alumni today
SCIENCE
Far Above, Far Below
When the latest crew of astronauts was
assigned to the space shuttle, NASA asked
each person to provide a list of people and
places they would like to speak to from space.
Astronaut Suni Williams put the Alvin submarine on her list, and Tim Shank ’ 88 was the
man at the other end of the line.
“We had never met before, but we immediately found so many connections between
us,” explained Shank, who is an assistant scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution. “We realized that NASA and the
NSF, space travel and marine research, are
traveling on colliding paths; not only do we
share experience in extreme environments,
we’re using some of the same technology.”
CAREERS
Atop the Ratings
How do you know which dishwasher,
chainsaw or baby food to buy? For 71
years, millions of us have answered similar
questions by turning to Consumer Reports.
Kimberly Kleman ’ 83 was working at
the St. Petersburg Times, where she’d written
several investigative pieces, about 10 years ago
when Consumer Reports turned to her.
“I wasn’t even looking for another job
when I got a call from a headhunter asking
me if I would be interested in working on a
major magazine as an investigative editor,”
Kleman recalls. “When I accepted the job at
Consumers Union, my husband, who is an
engineer, said that I had now become
respectable in the eyes of his friends.”
Kleman, recently appointed editor-in-chief
of the magazine, says she has written or edited
just about every kind of article published in
the magazine. “I’m coming into the role
when we are successful,” Kleman says of her
new position. “We are gaining when a lot of
The Alvin, the
vehicle Shank will
use to explore the
Arctic in July, is the
same vehicle that
NASA hopes to use
to explore a space
lake on Europa, one
of Jupiter’s moons.
Shank’s career
reinforces how dif-
ferent explorations Tim Shank ’ 88 is an assistant scientist at Woods Hole
converge. At UNC, Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Mass.
he heard Professor
Conrad Neumann describe a cruise he’d
taken on the Alvin. “I knew right then that I
wanted that man’s job, but when I talked to
him afterwards, Professor Neumann told me
not to go directly into marine science,” Shank
recalled. “He suggested that I pick a specialty
COURTESY WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION
field first.”
So Shank studied
molecular genetics
and worked as a cancer researcher in
Research Triangle
Park. From there, he
earned a doctorate in
marine ecology and
evolution and completed a postdoc at
Woods Hole, where
he works today. “I
apply the genetics I
learned in cancer research to study the life
forms that we find in seeps, on dead whales,
on wood on the sea floor,” Shank continued.
“These animals don’t use sunlight for their
energy. They use chemicals coming out of the
sea floor, thermal springs.”
MARIO RABADI/ CONSUMER REPORTS
It might be a far distance from the Alvin
to the shuttle, from two miles underwater to
200 miles above Earth, but the study of life
connects them. Williams returned from space
in June and hoped to visit Shank at Woods
Hole and travel to the bottom of the ocean.
published new data in May. Kleman works at
the Yonkers, N. Y., site where she witnesses the
level of care put into product testing. She said
she was pleased but not surprised that the
magazine weathered the storm without any
fall-off in subscriptions.
Consumer Reports Editor-in-Chief Kimberly Kleman ’ 83.
“There are a lot of things we can do to be
even better,” Kleman says. “I plan to do a
redesign of the magazine. Reading through
the reports can be pretty dense.”
other magazines are declining; our Web site is
the largest paid subscriber site in the world.”
Kleman also is taking on the job at a time
when Consumer Reports has just weathered
one of the most difficult mistakes in its history. In the February issue, reports that infant
car seats had failed crash tests were based on
miscommunications with the testing lab.
Consumer Reports retracted the article and
She also is looking to shift the definition of
product. “I want to include consumer issues,”
Kleman continues. “Things like health care
and green issues; these are not our traditional
subjects, but they are areas where we can use
our research capabilities to help consumers.”
Looking forward, Kleman laughs and concludes: “I hope it will be fun, and [that] I am
not a short-lived editor. I am humbled to
have been chosen. I love what I do.”
