This season has marked one of Kuchar’s most successful runs as a professional golfer, and he is well positioned to claim the FedEx Cup. He also has cracked the world top 10 list for the first time, ranking 10th overall.

Tomorrow Kuchar looks to continue his torrid run at the Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston.

In an interview with the Boston Globe, Kuchar said, “I still try to be humble. … I’d like to be as humble as I could be.’’

When the Jackets travel west to Lawrence, Kan., to face the Kansas Jayhawks, Tech alumni and fans are invited to a Friday, Sept. 10 meet and greet in Kansas City and a tailgate the following day starting at 9 a.m. at the University of Kansas Campanile Hill, south of Memorial Stadium. The game kicks off at 11 a.m.

Registration and more information is available at the Alumni Association Web site.

The following Saturday, Sept. 18, a tailgate will be held at 9 a.m. at the Top of the Hill Restaurant in Chapel Hill, N.C., prior to the noon kickoff of Tech’s game against North Carolina. President G. P. “Bud” Peterson and his wife, Val, will attend the event.

Registration and more information is available at the Alumni Association Web site.

For tickets to those games, contact the Georgia Tech Ticket Office at (888) 832-4849.

1950s

Randy Cabell, EE 53, MS EE 54, and his wife, Mary Kay, who was the first female professor at Georgia Tech, took a cruise last October from Copenhagen, Denmark, to Lisbon, Portugal, that included about a dozen stops along the west coast of Europe. A former member of the Fowler Street Five band, Cabell took along his pocket trumpet to entertain other visitors on the trip. He wrote that he surprised the Dixieland band on the dock in Bruges, Belgium, with his “antiphonal When the Saints Go Marching In.” The Cabells live in Boyce, Va.

Duncan A. Mellichamp, ChE 59, received the 2010 CACHE Award of the American Society for Engineering Education chemical engineering division. The award recognizes significant contributions in the development of computer aids for chemical engineering education. He was elected to CACHE early in his career and later served as a trustee and president. Mellichamp, a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, was inducted into the Georgia Tech College of Engineering Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni in 1995 and the Engineer­ing Hall of Fame in 2004. Since 2003, he has served as professor emeritus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, at which he was a founding member of the department of chemical engineering.

Joe Tannehill, ME 55, of Panama City, Fla., spearheaded the development of Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport as chairman of the airport authority. Opened in May, it is the first international airport to be built in the United States in more than a decade.

1960s

James R. Lientz, IM 65, of Atlanta, has been appointed to the Georgia Ports Authority by Gov. Sonny Perdue. Lientz is a partner at Safe Harbor Consulting. He served as Georgia’s first chief operating officer and is past president of the mid-South division of Bank of America.

Robert D. “Bob” Martin, IE 69, has been inducted into the Georgia Tech Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni. Martin is a partner with the Interlochen consulting group.

Joseph W. Rogers Jr., IM 68, of Atlanta, received the Award for Distinguished Service to State Government at the annual meeting of the National Governors Association in July. That same month, Rogers was appointed to the Georgia Ports Authority by Gov. Sonny Perdue. Rogers is the chairman, president and CEO of Waffle House. He serves on the boards of directors of the Georgia Tech Foundation and Grady Memorial Hospital and is co-chair of the Commission for a New Georgia.

1970s

John F. Brock III, ChE 70, MS ChE 71, has become a member of the Buckhead Coalition. Brock is chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. He will deliver a speech, “Open Happiness With a Georgia Tech Degree,” to alumni and friends during a Homecoming celebration at 6 p.m. Oct. 7 at the Global Learning Center in Technology Square.

J. Madison “J.M.” Drake, MS AE 77, was named to the National Society of Professional Engineers’ 2010 class of fellow members. Drake is the society’s representative to the nominating committee for the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority. He is a certified federal project director and a participant in the project manager’s career development program at the U.S. Department of Energy, for which he works. A veteran officer of the Army, Drake lives in New Orleans with his wife, Marlane.

Thomas A. Fanning, IM 79, MS IM 80, became the president of Atlanta-based Southern Company on Aug. 1. Fanning will become the company’s chairman and CEO Dec. 1. Before being appointed president, he was the company’s COO. Fanning joined the company in 1980 as a financial analyst and has held officer-level positions in finance, strategy, international business development and technology.

A. Mathewson “Matt” Gignilliat III, EES 78, of Smyrna, Ga., has been appointed to the board of trustees of the Herty Foundation by Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue. Gignilliat is the distribution manager for Georgia Power Co. in the metro-west region. He is a trustee on the boards of the Armstrong Atlantic State University and Savannah Technical College foundations.

Yvonne Pendleton, AE 79, has been named director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute headquartered at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. She has served as the NASA Ames deputy associate center director, chief of the space science and astrobiology division and as a research astrophysicist for 31 years.

David A. Perdue Jr., IE 72, MS OR 76, of Sea Island, Ga., has been appointed to the Georgia Ports Authority by Gov. Sonny Perdue. David Perdue is a director with Alliant Energy, Jo-Ann Stores, Liquidity Services and Gro-Eco, a private green venture company. He is a member of the board of trustees of the Georgia Tech Foundation and of the Georgia Tech Advisory Board. He is past president and CEO of Reebok and past chairman and CEO of Pillowtex and Dollar General.

Edward “Ed” Putnam, IM 74, has written a novel. The Final Season: State of Grace was inspired by his son’s 2001 senior baseball season at Sprayberry High School in Marietta, Ga. It is dedicated to a player’s mother, who died suddenly the following year while preparing to travel to her son’s baseball series at Columbus State. The book, published by Tate Publishing and Enterprises, was released nationally in January. Putnam is a program administrator with Intertek in Duluth.

1980s

John Bland, MgtSci 83, is the director of Amigos for Christ, which has partnered with the Gwinnett Coalition for Health and Human Services to hold Gwinnett Great Days of Service in conjunction with the Celebrate Service Music Festival in Suwanee, Ga. Great Days of Service, which will be held Oct. 1-2, allows individuals to participate in volunteer service projects around Gwinnett County. Amigos for Christ has held the Celebrate Service Music Festival for seven years as a way to raise awareness about community service.

Kent Brown, Arch 85, M Arch 88, has joined CO Architects, a Los Angeles-based designer of medical schools and research laboratories, as director of science and technology. Brown previously held principal positions at Kent Brown & Associates and Lord, Aeck & Sargent Inc.

Craig R. Buckley, Arch 83, has been appointed to the state board of architects and interior designers by Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue. Buckley is president of James W. Buckley and Associates and is a member of the Savannah chap­ter of the American Institute of Architects.

Sandee Coats-Haan, ChE 87, has been selected by President Obama and the National Science Foundation to receive the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. As part of the award, Coats-Haan will receive $10,000 and will travel to Washington, D.C., to meet the president. She is a physics teacher at Lakota East High School in Cincinnati.

Deborah A. Woida Cooper, ICS 80, has retired from General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems in Chantilly, Va., after nearly 30 years working in aerospace and national intelligence. She lives with her husband, retired Air Force Col. William Cooper, in Fairfax Station, Va., where she will continue her efforts with the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, assisting in the museum’s photo archives, as well as working as a family history researcher, rosarian and draft horse trainer.

Mike Dudgeon, EE 89, MS EE 90, was elected to the Georgia Legislature District 24 in July. He will take office Jan. 1.

Ali Erdemir, MS Met 82, PhD ChE 86, of Naperville, Ill., has been named a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Erdemir, also a distinguished fellow at the Argonne National Laboratory, developed new materials and coatings in surface engineering and tribology that provide ultra low-friction and wear coefficients. He holds nine patents.

Jeffery T. Farmer, AE 84, MS ME 87, a technical assistant and aerospace engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, was named a winner of the 2010 Forest R. McFarland Award by the Society of Automotive Engineers International. Farmer is the technical assistant to the division chief for NASA’s mechanical design analysis and fabrication division and the lead thermal engineer for the robotic lunar lander development project.

Thomas G. “Gerry” Picard, EE 80, MS EE 81, was issued patent No. 7,747,084, “methods and apparatus for target discrimination using observation vector weighting.” He lives in central Florida with his wife, Denise, and two children, Jessica and Scott.

Frederick Reece, Mgt 83, has been named director of the academic writing program at Koc University. Reece lives in Istanbul, Turkey, with his wife and two daughters.

Lenny Richoux, AE 89, took command of the 6th Air Mobility Wing at a ceremony at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., in July. He arrived at MacDill after a tour as vice commander of the 18th Wing, Kadena Air Base, Japan. Col. Richoux, who entered the Air Force in 1989, is a command pilot with more than 3,100 hours. He and his wife, Michele, have three children.

S. Lester Tate III, IM 82, a partner with the law firm Akin & Tate PC in Cartersville, Ga., was installed as president of the 41,000-member State Bar of Georgia in June. Tate has been a member of the bar’s board of governors since 1996 and its executive committee since 2005, serving as treasurer from 2007 to 2009 and president-elect last year. He also is a fellow of the Lawyers Foundation of Georgia and a member of both the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association and the American Association for Justice.

1990s

Jason Barnes, Econ 94, has joined the corporate and securities unit of Strasburger & Price LLP. Barnes, who previously was a partner with Haynes and Boone LLP, counsels financial institutions, public and private investment funds and high net-worth individuals and family businesses on various debt and equity transactions in the United States and abroad.

Buzz Brockway, MgtSci 90, was elected to the Georgia Legislature District 101 in July. He will take office Jan. 1.

Robert Copeland, CmpE 98, and his wife, Angeline Chong, announce the birth of a son, Alexander Yit-Keung Copeland, on June 26. Copeland is a software consultant for Altron Inc. and a computer science master’s student at Johns Hopkins University. The family lives in Rockville, Md.

Teresa Crisp, CE 95, MS CE 96, has been named an associate in the Atlanta office of Dewberry, a privately held professional services firm. Crisp will be responsible for expanding the firm’s water and wastewater services in the Georgia area. A licensed professional engineer in Georgia, she is an active member of the Georgia Association of Water Professionals and a contributing writer for its publications.

Brian H. Frank, IM 90, was promoted to managing director at the Premier Wealth Management Group of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in Atlanta and named one of America’s Top 1,000 Wealth Advisors by Barron’s magazine. He was ranked No. 5 in Georgia for the second consecutive year. He is president of the Planned Giving Association for the Marist School and is a member of the investment advisory committee of Zoo Atlanta and the national council for the Garth Brooks Teammates for Kids Foundation.

Matthew King, IE 95, and his wife, Christi, announce the birth of a son, Barrett Robert, on April 27. Barrett joins his brother, Landry, 3, at the family’s home in Duluth, Ga. King is a project manager for SITA.

Michelle Lane, Chem 98, is the owner of California-based Teeny Cake, which recently was recognized in the top five best cupcakes category of the 2010 Best of the BayList contest.

Anne Bracken McGraw, Mgt 99, and Ryan McGraw, Mgt 98, announce the birth of daughter Greta Ryan on May 4. Greta joins sister Cora, 2, at home in Nashville, Tenn.

S. Narayanan, MS IE 91, PhD ISyE 94, has become dean of Wright State University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science. He chaired the university’s department of biomedical, industrial and human factors engineering for the past nine years.

Rodney Parker, Mgt 92, was installed as the 2010-11 president-elect of the Atlanta chapter of the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters Society in May. He is a senior business analyst at Catlin in Atlanta.

Phillip B. Russell, Mgt 91, MS Econ 92, was included in the 2010 Florida Super Lawyers publication. He is a partner in the Tampa office of Constangy, Brooks & Smith LLP, a national labor and employment law firm.

Charles Scales, Chem 93, was selected as one of 27 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation clinical scholars to begin a two-year fellowship in July 2011 to examine the delivery, impact and organization of health care. Scales, a graduate of Duke Medical School specializing in urology, will receive his training at UCLA.

Joselyn Hoffman Schutz, EE 97, and Jim Schutz, EE 96, MS EE 97, announce the birth of a daughter, Anna Lucia Marie, on Dec. 12. Anna joins three brothers and a sister at the family’s home in Johns Creek, Ga. Joselyn is a full-time, home-educating mother, and Jim is a patent attorney with Troutman Sanders.

Keisha Wilson Tanner, ChE 95, was promoted to serve as the engineering team lead at BP in April. That same month, Tanner was featured in the corporate brass section of Who’s Who in Black Houston.

Alec Tilley, MS IE 93, has been named vice president on the corporate management team of ProFun Management Group Inc., a leading management and operations company of lei­sure properties.

Roy Wade, ABiol 97, PhD ABiol 02, has been selected as one of 27 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation clinical scholars to begin a two-year fellowship in July 2011. Scholars will examine the delivery, impact and organization of health care. Wade, a graduate of Dartmouth Medical School specializing in pediatrics, will receive his training at the University of Pennsylvania.

Todd Whittemore, ChE 91, completed his assignment as startup manager for the Ethylene Cracker Complex project for Shell Eastern Petroleum Ltd. in Singapore and relocated to Katy, Texas, to lead the process evaluations group of Shell Global Solutions. He and his wife, Megan Lane Whittemore, ChE 91, have three children.

2000s

Kaysi S. Benefield, Biol 05, graduated from the Georgia campus of the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in May and began an internship in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Julie Chu Carter, IE 00, is an engineer with UPS, and her husband, Ryan Christopher Carter, Mgt 00, is a tax manager with Ernst & Young. The couple live in Roswell, Ga., with 1-year-old daughter Abigail Claire.

Trey Childress, IntA 00, IE 00, MS PubPol 02, of Atlanta, has been named an ex-officio member of the Georgia Ports Authority by Gov. Sonny Perdue. Childress serves as chief operating officer for the state of Georgia. He previously served as the director of the governor’s office of planning and budget.

James D. Freedman-Aponte, CmpE 02, and his wife, Stephanie, announce the birth of son Eric David Freedman on May 13. Eric joins brother Ari, 2. Freedman-Aponte recently completed an MBA at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. The family has moved to Charlotte, N.C., where he now is an assistant vice president for Bank of America in its technology MBA program.

Albert A. George II, MS HTS 09, managing partner for Building Block Group & Associates LP, also is the CEO and co-founder of the Amazon Reforestation Project Inc. A member of the Georgia Tech Advanced Technology Development Center, the project is designed to combat deforestation and climate change by putting local people to work planting trees in the Amazon rain forest.

Joshua Hernstrom, ChE 01, and his wife, Stacia, announce the birth of a son, Andrew Conner, on May 9, Mother’s Day. Andy joins sister Sophia and brother Samuel at the family’s home in Austin, Texas. Hernstrom is a senior software engineer at National Instruments.

Jonathan LaCour, CS 03, is vice president of product development for ShootQ, which is a subsidiary of Pictage. Pictage and ShootQ provide a comprehensive set of business and postproduction tools to professional photographers.

Dave Lo, CS 00, a creature technical director with Industrial Light & Magic, rigs models for animation and hair and cloth simulations for shots. Rango, an animated film on which he has been working for more than a year and a half, is scheduled for release March 4. Lo, who also is a football card collector, submitted an article to Beckett Sports Card Monthly that was published this summer.

Robert MacMeccan, MS ME 04, PhD ME 07, was promoted to senior research engineer and team lead of the electromechanical systems team at Milliken Research Corp.

Ami Lott Mayo, Mgt 00, and Jeff Mayo, Mgt 02, announce the birth of a son, James Robinson Mayo, on June 23. Ami is an executive assistant for MFG.com, for which Jeff is a sales manager. The family lives in Atlanta.

Michael Van Epp, CE 03, was the winner of the Arizona Georgia Tech Club’s Young Alumnus Award.

David Ziskind, ECE 05, now is a professional engineer. Ziskind, a member of the Georgia Tech Young Alumni Council, is a controls engineer with Polytron Inc. in Duluth, Ga.

James Kim and Dan Ketmayura recently opened a Sarku Japan franchise. Photo by Eric Mansfield

Georgia Tech has a long history of entrepreneurism, with graduates going on to start some very recognizable businesses.

Arnold Willat, a 1907 electrical engineering graduate, invented cold permanent waving for hair. Reginald Fleet, ME 16, and his brother developed the famed lubricant WD-40. Gerard “Red”Murray, ChE 39, created an affordable cleaning pad under the name O-Cel-O, which became the most widely used sponge in the world.

While Tech alumni have continued to start businesses, the past decades have seen the Institute become known for preparing students for jobs at top corporations. But the focus is shifting back toward entrepreneurism, says Craig Forest, ME 01, an assistant professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering. He’s been at the center of a push to encourage students to start their own projects. An entrepreneur himself, Forest helped create a capstone senior design course in the mechanical engineering program and the InVenture Prize, a contest for undergraduate student inventors.

In the second competition this past spring, recent mechanical engineering graduate Patrick Whaley claimed the top prize — including $20,000 and a free patent filing — for his Omega Wear invention, a type of weighted sportswear.

In 2009, the School of Mechanical Engineering built the 1,000-square-foot Invention Studio, complete with $350,000 worth of design tools, for students to build their prototypes.

“There is a groundswell of action in this area,” Forest said. “It’s a cultural change. We want students to know, if they have a quirky idea, they can turn to their roommate and say, ‘Let’s do this.’”

Entrepreneurism will become an even more official part of Georgia Tech’s identity with the launch of the strategic plan. The draft of the plan states, “Our campus culture needs to be one which supports innovation, entrepreneurship and public service just as it does teaching and research.”

In July, President G. P. “Bud” Peterson was selected as a national leader in entrepreneurship by Gary Locke, secretary of the Commerce Department, to serve on the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Students and alumni interested in building businesses can find support through the Enterprise Innovation Institute. It includes the Advanced Technology Development Center, which has helped launch 120 companies in its 30 years of existence. Among those companies are some started by Tech faculty, including Mark Allen, the senior vice provost for Research and Innovation who co-founded CardioMEMS, which creates micro heart sensors. Another ATDC graduate, Suniva, has become a world leader in solar cell manufacturing. It was founded by Regents’ professor Ajeet Rohatgi from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

One of Tech’s most famous recent entrepreneurs is Christopher Klaus, Cls 96, who dropped out of the Institute to start up Internet Security Systems, which he later sold to IBM for $1.3 billion.

During a July talk to the Computing Alumni Organization on campus in the building named after him, Klaus explained that now is an ideal time for people to blaze their own trails in the rapidly shifting business world.

For the Tech alumni hoping their businesses become the next ISS, one thing is clear: Their reasons for taking the entrepreneurial path are as unique as the inventions and innovations they’ve created.

Pushed on a New Path

It’s often said that losing one’s job can be an opportunity to pursue one’s dreams. That’s the attitude taken by Dan Ketmayura, ISyE 04, and James Kim, ISyE 03, who both were laid off by Accenture after the economy cratered in 2008.

While Ketmayura and Kim had been successful in their corporate positions and likely could have found new jobs, neither of them had been very happy with life at a huge company.

“We came to the realization that we didn’t see our futures in the corporate world where we didn’t have control over what our efforts went toward,” Kim said. “I didn’t want to spend countless years working for corporations where the goal of my actions solely was to raise share prices.

“We wanted all of our hard work to go toward raising sustainable money to give away and impact people’s lives,” Kim said.

The two had known each other at Tech, and after graduation they would occasionally toss around business ideas. After losing their jobs, they decided it was a sign that they needed a change of direction.

They initially researched creating a business, but eventually they decided to take on a franchise. That would offer them the support of an existing company and proven product, Kim said. That product was teriyaki chicken.

In late May, the two opened a Sarku Japan restaurant at 5304 Windward Parkway, Alpharetta, Ga., in the city’s new technology park. The two split the duties, with Kim handling scheduling, labor and payroll while Ketmayura takes care of inventory and ordering. They’ve quickly noticed the differences from the corporate environment. Ketmayura said he often couldn’t see the impacts of his efforts at Accenture, but each decision at Sarku Japan, which also serves sushi, yields quick results.

Kim said the team atmosphere of the restaurant reminds him of working on group projects in his engineering classes. He and Ketmayura stress having a quality product and top-notch service.

“Although we’ve had our growing pains and not every transaction has been perfect, it’s great to see regular customers come in and for us to get to know our customers on a one-on-one basis,” Kim said. “Another thing that surprises me is just how much chicken teriyaki I can eat. I eat it for lunch every day and still haven’t gotten to the point where I’m entirely sick of it.”

The restaurant also offers unique challenges. As owners, the two have learned they’re responsible for every aspect of the operation. At the same time, they can’t be everywhere at once, Ketmayura said.

The two have the support of a company behind them, but opening the restaurant still required a significant investment of time and money. Each of them spends 70 hours a week at the restaurant, and it took more than $400,000 to get the location up and running.

While restaurants are known for operating on razor-thin margins, Ketmayura and Kim have given themselves an even steeper challenge by dedicating 10 percent of their profits to charity projects such as building wells in third-world countries and financing orphanages. Of the restaurant’s 12 employees, three are refugees from Iraq and one is from Burma.

“We also want to invest in sustainable projects locally that will affect our community here long term,” Ketmayura said. “James and I are both Christians, and the whole vision of starting this business was to help people.”

Donating a portion of the profits undoubtedly hurts the bottom line, Kim said, but being able to make that sort of impact is what pushed the two toward entrepreneurism.

“As cash-strapped as we are, at the end of the day, we sleep in our beds, and when we’re hungry, we have chicken teriyaki to eat and water to drink,” Kim said. “There are people around the world who can’t do that, and if we can change that, we should.

“On the topic of being cash-strapped, another thing Tech prepared us for today is learning how to turn $7 into a week’s worth of meals.”

Greg DeArment, Rick Lane and Nate Edwards developed the algorithm for trading company TickIt.

Filling a Need

Rick Lane, who graduated from Tech in 2003, said his computer science curriculum at the Institute didn’t offer the “latest and greatest” programming language. Instead, the faculty taught students theory and practices, the framework of how to program.

“I’ve long thought that this was one of the most valuable parts of my education at Tech,” Lane said.

It’s served him well in his professional life, as he started out designing war game simulations at Booz Allen Hamilton before moving on to co-found TickIt, a user-based electronic trading software company in Chicago, along with fellow alums Nate Edwards, IntA 02, MS IntA 04, and Greg DeArment, CS 07, who also came from the war-gaming industry.

“With such a strong foundation in pure computer science, learning a new programming language — or, in my case, an entirely new field of financial programming — was merely a formality,” Lane said. “This ability to adapt and be quick on your feet extends beyond just writing code. As the business was growing, we had to react nimbly to changing market conditions, and I feel my years at Tech aptly prepared me for this.”

TickIt Trading Systems, launched in October, allows individual traders to custom build their own automated algorithmic trading plans without having to write any code. In June, the company was acquired by Trading Technologies Inc. Lane started the TickIt project with his cousin, Mike Unetich, a futures trader. Because of Lane’s experience at Tech, there wasn’t much of a difference between working in the financial and security sectors, he said.

“In both cases, we had a similar challenge: Make something that was highly complex and data-intensive approachable to someone who was not a technical or computer-savvy person,” Lane said. “Our goal with TickIt’s Algo Design Lab was to empower traders to design highly complex algorithms with a drag-and-drop interface that was both approachable as well as flexible, allowing them to worry about their trading strategy and not about the technical details under the hood.”

For those looking to start their own companies, Lane had a very clear piece of advice.

“Manage your expectations,” he said. “Everything will take twice as long as you expect, cost twice as much as you planned and Murphy’s law will almost always hold true: Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. So rather than trying to avoid making mistakes, be prepared to handle them and to learn something from them so you don’t end up repeating them.”

Grace Ou and Jeff Weese work in tandem to develop 3-D images and software.

Pursuing a Goal

During one graduate class at Tech, Grace Ou was talking to a classmate about animation when another student butted into the conversation.

“I remember thinking, ‘Jeez, who does this guy think he is?’” said Ou, MS IDT 05.

That student was Jeff Weese, MS IDT 05, who shared Ou’s interest in 3-D animation. They began working together outside of class to master that medium. They both took graduate assistant positions as 3-D modelers in the Imagine Lab. They later worked together on a joint master’s project — a real-time 3-D game designed to teach cell biology to middle school students.

It was during their second year in the program that Ou suggested the two start a company together.

“I wasn’t sure how seriously he took me at the time, but two weeks later he came to me with a rough business plan, an interested private investor, a small studio space lined up and a page full of crazy company names,” Ou said. “I remember thinking, ‘We could actually do this.’ I had always dreamed of starting a business but making that first leap was a little intimidating.”

They agreed on the name Rival Industries and incorporated the company in 2006. The duo began producing high-quality 3-D graphics and animation for architectural visualization, educational games, interface design, medical procedures and digital information.

As with any entrepreneurial effort, times were tight at first. But Atlanta-based Rival was financially stable before the economic downturn.

“Like many startups, we did feel the strain of it all, but we’ve managed to focus on those areas of business that have traditionally held up well during periods of recession,” Ou said.

Both Ou and Weese came into the business having had experience working for large corporations. Ou said Rival has been able to adjust quickly when problems arise, and that kind of “strategic agility” wasn’t an option in the corporate world.

“We knew that we could build something different and better for ourselves,” Ou said. “Real-time 3-D engines can offer so much in terms of design visualization, and no one was really using them in that way. We wanted to pursue our own goals and make our own path.”

LearnBoost is the brainchild of Rafael Corrales.

Family Ties

The reason Rafael Corrales, IntA ML 06, decided to be an entrepreneur is simple: It’s in his blood.

“I’m from a family of entrepreneurs, so it has always seemed normal to go start a company instead of going to work for someone else,” Corrales said.

He started his first company “by accident” when he was a 19-year-old student at Tech. He and a friend stumbled onto the business model of delivering affordable personal tutoring. After moving on to Harvard Business School, Corrales felt it was time to start a new company at the intersection of technology and education. He met with educators and administrators from various schools to find out what big problems they were facing.

What came up again and again was the need for quality, cost-effective grade books and administrative software for schools. That research led to the creation of LearnBoost, a free online gradebook for teachers that includes lesson plan software, calendars, attendance tracking and tagging of state standards to assignments. The San Francisco company has received significant attention from educators and media, including being featured on National Public Radio’s Motley Fool program.

Although this is Corrales’ second effort at starting a business, the experience remains challenging.

“I don’t know where I first heard this, but starting a company is your attempt at reinventing the world,” he said. “And with that ambition comes a huge emotional roller coaster when things don’t go as planned and challenges get in your way. But it’s not the kind of thing that you can really teach. You have to experience it by starting a company.”

Despite the challenges, Corrales can’t imagine himself trading the experience in for a 9-to-5 job. “Right now, I wouldn’t want to do anything else.”

Brothers Michael and Joey Depa developed an organic fertilizer and started a metro Atlanta lawn treatment company. Photo by Eric Mansfield

Picking Their Co-workers

When they were kids, Joey and Michael Depa were told they and their dogs had to stay off the lawn of their home whenever it had been chemically treated. Later, the two ran a lawn business together before moving on to Georgia Tech.

After graduating with a management degree in 2009, Michael Depa accepted a job with a landscaping maintenance company that was starting a residential chemical fertilizer division. But he became uncomfortable with the possible health hazards posed by chemicals, and so the brothers started discussing a way to strike out on their own.

“I saw great potential to focus on developing an organic fertilizer company that focused on products that were safer for kids, pets and the environment and still developed a green, healthy lawn,” said Joey Depa, IE 05.

The result is Boost of Nature, which offers natural lawn care and organic fertilizer that uses corn gluten. Joey Depa began developing the natural fertilizer in 2008, and the brothers took the company live in early 2010. Since then, they have found a demand for safe, natural fertilizer. There’s only one downside.

“The Georgia heat is pretty awful,” Michael Depa said. “It takes a lot out of you
on some days.”

One of the main positives of the experience for both has been the chance to run a business with a sibling. They said the benefits include knowing they can trust each other and a willingness to be completely honest.

“That’s not to say there hasn’t been a family argument around the dinner table,” Joey Depa said.

Eric Mansfield

Georgia Tech President G. P. “Bud” Peterson launched the new 25-year strategic plan for the Institute to a packed auditorium of faculty, staff and students Aug. 31 at the Ferst Center for the Arts.

With the tagline “Designing the Future,” the strategic plan outlines goals and initiatives for creating the Georgia Tech of 2035, an institute at which students, faculty, staff and alumni do not just solve problems, but also shape the world. Peterson said Tech’s motto of “Progress and Service” long has been ingrained, and in the future, Georgia Tech will strive to improve the human condition in Georgia and around the globe.

Booklets about the strategic plan were handed to audience members as they entered the theater. Inside, the vision was described: “Georgia Tech will define the technological research university of the 21st century. As a result, we will be leaders in influencing major technological, social and policy decisions that address critical global challenges. ‘What does Georgia Tech think?’ will be a common question in research, business, the media and government.”

The five strategic goals that will help the Institute achieve its vision are:

• Be among the most highly respected technology-focused learning institutions in the world.
• Sustain and enhance excellence in scholarship and research.
• Ensure that innovation, entrepreneurship and public service are fundamental characteristics of our graduates.
• Expand our global footprint and influence to ensure that we are graduating good global citizens.
• Relentlessly pursue institutional effectiveness.

Planned strategies for achieving those goals are detailed in the September/October issue of the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine. More information on the strategic plan may be found at gatech.edu/vision.

Peterson said the strategic plan is to serve as a solicitation for ideas. Some of the initiatives already are under way, he said, and starting this fall, academic units and administrative departments around campus will be asked to propose ways in which they can help the Institute achieve its goals. For the Institute “to be successful the whole Georgia Tech community must be engaged,” he said.

“Working together we can do anything,” Peterson said. “This is, after all, Georgia Tech.”

A photo in the 1948 Blueprint shows two students kneeling on the field during a 1947 football game as they tinker with a model airplane painted with black and yellow stripes.

The control-line planes were flown during halftime at home and away games throughout the late 1940s and the 1950s.

The plans for the Yellow Jacket plane shown here were published in the 1959-61 edition of Frank Zaic’s Model Aeronautic Year Book after being submitted by Stuart Richmond, IM 51, who designed a version of the model airplane in 1948. In a description accompanying the plans, Richmond wrote that the Yellow Jacket “powered with a .29 to .35 engine has had an exciting life. It has been sprayed with DDT by rival cheerleaders. It has flown at bowl games. It was the victim of an attempted kidnapping. It has been peppered in flight with oranges by pretty University of Florida co-eds.”

Richmond recently told the Alumni Magazine that students would have just 20 seconds to launch the planes as Tech’s marching band exited the field following its halftime performance.

“We never failed to get one in flight during that 20 seconds,” Richmond said, adding that during his time on campus he was assisted by a great team of students, which included Aubrey Nabers, AE 51, and Bill Cooksey, IM 56.

“We had a timer on them that shut off the fuel after about 15 seconds, so when they flew, they only flew for like 12 or 15 seconds, just enough to create the illusion. They were on lines that were 70 feet long, so they did a 140-foot circle,” Richmond said.

Three Yellow Jacket model airplanes now sit on a shelf in the Georgia Tech Library’s archives. The oldest, pictured in 125 Pieces of Tech History, was donated to the Institute in the 1980s by Richmond and Cooksey, who died in 2004.

Something you won’t find at the library? An ill-fated model airplane that met its end during halftime in a game against Georgia in an incident that almost had Richmond thrown out of school. Richmond recalled that after he sent the Yellow Jacket plane on its way, another student launched “a rather worn, junky black and red airplane with black and red streamers on it. The two of them went around for about five or 10 seconds together on these wires, and the Yellow Jacket made a pass at this red and black airplane. I wasn’t flying it, but I was responsible for it. It crashed in the center of Grant Field into about a hundred pieces.”

The collision created quite a stir in the stands and resulted in Richmond being called into band director Ben Logan Sisk’s office the following Monday.

“He said, ‘The dean wants to see you, you’re in trouble up to your ears … and you’re probably going to get thrown out of school for this.’ I thought it was a great prank, we thought it went over really well. This is the lack of wisdom in youth,” Richmond recalled.

“I think it took three permanent demerits to get thrown out of school. On Tuesday, I was awarded two permanent demerits for the incident. I was a good boy the rest of my time at Georgia Tech.”

The Perrin Cup champion club soccer team included several Tech alumni and students. Back row, left to right, are Chris Shirah, ISyE 08; Kurt Peters; engineering student Jeff Carpenter; Chris Collins, ME 07; Mike Ely, ME 07; Michael Polacek; physics student Ivan Gadjeva; Brian Jones, CE 06; Ciro Pelliccia; and Jason Daley, ISyE 06. Front row, left to right, are Kevin Koushel, Arch 08; Joel Blake, ISyE 08; Karl Waasdorp; Morgan Mullis, ISyE 06; Rob Nacke; Chris Eiland; Ryan Harwell, STC 06; and Don Pottinger, CmpE 08. Team members Chip Stansfield, EE 05, and engineering student Brandon Mattix are not pictured.

In 2004, the Georgia Tech men’s soccer club had one of its finest seasons. In the national championship tournament, the team lost to eventual champion Texas A&M on penalty kicks. Tech finished with a top 10 ranking.

“We had guys who were freshmen, graduate students, PhD candidates and foreign exchange students that all contributed to our success,” said Morgan Mullis, ISyE 06, reflecting on his favorite soccer club moments. “Our road trips to other colleges for tournaments are the centerpiece to some of the craziest times I had in college.”

With those fond memories still fresh in mind after graduating, Mullis reached out to former teammate Chip Stansfield, EE 05. They decided to reunite the club as a team in the Atlanta District Amateur Soccer League, which was founded in 1967.

A core team of about 10 former players started competing during the 2007 season. Though it’s an amateur league, the team wanted more than just some weekend fun, Mullis said. They held tryouts and regular practices. Despite that work, it was a fun experience.

“Most of these guys were one to three years out of Tech and very excited for the chance to play again,” Mullis said. “A lot of us thought our soccer careers might be over once we were out of Tech.” Just as at Tech, the team, which goes by G Tech FC, enjoyed success on the field as well as good times off of it. By this past season, the club had moved up to the league’s second division.

During the Perrin Cup Tournament held in the spring to determine the league’s champion out of 40 teams, the Tech players once again found themselves in a tied game at the end of regulation.

But this game had a happier outcome, as the club knocked in five goals in overtime and claimed the title.

“Our team’s common bond of having played together for years at Georgia Tech is probably one of the biggest contributors to our success,” Mullis said. “The team chemistry we share motivates all of us.”

After having the summer off, the team will begin competing again in October. Mullis noted that the squad is looking for sponsors, and those interested may contact him at morganmullis@gmail.com.

Mullis and the rest of the team also were excited to carry over a well-worn rivalry into their postcollege days.

“Yes, there is a UGA team called Creswell FC that is in fact our biggest rival,” he said. “We finally got a chance to play Creswell FC this past season in the Perrin Cup semifinals and defeated them 5-4 in a very hard-fought match. For some reason, the victory feels much sweeter when you beat a UGA team.”

Anita Lamb, center, and Tech basketball players Deja Foster, left, and Alex Montgomery model suits from Lamb's clothing line, Altitude Fasique, at Georgia Tech's Global Learning Center. Photo by Eric Mansfield

Anita Lamb never had it easy finding fashionable clothing to fit her lean, 5-foot-10-inch frame. She laughed recalling how as a teenager she would unfurl the hem to add a couple of inches to a pair of pants or pull a pair of khakis down low on her hips to make them appear longer.

Now she only has to open her closet door to find a perfectly cut pair of trousers.

In 2008, four years after earning a master’s degree in management of technology from Georgia Tech, Lamb launched Altitude Fasique, a line of business attire created exclusively for women 5 feet 9 inches and taller who are “smart, stylish and moving up” the corporate ladder. Altitude Fasique’s collection of professional
apparel includes wide-leg and boot-cut pants and single-breasted blazers in charcoal gray with subtle purple piping, which are available through tallcouture.com.

Lamb was inspired to create Altitude Fasique more than 10 years ago. After graduating from Voorhees College in Denmark, S.C., with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, she took a job with Blue Cross Blue Shield in nearby Columbia.

“I would always dress in a suit,” Lamb said. “And I wanted to dress professionally, but I couldn’t find the style.”

Finding an off-the-rack suit with sleeves and pants that were long enough meant wearing a larger size and sacrificing a stylish, formfitting cut. And clothing stores for tall women did not offer fashionable looks that appealed to younger women. Ditching department stores, Lamb paid more to have her suits custom made by
a tailor. Deciding that she wanted to start her own clothing line to help women like herself, Lamb began looking for a new job that would give her the financial backing she needed to start her own business. In 2001, the Augusta native moved to Atlanta to join Southern Company.

After work, she acted as a sometimes stylist, helping tall women pick out suits on a case-by-case basis. She quit her job in 2007 to devote herself to creating a clothing line, enrolling in a 14-week course in small business development.

Lamb designs all of Altitude Fasique’s apparel then outsources the work to a pattern maker and a manufacturer. She hopes to have boutiques in Atlanta, Chicago and Washington, D.C., carrying the clothing within the next few years.

With the goal of making Altitude Fasique the No. 1 brand for women over 5 feet 9 inches, she recently expanded the collection to include dresses and plans to launch a line of blouses and fitness wear. But the company’s focus will continue to be on clothing for the modern businesswoman.

Lamb spoke of Altitude Fasique creating “a new business look,” with more relaxed apparel appropriate for casual Fridays. She said she learned from her time in the corporate world that women have to work harder than men to earn respect in the workplace. And showing up at the office each day in a neat, put-together outfit helps get you noticed.

“What would I tell a woman going into a corporate environment? I would say you have to balance style and the business atmosphere, and that’s a delicate sort of line you have to balance, to realize that you can still be stylish and still be business at the same time.”

Lamb said women should not be afraid to find ways to express their personalities through their clothing and should not shy away from adding some glamour to a traditional suit with a vibrantly colored blouse.

“We’re so comfortable with just black and brown and navy,” she said. “Those are all just neutral colors. You can really add any color you want to bring the suits out.”

During a recent visit to the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center, Lamb outfitted towering Institute students Deja Foster and Alex Montgomery in Altitude Fasique suits, a major departure from the white-and-gold jerseys they are used to wearing as starters on the women’s basketball team. Lamb, herself a former high school basketball player, offered the women some tips on dressing their best for their postgraduation job interviews.

Lamb suggested tall women pair a pinstriped blazer with solid-colored pants to keep from further elongating their legs. “Normally, what’s to a tall woman’s advantage is to have a pattern or pinstripes at the top and have a solid color at the bottom to be in balance.”

Always wear a jacket that falls at the hips, she said. “Styles come and go, but with your body type, you need to make sure you’re in proportion and not having your legs appear even longer than they are. The jacket kind of balances your body.”

But, ultimately, Lamb said, tall women should be proud of their height.

“You don’t ever downplay your height because it’s an advantage, and it’s the presence you bring into a room,” she said. “The best thing you can do for an interview when you walk in is walk in with confidence. It’s really about that feeling that you have, knowing that you have things that are appropriately designed for you.”

And that’s good advice for women — and men — under 5 feet 9 inches too.

Georgia Tech scored nearly 34 points a game last season, good for 15th in the NCAA. But the team ranked only 56th on defense, allowing nearly 25 points per contest.

With the loss of two top defenders, defensive end Derrick Morgan and safety Morgan Burnett, coming into the 2010 season, it’s the defensive side of the ball that poses the most uncertainty for the Yellow Jackets.

That’s where Al Groh comes in. A longtime NCAA and NFL coach known for his tough leadership and 3-4 defensive scheme, Groh is aiming to help Tech hold down opposing offenses as the team’s new defensive coordinator. Groh picked up the scheme while working under NFL coaches Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick, both of whom have utilized the defense to win Super Bowls.

Groh was on the New York Giants staff under Parcells during the team’s 1990 Super Bowl victory.

“I have a lot of ambition to do more things and a lot to prove,” said Groh, who was fired after going 59-53 in nine seasons as head coach at his alma mater, Virginia.

In deciding which coaching job to pursue, Groh said he looked for a location with a complete commitment to winning, a legacy of success, quality players in place and a high level of integrity. Tech, he said, offered all of those.

Groh didn’t go into specifics of how the system would be used and said the talent of the players and their willingness to buy into his defensive scheme would be critical to having success.

Last season, Virginia’s defense allowed only 5 yards per play while the Yellow Jackets’ gave up 6.1.

“There are a lot of ways to do things,” Groh said of the 3-4. “[But] it’s worked at a number of places on different levels.”

During the ACC football kickoff media event, Johnson said he wasn’t drawn to Groh as a candidate because of the 3-4 particularly, but rather because of Groh’s record in coaching.

“Any time you can get a coach like that, with that much experience and success, it’s great for our program,” Johnson said. “Al is a great football coach. He has a lot of energy, and I think he’s going to be good for our program. We’re excited about having a guy like that on our staff.”

“It’s like being a mommy to everybody and really impacting their lives. Some of the girls call me Coach,” says the 26-year-old Murad of her role at Atlanta-based Element Model Management.

“Discovered at the mall,” Murad, Psy 07, did some modeling while attending Chattahoochee High School and was encouraged by her agent to walk the runways of Milan.

“I knew right off the bat that my parents wouldn’t let me. And swimming was a big deal to me. I wanted to swim in college. If you model overseas, you’re there for one to three months, and I’d miss one to three months of my training. It was bittersweet, I guess,” says Murad over the French toast special at Junior’s Grill.

She followed her dad, Joseph Murad, MS AMath 76, MS EE 78, to Georgia Tech, where she was on the swimming team her freshman year.

“I almost made it an entire year as a distance freestyler,” Murad says. “I was bending over to pick up a pen I was using while studying for finals. Something just went out of whack on my back. It got to the point I couldn’t even climb into my bunk bed in the dorm. I couldn’t carry my backpack. I literally looked like a grandma walking around campus. It was that bad.”

She underwent testing and physical therapy. “‘Bottom line,’ doctors said, ‘you need to slow down on your training. It’s probably a combination of lactic acid buildup because of all the stress and overtraining.’”

Murad retired from swimming and began rebuilding her modeling portfolio.

“A photographer came from France, and my agent told me about it. I dropped 500 bucks on that shoot. You have to invest in this. You want to get the top-notch pictures. Once I started building my portfolio, I got signed again with an agency while I was in college,” she says. “Then random students around campus started asking me, ‘How do I get in the business?’ I would help these people out, but time is so valuable at Tech that I got to the point I started charging people. ‘You want my valuable knowledge? Let’s meet over coffee. I’ll give you a crash course.’”

She created the student group GT Mod Squad with friends Anees Mawani, Psy 08, and Vishwas Iyengar, PhD AE 07, and another from Georgia State. They organized a fashion show for Culture Week on campus and staged auditions.

“We had the boom box playing techno. We made them do cold walks. We had a rating card. On a scale of one to five, rate their face, rate their skin, rate how they dress, rate their personality. It was as fun as heck,” she says.

After graduation, Murad worked for a time as an Atlanta clothing designer’s executive director before visiting France with her parents.

“I came back after recentering myself and said, ‘You know what? It’s time to start
Element Model Management [ElementModelMgmt.com],’” Murad says.

The agency’s name comes from the sci-fi movie The Fifth Element.

“I guess it’s true,” she says. “Once you go to Georgia Tech, you get into science fiction movies. I just love the supermodel and the lead actress in The Fifth Element, Milla Jovovich, with the orange hair. That woman just exemplifies
power.”

She set up shop in February 2008. She now has about 50 models — men, women and children — on her roster and another 50 or so “in development.” Murad says she used her psychology training to develop motivational materials to transform the wannabe models into moneymakers.

“‘Hey, let’s whip you into shape. Let’s get a timeline, set evaluations. Here’s a map of exactly what you need to fix with your body and the types of training you need.’ I tell them, ‘This is a win-win situation,’” Murad says. “Their homework might be, ‘Stop wearing lip liner. You’ve got killer lips. You don’t need to wear lip liner ’cause it looks like white trash,’” she says. “I think that’s what sets our agency apart from others. You get the coaching. I eat, breathe and sleep this business, and, quite frankly, you need that coaching to be successful. That’s something I didn’t get as a model.”

Murad’s stable of models includes Georgia Tech students Jessica Hunt, Katee Lee and Kimberly Laughlin and alumna Stephanie Mma, MS AE 07.

Murad returned to Tech last year to teach an Options class. The turnout for the modeling and acting course was not stellar.

“I was bummed out. It was awkward teaching such a small class. I wasn’t doing it because I need to make money. I want to give back to Georgia Tech. I think self-improvement is huge,” she says. “How could you not like this?”