Alumni honored by University for careers

Vinnakota, the co-founder of the SEED School in Washington, D.C., the nation’s first urban boarding school for students from underserved communities, will receive the Woodrow Wilson Award, which is presented every year to an undergraduate alumnus or alumna whose career embodies the University’s unofficial motto, “Princeton in the Nation’s Service.”

Max, an astrophysicist who has made important contributions in the field of adaptive optics, will be awarded the Madison Medal, which is awarded each year to a graduate alumnus or alumna for a distinguished career, advancing the cause of graduate education or achieving an outstanding record of public service. She is the first woman to win the Madison Medal, according to a University statement.

Both will receive their awards and deliver addresses in Richardson Auditorium on Alumni Day, Feb. 21, 2009. Max will speak first on “An Adaptive Optics View of Black Holes in Colliding Galaxies,” and Vinnakota will speak on “Risk and the Social Entrepreneur.”

Reinventing urban education

In 1998, Vinnakota co-founded the SEED School in the nation’s capital, which has a large population of underprivileged students and a dearth of adequate public education.

Vinnakota said in an e-mail that he was “stunned” to hear that he won. “There are many Princetonians who are doing great things in the world, and I am lucky to work with many alumni in the areas of education reform, community development and social equality,” he said. “I’m humbled to have been considered for this distinction, much less receive it!”

The D.C. school opened in 1998 with 40 students, and it now enrolls around 320 students from grades seven through 12. The SEED Foundation created a second school in Baltimore this year.

“If you look at the number of entering D.C. ninth graders who matriculate at college, that number is 15 percent. We’re getting 75 to 80 percent of our kids to college,” Vinnakota told The Daily Princetonian last month.

A molecular biology concentrator with a certificate from the Wilson School, Vinnakota was a management consultant after graduation. But a conversation with friends about urban education at his first reunion impelled him to create a plan for the SEED School in 1997 with Eric Adler, a colleague from his consulting job.

“In communities that are suffering from all sorts of problems, the schools are offering the kids that go there the opportunity to get a first-class education and to go on to college,” explained Marc Miller ’69, a trustee for the new Baltimore SEED School.

Vinnakota’s colleagues, many of whom are Princeton alumni, said that his role and vision is crucial to SEED’s success.

“It was truly by the drive of his vision and his absolute refusal to take no for an answer that these schools have come to be,” Miller said.

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Pyper Davis ’87, a chief operating officer of the SEED Foundation, agreed. “[Vinnakota] is completely tireless in his work,” she said. “He’s always building and connecting and reaching out to bring the best minds and the best resources for kids who need them the most.”

Vinnakota also served as a University trustee from 2003 to 2007 and chairs the Annual Giving Committee. He received the Josh Miner ’43 Experiential Education Award from the Friends of Outdoor Action Board, an award recognizing leadership in education.

Studying stars

Max, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California-Santa Cruz, is best known for her contributions in the field of adaptive optics.

“It was thrilling to get this award,” Max said in an interview after learning that she won. “It’s quite an honor.”

Max, who graduated from Radcliffe College with a bachelor’s degree in astronomy in 1968, came to Princeton that year to earn her Ph.D. in astrophysical sciences. Though the undergraduate student body was all-male until 1969, the Graduate School began accepting women in 1961.

“Things have completely changed,” Max said, reflecting on her time at Princeton. “The campus has a much nicer feel to it now, and it’s just really opened up socially and in terms of cultural activities.”

Her research focuses on “using adaptive optics to observe nearby active … galaxies with black holes in their cores … and more distant galaxies,” according to her website.

Max is the inventor of the laser-guide-star technique, which, she explained, uses a laser beam to remove the blurring in telescopic images that occurs due to turbulence in Earth’s atmosphere.

She is the director of the Center for Adaptive Optics and was elected this year to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors given to scientists and engineers.