D Y S O N Y E A R I N R E V I E W • 2 0 1 7 – 2 0 1 8
20
Alumni Spotlight
Dyson alumni are standing out and making an impact.
Yahdon Israel '12
ENGLISH
Yahdon Israel is an essayist. He's also a
social media maven and style icon who has
been featured in publications including the
New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of
Books, and Man Repeller. Israel uses social
media to promote his work and that of other
up-and-coming writers, but his Instagram
hashtag, #LiterarySwag, has become so much
more. Originally conceived to bridge trends
in fashion and literature, it has evolved into
the monthly LiterarySwag Book Club and
features interviews with acclaimed writers
such as Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz and
Ta-Nehisi Coates, New York Times bestselling
author, finalist for the National Book Award,
and recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.
Israel's writing credibility and talent for social
media marketing have cemented his place
in the New York literary scene. He has been
published in Poets & Writers, espnW, and
Guernica, among others. In 2016, he joined
Brooklyn Magazine as editor-in-chief, and his
commitment to his work reflects the notion
that knowledge is a valuable commodity
and that one should never be afraid to shine
intellectually—the brighter, the better!
Ami Asakawa '17
FORENSIC SCIENCE
Now pursuing her PhD in medicinal chemistry at
Northeastern University, Ami Asakawa's work at
Mount Sinai St. Luke's Hospital's Department of
Pathology: Center for Computational and Systems
Pathology focused on improving breast cancer
treatment using artificial intelligence. Her goal as
an associate researcher was to introduce machine
learning technology to utilize the data for more
accurate diagnoses by programming a computer
to compare thousands of records instantaneously.
