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Niles North High School | Skokie, IL

North Star News

Niles North High School | Skokie, IL

North Star News

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North names making news: From Oscars to Shakespeare

North+names+making+news%3A+From+Oscars+to+Shakespeare

We all know that Niles North alumni have won award after award, but never before has a graduate won an Oscar. At the Scientific and Technical Awards presentation, held before the televised Oscar ceremony, Jeremy Selan, Class of  1997, received an Oscar for his role in the creation of  Katana– a computer graphic scene and management and lightning software. Katana was developed by Selan and his colleagues working for Sony. The software has been used for special effects in films such as The Amazing Spider-man, Alice in Wonderland, Men in Black 3 and in the upcoming OZ the Great and Powerful.

After high school, Selan studied at Cornell University, where he earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees.  He’s now a notable employee for Sony Pictures Imageworks.

“I remember him [Selan] being a very serious and intelligent guy,”  Katherine France, math teacher at North, said. France was one of his teachers in 1997.

Social studies teacher Pankaj Sharma counts Selan as a very good friend. Sharma and Selan were classmates who graduated together in 1997. “I think [Selan] was really surprised and excited when he won the Oscar, but I also think he always hoped to win something as big as an Academy Award,”  Sharma said. “It’s a huge achievement; I think he feels really great to have accomplished something like this.”

Selan was featured in a photo displayed onscreen during the televised Oscar ceremony on Feb. 23.

But Selan is not the only alum making North proud.  Dana Grabelsky, 2009, was featured in Northwestern University’s Cross Currents magazine for her phenomenal senior thesis. Grabelsky, a philosophy major, is in the Class of 2013 for Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

” Ethic is my primary area of interest in philosophy, and I wanted to see what happens when aesthetics and ethics conflict,” Grabelsky told the magazine.  Her thesis considers “the intersection of art and morality.” At North, Grabelsky was a top art student. Some of her artwork is still on display around the school, including one piece in the Point.

He’s not yet an alumnus, but freshman violinist  Aidan Perreault, who serves as concertmaster in North’s Orchestra, recently won two local musical competitions. Watch for a profile of Perrault ina later online edition of northstarnews.org.

Senior Rachel Sepiashvili took third place in the state English-Speaking Union (ESU) Shakespeare Competition on Feb. 28  in Ganz Hall at Roosevelt University, Chicago. She recited Helena’s monologue from Act 1, Scene 3 from “All’s Well That Ends Well” and Sonnet 121.

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North names making news: From Oscars to Shakespeare