THE WEST WING
Barack Obama’s administration continues to pluck up Stanford talent. Former physics department chair and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory director Steven Chu was confirmed as energy secretary in January. Chu won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1997 for his work on methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light, and advocates scientific solutions to the problems of global warming and the need for alternative sources of energy. John P. Holdren, PhD ’70, leaves Harvard to become assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “He has been one of the most passionate and persistent voices of our time about the growing threat of climate change,” Obama said in discussing Holdren’s selection. And Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, MA ’94, a former top military commander in Afghanistan, has been named U.S. ambassador to Kabul. See our complete list of major appointments.
OXY GENTLEMAN
Speaking of Obama, a Stanford alum soon will head up his first undergraduate alma mater. Jonathan Veitch has been selected as Occidental College’s 15th president, and will assume the post this summer. As dean of the New School University’s liberal arts college, Eugene Lang College, Veitch, ’81, doubled the size of the student body, hired more than 60 full-time faculty, introduced tenure and enhanced the curriculum.
AMAZING SIBS
Victor and Tammy Jih both went to Stanford. Then Harvard Law. Now, the siblings are contestants on the 14th season of CBS’s The Amazing Race, a global 22-day competition through extreme bungee jumps and sub-zero Siberian challenges. The question for Stanford viewers: whether Victor, ’93, and Tammy, ’03, will follow in the footsteps of last season’s brother-and-sister team, the winning duo of Nick and Starr Spangler, children of Jim and Caroline Spangler, both ’79.
BRACKETOLOGY, DECODED
And in case you want to indulge your couch-potato tendencies even further, check out TeamRankings.com. Tom Federico, ’98, MS ’99, Mike Greenfield, ’00, and Matt Koidin, ’00, have turned the March Madness-picking algorithm that Greenfield created in his dorm room senior year into a business. You decide which stats are most important, and the website spits out predictions about NCAA or pro basketball games. “We are basically your typical Stanford engineering nerds, but we do quantitative analysis of sports,” Federico says. “Most folks can’t believe we actually get to do this for a living.”
IN PRINT
Reflections from 75 well-known people appear in Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr.’s, ’68, new travel book, My Favorite Places on Earth (National Geographic), including those of a handful of alumni. Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor, ’50, JD ’52, talks about watering holes and Native American dances in her native Arizona. Actor Ted Danson, ’70, explains the significance of Martha’s Vineyard to his family. And astronaut Sally Ride, ’73, MS ’75, PhD ’78, extols the virtues of—where else?—outer space. Okay, not all of the favorite places are exactly on Earth.
First, Cathleen Lewis was told her son was blind. Then, she learned he was autistic. And then, he showed her he was one of the most musically talented people in the world. Lewis, ’79, has chronicled her and her son’s story in Rex: A Mother, Her Autistic Child, and the Music that Transformed Their Lives (Thomas Nelson).
