Princeton Alumni Weekly | The Weekly Blog: Tiger of the Week Archives

November 14, 2012

Tiger of the Week: Christina Lazaridi '92

Christina Lazaridi '92 co-wrote the screenplay for "Coming Up Roses," which opened at the AMC Village 7 in New York City last week. (Photo: Courtesy Christina Lazaridi)

Several elements are critical to an independent film project’s success, and strong writing is high on the list. Christina Lazaridi ’92, a veteran screenwriter who also teaches at Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts, explains that the writer’s job is to “create powerful roles,” which in turn attract major actors and help to secure the financing needed to make a film.

Lazardi and director Lisa Albright co-wrote the screenplay for Coming Up Roses, a new feature that stars Bernadette Peters and Rachel Brosnahan as a mother and her teenage daughter who confront the challenges of unemployment, codependency, and the mother’s clinical depression. After a successful appearance at the Woodstock Film Festival, the film made its New York City debut Nov. 9 at the AMC Village 7.

“When you watch your words come alive and become this three-dimensional world, it is an incredibly rewarding experience,” Lazaridi said. The chance to discuss the film with fans after the screening, she added, was a “powerful return” for her creative work.

Lazaridi’s screenwriting career began at Princeton, where she studied creative writing with Paul Muldoon and James Richardson ’71. Renowned film historian P. Adams Sitney advised her senior thesis work. After graduation, she earned an M.F.A. at Columbia and wrote the short film “One Day Crossing,” which received an Academy Award nomination in 2001.

Lazaridi said her next screenplay is a Romeo-and-Juliet-style international romance, in which Greeks and Turks stand in for the Montagues and Capulets. She also teaches screenwriting to Princeton undergraduates, which gives her a chance to be part of an arts community that has expanded since her student days.

“There is really a renaissance and a blossoming here [in the arts],” Lazaridi said, “and the students respond.”

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW's Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

November 7, 2012

Tiger of the Week: Derek Kilmer '96

Photo: Courtesy People for Derek Kilmer

It’s safe to say that Derek Kilmer ’96 did not lose track of his hometown when he went away to college. The Port Angeles, Wash.-native wrote his senior thesis about the “social and economic impacts of the Pacific Northwest timber crisis,” specifically analyzing the Clinton Forest Plan, which was adopted in 1994. After college, Kilmer studied social policy at Oxford as a Marshall scholar and eventually returned home to work for the economic development office in Tacoma-Pierce County. Since 2004, he has been climbing the ladder of local politics, first serving as a state representative, then as a state senator. On Tuesday, he reached another rung, winning election to the U.S. House of Representatives.

“I ran for Congress because a lot of middle-class families and small businesses are struggling,” Kilmer told the Seattle Times, “and they need someone who’s going to fight for them.”

Election day went well for a majority of Princeton’s 10 alumni candidates: Six are headed to Congress. Four are incumbents and two are newcomers — Kilmer and Ted Cruz ’92, who was PAW’s Tiger of the Week in August after he earned the Republican nomination for the Texas Senate race, scoring an upset victory in a runoff contest. For information about all 10 candidates, click here.

October 24, 2012

Tiger of the Week: Sean Frazier '12

Sean Frazier '12 (Photo: Courtesy Sean Frazier)

Sean Frazier ’12 checks his email once a week at his new job.

“I don’t need it,” he said. At Quail Hill farm in Amagansett, N.Y., Frazier spends most of his time outdoors: feeding chickens, seeding, weeding, harvesting, and selling vegetables. A large supply of the produce goes to over 250 families that come to the farm – a community-supported agriculture farm – to harvest vegetables from June to November.

“Twice a week the field is covered with people of all ages who come to pick food for themselves,” Frazier explained. “It’s educational.” The rest of the vegetables go to farmers’ markets and restaurants, he said. Though life on the farm becomes considerably quieter in the winter, Frazier still will be busy during the colder months. Quail Hill farm has a winter share supplying root vegetables, alliums, eggs, and greens to participants, and the farmers continue to grow greens in greenhouses.

Frazier first experienced farming while taking a year off from Princeton before his senior year. He worked on Long Island, on “a tiny farm with no machines,” and found the work to be fun and interesting. Before his senior year began, Frazier already knew he wanted to work on a farm again.

“I didn’t really want to leave the farm, but I wanted to go back to school,” he said.

Frazier officially finishes work at Quail Hill farm in December, though he said he hopes to complete a full season on a farm next year. “I don't see myself ever leaving the farming lifestyle completely,” he said, adding that he hopes to one day live on his own farm. “It is simple, practical work, and I enjoy it every day.”

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW's Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

October 17, 2012

Tiger of the Week: Lloyd Shapley *53

Lloyd Shapley *53 (Photo: AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

In the fall of 1949, two young mathematicians interested in game theory lived on the same floor of the Graduate College and became friendly rivals — John Nash *50, who won the Nobel Prize in 1994 and became famous as the subject of the book and film A Beautiful Mind, and Lloyd Shapley *53, who was awarded the Nobel prize on Oct. 15.

Shapley, who is 89, won the Nobel in economics sciences with Alvin Roth, a professor at Harvard, for their work on the design of markets and matching theory. Working independently of one another, the two addressed the problem of how to match different agents in a market as efficiently as possible — pairing new doctors with hospitals, prospective students with schools, or patients needing organ transplants with donors. Shapley’s work, which applies to markets where price is not a factor, seeks to ensure that both sides feel they have gotten the most attractive match. Shapley established the theoretical underpinnings of the theories in the 1950s and 1960s, while Roth devised real-world applications.

“Shapley is on a short list of the most important figures in game theory, many of whom were at Princeton at more or less the same time,” including Nash, David Gale *49, and Harold Kuhn *50, said Princeton economics professor Dilip Abreu. “They were huge talents, all present at the birth of the field, and that combination was quite explosive.”

Shapley earned a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1953 and taught at Princeton for three years before becoming a research mathematician at the RAND Corporation. He currently is a professor emeritus of economics and mathematics at UCLA, where he joined the faculty in 1981.

Sixty-three years ago, when Shapley and Nash were hotshots in Princeton’s math department, they frequently sat together in Fine Hall thrashing out ideas about game theory. Kuhn, who now is a professor emeritus in the Princeton mathematics department, said Nash and Shapley were “very much friendly rivals” who enjoyed tossing ideas back and forth or playing Go, a strategy-intensive board game played in China for thousands of years.

“The common room at Fine Hall was the place where everyone met every afternoon, and the ideas sort of bubbled over there,” Kuhn said. “Lloyd Shapley was the best in terms of his overall accomplishments of a very bright group of people. His Nobel is long overdue.”

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW's Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

October 10, 2012

Tiger of the Week: Maria Chudnovsky *03

Maria Chudnovsky *03 (Courtesy of the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)

Like many recipients of the MacArthur Fellowship, Maria Chudnovsky *03 was surprised by the news that she’d received the five-year, $500,000 no-strings-attached award. That’s by design — winners of the so-called “genius grant” are picked by an anonymous committee in a closely guarded selection process.

“When I got the call from the foundation, I don’t know what we talked about. All I remember is me saying ‘are you sure this is not a prank?’ ” Chudnovsky said in a video interview posted on the MacArthur Foundation website (see below). “I still don’t quite know what I think. Obviously it’s a good thing, but I have not mapped my life from MacArthur on.”

Mapping is familiar territory for Chudnovsky, who received her Ph.D. in mathematics at Princeton, working with adviser and mathematics professor Paul Seymour. She is an expert in graph theory, studying the connections between sets of similar things — the field can encompass anything from road maps to less visible connections, like networks of friendships, according to the MacArthur Foundation’s citation. Although Chudnovsky’s research is “highly abstract,” the citation said, “she is laying the conceptual foundations for deepening the connections between graph theory and other major branches of mathematics, such as linear programming, geometry, and complexity theory.”

Chudnovsky was named to Popular Science magazine’s Brilliant 10 in 2004, when she was a Veblen Research Instructor in Mathematics at Princeton. She joined the faculty of Columbia University in 2008 and is currently an associate professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.

Continue reading Tiger of the Week: Maria Chudnovsky *03…

October 3, 2012

Tiger of the Week: Amy Madden '75

Amy Madden '75 (Photo: Courtesy Amy Madden)

Amy Madden ’75 always has loved music. She played flute, guitar, and sang in bands. One day when a friend handed her a bass for the first time, she felt a strong connection. “I just felt like I was in love. It’s like I was home — I can’t even explain it,” says Madden.

About 30 at the time, she had put music on the back burner for about 10 years — during which time she had worked in the art world and done other things. But the instrument drew her in. She didn’t want to put it down. She taught herself, practiced, and auditioned for a band. “I was so bad,” she says, but she got the gig.

Since then she’s played in many different kinds of bands — from blues and rock to alternative indie and performed with artists including John Lee Hooker and Johnny Winter. For her work in the blues world, she was inducted into the New York City Blues Hall of Fame August 19.

A blues and rock bassist and songwriter, Madden says she was more of a “rock girl” when she started in the ’80s – and played at CBGB in New York. She headed to England for a while and recorded her EP Minor Disturbances. Eventually, she returned to New York. Today she regularly plays in a blues band with Jon Paris at B.B. King Blues Club. She also performs with Alan Merrill’s electric trio and other bands.

Continue reading Tiger of the Week: Amy Madden '75…

September 26, 2012

Tiger of the Week: Michael Kardos '92

Michael Kardos '92 (Photo: Courtesy Michael Kardos)

As a newcomer to fiction writing, Michael Kardos ’92 realized he had a long apprenticeship ahead when an instructor in his MFA program casually told him that “the first million words are all practice.” More than decade later, Kardos has published his first novel, The Three-Day Affair, and based on the reviews, the practice has paid off.

The story follows a group of Princeton friends who reunite for a golf weekend and are quickly thrown into an untenable position when one robs a convenience store and drags a cashier into the car. The driver, Will, immediately bolts toward the nearest hospital, believing the young woman is injured. After realizing that all three men are now guilty of robbery and kidnapping, the group tries to undo the mess caused by one friend’s unexplained criminal impulse.

The New York Times, in a round-up of new crime novels, called The Three-Day Affair “a carefully calibrated study of how even the most highly evolved members of our species can become feral under pressure.” A Publishers Weekly review said that Kardos “makes the most of his intriguing setup” and finishes with a “vicious closing sting.”

While the story and its publisher (Mysterious Press) place Kardos’ novel in the crime genre, much of the book explores the relationships between characters, forged in vivid scenes at Princeton that range from discussing the shared anxieties of freshman year to sliding down the peaks of Reunions tents just before graduation. (There’s even a passing mention of a certain alumni magazine.) “I didn’t write it to be any particular kind of novel,” Kardos said. “I just wrote the kind of novel I would want to read.”

Continue reading Tiger of the Week: Michael Kardos '92…

September 19, 2012

Tiger of the Week: Brian Kernighan *69

Brian Kernighan *69 (Photo: Frank Wojciechowski/ Courtesy School of Engineering and Applied Science)

While Brian Kernighan *69 has spent much of his life immersed in the field of computer science, he remains resolutely tight-lipped on the Internet. Kernighan, a Princeton professor of computer science, has resisted the tide of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and even avoids using Gmail because of privacy concerns.

“Facebook’s model is defined on knowing everything they can possibly know about you and selling it,” he said. “There’s a downside in that you’re giving away information on yourself … maybe you don’t have any idea about the real amount of information you’re giving away that can be aggregated into a remarkably detailed picture of you.”

Kernighan writes about Internet privacy in his 2011 publication D is for Digital, a book based on his course COS 109: Computers in Our World. In both the book and the course, which caters to non-majors, Kernighan aims to explain computing technology as well as the political, social, and legal issues that have accompanied new technology to a general audience. He noted that many don’t realize just how pervasive computing devices are today.

Continue reading Tiger of the Week: Brian Kernighan *69…

September 12, 2012

Tiger of the Week: Chris Larsen '95

Chris Larsen '95, left, and co-founder Patrick Groft with the homemade trivet that became the first Pocket Disc. (Photo: Beth Ruiz)

Chris Larsen ’95 wasn’t looking for a million-dollar idea when he picked up a homemade trivet, crocheted by a friend’s daughter, and tossed it across the room, Frisbee style. But when the disc sailed through the air, aided by an unintentional lip around its edge, the flight marked a pivotal event in Larsen’s life.

“It was that classic eureka moment,” he said. “We discovered that, my goodness, cotton can fly!”

Larsen and the trivet-maker’s father, Patrick Groft, eventually dubbed the new toy the Pocket Disc, and they began looking for a place where they could have it mass-produced, by hand, using fair-trade practices. On the advice of a hacky-sack importer, they began employing a network of Mayan women in Guatemala.

Larsen, a renewable-energy engineer, said that as an entrepreneur, he had “zero training beyond a genuine curiosity and a willingness to learn.” But four years after launching the company, both Larsen and Groft have quit their day jobs to produce Pocket Discs for clients that include small, independent toy stores as well as major retailers like Eastern Mountain Sports and L.L. Bean.

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September 5, 2012

Tigers of the Week: Alumni commemorating Woodrow Wilson 1879

Top, from left, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library trustees Tony Atkiss '61, Mike Dickens '68, Robert Cullinane '70, Mike Robbins '55, and Richard Coleman '60 in front of Wilson's 1919 Pierce Arrow limousine, which features the presidential seal below an orange pinstripe. Right, historian John Milton Cooper '61. (Photos: Courtesy Mike Dickens '68; John Cooper k'61)

To historian John Milton Cooper ’61, the presidential election of 1912 had “something for everybody” – a Republican incumbent, William Howard Taft, who arguably created a limited government platform that has endured in the party; a former president, Theodore Roosevelt, who broke with his party to run on the Progressive ticket; a spirited campaign from Eugene V. Debs that was a high-water mark for America’s Socialist party; and, of course, the eventual winner, Democrat Woodrow Wilson 1879, a former Princeton president who brought his professorial oration to the campaign trail.

Roosevelt and Wilson emerged as frontrunners with contrasting styles but, in Cooper’s view, a common approach. “What you get between T.R. and Wilson is the closest thing we’ve ever gotten – and I think we will get – to a philosophical debate in a presidential election,” said Cooper, an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin and author of Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (2009). “These two men were genuine intellectuals, and unashamed of it.”

Cooper and Thomas Knock *82, a professor at Southern Methodist University, are co-chairmen of a Sept. 14 symposium marking the centennial of the 1912 election, to be held in Wilson’s hometown, Staunton, Va., and sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library. Another Princetonian, historian Alan Brinkley ’71 of Columbia University, is slated to take part in the symposium.

The presidential library has a strong history of Princeton alumni support. Michael Dickens ’68 chairs the board of trustees, and six other alumni have supported the centennial festivities as current or recent board members: Tony Atkiss ’61, Richard Coleman ’60, Jerry Cox ’76, Robert Cullinane ’70, Mike Robbins ’55, and Ned Slaughter ’53. A series of library-sponsored events, drawing on key themes from Wilson’s presidency, will continue through 2021, the 100th anniversary of his departure from the White House.

Dickens, a pediatrician in Charlottesville, Va., said that Wilson’s Staunton birthplace has grown from a presidential museum to a “full-fledged research library and educational institution.” The organization continues to add to its collections, digitize material for research, and provide new educational opportunities through local outreach, rotating exhibits, and a popular history camp for children in the summer months.

Visitors to the museum and library may notice several Princeton artifacts, including a permanent exhibit devoted to his years at the University and Wilson’s Pierce Arrow limousine, which features orange stripes and a tiger hood ornament. Said Dickens, “What could be more Princeton than that?”

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW’s Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

August 29, 2012

Tiger of the Week: George Azarias '07

George Azarias '07 at the finish line of the Mongol Derby. (Photo: Richard Dunwoody/The Adventurists)

As an undergraduate, George Azarias ’07 wanted to become a leader for Outdoor Action, Princeton’s popular outdoor education program, but the last leader-training trip of the year conflicted with the final exam in an economics course he was taking. So Azarias lobbied to arrange an on-the-trail final, administered in a park ranger station. He earned passing grades in both the course and the leader training, and afterward, he says, his connection to the outdoors “blossomed,” largely because of OA.

Five years after graduation, Azasias credits OA director Rick Curtis ’79 and naturalist Robert Peck ’74 with inspiring his latest adventure: the Mongol Derby, a relay through Mongolia that holds the Guinness World Record for longest horse race, covering more than 600 miles.

Curtis invited Peck to speak at a Reunions event in 2009 and share experiences from several trips to Mongolia, and the talk set Azarias searching for a way to see the breathtaking steppes he’d seen in Peck’s photos. A veteran of adventure racing, Azarias had already completed the Iditarod Trail Invitational, in which competitors traverse 350 miles of Alaskan wilderness in the dead of winter.

Azarias, a derivatives trader in Sydney, Australia, applied for the Mongol Derby and was selected, despite being a relative novice on horseback (others in the field included professional riders and experienced ranchers). He trained on weekends, hoping to prepare for the “semi-wild” horses of the derby, which he says were “more like 3/4 wild or 9/10 wild.”

Switching horses every 25 miles, the riders are constantly trying to establish trust with new mounts, coaxing, coaching, and in Azarias’ case, singing to keep them calm. (“That actually worked really well,” he says.) At dusk on the second day of the race, Azarias had a near catastrophe while riding and trying to dig his headlamp from his backpack. Alarmed by the rustling, the horse began to spin, sending Azarias to the ground. He lost hold of the reins, and the horse ran off, taking with it Ararias’ sleeping bag.

Azarias was able to cobble together supplies and continue the race. Later, his OA training proved helpful when he stopped to assist another rider who had been thrown from his horse and injured. Despite the delays and mishaps, Azarias crossed the finish line after nine days of riding, completing one of the world’s most challenging races.

George Azarias '07 on the trail in the Mongol Derby. (Photo: Courtesy George Azarias)

UPDATE: PAW’s interview with Azarias, conducted via Skype Aug. 28, was cut short due to scheduling constraints, but in a follow-up message he explained the injury that occurred late in the race. A fellow rider was bucked off his horse, breaking his nose and fracturing the base of his spine. Azarias and a third rider immobilized the injured rider’s spine and stayed with him until medics arrived. “Because I was already at the tail end of the riders when the incident happened, and I lost an additional six hours, they moved me up two horse stations by car,” Azarias said. “This officially disqualified me. But I finished most of the rest of the race on horseback.”

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW’s Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

August 22, 2012

Tiger of the Week: James Wray '06

Mars rover scientist James Wray '06 poses at CNN's headquarters after an interview with Alina Cho earlier this month. (Photo: Jason Maderer/Courtesy James Wray)

When James Wray ’06 gets wrapped up in his research, he finds himself “living on Mars time.” NASA’s new Mars rover, Curiosity, does most of its work in daylight, and as the daylight hours keep shifting (a day on Mars is about 40 minutes longer than one on Earth), Wray’s attention tends to follow.

Wray, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Georgia Tech, has good reason to be excited. He is part of the team that created Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM), a suite of instruments onboard Curiosity. The tools should help the rover to “characterize the chemistry of some of the most interesting types of minerals” that it encounters, Wray said. By heating samples to about 1,000 degrees Celsius, SAM can detect trace amounts of important components such as water and carbon dioxide.

Wray has been interested in science for as long as he can remember, and in his time at Princeton, he dove headfirst into astrophysics – a tight-knit department where he worked closely with mentors like Professor Edwin Turner and even met his future wife, fellow major Maggie (Kirkland) Wray ’06.

Senior-thesis work studying the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn confirmed Wray’s hunch that he wanted to “focus on the planets closest to home,” so he continued his studies in a Ph.D. program at Cornell, working in the lab of astronomy professor Steve Squyres, the principal investigator for the science payload on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers.

Around the time that Wray arrived in Ithaca, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter began circling Mars, providing a trove of new data for his graduate research work. He later joined the group of about 400 scientists working on Curiosity, the largest and most complex Mars rover to date.

Wray said that the rover’s high-tech landing earlier this month was a great start, but its most interesting work may come in about a year, when the rover reaches the base of a 3-mile-high mountain of sedimentary rock. Samples from that mountain, he said, could hold important clues about how the environment evolved on Mars.

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW’s Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.