Curious Minds - Meet and Eat with Alums
Panel discussion in the lecture hall (5:00 pm) follwed by break out groups for dinner (6:00 pm)
Advance sign up for dinner required (sign up sheet at Bryan 330). Sign up BEFORE winter break.
Alumni to meet - Helen Chappell '03; Siyang Chen '08; Joe Davy '07; Melissa Ilardo '07; Meg Shea '04
Helen Chappell (c/o ’03) Helen is an exhibit developer, recovering physicist, and sometimes science writer who spends her days conceptually designing and scripting exhibits at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. Since graduating from NCSSM in 2003, she’s been an astronomer, a storyteller, a materials engineer, an educator, a terrible fiction writer, a star projector repairwoman, a competitive Frisbee player, a chemical physicist, and a reporter. Not all at once, thank goodness. Along the way, she managed to earn the proper credentials for a career completely different from the one she’s pursuing (a B.S. in Physics from Carolina and an M.S. in Physics from the University of Colorado) and to win some fancy-sounding awards that let her get paid to do cool things for a while (the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the AAAS Mass Media Fellowship). In her spare time she climbs mountains, bakes delicious cookies, and gets into bike wrecks while wearing evening gowns and no helmet.
Siyang Chen (c/o ‘08) Siyang is a software engineer and data analyst working at Facebook, Inc. in sunny California. Originally from Beijing, China, he spent the latter part of his childhood in the rolling hills of Wilkes County, North Carolina. During his stay at NCSSM, he enjoyed sailing in the biopond and mounting unicorn horns on the buses, while learning a bit of math, programming, and Russian. Upon graduating, Siyang moved down the street to Duke University. Driven by wanderlust, he convinced the school to fly him to several foreign countries and Florida by repeatedly qualifying for the world finals of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Competition. At age 19, he started teaching undergraduate courses on algorithmic problem-solving. After four short years, Siyang completed a B.S. in mathematics and computer science with a Russian minor, writing a senior thesis about algorithmic game theory. In his free time, he enjoys gymnastics, fire spinning, and figuring out what he wants to do with his life.
Joe Davy (c/o ’07) is the CEO of BUYSTAND, the world’s largest marketplace for active lifestyle equipment, apparel, and footwear. He is also a member of the Microsoft’s Customer Advisory Board, the Foundation Board of Directors at the North Carolina Museum of Art, and the Board of the Kenan Institute at UNC Chapel Hill. He also serves as an advisor to 8 Rivers Capital. Prior to BUYSTAND, Joe was the Founder / CEO and then Chief Product Officer of EvoApp, the creator of the enterprise big-data analytics platform Bermuda. EvoApp was acquired in 2012 by LocalSense to augment their marketing and data analytics capability. Additionally, Joe was the President of Davy Consulting (acquired in 2010) after starting his career at IBM as a software engineer. Joe attended UNC Chapel Hill from 2007 to 2010, studying economics. Joe has won numerous awards including the 2011 Small Technology Company of the Year award from the North Carolina Technology Association, the 2012 Companies to Watch award from the Council for Entrepreneurial Development, and INC Magazine’s Coolest College Startup award. Joe has been featured in Entrepreneur, INC, Fast Company, Business Insider, and numerous other publications, and is regarded as a leader in big-data, consumer internet, and web technology.
Melissa Ilardo (c/o ’07) During my time at NCSSM I was a hardcore physics-lover and proud RPhys-er. I applied for (and got!) time on the Arecibo 300m telescope for my pulsar research. However, in part because of an unforgettable miniterm in the Galapagos with Dr. Sheck and Dr. Halpin, I was eventually converted to an evolutionary biologist during my undergrad at Princeton University. I'm currently in grad school in Hawaii doing theoretical evolutionary biology as a part of the NASA Astrobiology Institute. Outside of school, I love keeping busy and active. I've been scuba certified for 10 years and have been diving, hiking, surfing, and rapelling in my spare time since I moved to Hawaii. I do yoga and aerial dance (think cirque du soleil) and play violin and ukulele. I speak Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and more recently I've been dabbling in Sanskrit. After I get my masters this Spring I'm taking a year off and buying a one way ticket to India where I will continue to study Sanskrit and yoga while working with an organization that rehabilitates children involved in sex trafficking.
Meg Shea (c/o ’04) After graduating from NCSSM, Meg attended Yale University where she oscillated between the Physics and Art History departments, though she ended up in Physics. She kept up her love of teaching (helped by being work-service for Kolena at NCSSM) by tutoring and doing a summer physics-teaching workshop at MIT. Meg also studied abroad in Beijing, China and began to explore international development on a student led trip to the Philippines. Upon graduation, she moved to Oundle, England to teach Physics and Mathematics at the high school level. Meg stayed at Oundle for three years, during which time she was able to further explore her interest in sustainable development through several school service trips to Kenya. Simultaneously, her interest in Physics deepened through teaching, visiting the annual meeting of the AAAS, and leading her students on trips to CERN. In her final year at Oundle, Meg worked on a research project in the High Energy Physics theory group at the University of Cambridge. She entered Duke's Physics department as a PhD candidate in fall 2011. She spent another summer working in High Energy but has since switched to Quantum Optics. She looks forward to focusing on the quantum world for her PhD. Meg also loves traveling with friends and family, cooking with local ingredients, singing, and swimming as much as possible.