Alum Notes

May 2011

• Former volleyball player Julianne Bierwirth will begin a PhD program in food science at the University of Georgia next month. The 2009 graduate will study under a USDA fellowship to examine the effects of industrial processing on the antioxidant value of foods. After graduating from Carnegie Mellon, Bierwirth went to the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and earned her master’s degree in human nutrition. Her research was focused on effective sensory masking of broccoli sprout extract for use in clinical cancer prevention trials in QiDong, China. At the University of Georgia, Bierwirth is hoping to focus her research on fermentation and roasting of cocoa beans.

April 2011

• Former Carnegie Mellon cross country and track standout Nick End '06 finished 30th at the Boston Marathon earlier this month. End finished with a time of 2 hours, 22 minutes and 30 seconds and was the 13th American to cross the finish line. Approximately 24,000 people competed in the 2011 Boston Marathon, which was the 115th year of the event.

March 2011

• Malena Yablinsky ’07, a former volleyball player for the Tartans recently auditioned for and was accepted into the Charleston Symphony Orchestra Chorus in Charleston, S.C. Still active in athletics, Yablinsky also plays volleyball routinely, although now at the beaches in Charleston.

• Former men’s basketball standout Dom Ionadi ’02 will be inducted into the Penn Hills Athletic Hall of Fame on April 15, 2011. Ionadi was a three-time University Athletic Association Honorable Mention honoree during his playing career as a Tartan. He currently is the all-time leader in career three-pointers made with 204 (1998-2002) and holds the record for three-pointers made in a season with 108 (2000-01). That same season he shot .436 from behind the arc which was a team best. As a sophomore, he led the team in points scored with 228 and led the team in three-point field goal percentage three times.

• Spencer Svetcov, a 2009 graduate of the men's tennis team was recently accepted into dental school at NYU. He is currently working as a research assistant at NYU with a peridontist.

February 2011

• Former track and field athlete Rotimi Abimbola ‘10 has been working as a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton since graduation. Outside of her working hours, the former student body president has volunteered her time to non-profit organizations doing development work in Africa.

• Men’s Basketball alum Gary Trendel '97 works at Boston Scientific and recently launched several innovative, minimally invasive products used to treat liver cancer.  These endovascular liver therapies have shown to increase life expectancy of patients while improving overall patient comfort.  Over the past year in this role, he has traveled across five continents and 13 countries.  Gary graduated from the Civil Engineering department in 1997 and earned his M.B.A. from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University in 2007.

January 2011

• Former cross country and track and field student-athlete Ashley Bakelmun '08 is currently working at GreenShape LLC in Washington, D.C. Bakelmun has spent the past 10 months working for GreenShape, which is a green building consulting firm. Specifically, the 2008 graduate has worked with architects, engineers, contractors and building owners to recommend energy-efficient strategies for buildings. Bakelmun also conducts research to write sustainability plans for building modernizations and operations. This fall, Bakelmun played flag football with the Carnegie Mellon alumni team. She is currently training for two 10-mile races.

December 2010

• Former volleyball standout Chisom Amaechi '09 will head to sub-Saharan Africa as a member of the Peace Corps in September 2011. Amaechi, who will finish her master’s in chemical engineering at the University of Delaware this spring, was nominated as a Girls Education and Empowerment volunteer in a French-speaking country. The 2009 Carnegie Mellon graduate is hoping to work on bringing renewable energy to her region of Africa while in the Peace Corps.

• Football alum Jonathan Brown '08 founded Axena Technologies, Inc. in October. Axena is focused on combating healthcare-associated infections and uses a novel antibacterial coating to prevent bacteria attachment and growth on medical device surfaces. Axena has been recognized by Mass High Tech as a “New England startup to watch” and was recently showcased at the 13th MIT Venture Capital Conference. Brown graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 2008 with a degree in mechanical engineering. He received his master’s degree in innovation management and entrepreneurship from Brown University in 2010.

• Carrie Hughes-Cromwick '05, who spent time with the women’s basketball program, is currently working for the United States Energy Information Administration, an independent branch of the Department of Energy. The 2005 graduate is part of a team that collects electric power plant data. Hughes-Cromwick recently earned a master’s degree in survey methodology and statistics from the University of Maryland.

November 2010

• Laurie (Arendas) Venzon is serving as Mayor Pro-Tem in Davidson, North Carolina. A 1985 graduate with a degree in industrial management, Venzon was a standout with the women’s basketball and tennis programs during her time at Carnegie Mellon. After spending more than 20 years as an executive at Bank of America, Venzon began her service to the town of Davidson in November 2007.

• Nik Bonaddio ’05 launched a company called numberFire in September. A predictive analytics engine geared toward fantasy sports, numberFire helps fantasy players make smarter decisions about their teams. Bonaddio was a design and information systems major at Carnegie Mellon and credits his education for helping him build his new product. A standout sprinter for the track and field program, Bonaddio still holds school records in the outdoor 200- and 400-meter events. He is also part of two school-record holding relays.

• Tom Bonvissuto ’87 and his wife Kimberly Kirkwood ’86 recently celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. Tom and Kimberly met during their days as cheerleaders at Carnegie Mellon.

October 2010

• Former Carnegie Mellon soccer player Matt Wilkinson ’06 has teamed with cross country and track alums Nick End ’06 and Breck Fresen ’09 to found Shoefitr, an online platform that shows a consumer how a shoe fits and recommends what size to purchase when shopping on the Internet. After graduation, Wilkinson worked for a 3D imaging company and then spent a couple of years as a new product engineer at Johnson & Johnson. In 2009, Wilkinson, End and Fresen left their jobs, moved back to Pittsburgh and have been building their company since January. Shoefitr aims to use its fitting algorithms to reduce the high rate of returns (one in three pairs) and increase consumer confidence in shopping online. The company was accepted into the Winter 2010 Alphalab session, which is part of Innovation Works – a Pittsburgh investment fund.

• 2006 graduate Jessica Vaughn is currently working as a docent at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania. Vaughn, who was a member of the women’s soccer and track and field teams, is pursuing a master’s of fine arts at UPenn. Prior to her arrival in Philadelphia, Vaughn managed youth art programs for Marwen, a non-profit agency in Chicago.

• Football alum Chad Zimmerman has been busy since graduating with a degree in chemical engineering in 2004. In 2005, Zimmerman co-founded STACK – the largest sports performance multimedia company in the country. STACK is one of the 15 largest digital sports properties in the United States and reaches five million readers with each issue of its magazine. STACK has worked with pro athletes such as Peyton Manning, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Derek Jeter, all with the mission of providing young athletes access to safe and effective sports performance information.

• Elliott Curtis ’09 has been traveling around the world since mid-September and blogging about his exploits and the game of basketball. Curtis, who established the vitaminTHICK clothing company, has made stops in London, Paris, Stockholm, Rome, Melbourne and many other cities on his six-week journey. The former Tartan point guard was interviewed by Slam Online to talk about his experience.

September 2010

• All-time women’s soccer goals leader Abigail Coffin ’09 has continued her playing career as a member of Las Aguilas de Moratalaz in Madrid’s La Liga B. A central defender for the team, Coffin was recently offered a tryout with Atletico Madrid, a professional team in La Liga A. Coffin completed her master’s degree at the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares for Bilingual and Multicultural Studies in the spring and taught conversational English at a private school. She was recently offered a full-time position as an English teacher.

• Mona Iyer ‘07 and Clayton Barlow-Wilcox ‘06 recently tied the knot at a ceremony in Charleston, West Virginia. Iyer, a former tennis player at Carnegie Mellon, recently graduated from George Mason School of Law. Barlow-Wilcox was a four-year standout with the men’s basketball program.

• Jonathan Bodnar CIT ’08, E&TIM ’09 began working as a design engineer at Flextronics in April. Bodnar focuses on the design of disposable medical products for the Dallas-based company. A four-year football player, Bodnar worked as an assistant coach for the 2008 and 2009 seasons.