Class of 2017

Shout out to the outstanding Orestis Lykouropoulos, who has been living it up in Seattle. Although originally from Greece, Orestis has been living on America’s West Coast since Commencement. He works at Amazon as a software engineer on AWS Transcribe, which uses AI to recognize speech in many languages and transcribe it into text. At Dartmouth Orestis took a language processing course, which combined machine learning and linguistics, so this team has been the perfect match for his computer science skillset. Although he is a master on the computer, Orestis is not a one hit wonder; he is also a magnificent musician. He is a talented violinist and even wrote his thesis on contemporary classical composition as part of his major in music. Since being in quarantine he’s been doing a lot of reflecting on his priorities and interests, so he’s been spending time hiking, climbing, and sailing and now is getting more involved with music and musical composition again. A career in music could be on the horizon. Best of luck with everything, Mr. Jack of All Trades!

On the other side of the globe, congrats to Emmanuel Hui, whose company, Moogene, went public on the Korea Exchange! Emmanuel founded Moogene in 2016 as part of his senior fellowship with Sam Kim ’15 and Sam’s uncle. Moogene does gene editing and gene therapy, so it can do things such as genetically reverse hair loss, overcome chemotherapy resistance in colon cancer, and more. Emmanuel said that launching the company was not as glamorous as it sounds; it required lots of hard work and rejection. He did more than 300 pitches before a Korean investment bank in Silicon Valley eventually showed interest. Moogene officially went public on June 24, 2020.

After relinquishing some of his responsibilities in the company, Emmanuel took about five months off from work and moved to Hong Kong (where he grew up) to relax. He has since joined a private equity firm, Sagamore, where he serves as a biotech expert overseeing about 600 biotech companies. In his free time he likes to sail, amateur dance (he was in Sugarplum at Dartmouth), and play video games. Oh yeah…he is also the voice to a jingle on a local Hong Kong radio station!

Congrats, Emmanuel! Keep up the great work!

—Dorian J. Allen, 33 Tuckernuck Ave., Oak Bluffs, MA 02557; dorallen@comcast.net