Class Notes

Siena Baldi, FA11, was one of 100 artists whom Loew’s commissioned to paint murals in 100 cities across the United States in celebration of its centennial. Baldi, who was invited to paint two murals, featured the natural beauty of Kona, Hawaii, from its sunsets to its coral reef. Website: sienabaldi.com

Daniel Cozzi, LW10, a partner with Donohue Brown Mathewson & Smyth, was named to the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin’s 2021 list of 40 Illinois Attorneys Under 40 to Watch from a field of more than 1,200 nominees. Cozzi practices in the medical malpractice and mass tort defense area. When not in the courtroom, he tutors underprivileged ­­grade-school students and mentors University of Chicago undergraduates interested in a law career.

Mary Bartling, GR10, GR18, launched thisbookisbanned.com, an online literary community that revolves around the close reading of books that have been banned or challenged. The website also provides tools that help readers discover everything a book may have to offer. Website: https://thisbookisbanned.com

Nikhil Agrawal, LA10, specializes in reconstructive plastic surgery with an additional focus on hand and nerve surgery at Long Island Plastic Surgical Group. Before joining the practice, Agrawal completed a Hand and Peripheral Nerve Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Earlier, he had a residency in plastic and reconstructive surgery in the Texas Medical Center at MD Anderson Cancer Center, Baylor College of Medicine.

Vir Singh, LA09, achieved board certification in emergency medicine by the American Board of Emergency Medicine and was named co-director of the Emergency Medicine Clerkship at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine. Singh was also named medical director of Rio Grande Regional Hospital ER 24/7 in McAllen and San Juan, Texas, and assistant medical director of the hospital’s main emergency department.

Andia Augustin-Billy, GR09, GR15, GR15, was granted tenure at Centenary College of Louisiana, the first Black professor at the college to achieve the standing in its 196-year history. An award-winning associate professor of French and Francophone studies, she leads students on trips to Paris and to Haiti, where she grew up as the daughter of missionaries. Augustin-Billy’s  other research interests include analysis of gender and sexuality in 19th- and 20th-century French literature and travel literature.

Tanya Roth, GR08, GR11, penned Her Cold War: Women in the U.S. Military, 1945–1980 (UNC Press, 2021), an examination of how the armed forces handled permanently integrating women into the military, a traditionally understood all-male bastion. By challenging traditional gender conventions and perceived gender roles, women serving in and with the nation’s military renegotiated the meaning of equality and the place of women in the defense of the nation since World ­­War II.

Chad Fite, LA08, is vice president and head of data at Machine Learning – Data Science Company. His work centers on improving lives by deriving actionable insights from unstructured and structured data in an automated fashion. Fite has delivered keynote addresses on applying artificial intelligence solutions to industry at several conferences.

Sebastian Deken, LA08, penned Final Fantasy VI: Boss Fight Books #28. In the book, he conducts a critical analysis of the musical structures of the Final Fantasy VI video game, which pushed the Super Nintendo’s sound capabilities to their limits and launched composer Nobuo Uematsu’s reputation as “the Beethoven of video game music.”

Leana Wen, MD07, wrote Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health (Metropolitan Books, July 2021). Much of the book focuses on the work Wen did in Baltimore to tackle the opioid epidemic, improve maternal and child health, and address violence as a public health issue.