An India Abroad cover story on UW CSE/EE’s MacArthur Award winner Shwetak Patel discusses Shwetak’s formative years in Birmingham, Alabama. Then there’s the bit about how he proposed to UW HCDE and iSchool professor Julie Kientz:
“He proposed to her at a ski resort in January of 2009, near Mt Rainier. The two sat down on the side of the slope overlooking Mt. Rainier.
“‘He then popped the question; he still had his snowboard gear on, so there wasn’t much kneeling involved,’ she added. ‘He didn’t have the real ring yet, since his dad had just come back from India with it, so he had secretly grabbed a ring from my jewelry box to propose with. Little did he know, it was actually a toe ring! How romantic!'”
Read more here (pdf)!
(Will this be our final 2011 post about Shwetak? Stay tuned …)