Read all about it! These members of the Kalamazoo College community are People in the News!
Dan Blustein ’06 earned his Ph.D. degree in January from Northeastern University in Boston where he helped to build and perfect a robotic lobster (no kidding) to help the United States Navy detect underwater mines near shorelines. His “RoboLobster is a robot with eight legs (each with six wires to contract or extend the robot’s leg “muscles”) and an acrylic, cylindrical body containing an electronic circuit board (the brains of the operation). Besides potentially helping the Navy, the new and improved robot can run computational neuroscience models, enabling researchers to test biological theories by programming the robot with certain hypotheses, seeing what happens, and comparing it to real world observations. Dan is now headed to the University of New Brunswick in Canada to research new ways that patients control prosthetic limbs. Currently, amputees must look at their prostheses to move them. Dan is interested in finding what sensory information about joint movement can augment visual cues.
Sage Eastman ’96, the longtime right-hand man to former U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.), is now a lobbyist at Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen Bingel and Thomas. Sage got his start in GOP politics roughly two decades ago with then-Gov. John Engler of Michigan — now himself a K Street mainstay at the Business Roundtable. After working for Engler, he worked a few more campaign cycles in Michigan before moving to Washington in 2003 to work in Camp’s personal office. http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/lobbyist-profiles/245059-k-street-cultivator
Lisa Ludwinski ’06 has been named one of the best chef’s in the United States by Eater, which bills itself as a national source for people who care about dining and drinking in the nation’s most important food cities. Lisa, owner of Sister Pie Bakery in Detroit, was honored as one of the best in Eater’s national Young Guns contest. She and 16 other rising culinary stars from across the country were fêted at a gala celebration in June in Los Angeles.
http://www.eater.com/2015/6/9/8751385/eater-young-guns-party-2015#4763400
David Scarrow, Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, is the namesake for the 2015 Scarrow Friday Forum lecture series at Bay View, the resort community by Petoskey in northern Michigan. The series hosts leading professionals in areas pertinent to local, national, and world issues. The series is named in honor of Professor Scarrow, a long-time Bay View resident who recruited outstanding speakers to the Bay View campus for more than 15 years and remains active with the Bay View Education Committee and the Bay View American Experience Lecture week. www.petoskeynews.com/news/community/scarrow-forums-begin-june/article_fa653d10-ffd7-531f-8a27-3c319d0a10a5.html