| Contact
Information |
T.H.E.
BRAIN TRUST
186 Hampshire St
Cambridge, MA 02139-1320
Tel: 617-876-2002
Fax: 617-876-2332
info@braintrust.org
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Meet our past volunteers
Barbara Phinney,
Craniopharyngioma
Lucy Yang, MIT BRAIN
TRUST
Ore Somolu, Web developer
Roger Keith, Adult Brain Stem Glioma
Sheila Sjolseth, Harvard GSE
Skip Douglas, Web developer
Steve Kokkotos, Tech. advisor
Teresa, Accountant
Vinod Rao, MIT BRAIN
TRUST
| Skip Douglas : Skip Douglas was T.H.E. BRAIN TRUST's primary web
developer from 1997-2000. His increasing vision and memory problems made the task more
difficult. Skip often said that working on these web pages was "a reason to get up in
the morning." Even after reluctantly giving up responsibility for the whole site,
Skip was always full of new ideas to make the site bigger and better. |
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| Oreoluwa Somolu : Ore recently earned a graduate certificate in
Applied Sciences at Harvard University, concentrating in Multimedia and Technical Writing. Her newly-acquired skills inspired her to develop
as many web pages as possible -- so she volunteered to help with ours! She says “What I really liked about
volunteering here was being part of this network where everyone cares about helping in
whatever way they can to raise awareness about brain tumors and other illnesses which
affect the brain and surrounding nerves. Volunteering at T.H.E BRAIN TRUST, I felt I
definitely improved as a web developer and also got an inking about working as a web
professional. I am glad to have been involved in bringing the newsletter online." |
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Steve Kokkotos :Born in Greece, I moved to the US in 1999.My
educational background include a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Software
Engineering, and more specifically Spatio-Temporal Databases. Currently I am a partner and
Information Systems Manager in a small financial consulting company. I volunteer for THE
BRAIN TRUST because I believe that it fills a much needed position in the brain tumor
community, that of after-surgery support and information. Apart from my work and
volunteering, I like to travel, sail and hike. But most of all I like to do archery at
the competitive level. |
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| Lucy Yang is
an MIT student graduating in 2002. She is co-president of the MIT Braintrust a training
project of T.H.E. BRAIN TRUST. The students created an internet tutorial to teach patients
how to use our online resources. She says, "It is one thing to imagine the
difficulties for brain tumor patients to learn to use the internet; it is another to be
face to face with them and see how they struggle with the simple tasks that we hardly
notice. For a patient with short-term memory loss, even reading a long body of text or
scrolling down the page with the mouse can be a challenge. We try to customize our
tutorial so that people with these disabilities will be able to use the technology [of the
World Wide Web] to gain strength to fight their disease armed with information and
support." |
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| Vinod Rao
says "I have enjoyed my time at MIT spent in research, but often felt unsatisfied
with the distance between research and everyday people. If there is anything I have
learned away from the classroom and lab, it is the appreciation and satisfaction of
humanitarian endeavors. The most influential event in my decision to go on to medical
school was attending the 2001 South
Florida Brain Tumor Conference representing MIT Braintrust and it’s mother
organization The Healing Exchange BRAIN TRUST. Through my interactions with patients and
survivors at the conference, I was profoundly moved by their strength in spite of such
hardships. Their perseverance pointed to their appreciation of life and made me realize
that there must be countless people with tremendous courage suffering from various
afflictions. I realized that I have a valuable opportunity to contribute to their healing
process." |
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| Sheila Sjolseth, Harvard GSE |
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