The next time you get a good answer from a web search, you can thank Susan Dumais ’75.

Beginning with landmark research in the 1980s, Dumais has made fundamental contributions to how we find, use and make sense of information on the Internet and in our computers.

For her achievements, Dumais was recently named the 2014-15 Athena Lecturer by the Association for Computing Machinery鈥檚 Council on Women in Computing.

Susan Dumais ’75 of Microsoft Research is the 2014-15 Athena Lecturer.

“Her sustained contributions have shaped the thinking and direction of human-computer interaction and information retrieval,” said Mary Jane Irwin, who heads the Athena Lecture awards committee.

The Athena award celebrates female researchers who have made fundamental contributions to computer science.

The author of more than 200 articles on information science, human-computer interaction and cognitive science, Dumais is a and deputy managing director of the Microsoft Research Lab in Redmond, Wash.

A native of Lewiston who grew up on Nichols Street near campus, Dumais was a magna cum laude mathematics and psychology major at 乐播传媒.

As a student, she did research with Drake Bradley, the Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus of Psychology, co-authoring a research article on that appeared in the journal Nature.

Being published as a student? “Pretty awesome,” she recalls. The pair also explored ways to use computer software to improve the teaching of statistics.

“She was one of the best students I ever had,” says Bradley, a comment echoed by Robert Moyer, professor emeritus of psychology, who says that Dumais “was one of the very best researchers I ever worked with 鈥� student or otherwise.”

Dumais headed to Indiana University for doctoral work, but didn’t leave 乐播传媒 behind.

In 1979, she teamed with Moyer and a University of Michigan researcher to publish the article “Semantic association effects in a mental comparison task,” in the journal Memory & Cognition.

The researchers measured how long it took subjects to say which item in a pair was larger, such as flea or dog, needle or boat, penguin or iceberg.

Subjects were able to judge the size of semantically related terms (such as dog and flea) more quickly than unrelated terms (needle and boat).

To be sure, the researchers’ conclusions went deeper than that, but the thrust of Dumais’ work 鈥� modeling how human memory works 鈥� was a leaping-off point for a career exploring how humans can better communicate with their machines.

(Fun 乐播传媒 connection: At Indiana, Dumais met a “fantastic teacher doing research in biopsychology” who joined the 乐播传媒 faculty the next year. That professor was John Kelsey, who retired in 2012 after a great career at 乐播传媒.)

Ph.D. in hand from Indiana, Dumais was on her way. After looking at how humans retrieve information from our own memories, she began looking at how we retrieve information from external sources, such as computers.

In the 1980s, Dumais was researcher at Bell Labs when she exploring “the vocabulary problem,” the fact that computer users always had to key in the exact, correct word to get what they wanted from their machine.

Reading like a manifesto for the information age, the paper explained the problem:

Many functions of most large [computer] systems depend on users typing in the right words. New or intermittent users often use the wrong words and fail to get the actions or information they want. This is the vocabulary problem. It is a troublesome impediment….In what follows we report evidence on the extent of the vocabulary problem and propose both a diagnosis and a cure. The fundamental observation is that people use a surprisingly great variety of words to refer to the same thing.

From that observation came a solution, , published three years later in the journal of the with Dumais as a co-author.

Today, in terms of how we find stuff on the Internet, whether cute kittens or Red Sox highlights, LSI acts as an indexing and retrieval method. It helps our search experience by deciding if words that share similar contexts also share a similar meaning, and thus should be elevated as a search result.

“For example,” Dumais says, “LSI would find that the words ‘physician’ and ‘doctor’ are similar not because they co-occur together but because they occur with many of the same words, such as ‘nurse,’ ‘patient,’ or ‘hospital.'”

Essentially, she adds, “LSI induces the similarity among words by looking at the company they keep.”

Dumais鈥� most recent research at Microsoft analyzes how web content changes over time, how people revisit web pages, and how searching can be improved by

By context, she means “who is asking, what task they are trying to accomplish, and what documents are of interest.”

That means you get your own search results. “So if I, Susan Dumais, search for SIGIR, I probably mean the ‘Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval’ and not the ‘Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.'”

In a good sense, Dumais sees no end to the work ahead.

The ability to search for information, she says, will support an “ever-increasing range of information, services and communications.鈥�

Hank Howie '81

Boston Globe tech blogger Scott Kirsner reports that game development veteran Hank Howie ’81 is the new chief operating officer of Boston game development studio Disruptor Beam.

Howie is the former head of Blue Fang Games (creator of the top selling Zoo Tycoon game) and, more recently, the co-founder of Beach Cooler Games, which produced the mobile game Universal Movie Tycoon.

Disruptor Beam is currently working on an online game tied to the hit HBO series Game of Thrones.

The app, known as , recently won the $20,000 grand prize in the XBRL Challenge, a contest to build an application using SEC filing data, which is formatted to the XBRL standard (“eXtensible Business Reporting Language).”

Calcbench is truly a “handy-dandy calculator,” Rosenbaum writes.

Pranav Ghai ’93, co-founder of Calcbench.

By typing a company’s ticker symbol into the browser-based calculator, a user sees a firm’s SEC filing information. When a user clicks on any number, the calculator displays changes over time in various financial categories, such as inventory or accounts payable. A user can also compare those results between companies.

“The quickest and easiest way to work with SEC filing data.”

Last year, Ghai and Rapp gave their 140-character description of Calcbench to Calcbench is “a free online platform to retrieve, analyze and share public financial data. The quickest and easiest way to work with SEC filing data.”

Rapp tells CFO.com that he and Ghai believe that the tool could give CFOs “a clearer view of how their filings will look to the investor community, as well as enabling them to more easily benchmark suppliers or partners.

Alex Rapp ’93, co-founder of Calcbench.

The startup is based at Dogpatch Labs, a venture-funded incubator for tech startups with labs in Cambridge, Mass., and New York City, as well as Palo Alto, Calif., and Dublin.

Ghai, based in New York, and Rapp, in Cambridge, have access to the labs in both cities (“though Alex uses it MUCH more than I do,” Ghai says) and they use Skype too.

Communications technology has been key. “We probably couldn’t have done this [startup] as efficiently five or ten years ago,” Ghai says.

Their both 乐播传媒 math majors. Ghai, the team’s systems and quantitative expert, earned a master’s degree in applied mathematics from New York University and has extensive experience in the financial services field as an analyst and consultant.

Rapp, the strategist, earned an M.B.A. at Boston University. He has executed a number of analysis and innovation projects in the technology, communications and mobile/wireless fields and is the founder of FilmBoston, a film and video production company.

The 乐播传媒 Fulbright recipients are: John Atchley, class of 2006, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Jill Jakimetz, class of 2005, of Veneta, Ore.; Timothy McCall, class of 2008, of Andover, Mass.; Ross Van Horn, class of 2008, of Highland Park, N.J.; and Rebecca Westlake, class of 2007, of Goldens Bridge, N.Y..

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently listed 乐播传媒 College among the educational institutions that produced high numbers of Fulbright grant recipients this year. 乐播传媒 appears in a list of top Fulbright producers in the Oct. 19 print edition of the Chronicle.

(Although five 乐播传媒 alumni received awards for 2009-10, the list credits the college with three recipients. According to a spokeswoman for the Institute for International Education, which administers the Fulbright program, the list supplied to the Chronicle was based on an information snapshot that did not include all recipients.)

Atchley, whose work as a Fulbright Fellow was in the same issue of the Chronicle, received a Fulbright-Jawaharlal Nehru Scholarship to study India’s Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) highway development project. The project is designed to connect India’s four largest cities, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai, with more than 3,000 miles of four- and six-lane expressways.

Focusing on the portion of the highway project that stretches through Uttar Pradesh and Bitar, areas known for high levels of illiteracy and poor governance, Atchley is examining the project’s success in promoting inclusive economic development.

“Measuring the impact of the GQ project in these states presents an extreme test for the idea of inclusive growth that’s promoted by the government,” Atchley says. “I plan to examine the success of this stretch of the GQ in promoting inclusive, equitable growth, and recommend new policies that can enhance these nascent efforts.”

Atchley, who says that his semester abroad in Dharamsala, Tibet, while in his junior year of 乐播传媒 influenced his decision to study India, left a job as chief of staff for Communications and Intergovernmental Affairs at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection to undertake his Fulbright-Nehru project. The Fulbright-Nehru grants are distinctive in the Fulbright program because they receive matching funds from the Indian government.

Fulbright research fellowship recipients include Jakimetz, who is undertaking environmental studies research in the Netherlands and Ireland, and Van Horn, who is studying agro-energy in rural communities in Brazil.

Westlake embarked on an English Teaching Assistantship in Madrid, Spain. After graduation from 乐播传媒, she completed a two-year placement with Teach for America, a nonprofit organization that recruits college graduates and places them in low-performing school districts. In Madrid, she works in a bilingual program with adolescent students.

鈥淭he Fulbright in Madrid allows me to gain a global perspective on urban education as well as a greater perspective on the problems that face the American public education system,鈥� says Westlake.

McCall also received an English Teaching Assistantship, and is completing his Fulbright in Germany.

Fulbright recipients come from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and from more than 250 U.S. institutions, representing a diverse cross-section of American higher education. About 1,250 U.S. Student Program grants are awarded each year.

— Becca Chacko ’10

A 乐播传媒 physicist has won a grant from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement to study a phenomenon that hints at a possible basis for the next generation of computers.

Lilian Childress received a $45,000 Cottrell College Science Award for her exploration of atomic phenomena called spin systems and their characteristics in diamond.

An assistant professor of physics, Childress researches optical phenomena in atomic and solid state physics. Such phenomena are described by quantum mechanics, the natural laws that govern the behavior of particles on extremely small scales. Her particular focus is on an atomic defect in diamonds that could lead to a mechanism for quantum computing.

“Unlike classical mechanics, quantum mechanics allows the possibility of a system existing in more than one state at once,” says Childress. “Random effects play a key role because the outcome of measurements of quantum systems cannot always be predicted.”

According to Childress, quantum mechanics may have a crucial function in the computers of the future. Today’s computers, which operate according to the laws of classical mechanics, are based on the rendering of data into strings of 0s and 1s — binary digits, or “bits.”

But, she says, “as computing hardware gets smaller, the physical systems we use to store these classical bits are approaching sizes where their behavior is governed not by classical mechanics but by quantum mechanics. The rules of quantum mechanics offer a different paradigm for computation.”

According to those rules, a quantum bit — or “qubit” — can exist in an infinite number of different states that are simultaneously 0 and 1, dramatically increasing the computing power per bit. “For certain applications, a computer based on quantum mechanics could run exponentially faster than a computer based on classical mechanics,” she says.

A quantum computer has yet to be built, and there is some debate over whether such a thing is even possible. Nevertheless, scientists around the world are exploring physical systems that could potentially provide the basic hardware.

Childress is studying what she describes as “a relatively new addition to the ranks of qubit candidates” — the behavior of particles associated with a flaw in the atomic structure of certain diamonds.

Called a nitrogen vacancy, this defect occurs where two of the carbon atoms normally constituting the diamond molecule are missing, and one of them has been replaced by a nitrogen atom. Pink diamonds have many nitrogen vacancy sites, which appear as tiny bright spots fluorescing in the diamond when it is illuminated by green light.

By using light, magnetic fields and microwaves, the characteristics of the defect centers embedded in the diamond lattice can be measured. In particular, Childress is interested in what quantum physicists refer to as “spin” — subatomic behavior that adds a few mathematical complexities to the rotation we commonly associate with the word.

Harnessing the spins of particles within a nitrogen vacancy site, Childress says, could provide the basis for a rudimentary quantum computer.

Childress, who joined the 乐播传媒 faculty in 2007, received her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees at Harvard University.

The second foundation established in the United States and, at the time of its founding, the first devoted to the advancement of science, the Research Corporation for Science Advancement was established in 1912.

Cottrell College Science Awards support significant research that contributes to the advancement of science and to the professional and scholarly development of faculty at undergraduate institutions. .

– Hillary Fink ’11, Office of Communications and Media Relations

“We’re in the middle of a revolution,” 乐播传媒 President Elaine Tuttle Hansen said at midday on April 30, “and it’s a hard place to see from.”

But Hansen, other members of the 乐播传媒 community and three visiting scholars spent that afternoon seeking a better view of the academy’s work amidst the tumult, amidst the creation and destruction, wrought by digital media.

That was the revolution Hansen invoked as she convened “The Teaching and Learning Shift: Diversity and Technology in the 21st Century,” her third annual symposium exploring issues of diversity at 乐播传媒.

The event examined the intersections of diversity and technology, and what they portend for academe. But if the title was “The Teaching and Learning Shift,” a different and bigger kind of shift resonated throughout: The changes in power structure, the threats and opportunities, that generational transitions in media and diversity hold out.

Take, for example, the surfeit of content on the Internet, and the potential and the dilemma it presents to faculty. If knowledge is power, who has the greatest leverage: the professor with his Great Books or the kid with the Google smarts?

Symposium organizer Leslie Hill, associate professor of politics and special assistant to the president for diversity initiatives, laid the day’s thematic groundwork in her introduction.

The event put a new spin on the old commonplace of the generation gap. It examined two new distinctions between today’s students, on the one hand,and their parents and teachers on the other. First, as diversity has become more visible and cultural boundaries more permeable, young people experience and perceive diversity quite differently from their elders.

Second, as Hill said, “today’s learners use tools unavailable, and perhaps unthinkable, to earlier generations” 鈥� a profound adaptation to technology evidenced through the afternoon by the term “digital natives,” young people whose ease with digital media is virtually innate.

The opening panel introduced the guests and concepts for consideration. , associate professor of new media at the University of Maine, offered variations on the idea that digital media can be a robust tool for empowerment and for subverting old, destructive hierarchical habits in the classroom. Examples from UMaine, such as a “” site that allows students to aggregate, tag and contextualize scholarly articles, were intriguing.

, an authority on African American film and culture and a professor of film and media studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, introduced herself with examples of real impacts that digital media have made in the civic and political realms. The outstanding case was the Obama campaign’s skillful use of online organizing; less known was the use journalist Howard Witt made of the African American blogosphere to showcase a instance of racial injustice in Texas.

, associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern University, studies the interaction of information technologies and social inequalities. She challenged common wisdom about digital media users, suggesting that differences in skill among young people create a participation gap 鈥� and that those differences are driven by socio-economic background and educational attainment, among other factors.

Breakout sessions ran through the afternoon, with Blais, Everett and Hargittai making note of salient themes, concerns and suggestions for action. Three sessions explored the role of digital technology in teaching and learning, while others looked at civic engagement through digital media, and at identity and difference.

During the breakout session “Digital Media and the Arts,” faculty members praised the Web as the source of what they need most: easy and quick access to video clips of artists’ works, often through services like YouTube.

“Dance is visual, and to teach dance I must have visual materials or it doesn’t make sense to students,” said Carol Dilley, assistant professor of dance.

Take famed choreographers like Mark Morris or Bill T. Jones: Reviews of their work often use similar phrases, like “gender-bending,” Dilley told the group. “But when students see YouTube clips, they immediately see that they are nothing alike.”

But faculty also see a downside of this click-and-view aspect of teaching. Online visual content is often presented without canonical context, so even more than before, faculty have to work hard to “fill in” the missing ideas, said Dale Chapman, assistant professor of music.

The closing session was designed to distill from the ferment of the day ideas that would inform, as Hill put it, “the ongoing process of crafting the 乐播传媒 education.”

Hargittai described the breakout sessions as “incredibly rich,” and the panelists harvested a tantalizing bouquet of ideas. Among the salient findings:

鈥� Technology is often made a scapegoat for other problems. For instance, the generational divide among users is exaggerated, and, as Everett said, can create a destructive false dichotomy.

鈥� Still, the divide is real. As Everett reported, “There have to be reward structures to encourage faculty to engage with the black hole of technology.” At the same time, the current practice of hardware and technical instruction is incomplete 鈥� the missing piece being guidance in the effective pedagogical application of high-tech tools.

鈥� The faculty’s job of teaching critical discernment and evaluation is more important than ever in the digital world. “Faculty have to acknowledge students’ expertise,” Hargittai said, “but not abdicate their power.”

Blais told a story about a faculty member who was using Facebook to take a student to task about late assignments 鈥� and how the student later used the same public forum to press the professor to deliver an overdue assessment of the student’s thesis.

Blais concluded the tale, to appreciative laughter, with something a 乐播传媒 student said during the afternoon: “The power structures that permeate the academic world were not made for Facebook.”

When Tom Brennan ’83, senior natural resource manager for Poland Spring bottled water, approaches a Maine community about using their water, he’s ready for a frosty reception.

“They’re not always thrilled to talk to Poland Spring,” says Brennan, a 乐播传媒 geology major who took part in a recent Department of Geology luncheon for students, faculty and staff.

Maine communities, increasingly aware of various sustainability issues, are more protective of their water resources than ever. So, to begin a productive dialog, Brennan relies on his geology training. “We ask a community if we can do the science,” he says.

• A 2008 about Maine water issues quotes Tom Brennan ’83.
• A 2006 乐播传媒 Magazine story features Brennan, Andy Tolman ’70, and Keith Taylor ’82 and their involvement in Maine water.

In , for example, Poland Spring recently opened a new water extraction and bottling plant after years of studying and learning about the aquifer and its resilience. The process began when Brennan approached a skeptical local water district. “Once we began focusing on the water, a lot of the problems went away.”

Still, Poland Spring 鈥� and the bottled water industry in general 鈥� is facing a backlash these days around a variety of issues: the carbon footprint of trucked water, PET plastic recycling, land use, local control and social justice.

At 乐播传媒 (which offers the Summit Spring brand of bottled water), there’s a chapter. During Brennan’s visit, students quizzed him about 鈥� among other issues 鈥� whether America could become a society cleaved between those who can afford quality bottled water and those who only have access to tap water flowing through a dilapidated infrastructure.

The bottled-water industry faces more such criticisms than other water-intensive industries, Brennan says. “Water can’t hide,” he says. “Sometimes I think if we put a little food coloring and carbonation in our product, we’d be off the hook.”

In an age when volatile fuel markets and fears of environmental Armageddon generate big headlines, it鈥檚 astonishing to hear John Rossi 鈥�88 talk about what wasn鈥檛 being talked about in architecture school in the early 1990s. Green technology? Efficient homebuilding? “That stuff wasn鈥檛 even on the map,” he says.

Then again, Rossi wasn鈥檛 necessarily looking for it. “I was very typical of a lot of people who recognized that while the environment is important and it鈥檚 worth keeping, it also feels way too big to know what to do about it,” says Rossi, who finished 乐播传媒 with a degree in psychology.

Which is to say, a lot has changed in the last 15 years 鈥� both for Rossi and the building industry. Solar seems to be back from its near-death experience of the 1970s, wind has made a believer out of Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, and geothermal heating systems are starting to find their way into American homes. And though not quite as sexy, there鈥檚 more-efficient drywall and cement, while a whole new generation of insulations and weatherstripping materials has hit the market.

These are developments Rossi follows closely as principal of the Barendsen Rossi Collaborative, named for Rossi and his wife, writer and editor Lynn Dolberg Barendsen 鈥�88. From the firm鈥檚 cozy third-floor office in downtown Newburyport, Mass., shared with a fellow architect, a landscape designer, and a Web designer, Rossi generates work that attempts to blow apart the notion that high efficiency and attractive design are somehow mutually exclusive.

“A lot of green architecture looks like a science project,” says Rossi, who exudes an infectious energy whenever the discussion turns to architecture and art. “It looks like an engineering experiment 鈥� a bunch of tubes and pipes. Who wants it? You don鈥檛 want it to look like a freak show. The aesthetics have to work.”

So do the economics. That鈥檚 why Rossi cringes at the argument that “green” architecture is a feel-good euphemism for “it鈥檚 gonna cost more.” The way he sees it, mainstream construction methods and the bigger-is-better mentality that has infiltrated the homeownership dream are plagued with inefficiencies and rife with hidden costs. Consider: Nearly 90 percent of all U.S. homes draw their energy from fossil fuels, and since 1950 the average size of a home has more than doubled. Add the fact that the U.S. building industry generates 40 percent of all landfill waste, and, well, you get the picture.

For Rossi, that picture came into focus first-hand. A Connecticut native who come from a long line of stonemasons, he studied in Rome during his 乐播传媒 years and once worked in a sculptor鈥檚 studio. He recalls watching his dad carve out a living as a residential developer. Right after 乐播传媒, he embarked on a homebuilding business himself.

He watched as usable “waste” material was thrown out, inexpensive but inefficient appliances were installed, and the idea that a house should harmonize with its environment was stripped out of the building equation.

However inefficient, home construction, measured by square foot or by unit, “has never been less expensive than right now,” says Rossi, as anyone who鈥檚 seen a row of McMansions lining a golf course can attest. “It鈥檚 cheaper because it鈥檚 more generic. In many ways we鈥檝e worked hard to idiot-proof the building process. Buy one of those, add two of that, and you鈥檝e got a building.”

Point being, it is more expensive to hire an architect like Rossi and actually make decisions. “But I鈥檝e found that when a homeowner discovers that they do have choices, the doors start to open for them.”

Rossi鈥檚 former company, PowerHouse, was started in 2003 as a reaction to this inefficient, one-size-fits-all process. The idea was to harness the model of the modular home construction business to create smartly designed “green” houses. “[Modular factories] already offer a more eco-friendly process,” says Rossi. “The site impact is less. The waste is less. And they come to your property in a few trucks, as opposed to making 55 trips a week to the lumberyard.”

In total, PowerHouse constructed four houses and eight small buildings called “PowerPods” whose green features include:

• proprietary thermal break system (to prevent heat loss) in the wall construction;
• Forest Stewardship Council-certified woods;
• innovative solar technology;
• and a special remote home-monitoring system that allows owners to check the home鈥檚 temperature and humidity levels from any computer with an Internet connection.

The press and the industry raved about the PowerHouse approach to style and efficiency, but a rush of venture capital or a big deal with a developer never materialized. Coupled with what Rossi describes as the company鈥檚 own lack of a strong business foundation, the venture seemed destined to fail.

In early 2008, Rossi walked away from it. “We kept being told that what we were doing made a lot of sense and that we clearly knew what we were doing,” says Rossi. “But nobody wants to be the guinea pig. It鈥檚 a building, not a little widget, and when you鈥檙e having a half-million dollar home built, you don鈥檛 really want to experiment.”

As he tries to carry forward concepts from PowerHouse, including modular construction, Rossi compares the current entrepreneurial landscape for green builders to “the Wild West, or like the Internet in its infancy. There are many startups out there, some like mine with cool ideas, proven success, and even lots of free media attention. Most are not making much headway yet 鈥� especially with this economy 鈥� but some are going to be moneymakers.”

The economy鈥檚 impact on the sustainability movement is something David Braslau 鈥�84 faces each day as a vice president of the Projects and Services Group at Constellation Energy, a Fortune 500 company that specializes in energy exploration and delivery as well as infrastructure improvements. Based in Boston, Braslau oversees the design and execution of large-scale energy-related renovation projects for clients like hospitals, universities, and the federal government.

When he completed his master鈥檚 in environmental planning in the mid-1980s, Braslau 鈥� a veteran of 乐播传媒鈥� first efforts around energy awareness 鈥� figured he was at the dawn of an era when energy efficiency would be all the rage. “But then I started knocking on doors and found that people weren鈥檛 all that interested in energy conservation,” he says. “It was all about the bottom line 鈥� nobody wanted to add new features to a project if that meant raising the cost. And that鈥檚 really the same today.”

As recently as mid-2008, Braslau saw a resurgence of interest in sustainability among institutional clients. But with the souring economy and a major drop in energy prices, some Constellation clients who had expressed interest in progressive long-term energy solutions 鈥� solar photovoltaic rooftop systems, solar-electric hybrid lighting, or vegetated roofs that help reduce heat loss, for example 鈥� are now dialing back their green plans.

“It all drops back to the economic equation,” says Braslau. “We can show them the environmental impact if they don鈥檛 do something, or what their carbon footprint is, but if you鈥檙e a hospital or university CFO, how do you justify doing something if you can鈥檛 show it鈥檚 cost-effective?”

At the consumer level, Halsey Platt 鈥�88, a high-end remodeler and cabinetmaker based in Groton, Mass., argues that the greenest way to meet the human need for shelter is through home renovation rather than building new. “It鈥檚 the ultimate recycling. You don鈥檛 use up undeveloped land for a new home.

Platt has been in the building business almost as long as he鈥檚 been away from 乐播传媒, but it wasn鈥檛 until 2000 that clients even started asking about environmentally friendly and energy-efficient construction. Nearly nine years later, with more than half of his customers demanding “greener” building in the form of better windows, sustainable products, native woods, or higher-end heating systems, Platt still sees an alarming lack of proven green options for the regular consumer.

Take the electrical box. A typical home has about 300 of them, says Platt. And yet, pay a visit to your regular big-box hardware store and what you鈥檙e shown is a unit made out of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a controversial plastic that can鈥檛 be recycled. Want one made out of steel? Sorry. Your electrician will tell you he only installs those on commercial jobs 鈥� though he could get them at extra material and labor cost. “Your clients have to be able to spend more, plan further ahead, and look harder,” says Platt.

But what constitutes “green” and what doesn鈥檛 isn鈥檛 always so clear. “You have to be careful because there is a lot of greenwashing out there,” he says. In one recent renovation of a space for an organic food company in Arlington, Mass., Platt explored the use of a newer insulation material made from recycled denim. “Part of my concern about this product was whether or not we could stand behind it,” he says. “We have to guarantee to our client that this insulation isn鈥檛 a perfect home for mice or mold.”

And if it fails, it鈥檚 Platt Builders that takes the hit. “Having to come back three or five years down the road and rip it out is certainly antithetical to the entire green movement,” says Platt.

John Rossi is convinced that green building has moved beyond amateur hour. “The more [people] see that it really works and it isn鈥檛 funky or hard to live with, and the more we are able to deliver and deliver well, the easier this will all become,” he says.

Rossi compares green building to the personal computer. “Who had one of those 25 years ago? Now we can鈥檛 think of living without them 鈥� they do more, they鈥檙e cooler, more fun, and cheaper. Same deal.”

By Ian Aldrich

Ian Aldrich, a freelancer living in Boston, wrote about energy trader Dan Rice 鈥�73 in the Fall issue.

Don’t pigeonhole John White ’39 as just another nonagenarian champion swimmer.

“Swimming’s not all I do, you know,” White says during a pause in his daily laps at Tarbell Pool.

For White, who turns 93 in April, there’s also a long-term project to hybridize a yellow Japanese iris, and genealogy work to trace the White family forebears further back than their arrival at Massachusetts Bay in the 1630s. And, it being winter, he’s got to clear snow from his Minot property riding his 17-horsepower garden tractor with snowblower

Around Tarbell Pool, though, White is known as the nonagenarian swimmer. Younger observers simply marvel at his ability, while older swimmers have a more complex reaction: “Jealousy,” smiles 80-year-old Professor Emeritus of Economics Ted Walther, another noonday swimmer.

A backstroke specialist since his days as 乐播传媒’ swim captain 70 years ago, White has been among the best masters swimmers in his age group for about a decade. In 2006, he was crowned the top U.S. swimmer in the 50 and 200 backstroke (yards and meters).

For obvious reasons, the older age groups draw fewer swimmers, and sometimes it’s not the speed of the event that’s remarkable but its mere occurrence. Like in 2007, when White and fellow oldsters Norman Seagrave, Everett Hanke, and John Woods swam a 200-meter relay in their masters combined-age group (360-399 years). It had never been done before.

Though slowed by eye troubles, aches and pains, and a cold, White swam the 100-yard backstroke in competition last fall, and his 2:20.60 was good for a second ranking nationally in U.S. Masters Swimming. A 90-year-old pup currently holds the 2:01.80 top spot.

As with any competitive athlete, White’s near-misses are as memorable as the triumphs. For a guy in his 10th decade, there’s a lot to consider, like the race a few years ago when his foot slipped during a turn. “I went right under the lane divider and had to start from a dead stop,” White recalls. “I lost 5 seconds, and the guy who won only beat me by a second.”

In short, White’s approach to life seems to mock the old saying attributed to the late Claude Pepper, the longtime congressman from Florida: “I’m so old I don’t even buy green bananas.”

Take White’s passions as a genealogist and iris breeder, both of which require an optimistic belief that time invested will yield a positive return.

Looking down the White family tree, he’ll tell you that in the 1900s, his mother was expelled from 乐播传媒 for ice skating on Lake Andrews on a Sunday. In the 1800s, White relatives once owned Mount David, and in the 1700s his great-great-grandfather began the Whiteholm dairy farm in Auburn, where Wal-Mart is now. John White ran the family farm for many years and was later involved in real estate.

With iris breeding, meanwhile, White’s achievements include a pink iris hybrid, Dirigo Pink Milestone, seen below. In 2007, it won the Payne Medal from the Society for Japanese Irises, the highest award in its class.

White’s current project is to create a yellow variety of the species Iris ensata, the true Japanese iris. “Everybody says it can’t be done,” he says. “Even the Japanese have quit trying it. The trouble is, they didn’t think the problem through.”

“There are no known yellow I. ensata cultivars,” says Dennis Hager, president of the Society for Japanese Irises. True, there are yellow iris hybrids with I. ensata in their background, he says, but the yellow color “has never been attributed to the I. ensata parentage.”

Andrew Wheeler ’01 is a Ph.D. student at California’s Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, home of the botany department of Claremont Graduate University. He’s known White for years, thanks to their mutual iris interest. “In many respects, John is one of the youngest people I know,” says Wheeler, who uses DNA sequencing to examine relationships among iris species.

He calls White’s efforts “remarkable.”

White is also trying to create a tetraploid iris, a plant with double the usual chromosomes. Such a genetic structure often yields desirable qualities like larger, thicker flowers with deeper colors.

“Japanese breeders have massive fields of iris but they don’t have tetraploid breeding lines because it’s difficult and frustrating,” Wheeler says. “They don’t think they have enough time to do it. But John doesn’t care about time.”

Beneath White’s photo in the 1939 Mirror is a telling quote: “Patience is not the least of the virtues.”

“I am now in my third generation, which will have the yellow gene on both sides,” he says. “So there’s a chance when those bloom this summer I will get a yellow. That will be a true Japanese yellow iris.

“And if I don’t get a yellow, I will cross some of them again. I’ll keep going until we get it. It’s a slow process and you need luck. But if you get lucky, you get what you’re after.”

By H. Jay Burns, photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen

This story used information from an oral history provided by John White ’39, part of the and now housed at the Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library.