1 – Coronavirus Provided Opportunity
To Pursue the Armenian Cause Online
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
2- Armenia Loosens Lockdown Even As COVID-19 Cases Increase
3 – Despite Pandemic, Chicago Armenians Protest Turkish Genocide Denial
4- Prominent Manhattan E.R. doctor on COVID-19 front lines
commits suicide
5- Armenian Engineers Instrumental in Creating
FDA-approved NASA ventilator for COVID-19 treatment
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1 – Coronavirus Provided Opportunity
To Pursue the Armenian Cause Online
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
The coronavirus pandemic disrupted the traditional plans of Armenians
around the world to commemorate the 105th anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide on April 24. However, very quickly Armenians discovered new
ways to commemorate the Genocide by changing the street protests and
large gatherings to online marches and internet programs. In the
future, when this pandemic is over, Armenians can use some of the new
internet and video methods on April 24 in addition to the public
events.
This year, Armenians in various countries carried out virtual programs
on April 24 instead of the traditional street protests and indoor
commemorative events. Today I will focus on one of these programs, the
HyeID virtual march.
HyeID is a Glendale, California-based non-profit organization that was
formed three years ago to plan the future Diaspora Armenian
Parliament. This year, the HyeID group organized a virtual
commemoration during the week of April 24, starting on April 22.
Within a few days, over 341,000 Armenians and some non-Armenians from
around the world endorsed the following message on the
April24.Hyeid.org website: “We have to stay home this April 24, but we
join the Online March. We demand justice for Turkey’s Genocide of 1.5
million Armenians in 1915.”
Within a few hours of making this website public, it came under
persistent and massive attack from Azerbaijan and Turkey trying to
hack the site. Fortunately, HyeID board member Aram Ter-Martirosyan, a
software engineer, and his team, reacted quickly by blocking the
hacking efforts. Such an organized hacking attack could have only come
from the governments of Azerbaijan and Turkey. This is called
“Denial-of-service attacks” which Wikipedia describes as “a
cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or
network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or
indefinitely disrupting services of a host connected to the internet.
Denial of service is typically accomplished by flooding the targeted
machine or resource with superfluous requests in an attempt to
overload systems and prevent some or all legitimate requests from
being fulfilled.” By working around the clock for two nights,
Ter-Martirosyan’s staff was able to block the flood of attacks on the
April 24 link.
Another unfortunate disruptive act was caused by Google, which blocked
on Google Play the HyeID app created by Aram Ter-Martirosyan and his
staff. The Turkish and Azeri hackers, having failed in their
disruptive efforts, probably complained to Google to remove the app
that powered the April 24 program. Google’s negative action limited
significantly the number of online march participants.
Google sent the following offensive message to Aram: “We don’t allow
apps that lack reasonable sensitivity towards or capitalize on a
natural disaster, atrocity, conflict, death, or other tragic event.”
Google also blocked the Google account of Aram’s company, ConnectTo
Communications, Inc., disrupting and causing damage to his business.
Aram immediately filed an appeal with Google, advising that the State
of California, where Google is headquartered, and the United States
had recognized the Armenian Genocide. Google has not responded to
Aram’s appeal. I suggest that HyeID or Aram file a lawsuit against
Google to revoke its wrongful decision on the app.
The HyeID group also posted its April 24 link on Facebook, generating
a large number of responses. This virtual march generated over 341,000
participants—which included 310,000 Armenians and 41,000
non-Armenians—from 198 countries and territories. A major achievement
was that Apple Store ranked the April 24 app among the top 10
downloaded apps in the world for iPhones and iPads.
Besides publicizing the Armenian Genocide to 41,000 non-Armenians
around the world, a by-product of this effort was that for the first
time we discovered that there are Armenians in 198 countries and
territories.
The HyeID group was ecstatic that such a large number of Armenians and
non-Armenians participated in the April 24 virtual march. Even though
this figure is far below the approximately 10 million Armenians
worldwide, the HyeID group was surprised to find out that Armenians
were dispersed in close to 200 countries. Here is the number of
participants in some of the countries/territories:
Russia: 121,415 Armenians; 10,677 non-Armenians.
Armenia: 54,065 Armenians; 3,760 non-Armenians.
United States: 50,390 Armenians; 4,071 non-Armenians.
France: 13,476 Armenians; 1,797 non-Armenians.
Georgia: 9,917 Armenians; 1,049 non-Armenians.
Lebanon: 6,016 Armenians; 828 non-Armenians.
Canada: 5,598 Armenians; 373 non-Armenians.
Belgium: 4,565 Armenians; 313 non-Armenians.
Iran: 4,440 Armenians; 441 non-Armenians.
Germany: 3,748 Armenians; 522 non-Armenians.
Argentina: 3,547 Armenians; 966 non-Armenians.
Netherlands: 2,962 Armenians; 230 non-Armenians.
Ukraine: 2,885 Armenians; 416 non-Armenians.
Spain: 2,473 Armenians; 291 non-Armenians.
Greece: 1,747 Armenians; 187 non-Armenians.
United Kingdom: 1,664 Armenians; 266 non-Armenians.
Austria: 1,223 Armenians; 51 non-Armenians.
United Arab Emirates: 1,174 Armenians; 205 non-Armenians.
Australia: 1,012 Armenians; 61 non-Armenians.
Syria: 1,010 Armenians; 83 non-Armenians.
Artsakh: 961 Armenians; 177 non-Armenians.
Cyprus: 872 Armenians; 77 non-Armenians.
Turkey: 795 Armenians; 410 non-Armenians.
Poland: 651 Armenians; 475 non-Armenians.
Switzerland: 611 Armenians; 156 non-Armenians.
Egypt: 425 Armenians; 85 non-Armenians.
Azerbaijan: 201 Armenians; 99 non-Armenians.
Nakhichevan: 100 Armenians; 33 non-Armenians.
Interestingly, there are a handful of Armenian participants in such
unexpected places as: Mongolia, Northern Mariana Islands, Wake Island,
Indonesia, Wallis and Futuna, American Samoa, French Polynesia, New
Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, Antarctica, Libya, Algeria, Mali,
Madagascar, Mauritius, Chad, Tanzania, Congo, Namibia, Zimbabwe,
Kenya, Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, South Africa, Central African
Republic, Maldives, Iceland, and Greenland.
To find out the results of the online march in your own country and
city, please go to the interactive report: www.HyeID.org. You can also
learn the number of participants near you by selecting the distance
from your area. As the saying goes, “amen degh Hye ga” [Armenians are
everywhere].
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2- Armenia Loosens Lockdown Even As COVID-19 Cases Increase
By Raffi Elliott
YEREVAN—Most businesses across Armenia have been allowed to reopen on
Monday as the country relaxes COVID-19 related lockdown measures even
further. According to Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan, who heads
the anti-pandemic task force, large malls and shopping venues where
people congregate in numbers will remain closed for the time being, as
well as bars, nightclubs and some restaurants that do not offer
outdoor seating. Schools and cultural sites will not reopen for the
moment as well. Public transport, both within Yerevan and between
cities, have not been given the go-ahead to resume operations either.
Avinyan further explained on Sunday that all businesses are required
to operate under strict health and safety guidelines formulated by the
Health Ministry, mandating face masks on employees, limiting the
number of patrons inside stores or restaurants and regularly
disinfecting various surfaces.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who also appeared in Sunday’s Facebook
Live broadcast along with Avinyan and Health Minister Arsen Torosyan,
was careful not to call this “a victory just yet, but rather a new
phase in the struggle.” He clarified that the decision was based on
re-examining data from around the world and concluding that the virus
could not be completely stamped out until a vaccine becomes widely
available.
The pharmaceutical research company Moderna, co-founded by
Armenian-American entrepreneur Noubar Afeyan, announced a 10-year
manufacturing agreement with the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Lonza that
could result in the production of one billion doses per year. Moderna
is one of several research laboratories which have made critical
progress in the race to develop a vaccine for the COVID-19 pandemic
over the past week.
Public health experts in Armenia had hoped that warmer spring weather
would slow transmission rates, but data from the United Arab Emirates,
which has enforced some of the world’s most draconian lockdown
measures before relaxing them, indicates that such a slowdown might
not happen. “The strategy going forward is to apply new hygiene
standards and adapt to life with coronavirus, since, I’m sure you’ll
agree, the prospect of life under lockdown for the next year is not a
realistic one,” the Prime Minister continued. Pashinyan also mentioned
that had data suggested that the virus could be thoroughly defeated
with one more month of lockdown “under the strictest conditions,” they
would have done so, but projections suggest otherwise.
While Armenia managed to successfully slow the spread of the virus
after applying strict lockdown measures in late March, the number of
new COVID-19 cases has steadily creeped up again in the last week of
April. These new cases have been attributed to more robust testing
methods, but also Easter holidays and warmer temperatures have
encouraged more and more citizens to break lockdown protocols.
Critics, however, have blamed authorities for inconsistently enforcing
the stay-at-home rules. The Prime Minister himself had previously
complained of seeing large groups of people on the street without
personal protective equipment in full view of police.
Authorities have responded that they can only do so much to enforce
the rules and that citizens must share some degree of responsibility
for shielding their elder family members. Armenia’s relaxing of
lockdown rules coincides with similar moves by other European nations
which have been affected by the virus. Neighboring Azerbaijan has
lifted all restrictions on freedom of circulation on the same day as
Armenia, while Georgia is lifting travel bans on Kutaisi and Batumi on
Tuesday and the capital Tbilisi by the end of the week.
However, Armenia continues to lead the region in terms of overall
cases and COVID-19 related deaths. Over the weekend, the country
registered both its single largest daily jump in new cases on April 30
with 132 confirmed. Sadly, four more people also passed away in a
24-hour period. Health Minister Torosyan mentioned that the majority
of the April 30 cases resulted from people who had attended the same
funeral; the general growth in cases, he explained, stems from
increased mobility since the previous restrictions were relaxed as
well as infections among healthcare workers which make up 320 or about
13.4 percent of all cases. “I understand that we all need to pay
respects, but a certain amount of personal responsibility is in order
here,” the Minister cautioned.
Torosyan reminded viewers that the point of the lockdown measures was
not to eradicate the virus, but to slow down the rate of infection
enough for first responders and the public health system to adapt to
the novel pandemic and allocate their resources to treat patients. “In
that goal, we have largely succeeded,” Torosyan said last week. In
March and April, the healthcare system was able to expand its
treatment capabilities to manage up to 4,000 cases. At the moment,
fewer than 900 patients require hospital care, while 350 patients
remain under isolated observation in hotels. The Minister added that
if the numbers continue to grow, they will simply keep asymptomatic
patients in self-quarantine. Armenia has greatly expanded its
detection capabilities, having conducted over 25 thousand tests since
the pandemic began at a rate of around one thousand tests per day.
Factories across the country are also producing face masks at a rate
of 200,000 a day.
The Labor and Social Affairs Ministry has also announced 15 emergency
assistance packages since the pandemic began, releasing 12 billion AMD
($25 million) in funds to subsidize utility payments and unemployment
insurance for hundreds of thousands of workers who have been
furloughed.
Armenia has registered 2,507 cases since March 1. In total, 1,071
patients have made full recoveries; 39 people have died. Doctors are
currently treating 1,393 active cases. To date (as of the publication
of The California Courier on May 4), Armenia has tested 24,942 people
for the disease. The State of Emergency remains in place until May 14.
This article appeared in The Armenian Weekly on May 4, 2020.
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3 – Despite Pandemic, Chicago Armenians Protest Turkish Genocide Denial
CHICAGO, Ill. —A small group of protesters commemorated the 105th
anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in Chicago’s iconic Daley Plaza
on April 24, 2020, demanding that Turkey return the portions of
Armenia that it occupies and make just reparations to the Armenian
people for its losses during the Genocide. Due to the current
shelter-in-place orders and the global pandemic, Daley Plaza, like
much of Chicago’s city center, was desolate.
Donning face masks and gloves and complying with social distancing
guidelines, protesters held aloft flags, signs and banners conveying
their demands, including an end to Turkey’s aggressive campaign of
genocide denial. The protest drew interest from the few passersby,
both on foot and in vehicles.
“2020 not only marks the 105th anniversary of the Genocide, it is also
the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Sevres, which delineated the
boundary between Turkey and Armenia,” said Greg Bedian on behalf of
the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF). “The time has come for
Turkey to live up to its treaty obligations and respect Armenia’s
territorial integrity by immediately withdrawing its armed forces and
its illegal settlers from Armenia’s western territories,” he
continued.
Protesters led by the Chicago ARF standing in front of the famed
Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago, Illinois, April
24, 2020
Armenian Americans and other people of conscience in the Chicago area
have held protests annually for nearly 50 years to raise awareness of
Turkey’s 1915-1923 genocide of its indigenous Armenian, Greek and
Assyrian populations. Although recent protests have had hundreds of
demonstrators, this year’s protest was severely limited in scope due
to COVID- 19 restrictions on public gatherings imposed by Illinois
Governor J.B. Pritzker.
“Even though we were limited in numbers, we felt it was essential that
our message be conveyed in person this year as well,” stated Bedian.
The ARF Chicago “Christapor” Gomideh led the protest this year.
Other events organized by Chicago Armenians to honor the 1.5 million
Armenian victims of the Genocide are taking place online through the
end of April including special church services, memorial programs with
the participation of Illinois congressional representatives and a
global vigil organized through the #TogetherWeRemember Coalition.
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4- Prominent Manhattan E.R. doctor on COVID-19 front lines
commits suicide
By John Annese
A prominent Manhattan emergency room doctor who had treated a
staggering number of coronavirus patients killed herself in Virginia,
authorities said Monday.
Dr. Lorna Breen, 49, the medical director of NewYork-Presbyterian
Allen Hospital’s emergency department, died by suicide in
Charlottesville, a spokesman for the local police department told the
Daily News.
Spokesman Tyler Hawn said police responded to a call Sunday seeking
medical help, and Breen was rushed to UVA Health System University
Hospital but succumbed to self-inflicted injuries.
“She gave what she had, and she’s a casualty of the war in the
trenches, as far as I’m concerned,” her father, Dr. Philip Breen, told
The News. “She’s a true hero.”
Breen’s father said the crush of coronavirus cases his daughter
handled was overwhelming, and that she herself became ill with
COVID-19, though she went back to work after a week and a half. She
had no history of depression, he said.
“She was a very outgoing, very energetic person who, I don’t know what
snapped, but something blew up in her, and so she ended up taking her
own life,” he said. “She just ran out of emotional gas.”
He said his daughter traveled to Charlottesville to stay with her
sister after the hospital sent her home a second time.
“She stayed home about a week and a half, but I think she felt guilty
about not being at work,” her father said. “The last time I talked to
her was before she went in for her 12-hour shift that she couldn’t
finish.”
“Just before she went back, she said that the ambulance had been
waiting outside the building for over three hours with sick people.
They couldn’t even get the people out of the ambulances in there,” he
added.
On Monday, Columbia University Irving Medical Center and New
York-Presbyterian hailed her tireless devotion to her work. “Dr. Breen
is a hero who brought the highest ideals of medicine to the
challenging front lines of the emergency department,” the statement
said. “Words cannot convey the sense of loss we feel today.”
The statement added the hospital would focus on providing “support to
her family, friends, and colleagues as they cope with this news during
what is already an extraordinarily difficult time.”
The Charlottesville Police Department also extended its condolences.
“Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) can reduce the likelihood of
being infected, but what they cannot protect heroes like Dr. Lorna
Breen or our first responders against is the emotional and mental
devastation caused by this disease,” Charlottesville Police Chief
RaShall Brackney said.
Breen, a devout Christian who was one of four siblings, traveled the
world to give lectures on emergency medicine, and to hike and
snowboard, her grieving father recalled.
Breaking News Newsletter
“She was a salsa dancer and she played the cello,” he said. “She was
working on her master’s degree in business administration also.”
Breen loved New York City, he said. “I sort of hope that when this is
over, there may be a wall of heroes in New York someplace. She should
have her plaque on there . She gave it all for her city.”
Breen’s maternal grandparents were “refugees from the Armenian
massacres” according to her sister Jennifer. She added that her sister
Lorna and her mother had visited Armenia just a few years ago, and
they have deep pride for their Armenian roots.
This article appeared in The New York Daily News on April 28, 2020.
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5- Armenian Engineers Instrumental in Creating
FDA-approved NASA ventilator for COVID-19 treatment
By Jenny Yettem
(The California Courier)—A new ventilator developed by NASA to treat
victims of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has received emergency
approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the space
agency said on April 30.
The NASA ventilator, a high-pressure device called VITAL, was
developed by engineers at the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena, California in response to the limited supply of
traditional ventilators for COVID-19 patients suffering from
respiratory distress.
“This FDA authorization is a key milestone in a process that
exemplifies the best of what government can do in a time of crisis,”
NASA chief Jim Bridenstine said in a statement. “This ventilator is
one of countless examples of how taxpayer investments in space
exploration — the skills, expertise and knowledge collected over
decades of pushing boundaries and achieving firsts for humanity —
translate into advancements that improve life on Earth.”
FDA officials approved the VITAL ventilator (the name is short for
Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally) under the
administration’s Emergency Use Authorization of April 30. JPL
engineers developed the new ventilator in 37 days and tested it April
21 at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
The ventilator was one of several coronavirus-fighting devices and
technologies NASA showed President Donald Trump last week.
“VITAL poses several benefits in the national response to COVID-19,”
NASA officials said in the statement. “It can be built faster and
maintained more easily than a traditional ventilator, and is composed
of far fewer parts, many of which are currently available to potential
manufacturers through existing supply chains.”
The device can also be modified for use in field hospitals, like those
in some convention centers and hotels across the country, NASA
officials added. The VITAL ventilator is designed to last up to four
months and is not a replacement for dedicated hospital ventilators,
which can last years.
The California Institute of Technology (Caltech), which manages JPL
for NASA, is offering a free license for the VITAL ventilator to
commercial medical manufacturers.
“Now that we have a design, we’re working to pass the baton to the
medical community, and ultimately patients, as quickly as possible,”
Fred Farina, chief innovation and corporate partnerships officer at
Caltech, said in the statement. “To that end, we are offering the
designs for licensing on a royalty-free basis during the time of the
pandemic.”
Seven Armenians—Mineh Badalian (Mechanical Engineering); Sarah
Hovsepian (Mechanical Engineering); Theodore Iskenderian (Mechanical
Engineering); Razmig Kandilian (Thermal Engineering); Torkom
Pailevanian (Robotics); Ara Kourchians (Robotics); and Arbi Karapetian
(Mechanical Engineering)—were part of the VITAL team.
As System Manager on this project, Karapetian was responsible for the
prototyping, testing and delivery of the VITAL unit, reporting
directly to the project manager.
Karapetian has been with JPL for 20 years, having started in the
electronics division, then moving to system engineering, then the
mechanical engineering division where he has been for the last 6
years. In his day-to-day role—as Deputy Section Manager for Payload
and Small Spacecraft, in Mechanical Engineering—he is responsible for
hiring, mentoring and training employees to ensure the integrity of
the products that the people in his section are working on. Normally
this section, which includes Theodore Iskenderian, Mineh Badalian and
Sarah Hovsepian, makes instruments for spacecraft like Mars 2020. One
of the notable instruments they built is an experiment to make oxygen
on Mars. Another is the Mars Helicopter, the world’s first
extraterrestrial powered aircraft.
The VITAL team, he explains, came together quite organically to face
an immediate problem head-on. “One of the great things about working
at JPL is that you have access to all kinds of experts. As the team
was learning about how to pivot our skills to building a ventilator,
we would realize we needed specific expertise—for instance with the
flow of gases, and how 100% oxygen concentration would affect the
materials. And getting the answers was relatively easy, as we would
call someone we know. Everyone is so willing to help. Everyone
committed their talents, energy and motivation,” said Karapetian.
The team worked around the clock every day, often exchanging emails
and fielding requests in the middle of the night. “You could send
someone a request at 2 a.m., and get a reply by 2:02 a.m. The energy
was high. We were exhausted but it was one of those things we knew had
to be seen through completion. I’ve had the benefit of working on some
amazing projects like the Mars Curiosity Rover. That was a once in a
lifetime experience. I would say this is also in that category,” said
Karapetian.
Most of the team was working remotely. There were about 10 to 15
people who would go in to the lab, equipped with Personal Protective
Equipment (PPE) to do the fabrication on site. The rest of the team
was working remotely using teleconferencing tools. “What’s also
remarkable is that this team had never worked together before, never
worked on a medical device, or this remotely on anything before. We
figured out how to do this in 37 days—something novel, using
collaborative and online tools we’d never used before. There’s a sense
of some magic for it to have worked out this way. It’s the power of
the human spirit,” said Karapetian.
Sarah Hovsepian completed both her undergraduate and graduate
education in architecture, and chose to work at NASA because of the
opportunity to explore her diverse interests. “I never work in one
specific field but I love combining as many fields as I can to solve a
problem. I enjoy looking at a problem from many different
perspectives,” she said, noting how a course “How to Make Almost
Anything” pushed her to explore graphics, art, engineering and design
to build products and structures that accommodate the human
experience. While completing her graduate program at MIT, she was
involved in the revolutionary Maker Movement—a convergence of
independent inventors, designers, tinkerers, computer hackers and
traditional artisans, who create imaginative and innovative products
using open-source learning, contemporary design and powerful personal
technology like 3-D printers.
Hovsepian navigated two positions with the team, essentially guiding
the project through from start to finish. First, as executive officer,
she was responsible for ensuring the team had everything they needed
to be organized in planning, coordinating and completing the
objectives for the ventilator device. Second, in systems engineering,
she worked on the verification and validation team that conducts tests
on the prototype to confirm the device will perform as stated in the
design requirements.
“My particular background helped from the sense that I’m a big picture
thinker. Coming from the architecture world, you have to look at a
building system from many different angles, parts and systems. In this
project there were many key decisions, and it emerged where I created
diagrams of options we could take as a team—mapping out what could
happen. It’s the bird’s eye view, to assist the team in assessing
various options across the board,” said Hovsepian.
Hovsepian worked directly with the task manager, who had come up with
the idea for the ventilator. She was his right-hand person, in
coordinating and organizing the team in such a short time frame—and
also in setting up the data infrastructure, tools and technology to
ensure the team could collaborate while working remotely.
“We did it because it was urgent. That whole part of my life will be
ingrained in my mind forever. It’s a piece of history, what we’re
going through globally. Everybody at the end of the day, regardless of
nationality or identity, is stepping up to the plate to help each
other. Everybody is coming together as a community, supporting each
other. This is what’s beautiful. That has been the lesson that has
emerged for us. Life is fragile it can change instantly. In the end,
it’s what we do for our loved ones, our community and ultimately
humanity that carries us all through this difficult time,” said
Hovsepian.
The team came up with two distinct ventilator designs. The first is
the VITAL pneumatic unit designed to be used in a hospital setting
where there is compressed air and oxygen plumbed into the walls. The
second design—the VITAL compressor unit—is in the process of being
completed and prototyped, and should be tested around May 14. This
ventilator would be used in tent hospitals or any place without access
to compressed air, because it creates its own pressure.
Karapetian explained that current prediction models show the United
States may have the needed amount of ventilators, so NASA is looking
at this project in terms of helping foreign countries that are
projecting a great demand for ventilators for COVID-19 patients. There
has been interest from all over the world, especially Africa, the
Middle East and South America. Karapetian explained that manufacturers
would need to optimize the design for large-quantity manufacturing,
taking into account things such as whether plastic or aluminum housing
would be more cost-effective.
“To some level when we go through hardship, everyone wants to do
whatever they can to help others. You think globally but also about
your own community. When I think about my immediate relatives who are
older and not in optimal health, the thought of them needing something
like this and not being able to get it—that’s a driving force on a
personal level. And as you start propagating that out—the sense of
responsibility becomes enormous. When you identify that there is
something you can do, it pushes you over the edge to work around the
clock to get it done,” said Karapetian, who noted that he has been
grateful to have the opportunity to spend almost uninterrupted time
with his family throughout the quarantine.
“It’s remarkable to be able to see your loved ones this consistently.
A lot of us didn’t know what that means because we were up at 7 a.m.,
and out until 7 p.m. working and running around. The silver lining of
this project—where we were all going on four hours of sleep—is that
I’ve been blessed to be working on something inspirational to me,
while being able to see my family and enjoy their presence,” said
Karapetian.
“I was also very proud that we were representing the Armenian
community,” said Hovsepian, who credits her formative years at
Armenian Mesrobian School with shaping her educational and career
path. “All my teachers, my classmates, my principal—if only they could
see now how the opportunities they gave me have shaped the person that
I’ve become. I’m proud of my values, education, and heritage. This has
ultimately always inspired and motivated me to help others. I wish I
could reach out to them and say ‘thank you.’”
The team is now working with UCLA to test the second design, which has
not yet been tested at an outside facility. Hovsepian is now managing
and coordinating to make sure that all the testing goes through
smoothly between JPL and UCLA. “I continue to track the big picture
schedule for the team. I’m interested in data visualization, and
lessons learned from everyone on the team—I’m working with the team to
take this information and show it in a graphic that will tell the
story of what happened in the last 40 days,” said Hovsepian. “The
project will come to a close in a couple weeks. We’re looking to the
finish line. As soon as we have the compressor tested, and get FDA
approval—we’ve hit a home run on all our major milestones on the
project.”
This article appeared in The California Courier on May 7, 2020.
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