Spring 2020

Application as Its Own Reward

Whether through building robots or spinal implants, HD LifeSciences’ co-founder Christopher Jones (AE ’07, Ph.D. BME ’14) says that he finds rewards in being creative and applying his technical aptitude.
Heart for the Orphaned and Abandoned

A one-week humanitarian medical mission led Mitchell Golbus (PSYC ’60) to his lifelong mission to help women and children in all areas of Guatemala.

Inside this Issue

Letters

Letter from the President

This past January, when the coronavirus began to change our world as we know it, Illinois Institute of Technology found ourselves doing what have done best since 1890—providing our students with a world-class education—only this time with the added challenge of ensuring a heightened level of safety for our community during a global pandemic.

On Campus

New College of Computing to Anchor Computation and Data Activities

A hub for addressing a variety of interdisciplinary computational research and educational needs. Degree programs in artificial intelligence. Collaborations with experts around the United States on how to develop a faster and more secure internet. These are just some of the projects that will take place under Illinois Institute of Technology’s new College of Computing, which opened on June 1. Besides the Department of Computer Science, the College of Computing, headed by current College of Science Dean Lance Fortnow, will house the departments of information technology and management, and applied mathematics, as well as the industrial technology and management program.

On Campus

Keeping Illinois Tech Safe

Weeks before the first case of the new respiratory virus 2019-nCoV, now widely known as COVID-19, was reported in the Chicago area on January 24, Illinois Institute of Technology leadership was behind the scenes, monitoring the campuses and coordinating efforts with officials from the Chicago Department of Public Health as well as state and national authorities.

On Campus

Illinois Tech Headliners

“There is no oops. We need compensation.” Chicago-Kent College of Law Professor Bernadette Atuahene, in a Detroit News article on the continued problems of the city's over-assessments on homeowners

On Campus

Enhanced Web Presence

In December 2019 Illinois Institute of Technology launched a redesigned website with the goal of enhancing the site’s appeal to prospective students. By February of this year, prospect requests for information had increased by 150 percent. More visible “Request Info” buttons on each page of the new website make it easier for potential students to navigate and obtain the information they need.

On Campus

Easing the Burden

Could good design solve Chicago’s longstanding problems with unfair ticketing practices? An Institute of Design student team led by Visiting Industry Professor Mark Jones (M.Des. ’95) is proposing new innovations that could provide economic relief to low-income citizens burdened by parking ticket debt. During the fall 2019 semester, Jones and...

Philanthropy News

Leading by Gracious Example

The restoration of the former Bailey Hall is focused around student success. Designed by award-winning architect and alumnus Dirk Denison (ARCH ’83, M.B.A. ’83), the soon-to-be-rededicated George J. Kacek Hall offers comfort, stunning views, and space for study and sociability in a way that honors the building’s distinct, historical qualities—the original building was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and completed in 1955—while innovating for the way students live, study, work, and socialize in the twenty-first century.

Athletics

Learn by the Sword

In a perfect world, Megan Burrill (MSE/M.S. 2nd Year) wouldn't mind if her life were a little less busy. Captain of the Illinois Tech women’s swimming and diving team, Burrill leads the Material Advantage and blacksmithing clubs, is involved in research on campus, and is minoring in computer science, among other activities. A clarinet and saxophone player, she would also like to return to playing at VanderCook College of Music—if only she could find the time.

Research Briefs

Best-Laid Plans of MICE and Researchers

Professor of Physics Daniel Kaplan and a group of international collaborators recently had an article published in Nature about how their beam-focusing Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) could contribute to the development of the next generation of particle accelerators.

Research Briefs

Biting into Ocean Plastics

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that 8 million metric tons of plastic—or the weight of nearly 90 aircraft carriers—enter oceans annually, threatening wildlife and entering the food chain up to human consumption. But what if an organism could be used to break down the plastics? A team of Illinois Institute of Technology students is working to genetically modify algae that could eat away at this growing problem.

Features

The Sunrise Kid

At age 24, Brian Gómez (CECD ’18) is taking action on climate change with Sunrise Movement, a national nonprofit that has positioned itself among the strongest advocates for a Green New Deal. What is exceptional—aside from the rapid pace at which the organization has grown in just a couple of years—is that the people who are steering the movement are all under the age of 35, with a majority under age 30.

Features

Brewing Up Something Big

The first taste of craft beer for Ankur Jain (CS ’03) was a swig of Anchor Steam, whose nineteenth-century recipe and California ocean-port pedigree made it a great object lesson in a course he took about the Industrial Revolution at Illinois Institute of Technology.

Features

Proactive Advocate

The genesis of a career that Jennifer Welch (LAW ’94) has spent the last three decades cultivating can be traced to the fax machine in a Planned Parenthood clinic in Chicago. Fresh out of college and working full-time at the organization, Welch vividly recalls that day in 1991 when she went to retrieve a fax—the ruling in Rust v. Sullivan, the case in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that the government was able to withhold Title X funds from family planning facilities that counseled patients on abortion. A realization suddenly hit her.

Features

Building Sustainability

Much more than an aesthetic flourish, the glass gradient represents both an achievement in building material advancement and a step forward in energy-efficiency, two areas of architecture that Vista Tower’s design principal, Juliane Wolf (ARCH ’01), has been pursuing her entire career.

Features

From ‘Bots to Biomedicine

Christopher Jones’s road to biomedical startup success did not quite unfold with machine-like precision. Sure, he was an engineering prodigy and is a natural entrepreneur, and the company that he co-founded, HD LifeSciences, makes implants for spinal fusion surgery.