Paul Albrecht ’79

Paul Albrecht ’79 died on July 2. He battled Parkinson’s for 12 years before succumbing to Covid. Paul and his family were longtime residents of Bedford, Massachusetts, and recently moved down the coast to Plymouth. He was 66. Born on September 17, 1956, Paul attended Wootton High School in Rockville, Maryland. At Dartmouth Paul majored in physics and served as chief engineer and then technical director at WDCR and WFRD. Paul earned M.S. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT and then his Ph.D. in medical engineering from a joint Harvard-MIT program. Paul excelled at medical technology: He was awarded 52 patents, won three ebook and mobile reading product awards, wrote open-source graphics software used for more than 20 years, and developed a core component of an early electronic medical records system now used in hospitals worldwide. Paul also founded a company that produced a cardiac stress test system to identify risk of sudden cardiac death and developed an array of other healthcare products, including a mobile reader app for the blind and wearable computing technology for ambulatory cardiac monitoring. Paul is survived by his wife, Sheila; son Michael and wife Christine; and daughters Megan and Melanie. Family and classmates remember Paul as “a genuinely kind and wonderful person who wanted nothing other than what was good for his family” and as “incredibly smart and thoughtful and a gifted teacher with a quick sense of humor that made everyone laugh.”