Milton Oceanographers on Global Warming

The home of biologist Carin Ashjian’s research efforts, the port of Barrow, Alaska, is drowning. Melting Arctic ice is producing more severe ocean storms, sending larger waves crashing onto the shores of the low-lying communities, swamping roads and eroding the landscape. Carin, Class of 1978, is an associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceano-graphic Institute studying biological oceanography, particularly in polar regions (Arctic and Antarctic). She’s currently leading a Barrow-based project that is exploring how climate change is affecting the migration and feeding patterns of bowhead whales, a traditional food source for the indigenous Inupiat people. In Barrow, she says, climate change seems very real.
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Solving a Problem You Can't See

We’ve all done it: come home to a dark house and searched to find the light switch. Richard Kornbluth ’66 is looking for a different sort of switch, one that will turn on the body’s immune system to fight tumors and infectious disease. He studies how our body’s T cells (a kind of white blood cell) activate macrophages (in Greek, “big eater”) to fight HIV, AIDS, and cancerous tumors. His HIV vaccine has stimulated an immune response in mice and is now being tested on macaque monkeys through a grant from the National Institutes of Health. Richard has also tested a similar vaccine for malaria—“It’s a DNA vaccine that doesn’t have to be refrigerated. A stable shelf life is crucial for these kinds of vaccines.”—and a vaccine that appears to cure mice of tumors for the rest of their lives. He expects the latter to come to human trials in one or two years.
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Mind Reader

Correlating the mind with the brain is like trying to unite body and soul: it’s hard to know where one ends and the other begins. But the links are there, and Ned T. Sahin ’94 is searching for them. As a Ph.D. candidate in cognitive neuroscience at Harvard University and a scholar at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital, Ned is investigating how our brains allow us to speak. Using brain imaging and more invasive electrical recordings, Ned is tracing the neural circuits for language and grammar in Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, two regions long known to be involved in language.
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Active Science for a Modern Age

Safety goggles aren’t enough anymore. Today’s science students will need an explorer’s pack for the adventures they’ll be undertaking. For while learning begins at a desk, the path of discovery leads out of the classroom and into the landscapes and labs of our world. Today, lectures and experiments are only the start of the conversation. From geology to physics to biotechnology, these alumni are pioneering the frontier of science education.
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Mergers and Acquisitions: Three Women Working at Junctures of Two Fields

Clara Richardson ’71
Scientific Illustrator, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago

“As an artist, trained as a scientist, before I start to draw I try to understand what the researchers need to communicate.” With years of study and experience both in zoology and in art, Clara Richardson ’71 is a natural science illustrator with the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. The Field Museum is both an esteemed research institute and a library of specimens. For 20 years she has helped document the findings of researchers in evolutionary biology.
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Recent Graduates Make Tracks in Science

“In science, the most interesting stuff is happening at the interfaces between disciplines. There’s a blurring of traditional divisions. Think about nanotechnology, for example—a combination of chemistry, materials science and physics. Right now at Apple, I get to work at the intersection of business, engineering and design.”
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Working at the Nexus of Science and Public Policy

Science news drives headlines on a daily basis, whether the issue is the Kyoto Protocol, avian flu, gene mapping, or genetically modified food. Reactions to opportunities, crises or economic realities often show leaders in reactive mode. These three Milton grads are among those with the scientific and social expertise to gather information, evaluate and act, helping leaders make effective, broadly beneficial choices, in the face of real-world considerations.
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With a "Hand" in Developing the New New Thing

“My work with Intel is about making sure there is a clear technological strategy for developing business—the Intel business that intersects with consumers.”
—Brendan Traw ’87
Intel Fellow and CTO

“I most enjoy being on the front edge of new technology waves, looking over the horizon for non-obvious opportunities.”
—Gil Kliman ’76
Interwest Partners, Menlo Park, CA

“I work with start-up companies and inventors in many different areas of technology who want to patent core technology.”
—Nick Ulman ’84
Woodside IP Group
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Genetics Class Uses HIV Epidemic as Model

Not many high schools have taken this approach in genetics,” says Diane Gilbert-Diamond, of the science department. Normally colleges and universities would take a model such as HIV and study the fundamentals of molecular genetics through it. “Molecular genetics is such a broad field, and using HIV is a way to find a common thread and allow students to become experts on a topic during the semester,” Diane says.
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Independent Milton Scientists

Every year, Milton students, usually in Classes I or II, find their imaginations and intellects so fired they elect to do an independent study in science. This winter we caught up with four of those students: Wiley Caine, Kathryn Evans, Amanda Faulkner and Hannah Gallo, all Class of 2006.

Although their projects are different, all four students share common ground when they speak of science. They point to particular moments when science took hold of their thinking. For Hannah, that moment was the research topic she did on sustainable forestry at the Maine Coast Semester. She remembers making over 80 phone calls and conducting more than 20 face-to-face interviews as part of her research. “You became devoted to your topic.” Her presentation of her findings to the rest of the school was “a big pivotal moment. I had never applied myself that much; I had never known so much about a topic before. It felt good.” Wiley’s inspiration started at Milton in Tony Domizio’s Methods in Scientific Research class, which “really got me into inquiry,” Wiley says. Coupled with his family’s longtime interest in environmental matters, Wiley’s inquiry led to research on environmentally sound buildings. Amanda’s curiosity about fish farming grew straight out of her experience in California this past summer as Milton’s S.E.A. Scholar (an opportunity provided by the Roger Hallowell ’28 Memorial Fund). There she found the study of marine life so fascinating that she changed her Milton course schedule to include an independent project on fish farming. Kathryn has lived her whole life “across the street from water,” so she has had a lifelong curiosity about marine life. On any given day, she says, “you can find me in hip waders mucking around in the marshes.” Two Milton experiences led to her project of dissecting marine organisms: the dogfish dissection in Marine Biology and her participation in the Blue Lobster Bowl marine science competition at MIT. The only Class II student on the Milton team, Kathryn found the competition eye-opening: “There I realized the extent of marine science. I wanted to learn more.”
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