Hey! Any alumni out there?

[SEDShead]

Being an alumni myself, I'm very interested to hear who else is out there and what they're doing!

We've had a few false starts at creating an active SEDS Alumni organization, but maybe this time is the charm.

There's some quiet stirring at http://alumni.seds.org/ as well as some other efforts at http://seds.org/seds/history/ to capture some of SEDS' history.

I'm also working on photo-archiving our founder's (Peter Diamandis) SEDS scrapbook. I'll post another note when I have some pages available.

Anyway, a bit about me -- I was at the University of Arizona from 1992-1997 for a bachelors, my tenure went something like:

1992-1994 UA SEDS Vice President
1993-1995 SEDS-USA Director of Special Projects
1994-1996 UA SEDS President
1995-1997 SEDS-USA Chair

and then in a number of unofficial capacities since then... These dates don't seem quite right, and I need to look some stuff up to verify them. Ah memory.

Anyway, this brings to mind another idea -- we really need to put together a roster of who our national leadership was back to the beginning of time (1981 for SEDS).


Anyway, to close out, I'm now living in the Pasadena area working as a flight systems engineer at JPL, currently on the Mars Exploration Rovers project.

Looking forward to hearing from others!

-Chris Lewicki (aka SEDShead around here)

[JohnWright]

To follow Chris's lead:

Let'see my SEDS activity went something like this:

1988-1991 Flintridge Prep Founder/President
1989-1991 High School Rep to National Executive Board
1991-1993 National Executive Board member
1991-1993 restarter of Occidental College (Oxy) SEDS

1988-89 member of the 1989 SEDS International Conference Committee
1990-91 CalSEDS '91 Chair

And, like Chris, a number of other things...oh, and I even won the SEDS Scholarship in '91 =)

Right now I'm working on:

http://www.YurisNight.net
http://www.PermissionToDream.org

- John

[msbentley]

When you come to archive this stuff, we have a fairly complete list of committee members of UKSEDS for the last (um, quick calculation...) 13 years - it gets a bit hazy near the beginning though ;-)

The corresponding email addresses are still maintained and updated in a rather sporadic manner - but we can pass info on an alumni organisation / site on!

[jeff]

Another alum checking in: I was a member of Caltech SEDS from 1989 to 1993, serving as chapter president in 1991-92; I was also a member of MIT SEDS from 1993-1999. I served as a member of the SEDS-USA board in one capacity or another from 1991 through about 1996, including being national co-chair in 1992-93 (this was before the 1993 constitutional reforms that established a single national chair and vice-chair, rather than two co-chairs; ah, the memories of those debates. :-)

Since graduating from MIT with a PhD in planetary sciences in 1999, I have been doing a wide range of activities, ranging from working as webmaster of Technology Review magazine to being principal engineer of a dot-com. Right now I am "between jobs" (read: unemployed) but that may change very soon.

While at MIT I edited an online space news publication, SpaceViews, which grew quite nicely. Because of a number of business transactions too detailed to discuss here, SpaceViews is no longer published, but I do have some newer projects, namely spacetoday.net (http://www.spacetoday.net) and, coming soon, The Space Review (http://www.thespacereview.com).

I have also been sporadically working on reviving the SEDS Alumni Association, which has not been active for a number of years. Interest to date has been lukewarm, but I would be happy to hear from alums, and current SEDS members, how an alumni association would be useful.

Regards,
Jeff Foust
jfoust@alum.mit.edu

[jeff]

A brief update from my last post: I've recently started a new space-related (!!) job as a launch industry analyst for the Futron Corporation (http://www.futron.com), a company that works with government agencies (including NASA and the FAA) and private companies on a wide array of space and technology issues. Since Futron is headquartered in Bethesda, MD (a suburb of Washington DC) I have just moved down to the area from the Boston suburbs -- I'm still unpacking! Should you need my updated physical coordinates (phone and snail mail address) just email me at jfoust@alum.mit.edu.

[JohnWright]

Congrats Jeff!

I just started a space-related job too (my first one since college!):)

I just started a gig working for the Space Frontier Foundation...
wow, everyone's getting employed :)

J