Talcott Mountain Science Center

Alumni

TMA Class Lists

Steve Perlman & Sandi Dobrowolsky
Saturday & Summer Students turned Instructional Staff!

Founders of Rearden Studios - a entrpreneurial media company in San Francisco. Steve & Sandi gave their all to starting WebTV (the prototype was assembled in a spare bedroom!) Steve also engineered the Catapult internet game playing system for Sega & Nintendo, and was a Wizard (yes, that was his actual job title) at General Magic, a spin-off of Apple Computer, where he was instrumental in engineering the first color Macintoshes and in developing QuickTime - the first standard for internet broadcasting. Steve has 30 47 57 61 patents to his name.

Dr. Eric Fossum - Saturday Programs

(bio courtesy of siimpel.com) "Dr. Eric R. Fossum is the CEO of Siimpel. Prior to joining Siimpel, Dr. Fossum was the CEO of Photobit Technology Corporation in Pasadena, CA. He co-founded Photobit in 1995 with associates from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to commercialize CMOS image sensor technology. Photobit was acquired by memory-chip manufacturer Micron Technology, Inc. in 2001, and was one of the leading suppliers of high performance CMOS image sensors for camera-phones, web cameras, automotive applications and high-speed motion-capture cameras. Before the formation of Photobit, Dr. Fossum managed image sensor and focal-plane technology R&D at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and also served as Senior Research Scientist. He was the inventor of the low-power, high quality CMOS active pixel image sensor camera-on-a-chip technology that has enabled camera-phones and swallowable camera-pills. CMOS Active pixel sensors are also used in high performance digital SLR cameras. Dr. Fossum holds over 100 US patents. He has received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Award and medals from the Photographic Society of America and the Royal Photographic Society in the UK. He was inducted into the US Space Technology Hall of Fame in 1999 and is Fellow member of the IEEE. Dr. Fossum was a faculty member in the Department of Electrical Engineering of Columbia University from 1984 to 1990 after receiving his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1984 and his B.S. from Trinity College in 1979. He has published over 235 technical papers and has served as adviser to 13 Ph.D.s. He received Yale's Becton Prize in 1984 and the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1986. He is the founder of the biannual IEEE Workshop on CCDs and Advanced Image Sensors. He also holds concurrent appointments as Adjunct Professor Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California and as a member of the Board of Advisors for Canesta Corporation."

Dr. Linda Ivany - Saturday Programs NEW! 2001 December Trip Log here!

Linda, a ravenous geology student when at TMSC, Linda tore through University of Florida, Syracuse and Harvard University (Ph.D. 1997 - a four year, free ticket to work with Stephen Jay Gould...) and is currently Assistant Professor of Earth Science at Syracuse University and visiting professor at University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Linda's recent work concerns the extremes of winters as a factor in one of the mass extinctions 34 million years ago. You can listen to an NPR interview here. A recent trip to Antarctica to collect fossils gave Linda her big-boat sea legs (a change from her usual kayaking) , and is chronicled here.

Shari Wiseman Shari Wiseman, the valedictorian of the TMA class of 1998, has won the Siemens Westinghouse Award for Advanced Placement. The award is given to two girls and two boys from six regions in the country with the highest scores on the greatest number of math and science Advanced Placement (AP) Exams. As a result of winning the award, Shari was invited to an awards ceremony in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC and receieved a $3000 scholarship. Shari is "certain that she would not have won this award without the foundation in math and science she gained at the Academy." She went on to say that she "strongly recommends the school to any gifted child with a passion for learning, even if he or she hasn't discovered it yet." Shari attended Glastonbury High School, and is currently studying Neuroscience at Yale University, and also volunteers at TMSC's Saturday and Summer programs.

Greg Kochanski - Saturday Programs

In addition to winning the MIT 2.007 engineering competition for the 1981-82 school year, Greg is part of the team at Lucent's Bell Labs that took the first ever images of the "DarkMatter" in the universe. Greg is a highly regarded astronomer and computer expert. Here are some of his opinions on the importance of research.

Bryan Nagy - TMA 1990

Bryan is at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, working on a robotic fork-lift. As part of the Robotics Institute at CMU, they are developing automated systems for packing and unpacking truck trailers and containers.

Kerri Kusza - Saturday Programs

Kerri started as part of Wallingford Schools programs at TMSC. She is working at Stanford University and has among her credits work on a spectrometer that will fly on "Athena" - one of the next generation of Mars Rovers in 2003!

Brian Doyle

Brian is working at North Sails, and had an article in Scientific American about molded sail tecnology using composites (usually used for bike frames and kayak hulls) to make super efficient boat sails. The technology is detailed here at North Sails. We don't think that's him in the hang glider rig, though.

 Ariana Feldberg - TMA 1990

Ari, a marine biologist is part of the team creating aquaculture of oysters, clams, and scallops for the Wampanoag Tribe in Aquinnah, Martha's Vineyard Island. She presented this work to an enthusiastic crowd of students at the academy this past March.