Water is on the mind of Maya Sathyanadhan, an ’06 and ’07 graduate from the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering. The president of the Executive Board of JHU’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders–USA, Sathyanadhan has traveled to places like South Africa to help supply water to remote villages. “I like my Nalgene bottle,” she says. “The product itself has had a lot of materials testing to it because it’s considered unbreakable. But the reason I like it is that it allows me to not use plastic bottles, but to reuse this one. I don’t own water, but the Nalgene product allows me to carry water without having to buy it.”

Technological advances to a classic design impress Nicholas Jones, dean of the Whiting School. “I love my new bike,” Jones says. “It’s great in its simplicity and how it hasn’t changed in more than a century. Yet it has evolved in detail. The high-end bikes these days are so superbly engineered in terms of what they contribute relative to their weight and how efficient they are.” On the weekends, he enjoys riding his Trek hybrid along the many trails near Baltimore. Jones, who grew up in New Zealand, didn’t get a bike until he was 10—“which is probably a good thing,” he says, “because I grew up in quite a hilly region and I could have ended up in a pile at the bottom of a steep hill.” (The dean is making up for lost time—he estimates that he logged more than 3,000 miles on his last bike.)