Letters
Fred Hickernell

Letter from the Vice Provost for Research

When I entered Pomona College, I was surprised that there were questions my professors could not answer. During my elementary and high school education, all questions posed had answers, and we learned to express those answers clearly on our exams. But in college I was exposed to the frontier of knowledge, where some questions did not yet have answers. As an undergraduate student, I spent two summers working alongside faculty and other students discovering answers to questions at the frontier. It so excited me that I pursued a doctorate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I learned to pose my own questions as well as answer some of them. This is why I have relished an academic career, and especially my past 14 years at Illinois Institute of Technology.
On Campus
Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship

Kaplan Institute Grand Opening

The Illinois Tech community and the City of Chicago came together on Mies Campus to celebrate the grand opening of the long-awaited Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship on October 25, 2018. “Pepper,” a semi-humanoid robot, was in the crowd, as well as former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who, along with namesake benefactors Ed Kaplan (ME ’65) and his wife, Carol, and other dignitaries helped to cut the ceremonial ribbon opening the institute.
Features
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.”
Features
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.
Chapter News
Connecting Alumni Around the World

Connecting Alumni Around the World

Vasudevan “Raj” Rajaram (LAW ’91) has made it his priority in life to serve others. He has dedicated himself to nonprofit work since 2004, much of it with Illinois Tech. He mentors students in Stuart School of Business, helps the Office of Undergraduate Admission recruit minority students, and rallies international alumni to aid in recruiting programs. Rajaram has served two terms on the Alumni Association Board of Directors and has returned for a third. He has also volunteered countless hours to domestic and international alumni initiatives in his role as chair of the International Alumni Committee.
Alumni News

Obituaries

Chicago, served as a faculty member at the Institute of Design from 1966 to 2011, faculty emeritus, and director of ID from 1982 to 1986. Early in his career he was product designer for Unimark International and then co-founded the Chicago design firms Source, Inc. and Design Planning Group, contributing products to Knoll International and Steelcase, among other firms. The recipient of numerous design awards, Fahnstrom has some of his early work in packaging design as part of the permanent collection of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. In 2017 the Dale Fahnstrom Endowed Teaching Fellowship was established at ID by co-founders of the design consultancy Gravity Tank, who were also Fahnstrom’s former students.
Spring 2019 Magazine
Vice President for External Affairs

Jess Goode

Managing Editor

Marcia Faye

Director of Content

Chelsea Kalberloh Jackson

Contributors

Emily Ayshford
Olivia Dimmer
Steve Hendershot
Robin Hunt
Scott Lewis
Casey Moffitt
Kristin Baird Rattini
Rebecca Scherer
Andrew Wyder

Art Director and Design

Scott Benbrook

Web Edition

Brian Bailey
Peter Beltemacchi
Adrian Cabrera
Abbey Vargas

Illinois Tech Magazine is published two times a year by the Office of Marketing and Communications
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