Helping chronically ill children and their parents
Andrew Isaacs ('81)
Senior Director, Industrial Markets, KPMG, New Jersey
President and Executive Director, J.A.I. Children's Foundation Inc.

When Andrew and Lorie Isaacs' son Jordan started having seizures, the ensuing battery of diagnostic and neurological tests consumed much of their time, attention, and Jordan's infancy. Jordan was diagnosed with febrile seizures, a condition most children outgrow but which, unknown to the Isaacses, afflicts an estimated 200,000 children born in the United States. "Very little is known about this disease," says Andrew, "and even less is communicated to families and caregivers before or after an episodic event."

Today, at the age of six, Jordan is free from seizures -- he's an active Tae Kwon Do enthusiast in hot pursuit of his black belt. But the Isaacs have not forgotten how hard it was for them to gather information about their son's medical condition, so they created the J.A.I. Children's Foundation Inc. (www.kid-med.org), a nonprofit childhood disease information resource for parents and health care professionals. Recently, a physician in Canada supplied the foundation's Web site with information on more than 500 pediatric diseases.

"Our next step is to put all of the information we have into one database and make a CD-ROM available to the general public," says Andrew, who received the 1999 College of Engineering Alumni Award for Distinguished Service to the Community at Reunion in May.

Honoring a college friend and roommate
Ezra Kucharz ('90)
Founder, Total Sports, Inc., North Carolina
Co-creator, ENG's Adam Miller Senior Project Fund

Senior roommates Ezra Kucharz and Adam Miller graduated from BU and went their separate ways. Kucharz became a grad student at Duke University and "came up with a harebrained idea to do things for the basketball team that were unheard of at the time, like an Internet broadcast of games." Applied New Technologies, which Kucharz formed with two others, eventually became Total Sports, Inc., a sports media, information, technology, and marketing company with clients that include Major League Baseball, the NHL, the NFL, NBC Sports, and more than fifty universities and conferences, including BU (www.gobu.com).

While Kucharz was living in Houston in 1993, Miller came to the city on business. One morning, Kucharz received a telephone call that his friend had been "in a bad car wreck." Kucharz drove first to the scene and then to the hospital to which Miller had been airlifted, but his friend had died upon arrival. To honor him, Kucharz helped establish the Adam Miller Senior Project Fund, which will help cover the costs of the Biomedical Engineering Department's Senior Project Program (see page 18).

"I hope to do more for the University and for the Adam Miller Fund," says Kucharz, adding that the education he received and the friendships he formed at BU have had a profound influence on his life. Kucharz received the 1999 College of Engineering Alumni Award for Distinguished Service to Alma Mater.

Reuniting classmates and strengthening community
Margaret Lundin ('73)
Consultant, Buttonwood Business Systems, New York
Volunteer, Class of 1973 25th Reunion

"It was a strange time to be a member of a very large institution,"

Margaret Lundin says about attending BU during the turbulent '70s. "There was so much deep emotion rolling around in people about the inability of seemingly large organizations to care about individuals. But at the College of Engineering, we all felt very much that we were a small human island in this monstrous sea of indistinguishable people."

Lundin's class of about thirty students was known for "really hanging out together socially and intellectually." She earned the nickname "the Bird" as a member of the AEBA -- the Almost Engineers Bowling Association. Later, "when the University decided not to produce a yearbook in 1973, I worked with the graduating seniors at Sargent College, the School of Nursing, and the College of Engineering to publish our own yearbook."

Lundin says of her classmates, "We succeeded socially and academically because we helped each other out. I really wanted to see those guys again." For her volunteer work on the Class of '73's 25th Reunion, which boasted an astounding 50 percent attendance -- the highest participation rate at the University -- Lundin received the 1999 College of Engineering Alumni Award for Distinguished Service to Alma Mater.

Internationally recognized industry leader
Carol Russo ('68)
Director of Aeronautics, NASA Glenn Research Center, Ohio

"In the mid-1960s, engineering was really a male-dominated profession," says Carol Russo. "I was the only woman in my engineering classes and, while I was active in asking questions in class, I was always conscious of the fact that I was unusual. I had to work extra hard because I always worked alone. And, because I was a novelty, the spotlight was on me. People were naturally curious about how well I would do."

Russo, who got her private pilot's license at the age of sixteen and transferred from Northeastern to BU because she wanted to major in aeronautical engineering, also earned an M.S. and Ph.D. in fluid mechanics from Harvard. She brought to NASA twenty years of industrial experience (at GE Aircraft Engines) with commercial, military, and large and small engine systems.

As director of aeronautics at NASA's Glenn Research Center, Russo leads a team of approximately 1,000 civil service and support service contract personnel in developing advanced propulsion technologies for use in aircraft engines, in partnership with U.S. industry, universities, and other government agencies.

For her wealth of engineering experience and her international reputation in aeropropulsion, with special achievements in turbomachinery and artificial intelligence, Russo received the 1999 College of Engineering Alumni Award for Distinguished Service to Industry.