Ben Akman (1985 B.S. Computer Science) is Chief Technology Officer, The Brookhaven Group, New York. Previously, he has been the CTO of Procurease LLC, manager of the Web Services Development Team of OptiMark Technologies, Inc., and a Principal Architect for Openvision Technologies (merged with Veritas). As an independent consultant, he helped develop numerous systems including futures software for Lehman Brothers, a foreign exchange trade order management system for Deutsche Bank, AG, and an energy trading system for Dow Jones Telerate. He began his career building network operating systems at AT&T Bell Laboratories. He holds an MS in computer science from the University of Southern California.

Kenneth F. Carey, 1982 B.S. Physical Sciences, was promoted to Senior Principal Systems Engineer at Noblis, a non-profit science, technology and strategy company based in Falls Church, VA. He is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), and a recent winner of the Charles Franklin Brooks Award For Outstanding Services To The Society "…..For his extraordinary, long-term commitment to the Society across the public and private sectors, and for exceptionally energetic service on a variety of the AMS committees from local to national levels."

Didier A Depireux (1991 Ph.D. Physics, advisor S. James Gates), is an Assistant Professor, Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of Maryland School of Medicine. He also holds an adjunct appointment with the Robert Fischell BioEngineering department at the University of Maryland at College Park. After obtaining his Ph.D and 3 years of post-doctoral training in string theory and integrable systems, he moved on to the more concrete field of computational neuroscience, with a particular interest in understanding hearing and our innate ability to extract speech and music in very noisy, reverberant environments such as in a car or a busy restaurant. He joined the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland, working with Shihab Shamma on measuring and modeling neural activity in the auditory midbrain and auditory cortex. In order to be even closer to the model of relevance, namely humans, he accepted a faculty position in the School of Medicine where he teaches (among other things) human gross anatomy and medical neuroscience to the medical students, and pursues his research in close collaboration with medical doctors. More recently, his interests have led him to develop an animal model of tinnitus (ringing in the ears); he is currently funded by the Department of Defense to study changes in the central nervous system associated with the induction of tinnitus. His research has been supported by grants from the NIH, the American Tinnitus Association and other foundations.

Kristopher Karnauskas (2007 Ph.D. AOSC, advisor Tony Busalacchi), currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), Columbia University, has recently accepted a tenure-track research scientist position at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) on Cape Cod, beginning in late August 2009.

Joann Kline, 1984 M.S. Meteorology, graduated May 16, 2009 from Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, MI. She received a Juris Doctor degree (with Business Transactions concentration), graduated Magna Cum Laude, and was ranked 6th in a graduating class of 402. Joann is currently the Director of Quality and Regulatory Affairs for Jackson Safety, a manufacturer of industrial personal protective equipment and division of Kimberly-Clark Professional. She received an M.S. degree in Engineering Management from Western Michigan University in 1993.

John H. Knight (1990 B.S. Physical Sciences) is a director in the Restructuring and Bankruptcy Group of the law firm of Richards, Layton and Finger. His practice focuses on representing debtors, secured creditors, and other parties of interest in chapter 11 cases. Knight is also a leader of the firm's substantive non-consolidation opinion team. He has served as counsel to numerous chapter 11 debtors in varied business segments and also has an active secured lender practice, representing the prepetition or DIP lender in many large chapter 11 cases. Knight has been recognized as an outstanding bankruptcy attorney by “America’s Leading Lawyers for Business” and “Delaware Super Lawyers.” He received his J.D., with Honors, from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1994.

Martin O’Neill, 1983 B.S. Computer Science, has published the book “Building Business Value: How to Command a Premium Price for your Midsized Company,” a guide for business leaders to build greater value in their companies. O’Neill runs Corsum Consulting, is a member of the National Speakers Association and is a frequent speaker and consultant on leadership, corporate culture and building enterprise value. He sits on the Business Advisory Board for the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) Tech Center and lectures in UMBC’s Entrepreneurship Program.

Heath (Hap) Peden (1990 B.S. Computer Science) was officially named the National Capital Area 2009 Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Man of the Year at the grand finale gala on June 14. Peden raised $93K in 10 weeks and, together with his fellow candidates, they raised $890K. The funds will help find a cure for blood cancers and improve the lives of the patients and their families.

Mark Pleszkoch (1990 Ph.D. Computer Science, advisor William Gasarch) is a member of the Technical Staff, Survivable Systems Engineering Team, CERT, Carnegie Mellon University. Pleszkoch works in the area of automation of formal methods. His current project, Function Extraction for Malicious Code (FX/MC), involves the automatic derivation of the functional behavior of disassembled assembly language code. Previously, Pleszkoch worked at IBM for twenty-one years in various capacities. As a member of IBM’s Cleanroom Software Technology Center, he provided education and consultation to clients in software process, software engineering technologies, and software testing.

Kristin V. Stephens, 2009 B.S. Computer Science, was the student speaker for the Spring 2009 Commencement, held on May 22. Stephens participated in the University Honors Program, is the recipient of a Kendall Scholarship, a Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics Scholarship and a Guy Wassertzburg Scholarship. She plans to continue in the new Computer Science Combined Bachelor’s-Master’s 5 year program, which enables our very best students to earn both a B.S. and M.S. in five years, and is interning at Google this summer.