Throughout his journey to America and into academia, Pant never forgot the generous support he received from Pitt. This summer, he decided it was time to give back. Pant and his wife have launched the Prahlad and Bindu Pant Endowed Student Resource Fund in Civil Engineering, a $100,000 gift that will support Swanson School of Engineering students pursuing degrees in civil engineering.

Two suitcases

Growing up in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, Pant enjoyed math and science and had to decide which to pursue. “At that time,” he said, “if you wanted to go for higher education, you applied for a scholarship for engineering or medicine.” He chose the former.

After studying engineering at BIT Sindri, in India, Pant returned to Nepal and began working for the government, where he tried unsuccessfully to obtain a passport to go abroad. Undaunted, he worked on a USAID-funded project building highways in the mountains, which sent him to Pitt to study for a summer semester.

Before returning to Nepal, Pant’s professor invited him, his wife, and a few other students to his house for dinner. “As we were about to leave,” Pant recalled, “the professor asked if I wanted to continue studying at Pitt.”

Pant had obligations in Nepal but at the professor’s urging, he filled out a graduate school application and dropped it in the mail before he flew home.

“I had almost forgotten about that, and in March of 1976, I received a letter that I had been admitted to the master's program in the Department of Civil Engineering,” Pant said.

In late August that year, he and his wife flew back to Pittsburgh, this time to stay. “We came with only one suitcase each,” Pant said. “Then we were at the Pittsburgh airport and didn't know where to go, so we just called the cab and said, ‘Okay, take us to a hotel near the University.’”

The next day, Pant met with the professor and things fell into place. Apartments around the university were full, so they found one in Squirrel Hill. Classes started, and Pant was immersed in his studies.

“The academic part was challenging, and I had to work hard,” Pant said. He and his wife also had to adjust to the weather. The winter of 1976 – 1977 was famously cold, with the city setting a record of 33 consecutive days with temperatures below freezing. In Kathmandu, temperatures occasionally reach freezing, but most days are warm and sunny.

When Pittsburgh bus drivers went on strike in December, Pant recalled trudging through the snow to campus. “Luckily the strike only lasted a couple days.”

Despite the cold and the challenges of earning graduate degrees in a foreign country, Pant “loved it. I was also lucky. I was supported by the civil engineering department every semester that I was there.”

A dream realized

“Being a professor was my dream,” Pant said. “Coming to America, I wasn’t interested in any other thing.”

After earning his PhD, Pant applied for three teaching positions and received two offers. He chose the University of Cincinnati, where in 1980 he became the first Nepali engineering professor in America.

Suddenly, Pant found himself entering a classroom not as a student but as a professor. “I had no training in teaching. I said, ‘How am I going to teach these courses?’ It was a learning experience.” He learned quickly and for over 20 years conducted research and taught courses in transportation and traffic engineering.

In 2003, Pant retired as a professor emeritus and launched the startup company PDP Associates, a successful transportation research and traffic management company. After staying on at the University of Cincinnati until 2007 to support his last graduate students, he and his wife, in search of a warmer climate, moved to Atlanta.

The opportunity to give back

Pant recalled the two suitcases he and his wife brought to America. “That’s all we had, nothing else,” he said. “Now we had something and could give back to Nepal.”

In 2008, the couple launched the Prahlad & Bindu Pant Orphans Foundation (now called the Pant Family Foundation). Today, the foundation has expanded its scope to support other areas including orphaned children in Nepal.

Last month, the foundation and Pant himself introduced the Pant Family Endowed Student Resource Fund in Civil Engineering. The $100,000 gift will support education-related expenses for Pitt undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students in civil engineering, with a focus on those studying transportation engineering.

The fund will help make research, conferences, travel, and global experiences more accessible to more students. It seeks to create opportunities for students who, like Pant when he first came to America, need extra financial support to reach their dreams.

For Pant, the decision to support Pitt was easy. “Pitt helped me so much during my studies,” he said. “It was very straightforward. I had to give back something to help today’s students.”

Wanting to round out his education, Pizzutillo applied to the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (MCSI) Undergraduate Summer Research in Sustainability program. He was paired with Pitt’s Wei Xiong, a professor he admired, and for ten weeks Pizzutillo investigated more sustainable alternatives to cobalt as a binding agent in tungsten carbide.

His project and the research experiences that followed proved invaluable. They helped Pizzutillo land a job as a process engineer at 6K Additive, a local company that sustainably transforms scrap metal into high-performance metal powders. And they prepared him to thrive at his work.

“I came to Pitt because of the co-op opportunities and because I liked how we all started as just engineers and had a year to decide on the specific field we would pursue,” said Pizzutillo, who enrolled in fall of 2020, during the height of the pandemic. “It was all online then, and I’d learn about the different fields during Zoom calls with department heads.”

A meeting with Associate Professor and Materials Science and Engineering Program Director Markus Chmielus piqued Pizzutillo’s interest. “Materials science was all about why things behave the way they do. I’d never thought about that, about how, for example, different types of steel behave differently.” When his first year ended, he knew the field he would pursue.

By the end of his third year, Pizzutillo had completed co-op rotations at Stratus Materials, Inc. and Timet, and he was ready for a new challenge. “I’d taken Dr. Xiong’s Materials Thermodynamics course and wanted to conduct research to balance the industry side. I’ve always been drawn to sustainability and applied to the MCSI summer research program.”

Through the program, he was paired with Xiong, associate professor and William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. Pizzutillo set to work investigating binding agents that didn’t contain cobalt.

“Carbides are composites that contain hard materials, like tungsten, and they’re cemented together using a metallic binder like cobalt,” Pizzutillo said. “Cemented carbides can be used to create drill bits or tools that cut through surfaces as hard as diamonds. Most anything that functions under extremely high heat requires these carbides.”

While a highly effective binder, cobalt is carcinogenic and often unethically mined. “We were looking for a more sustainable alternative,” Pizzutillo said.

He started his project by reading the scientific literature and then began running thermodynamic simulations and calculations. After he helped narrow possible alternative materials, he got into the lab preparing the samples and viewing them under an electron microscope, characterizing them and comparing the various samples against each other and against more traditional binders. From his findings, he wrote a paper and presented his work.

The experience afforded Pizzutillo a unique window into research. “I worked with PhD and postdoctoral researchers in Dr. Xiong’s lab and got to see firsthand what investigating more sustainable solutions looks like.”

They produced five carbide binders that used iron-nickel alloys, some that included zirconium or other metals, and of those samples they focused on three. “In our initial testing, the three alternatives showed promise in producing strong tungsten carbides, but they will require more research,” Pizzutillo said. “While it’s uncertain if this research will change the industry, the experience was incredibly rewarding and reflects the promise of finding sustainable alternatives.”

Indeed, what started that summer continued into the fall as Pocket became a fixture of Xiong’s lab.

“Pocket is an excellent example of the impact of the MCSI summer internship program. He continued to work with me after the summer internship program through his senior research design project in my lab,” Xiong said. “He grew as a researcher and produced an excellent senior project.”

This past November, Pizzutillo accepted a position as a process engineer at 6K Additive. The company turns scrap metal into high-quality metal powder that can be used in 3D printing. “We take scrap metal out of the supply chain and reintroduce it as a high-quality material,” he said.

Pizzutillo added, “Research is vital to my work as an engineer, and being comfortable working independently, learning as I go, and using my hands all started with the summer program. Now I get to do that every day, for a company dedicated to sustainability.”

“It is a great honor to host this Distinguished Alumni Award Banquet,” Manuel said. “Each year, this event brings together remarkable alumni, faculty, staff, and students to celebrate the spirit of innovation, grit, creative problem-solving, and endless curiosity. This year’s cohort of Distinguished Alumni embody those qualities, and their tremendous achievements reflect the rich history of the Swanson School, the University, and our region.”

The 2026 Class of Swanson School Distinguished Alumni includes:

Anthony M. Parasida, BSCE '78

Swanson School of Engineering Distinguished Alumnus

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Gregory J. Carlin, BSME '92, MSBioE '94

Distinguished Alumnus in Bioengineering

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Patricia Gergerich Tuite, BSChE '83

Distinguished Alumna in Chemical & Petroleum Engineering 

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Charles Niederriter, BSCE '82

Distinguished Alumnus in Civil & Environmental Engineering

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William P. Gaussa, BSEE '85

Distinguished Alumnus in Electrical & Computer Engineering

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Richard A. Stinson, BSIE '81

Distinguished Alumnus in Industrial Engineering

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Timothy M. Knavish, BSME '87, MBA '93 

Distinguished Alumnus in Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science

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“It is a great honor to celebrate Tony and his important contributions to the field and to Pitt," said Michele Manuel, U. S. Steel Dean of Engineering. "Throughout his impressive 38 years at Boeing, Tony has held numerous positions across the company, including leading the V-22 Osprey, the F/A-18 Super Hornet, and the P-8A Poseidon programs.”

“Over the years, Tony’s Pitt pride has never faded, and he recalls fondly his third year at Pitt, in 1976, when the Panthers won the NCAA Football National Championship," Manuel added. "A  member of Pitt's 1787 Society, Tony was recognized in 2011 as the Distinguished Alumnus for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering."

About Anthony Parasida

Tony Parasida, BSCE ’78, retired from The Boeing Company in 2016 after a 38-year career marked by ever-increasing leadership roles in engineering, program management, and general management. As a composites expert, Tony worked on military helicopter programs early in his career, including on the RAH-66 Comanche and the V-22 Osprey. Through his experience guiding a team of engineers, Tony took on more management responsibilities such as leading the V-22 Osprey, the F/A-18 Super Hornet, and the P-8A Poseidon programs.

Tony also served in general management roles such as Vice President and General Manager of Military Surveillance programs and as President of Global Services and Support, a $15 billion business. Tony completed his career at The Boeing Company as Executive Vice President, Chief Human Resource and Administration Officer.

Tony holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and a Master of Engineering Management from Drexel University. In 2011, Tony was honored as a Distinguished Alumnus for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering. Recognizing the importance of leaving a lasting legacy, he is a member of the 1787 Society at the University of Pittsburgh and the Spires Society at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.

Tony and his wife, Mariann, have two grown children, both proud graduates of Gonzaga with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting.

“When we talk about what an education in industrial engineering prepares someone to do, Rich’s career is a remarkable example,” said Lisa Maillart, Leighton E. and Mary N. Orr Professor and Department Chair of Industrial Engineering. "Over more than four decades in the electrical industry, he has led at the highest levels while influencing organizations, industries, and thousands of employees along the way.”

“Throughout Rich’s career, what stands out most to me is his philosophy of leadership,” Maillart added. “He has spoken about the importance of building cultures grounded in empowerment, trust, consistency, and inclusion. Those are the type of values we hope our engineering graduates carry with them as they move into leadership roles.”

About Rich Stinson

Rich Stinson, BSIE ’81, recently retired as President and CEO of Southwire, a leading wire and cable solutions provider. The nearly $10 billion organization is made up of more than 9,000 team members worldwide who serve each other, their customers, and their communities.

Under Rich’s leadership, Southwire focused on significant advancement and the company's commitment to remain generationally sustainable for the next 100 years and beyond. Rich successfully led the business through organic growth as well as expansion via acquisition. He played a key role in achieving the best safety metrics in the company’s history and in improving Southwire’s financial position while emphasizing the importance of a company culture built on empowerment, trust, consistency, and inclusion.

Prior to his role at Southwire, Rich spent more than three decades in the electrical industry. He retired from Eaton Corporation as president of its $5 billion Electrical Systems and Services group, and in his tenure there, his businesses were recognized by the prestigious Eaton Business Award three times in ten years.

Rich holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from the University of Pittsburgh. He serves as past chair of the Board of Executives for the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) and served as former Vice Chair for the International Cable Federation (ICF). Rich serves on the executive committee for the Copper Development Association and is active in the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). He is a member of CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion and the United Nations Global Compact.

Rich was recognized as one of the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Most Admired CEOs in 2022, Most Influential Georgians by Georgia Trend in 2023 and 2024, and one of Georgia Trend's Notable Georgians in 2025. In 2023, he was also named Most Respected Business Leader by Georgia Trend. In 2026, the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering received funding to introduce the Richard A. Stinson Endowed Scholarship to support the next generation of students pursuing industrial engineering degrees.

“Chuck began his Pitt journey at Pitt Titusville, which didn’t have a computer that ran Fortran programs. Chuck and his classmates would type code into their punchcards and then drive ten miles to Oil City to access a computer,” said Vikas Khanna, Professor and Interim Department Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “When errors occurred, they had to drive back and forth until everything was correct. The experience instilled in Chuck a commitment to getting it right the first time, which has defined his career.”

“I am grateful to Chuck for his involvement with our IRISE Consortium — the Impactful Resilient Infrastructure Science and Engineering research consortium," Khanna added. "When we approached him in 2018, he eagerly signed on and has remained active ever since, helping us solve problems and advance infrastructure in our region.”

About Charles Niederriter 

Charles Niederriter (BSCE ’82) is Chief Operating Officer at Golden Triangle Construction Company. Over the past 40 years at Golden Triangle, he has had the opportunity to help grow a small family-owned heavy / civil construction company from 30 employees to over 350 today, with revenues of over $150M per year. Prior to his role as COO, Niederriter served as Vice President of Construction, General Superintendent, Project Manager, and Project Engineer. Niederriter’s work includes many interstate highway and bridge construction projects in Western Pennsylvania. He has also been involved with almost every airfield reconstruction project at Pittsburgh International Airport over the past 20 years, including the complete replacement of Runway 14/32. Throughout his years completing design and build projects across this region, Niederriter credits his time studying engineering at Pitt as a key to their success.

In 2018, Niederiter was approached by the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department in the Swanson School of Engineering to help establish the Impactful Resilient Infrastructure Science and Engineering (IRISE) research consortium. He eagerly signed on to the consortium and has remained active ever since. Niederriter shared, “IRISE provides a novel approach for solving infrastructure problems and for promoting innovation by capitalizing on the knowledge and ingenuity of private industry, academia, and owners’ representatives as a team.”

In addition to his contributions to IRISE, Niederriter has served as president of the Constructors Association of Western Pennsylvania (2010 – 2011) and of the Associated Pennsylvania Contractors (2019 – 2021). He was also the chairman of the American Concrete Pavement Association Pennsylvania Chapter (2012 – 2017) and of its national chapter (2018).

Niederriter and his wife, Kerry, live in Renfrew, PA. They have three grown children: Evelyn, Andrew, and Mary Kate.

“Patty’s connection to the University began as a child, when her father enrolled at Pitt to study engineering. As a reward for Patty’s good grades, he would take her to campus in the evening to run his Fortran computer punch cards,” said Steven Little, Distinguished Professor and Department Chair of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering. 

“The seed her father planted grew into a career spanning more than four decades," Little added. "Today, she is one of the nation’s leading experts in power generation valuation and energy facility analysis. Her expertise spans virtually every energy technology you can name: nuclear, coal, hydroelectric, gas turbine, solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and waste to energy.”

About Patricia Tuite, CCP 

Patty Tuite, BSChE ’83, is a managing director in Deloitte Transactions and Business Analytics LLP. Patty has over forty years of power and utility expertise, and since joining Deloitte in 2002, she has extensive experience in the valuation of power generation and renewable energy facilities as well as federal tax cost segregation and investment tax credits.

Her experience in power generation includes utilities and independent power producers and spans several technologies, including nuclear, coal, hydroelectric, gas turbine combined cycle, gas turbine simple cycle, waste to energy, geothermal, solar, biomass, and wind. In addition to her power plant and asset life cycle expertise, Patty performs utility studies for manufacturing clients to facilitate a sale and use tax exemption on their energy consumption.

Prior to joining Deloitte, Patty worked with Empyrean Services as a managing director. Empyrean provided technical analyses and technical professionals in the nuclear and fossil fuel industry. She also spent one year with a valuation consulting firm and eighteen years with Duquesne Light Company (DLCO) in both nuclear power generation and transmission and distribution.

Patty is a Certified Cost Professional through the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering International and a Candidate Member of the American Society of Appraisers.

Patty received her Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh. She earned her Master of Science in Information Systems Management at Robert Morris University and completed the Advanced Executive Program at Northwestern University.

“Bill’s journey began here in Pittsburgh. After graduating from Pitt in 1985, he started his career at Westinghouse,” said Alan George, Department Chair, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair, and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “What makes Bill’s career remarkable is that he has spent more than 25 years at the intersection of engineering and entrepreneurship — turning new ideas into industry-recognized, award-winning solutions across the MedTech and HealthTech markets.”

“What I especially value is Bill’s dedication to mentorship,” George added. “He serves as an advisor and coach within nationally recognized programs, and I’m proud to note that the University of Pittsburgh recognized him as Startup Coach of the Year in 2023.”

About William Gaussa

Bill Gaussa, BSEE ’85, is the chief executive officer and founder of NorthCoast Innovation Advisors and Managing Partner of Factor 7 Medical. He has over 25 years of experience in creating new businesses within the MedTech and HealthTech markets. He has worked with a wide range of companies, from startups striving to gain traction to leading innovation for Philips in a $2 billion business. Throughout his career, Bill has consistently launched industry-recognized, award-winning solutions that have grown into global successes, often leading to market leader positions and successful exits or acquisitions.

Currently, Bill is leveraging his experience with startups to move from concept to market launch, developing sustainable growth and strategic partnerships. He is passionate about transferring his know-how to entrepreneurs, as evidenced by his roles as an advisor, coach, and mentor within several nationally recognized programs (ICorp, Techstars, Olympus, etc.).

Bill's background in software engineering and business/marketing allows him to bring a unique perspective to highly technical founders on how to achieve commercial success. He enjoys helping companies identify top ideas, refine value propositions, create market-winning products, secure competitive advantages with IP/trade secrets, and build investor pitches that secure investment.

Bill holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and a Master of Business Administration degree from Carnegie Mellon University.

“Tim is a Pittsburgh native who has never strayed far from his roots, even while building a global career,” said Buddy Clark, Professor and Interim Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. “He earned both his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering and his MBA from the University of Pittsburgh, and today he leads one of the most iconic companies in our city’s history, PPG.”

“What makes Tim’s journey so compelling is that he started on the factory floor,” Clark added. “He joined PPG in 1987 as an engineer in the flat glass business and rose through virtually every part of the enterprise — process engineer, plant manager, supply chain director, general manager, and beyond.”

About Timothy Knavish

Tim Knavish is chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of PPG.

Knavish joined PPG in 1987 in an engineering role in the former flat glass business and was based at the corporate headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He then advanced through roles including process engineer, supervisor of technical services, manager of operations planning and scheduling, and superintendent of production in PPG’s former flat glass and automotive glass businesses before joining the architectural coatings business in 2000 as plant manager for the East Point, Georgia manufacturing facility.

In 2002, Knavish returned to Pittsburgh as director, supply chain for the former automotive replacement glass business, and in 2004, he became global director, manufacturing and supply chain for the automotive refinish coatings business. He moved to Australia in 2005 as managing director, Australia and New Zealand coatings, and general manager, automotive refinish. In 2007, Knavish assumed responsibility in Troy, Michigan, as general manager, automotive coatings, Americas, and in early 2010, he was elected as a vice president with the same scope of responsibility. He relocated to Pittsburgh in 2012 as global vice president, protective and marine coatings, and returned to Troy in March 2016 when he was appointed as an executive officer as senior vice president, automotive coatings.

Knavish returned to Pittsburgh in October 2017 as senior vice president, industrial coatings, leading PPG’s industrial coatings, packaging coatings, and coatings services businesses, the global supply management function, and PPG’s Asia Pacific region. In January 2019, he was appointed senior vice president, architectural coatings and president, PPG EMEA, and in October 2019, Knavish was promoted to executive vice president with responsibility for the global automotive refinish business, architectural coatings businesses in the U.S., Canada and the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, PPG’s Latin America region and the digital and information technology functions. Knavish became PPG’s chief operating officer (COO) in March 2022, before being named President and CEO, effective Jan. 1, 2023.

A native of Pittsburgh, Knavish earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Pittsburgh. Knavish serves on the boards of the American Coatings Association, Allegheny Conference on Community Development as vice chair, and the United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania. He is also a director on the board of Rockwell Automation and a member of the Business Council. Knavish previously served on the board of Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania.

Pitt’s Center for Energy sponsors two awards that recognize a high school and a middle school student. Grainger himself sponsors a third, the Thomas Lake Pittsburgh Excellence in High School Physics Award, in honor of the high school science teacher who inspired his own love of STEM.

“I’ve been attending and delivering these awards almost yearly for a decade,” said Grainger, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and Eaton Faculty Fellow at the Swanson School of Engineering. “It makes a difference to celebrate these students.”

Grainger presented awards to two high school students: one for a project that explored biomedical sensors for monitoring the heartbeats of newborn babies, the other that investigated the optimal resistive loads in solar panel arrays. He also recognized a middle school student whose project examined the temperature performance of batteries.

“There are always so many amazing projects,” said Grainger, who also directs the Electric Power Technologies Lab and co-directs the Energy GRID Institute and Pitt AMPED. “This year, there was a student using finite element analysis to analyze structures. That’s very, very advanced for a high school student.”

Beyond getting to see some of the region’s strongest STEM projects up close, Grainger says that his motivation for supporting these students is practical and personal.

“There were over 400 students there, and I’d say only about five percent might continue pursuing an engineering degree because of the available competition with various career options,” he said. “We need to get middle and high school students thinking about engineering education and career pathways much earlier.”

While companies and organizations like Bechtel Plant Machinery, the Society of Women Engineers, and Carnegie Mellon University also provide awards, Grainger sees the potential for more industry and university support. “The awards validate the work these students do and inspire them to continue exploring STEM-related pathways.”

Grainger added, “I’m a product of the Pittsburgh Public Schools, and it’s important that former students like me find someone who sees their potential.”

Colwell chose guitar. And sure enough, as an undergraduate electrical engineering student at the University of Pittsburgh, he found himself onstage at an Oakland bar, playing in a band to make extra money.

Between sets, he would finish his homework. “I remember the drummer coming up to the table one night, where I was doing calculus between sets,” Colwell said. “He just shook his head and muttered, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you.’”

There was nothing wrong with Colwell. He was just helping cover tuition while doing what he loved—playing guitar and pursuing his electrical engineering degree.

Colwell’s passion for electronics would guide him from his humble beginnings in Pittsburgh, where he was one of six children (half of whom became Pitt grads) in a working-class home, to a groundbreaking career designing microprocessors at Intel. He would author patents, win awards, write a book, and serve as Director of the Microsystems Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). At every step, important mentors sparked his curiosity, challenged his thinking, and embodied qualities that would define his career.

A Wizard

Colwell credits his hometown for helping develop his mindset. “Pittsburgh was hands on, make it happen, no excuses, you know—get it done,” he said. “That was excellent preparation for going into a technology field.”

If the city helped shape him, so did his Uncle Joe. “When I grew up there in the ’60s and early ’70s, in my family, if something broke, you didn't take it to someone else. You fixed it, or you got my Uncle Joe to fix it.”

His uncle, with the help of Heathkits and Erector Sets, inspired Colwell’s fascination with electronics. And although he had no college degree, Colwell’s uncle, an electronic technician at Westinghouse, imparted something else.

“He taught me to never assume something was intellectually beyond me,” Colwell said. “He would say, ‘Someone designed that, so you can understand it enough to figure out how it works and how to maybe make it better.’”

To Colwell, his uncle seemed like a wizard. “I admired that fearlessness associated with complex technology, and that's what I'd like to pass on to anyone else.”

A Professor

If his uncle inspired Colwell’s fascination with electronics, his advisor at Pitt, Ronald Hoelzeman, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, illuminated their inner workings.

Colwell took Hoelzeman’s Digital Logic. “Prior to that course, I understood very little about digital electronics. But in that class, I got it. I could see how it works,” Colwell said. “Ron was an extremely good teacher.” He was the first professor who supported Colwell’s instinct to design systems.

Decades later, Colwell would re-connect with his early mentor while both served on the editorial board of the IEEE publication Computer Magazine.

A Peer

Colwell’s undergraduate experience also introduced him to a peer who would later become a collaborator: Kaigham “Ken” Gabriel (BS EE ’77).

At the time, Pitt’s electrical engineering curriculum required students to write 40 to 50 pages of handwritten equations as circuit analysis homework. As Colwell recalled, “I’d get bored. I’d start to move faster, skipping steps. I inevitably made mistakes.”

He noticed the work of a fellow student, whose equations were written out immaculately on lined engineering pads. “It was like it came out of a printer,” Colwell said. “I sensed that I needed to meet this guy, so I introduced myself. I said, ‘You’re the guy who screws up the curve when they grade the tests. So who are you?’”

The two became good friends.

Gabriel imparted advice that stuck with Colwell. “He told me that if you struggle at all with something, don’t skip any steps—don’t be lazy. Draw them out, line by line.”

The discipline proved invaluable as Colwell went on to earn his computer engineering PhD from Carnegie Mellon University and begin designing and innovating at Bell Labs, PERQ Systems, Multiflow, and eventually Intel, where he would become the Chief Architect responsible for Intel’s Pentium P6 microarchitecture in the 1990s.

In the 2010s, Gabriel would recruit his former Pitt classmate to join him at DARPA, where Colwell would guide high-impact technological innovation and meet remarkable people like a space shuttle astronaut and an SR-71 Blackbird pilot. He would also get to fly in an F-16 fighter jet and land and take off from an aircraft carrier.

A Colleague

“One of my theories, which I pass on to any engineering student who wants it, is that the best thing you can do for yourself and your career is to find the best possible people and latch onto them. Be nice to them,” Colwell said.

That philosophy led him to another collaborator, David Papworth, a colleague at Multiflow and later at Intel.

“When you design a microprocessor,” Colwell said, “every day you're faced with a hundred decisions about the product, and each one represents an important tradeoff.”

Constrained by time and money, Colwell valued having “a genius” who would help navigate the most difficult tradeoffs. “Dave's one of those people who's just, you know, God knows where his brain came from.”

Commitment, Kindness, and Curiosity

Figures like Hoelzeman, Gabriel, Papworth, and especially his uncle shaped Colwell’s trajectory, and they embodied qualities that he has found essential to his success.   

First is commitment. “It may seem obvious,” Colwell noted, “but if you're unwilling to throw yourself at the problem, what are you doing?”

Second, which years of leading teams taught him, is kindness. “People don’t create in a vacuum anymore, and if your peers hate you, your output will go down. It’s also just the right thing to do.”

And finally there is fearless curiosity—the desire to take something apart and make sense of it.

“I like creating,” Colwell said. “I like starting with something that is nothing and turning it into something useful or pretty.”

Indeed today, when he’s not consulting with industry and academia, he loves working with his hands, building furniture and restoring analog synthesizers. He still plays guitar, too, and can knock out those old songs that once helped him pay his way through Pitt.

Segel’s drive recently earned her a spot on Forbes’ 2026 30 Under 30 List for Manufacturing and Industry, recognizing her work as founder and CEO of FlowCellutions, a startup that develops technology to monitor redox flow batteries. This honor places her amongst a select group of young entrepreneurs who are changing the world, and it reflects a journey that took root at the University of Pittsburgh.

In 2020, after graduating from Case Western Reserve University with her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, Segel weighed the fastest, most effective way to address climate change. She considered national research laboratories or a career in industry but settled on something else: starting her own company.

“I fell in love with electrochemistry as an undergraduate and was introduced to redox flow batteries,” Segel said. “The batteries are a promising piece in the puzzle to reduce carbon emissions.”

Flow batteries are large systems, some the size of a shipping container, that hold liquid electrolytes which are pumped through a central unit to produce and store electricity. Using inexpensive, earth-abundant materials, the batteries can last for decades without serious degradation, and they can store renewable energy to power microgrids, hospitals, data centers, and even neighborhoods. 

Determined to continue researching this technology and start a company, Segel enrolled at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering to pursue a PhD in Chemical Engineering.

“I chose Pitt because it had the Big Idea Center and two fantastic advisors, professors James McKone and Chris Wilmer,” said Segel, a fourth-generation Pitt graduate.

At the Swanson School, Segel joined McKone’s research group, where her work focused on developing sensing technology to monitor flow batteries in real time. That research became the foundation of FlowCellutions, which she founded in 2022 with the support of her advisors.

Segel also found invaluable support at Pitt’s Big Idea Center, which connects students to resources like mentoring, workshops, and competitions that help them turn their ideas into action.

“The Big Idea Center was a huge help,” Segel said. “I learned so much about starting a business and gained practical experience through the competitions they sponsor.” 

In 2022, Segel won Pitt’s Randall Family Big Idea Competition. That same year she was the first author of the paper “Flow battery electroanalysis 3: online kinetics measurements using ultramicroelectrodes in channel flow” (DOI: 10.1039/d2ta02132c) and was recognized as one of the Pittsburgh Business Times’ 5 Founders Under 25.

“Becca is a rock star,” said Wilmer, himself named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List, in 2013. “She was recognized as one of the most ‘outstanding graduate students’ in 2025 for her technical skills, research, and leadership. This recognition from Forbes is well deserved.”

Now in its pre-seed phase, FlowCellutions continues to advance technology that could help accelerate the adoption of long-duration energy storage. For Segel, the Forbes recognition is meaningful, but it’s her determination to make a difference in the fight against carbon emissions that keeps her moving forward.

It was the fall semester of 2021 and as Ashmar said, “I’d just finished my final co-op rotation with The Sherwin-Williams Company, where I had the chance to do R&D work in a lab. I loved it.”

That all changed after a friend approached Ashmar about the opportunity to work on a project that could help reduce plastics in the ocean.

“My friend Jon [Bingaman] had been doing undergraduate research looking at algae-based bioplastics, and he encouraged me to take it over,” Ashmar said. “I had no idea what it would entail.”

Though reluctant, he worried he might regret not trying it. Ashmar signed up for three credits and figured that would be it for academic research.

New plastics for an old problem 

At the time, Pitt chemical and petroleum engineering professors Eric Beckman and Susan Fullerton were developing sustainable bioplastics to help solve one of the most vexing environmental problems: the growing masses of plastic floating around the oceans, collecting on the seafloor, and finding its way into sea life. 

“A recent report has found that by 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean on a per-mass basis,” said Fullerton, who also directs the Nanoionics and Electronics Lab. “Findings like these have inspired developments in ‘biodegradable’ plastics, which are a step forward, but early generations require harsh environments to break down. They can last for years in the ocean.” 

The Pitt researchers turned to sodium alginate, which is derived from naturally occurring brown algae. They were exploring its potential as a bioplastic that could be engineered to dissolve in seawater. The research began in 2018 after their idea won them a $200,000 Innovation Prize from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. They were the only university team among five winners.

Since the start of the project, undergraduate researchers have played an essential role. As Fullerton said, “This project reflects the tremendous work of students like Andrew, who have taken ownership and made important contributions.”

Finding his place in the literature and the lab

Although initially hesitant, Ashmar soon did take ownership of the research.

“Most undergraduates require guidance and deadlines,” Fullerton said. “We quickly realized that would be unnecessary for Andrew.”

“I was reading the literature, compiling the previous research, doing experiments,” Ashmar said. “And then I started writing a paper, getting some drafts together.”

As Fullerton said, “Andrew was coming to us with all this new information, things he’d read. I remember having a conversation with Eric [Beckman] about how we needed to make sure he was doing okay in his classes because he was spending so much time on the research!”

Turns out, Ashmar was doing great. “It was my best semester,” he said.

When the semester ended, he signed up for more research credits to continue advancing the project.

Engineering bioplastics that know when to disappear

At heart of the project was the sodium alginate, which is commonly used to produce hydrogels. These solids are soluble and swell with water, but they don’t fall apart, which isn’t great if the goal is to create plastics that dissolve.

Through dehydration and crosslinking—a process that connects polymer strands into a stronger, three-dimensional network—the sodium alginate can be transformed into a rigid, solid-state material that behaves like a conventional bioplastic, holding its shape and resisting breakdown in deionized water.

Their breakthrough came after realizing those strong calcium-based crosslinks can be reversed.

“The calcium ions can be replaced with sodium ions, creating a trigger for the bioplastic films to dissolve in seawater because it has such a high concentration of competing ions,” Fullerton said. “With enough exposure to sodium ions, the films just turn into a benign byproduct.” 

A publication, a patent, and the pursuit of a PhD

As Ashmar immersed himself in the research, conducting experiments and compiling and synthesizing the data from earlier undergraduate research, he realized that what he loved about hands-on industry R&D work, he had also found in academic research. “It’s all about problem solving, which is what first got me interested in engineering.”

By the time he graduated in 2022, Ashmar had made significant contributions to the research and had drafted a manuscript that he continued to work on with Fullerton. In June of 2025, the team submitted the paper, “Uniformly crosslinked algal bioplastic with triggerable decomposition in salt water” (DOI 10.1039/D5GC02866C), and in October it was published in Green Chemistry.

Ashmar, notably, is the paper’s first author.

“It’s rare to have an undergraduate take a project through to publication in a high impact journal, especially as a first author,” said Fullerton. “The first author is the one who made the greatest contributions—from the research hypotheses to data collection and analysis to writing. The first author really drives the work from start to finish. It’s not just about ability; first authorship requires dedication to stick with it. Andrew exemplified both.”

In 2023, as Ashmar started his PhD in chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, Pitt filed a patent application on the triggerable bioplastic technology that Ashmar and other remarkable undergraduate students had helped advance.  

It was an unexpected turn for a student once set on moving immediately into industry. 

“As an undergraduate researcher, I was talking with PhD students in the lab, and I became more comfortable with the idea of graduate school,” said Ashmar. “As for the research, it was rewarding to do something that could have such an impact on our environment.”

Sudar teaches much more than that. During a series of eight 90-minute workshops called Business Essentials, he and guest speakers, many of whom are also Pitt alumni, impart valuable professional skills to students in a highly technical field. They prepare students to enter the workforce with a higher emotional intelligence, better equipped to market themselves, recognize body language, hold uncomfortable conversations, and of course shake hands.

The workshops help students, Sudar says, gain an “unfair competitive advantage.” Judging by the interest in the series, students are eager for this edge.

“This year, we’ve had more than 40 engineering students attend the eight sessions regularly. These students aren’t getting any credit for this, and some have attended two years in a row,” said Lisa Maillart, Professor and Department Chair of Industrial Engineering. “What sets this series apart is that it’s facilitated by executives. The message lands differently when delivered by industry alumni rather than academic faculty or staff.”

The idea to conduct the workshops originated six years ago, when Sudar was talking with Larry Shuman, Distinguished Service Professor of Industrial Engineering and then-interim department chair, about essential skills that were not offered in a modern engineering curriculum.

“Larry had the vision to launch these workshops to prepare Pitt engineering students—to upskill them,” said Sudar, Senior Director, Americas Consulting Sales & Business Development at SAS, a data and AI solutions provider.

As Sudar conceived the series, he asked himself, “What skills do I wish I had when I graduated? What would’ve helped me advance, personally and professionally?”

He turned to his own experience and the skills he’d acquired after graduating, from his time working as a production engineer for Quaker Oats or as an operations research analyst for Roadway Express, to his more than 25 years in the software industry, consulting with large global brands.

The result is Business Essentials, a unique opportunity for students to learn about sales, personal branding, body language, likeability quotients, the six pillars of persuasion, negotiation, difficult conversations, emotional intelligence, and much more. Each week for 90 minutes, students engage actively with Sudar and guest speakers, role playing, practicing, and networking.

Sudar loves teaching it. He loves to return to his alma mater and engage with engineering students. “What inspires me most is the energy I get from the students, the way they lean into participating and how they buy in so quickly. You can see how they crave what these workshops offer.”

For Hannah Reeve, a third-year industrial engineering major, the workshops have been so influential that she’s attended two years in a row.

“I remember last year, after I left the first workshop, I was in awe,” Reeve said. “It was unlike anything I’d done in a class. It already felt like I’d gained such an advantage when dealing with any social situation.”

This year, with the addition of new guest speakers, Reeve continues to learn more. “Getting to hear about their experiences and how they use the skills taught in the workshop has been amazing.”

As Henry Hoeg, a fourth-year industrial engineering student, said, “I didn’t know this workshop would be one of the most important classes I’ve taken at the Swanson School.”

In addition to gaining important skills that he needed to pursue a career in business, Hoeg found something else last year as he attended the workshops. “Andy has become a mentor,” Hoeg said. “He has helped me land two positions, and he recently came to talk at a consulting firm where I work.”

Hoeg regularly turns to Sudar for advice and feels grateful for the support and the opportunities it has helped create. As Hoeg remembered, “One of the first workshops, Andy asked me to sell him a pen. When I had my first interview for a sales job, I was asked to do the same thing. I was prepared, and I got the position.”

Hoeg already has an offer from global technology company, where he interned this past summer, and he credits Sudar with helping him land the position. “I understand why students would attend the workshop for two years in a row,” he said.

So does Lisa Maillart, who in 2022 immediately saw the value of Business Essentials and has helped expand and promote the series since becoming chair of the department.

“In the three years that Andy has taught these workshops, I’ve only missed one,” Maillart said. “I always get something new out of them. It’s like the handshake. You think you know how to shake hands, but when you break it down, you can see how you can go wrong and how you can improve it—and the advantage that that can give you.”

That year, fighting cabin fever, Raul Casas and his college roommate began building wooden skateboarding structures and transporting them to an abandoned lot in Oakland’s Panther Hollow. Soon, skaters from around Pittsburgh, equally starved for community, began showing up, and with them came sounds that had grown foreign: laughter, encouragement, the whir of wheels on pavement, the click of a skater landing a trick.

Casas, then a mechanical engineering student at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering (BS MEMS ’22), established what today is the Oakland DIY, an officially recognized skatepark filled with concrete structures. In 2024, before Casas left Pittsburgh, he passed the project to another Pitt mechanical engineering student, Andrew (AJ) Haddon. Together, with tremendous support from the community, the two have engineered a thriving community place.  

Wood

Growing up outside of Philadelphia, Casas was introduced to engineering by his dad, an electrical engineer. “He would show me what he was working on,” Casas said. “His work is more computer based, but I’ve always been hands on and went into mechanical engineering.”

At 15, he started skateboarding and fell in love with the sport, which since the 1950s has connected fellow skaters from across towns and even the world. 

As skateboarding evolved, so did structures like half-pipes, ramps, rails, boxes, even stairs, which drew skaters to congregate to test their skills and find creative ways to land tricks. These structures would eventually form the crux of the Oakland DIY skatepark.

In 2018, Casas came to Pitt to study engineering. There weren’t many places to skate around Oakland, and after the pandemic hit, he decided to help change that. He built the first wooden structure and kept going. “As an engineer, I’ve always loved to build stuff.” 

As an engineer, Casas also knew that the wooden structures wouldn’t last long in the Pittsburgh weather. By 2021, he realized it was time to build something more permanent. And fortuitously, he was about to meet someone who shared his passion for building a skatepark.

Concrete

AJ Haddon’s interest in engineering started in Sandpoint, Idaho, where each summer the Chicago native would visit relatives who own a logging operation. As a boy, the huge trucks and excavators fascinated him, and his interest hasn’t waned.  

In 2022, Haddon enrolled in the Swanson School of Engineering after visiting Pittsburgh and realizing, as he said, “how cool the city was.” The day he moved into his dorm, he saw an Instagram post from a skateboarder. “They were pouring concrete and needed help.”

“AJ helped on every pour that we did,” Casas said. “Concrete pour days are exciting, and many people come to help, but the days leading up to them aren’t as fun. Fewer people show. AJ, however, was always there.”

Haddon, who started skating in fifth grade, loved it. He enjoyed constructing the forms and laying rebar and mixing concrete. He was meeting new skateboarders, learning more about the scene in Pittsburgh, and applying what he was learning in school.

Feature by feature, Casas, Haddon, and a team of dedicated skateboarders, rollerbladers, and BMX and scooter riders began transforming the abandoned lot into a connected series of concrete structures.

In the process, the two mechanical engineers became close friends. As Haddon said of Casas, “He mentored me through my first years of college. We had the same classes and professors. He taught me everything he knew about building the skatepark, and he left me with this huge project to finish.”

Community

“At first I had zero idea what I was doing,” Casas said, “but other skateboarders were coming here, old heads from Pittsburgh who had experience. I’m still so grateful for them.”

Casas also found that the skills he was learning in school would benefit the skatepark. He began designing new structures using computer aided design (CAD) software.

As Haddon became more involved and then took over the project, his engineering education was equally useful. In addition to using CAD, he investigated Pennsylvania building codes and city safety standards and load-bearing structures. He modeled complicated features using simulation software to uphold the standards.

“I was doing all the calculations,” he said. “I knew that we needed to overbuild it.”

Engineering a skatepark went far beyond modeling structures and mixing concrete. Casas and Haddon maintained GoFundMe and Venmo accounts, where they have raised more than $20,000 to build new structures. They’ve tracked down donations of concrete, railings, and even astroturf. They’ve managed builds. They’ve even begun hosting events with food trucks and bands.

Outreach

This fall, Haddon learned a new skill: advocacy.

During the summer, a Panther Hollow homeowner launched an effort to shut down the skatepark. For two months, construction was halted.

Before he knew it, Haddon was creating presentations to share with the Pittsburgh City Council. He organized fellow supporters to testify at a City Hall hearing to decide the fate of the park. Eighty supporters attended and forty, including Haddon, spoke.    

Their efforts worked, and the Oakland DIY is now a recognized park. It continues to grow and has even begun to attract pro skating teams who have visited while touring parks around the country.

“It’s extraordinary,” Haddon said. “I get to build something that I love to do. I get to skate it and see other people skate it and appreciate it.”

Although Casas now lives in Norfolk, Virginia, where he repairs nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, he still returns to Pittsburgh to skate the park that he helped build.

“We’re expanding, one corner at a time,” Haddon said. “There are still so many projects, but when we complete a new one, everyone comes and checks it out.”

He added, “Having a third place, a place that people love, is so important. Everyone needs their community.”

Paramo, a senior at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, had seven weeks left working in Distinguished Professor Steven Little's Little Lab at Pitt to complete his experiment, “Characterization of Release Kinetics from Liposome-Based, Controlled-Release Fertilizers.” 

“It looked like dead skin flaking off,” he remembered. “The first thing I thought was, it was my fault.”

While the original experiment was lost, Paramo learned how to navigate setbacks and to pivot and persist. Indeed, instead of discouraging him, the experience fueled his interest in graduate research.  

The Pre-PhD Program has provided students from across the country with their first taste of laboratory research. By affording students the opportunity to learn firsthand what a PhD program looks like, the internship has opened countless pathways.

Over the past 20 years, 88 students have participated. Of those, 54 transitioned to graduate school, 13 of whom earned their PhDs in engineering from the Swanson School, and seven of whom completed their MS degrees at Pitt. Currently, 12 Pre-PhD students are pursuing PhDs in engineering at the Swanson School.

This year, six students participated, working in the labs of Bryan Brown, David Gau, Steven Little, Warren Ruder, Helen Schwerdt, and Jonathan Vande Geest. 

“Students have a unique opportunity to spend nine weeks immersed in graduate research,” said Sussan Olaore, Associate Director of Wellness and Engagement Graduate Programs. “They read scientific literature, write papers, conduct hands-on research with professors and graduate students, and present their findings. They get to see everything that the Swanson School has to offer.”

A springboard to a career working for cleaner air

In 2014, Harold Rickenbacker graduated from South Carolina State University (SCSU) with a BS in Civil Engineering Technology. He’d recently learned about environmental engineering and began formulating a plan to pursue a master’s degree in the field. 

A mentor encouraged Rickenbacker to look at Pitt’s engineering program, and on a recruiting trip to the Swanson School, he learned about and applied for a Pre-PhD Summer Internship.

“I was coming from a teaching school and didn’t have much experience with research,” said Rickenbacker. “The Pre-PhD Program directly led to my success at Pitt.”

Rickenbacker worked with Melissa Bilec, George M. and Eva M. Bevier Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, researching indoor air quality, which profoundly affects people’s wellbeing. This first taste of research would help convince Rickenbacker to pursue his PhD at Pitt, where he continued this important work.

Rickenbacker earned his PhD in 2019 and has been helping to improve air quality indoors and outdoors ever since. He worked first at the Environmental Defense Fund before moving to the Environmental Protection Agency. To improve the lives of people in under-resourced communities, he has contributed to countless projects, from hyperlocal air monitoring to helping develop $3 billion air quality and climate legislation.

“This program was a springboard,” said Rickenbacker. “It pivoted me to where I am today.”

A window into biomechanical research

David Jordan graduated from Louisiana State University with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and like Rickenbacker was interested in graduate school, but he had no research experience until he was accepted to the program in 2016.

“I was paired with Professor Mark Miller and studied biomechanics of the distal radius of the wrist. I conducted two experiments and gathered data.

“At the time, I wasn’t committed to any specific field, but I really enjoyed bioengineering and the research. I stayed at Pitt and pursued my PhD.”

For the next five years, Jordan worked with Miller and investigated the failure properties of a ligament of the elbow, which is especially important for baseball pitchers.

After earning his PhD in 2021, Jordan took a Postdoctoral Research Associate position at the University of Arizona, where he investigated the biomechanics of the hand and wrist affected by the musculoskeletal disorders carpal tunnel syndrome and osteoarthritis. In 2025, he accepted a faculty position in the College of Engineering at Illinois State University.

“If I’d been offered a job in industry right after undergraduate, I probably would’ve taken it,” said Jordan. “The Pre-PhD Program started me on this research trajectory I’ve been on these past ten years.”

The power of a lasting community

Now in her fifth year of the PhD program in Bioengineering at Pitt, Remi Shittu took a different path to graduate research. After earning her BS in biomechanical engineering from Boston University, she worked in industry at Thermo Fischer Scientific.

“Before I got too far into my career, I wanted to pursue a PhD,” Shittu said. She applied to Pitt and during the recruitment process learned about the Pre-PHD Program.

“I wasn’t used to being in school mode, and the program provided a window into graduate school,” said Shittu. “I also got weekly mentoring from Professor Sylvanus Wosu, who directs the program.”

“You get to wade into the pool before you take a plunge,” Shittu added. “And the program provides a community. Graduate school can be isolating, and having the people I met in that program has been so important.”

Since finishing the program, Shittu continues to engage with incoming Pre-PhD scholars and has made many new friends. “The community and mentorship have made such a difference,” she said.

A real look at research

Back to Gerardo Paramo. After his experiment failed, he talked to his graduate student advisor, Mohammadzadeh Alireza, who was equally perplexed. With a background in microbiology, Paramo set out to discover why the cellulose-based dialysis bags broke down in the pore water. And then he set out to use 3D printing to develop a new capsule that would hold the nanoparticles. He made the most of his remaining weeks. 

“I learned so much more about research because I had to do more than set steps for the release experiment,” Paramo said. “I learned a new set of skills through 3D CAD. I learned qualitative data about degradation. I learned when something goes wrong, sometimes you need to take ten steps back. 

“I also got a better sense of graduate school. Even though one part of the experiment failed, I kept going and had a project that I owned and that I delivered. When you encounter setbacks, you need to find new ways to move forward.”

In 2018, as a postdoc at Pitt, she taught her first class and remembers thinking, “Yeah, I definitely like this.”

Her love of inspiring students to take ownership of their education has only grown since then. Now an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at her alma mater, Bocan has been recognized as the Institute of Electrical and Electric Engineers (IEEE) Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) 2025 C. Holmes MacDonald Outstanding Teacher.

“I can’t put into words what this award means to me,” Bocan said. “Knowing that students have got something out of my courses or that I’ve helped them in some way is what I love about teaching. It’s so rewarding." 

Each year, IEEE – HKN student chapters can nominate one professor, and Bocan was an easy selection. As Abby Magistro, a former student and teacher’s assistant, said, “Dr. Bocan is a favorite professor of many students in our department. She provides many resources like lecture videos and other materials for curious students to investigate.”

Added John Klamut, a Pitt graduate student, “Dr. Bocan always ensures that students have access to whatever support they need, whether in the form of office hours or supplemental materials.

“She structures her courses so as to create a strong conceptual foundation while encouraging critical thinking and problem-solving."

Bocan teaches courses in C++ programming as well as in software architecture and software simulation. Drawing on research in self-determination theory, she builds lessons that motivate students “to do something hard, to learn difficult things.”

“I’m interested in how students learn, especially in the age of ChatGPT,” Bocan said. “How do you structure a course and develop activities that will encourage students to intrinsically realize the value in what they’re learning?”

Questions like this one guide Bocan’s work to develop adaptive classes that uplift students who are struggling while challenging those who have excelled. She creates and provides materials and adjusts projects to reach students across levels and interests.

She also encourages collaboration, building a vital skill students will need when they enter the workforce. She teaches an upper-level course where students will code in teams, practicing on Github, a coding platform, and collaborating on the repository.

“Working in teams can be difficult,” said Bocan. “I’m careful to structure the team interaction to ensure students get the most out of working together and stay motivated.”

Bocan researched wireless electronic medical devices as a PhD student and simulation and modeling as a postdoc. Today, she researches engineering education and values the opportunity to learn from and work with her colleagues through her involvement with the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET and through the Engineering Education Research Center (EERC).

“Kara has been a tremendous addition to Electrical and Computer Engineering and to the Swanson School and larger Pitt community,” said Alan George, Department Chair, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair, NSF SHREC Space Center Director, and professor of electrical and computer engineering. “Her commitment to innovative learning and to fostering in her students an intrinsic interest in the material ripples far beyond her classrooms. Kara embodies the spirit of this prestigious award.” 

IEEE – HKN launched the award in 1972 in honor of its namesake, C. Holmes MacDonald, a Bell Telephone engineer who would go on to teach at Drexel University. Given to one professor from around the world each year, the award highlights “the central and crucial role of college professors in training and motivating future… engineers.”

IEEE – HKN will recognize Bocan at the 2025 IEEE EAB Award Presentation Ceremony on Friday, November 21, in New York City.

Curtis majored in environmental engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, but he is equally fascinated with languages, especially Japanese, which he began studying in high school. “It’s so different, linguistically, from English, and I took as many Japanese courses at Pitt as my schedule allowed,” Curtis said.

Although he received the George Washington Prize and graduated from the Swanson School of Engineering in 2024 with a 3.98 grade point average, Curtis had no intentions of attending graduate school. An internship and the possibility of studying abroad helped change that, and Curtis recently received a prestigious Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) Scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in Sustainability Sciences at the University of Tokyo. In the fall, he will immerse himself in Japanese culture and research how to ensure disaster management plans benefit all people involved.

They seemed the happiest

In 2019, when Curtis toured colleges and universities, he was always careful to talk to the engineering students and ask about their impressions of the program. While these students spoke well of their respective schools, he sensed something unique at Pitt. As he said, “The students here genuinely seemed the happiest.”

Curtis enrolled and weathered the Covid year online. When classes resumed in person, he thrived. He earned straight As and became active in the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) IDEA committee, an organization that builds community so all students and faculty can excel.

As Curtis developed as an engineer and as an active member of the Swanson School, he didn’t lose his love of language. During his sophomore year, he interviewed with Pitt’s Japanese department and began studying the language at the third-year level.

During his final year, Curtis completed his senior design project that focused on improving energy efficiency in older and historic Pittsburgh homes by replacing appliances and sealing openings. The project would provide a perfect jumping off point after earning his degree.

Envisioning a more sustainable future for all

After graduating from Pitt, Curtis interned at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), a nonprofit research organization working for a cleaner, more sustainable future. He drafted a document on fleet electrification—exploring the logistics, benefits, and other considerations of transitioning fleets of vehicles to electric.   

Curtis also drafted a paper on transportation project prioritization. When officials propose projects like upgrading a highway, repairing a bridge, or creating a new road, they assess the need, which can determine which projects are funded.

“For projects like these,” Curtis said, “there should be a scale or a matrix to prioritize the projects. Traditionally, the considerations have focused on safety and economic impact; however, some states are incorporating new ones, such as carbon emissions and equity.”  

Curtis explored how different states are incorporating these new factors and outlined best practices in project prioritization. And he grew increasingly interested in the ways organizations and governments determine how projects are funded—and how that affects marginalized communities.

For the opportunity to work with the ACEEE, Curtis in large part credits Pitt. “I was grateful because beyond the research skills I had gained, my senior design project and my involvement with the CEE IDEA committee aligned perfectly with the work I would do at the ACEEE,” he said.

Graduate school is elsewhere

Before working with ACEEE, Curtis had heard little about the methods for prioritizing projects and how important decisions are made—or about how United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals are implemented.

“Up until that point,” he said, “I had a hard time imagining that equity, if it was even discussed at all, could have a point value.” The process and the ways different states or countries approach it—and how those decisions affect different people—fascinated him.

While Curtis hadn’t planned to attend graduate school, if he did, he knew that it would be abroad. “I would want to immerse myself in a different culture and gain insight from living and working somewhere else,” he said.

Inspired by his experiences at ACEEE, his continued study of the Japanese language, and his interest in Japanese perspectives on the environment and sustainability, he formed a plan. But Curtis needed to find a way to pay for a graduate education overseas.

Since 1954, through its competitive MEXT scholarship program, the Japanese government has helped more than 100,000 students from around the world realize their dream of studying at a university in Japan. Curtis discovered the scholarship and applied. He also applied to the University of Tokyo’s Sustainability Sciences program and was accepted.

This month, he received final confirmation of the MEXT scholarship, which will cover tuition and provide a stipend for living expenses. In the fall, he will begin his master’s work in a country that has long inspired him.

Curtis will research equity in natural disaster management. He will explore how governments and organizations in different countries plan for prevention, evacuation, and post-disaster efforts, and how those plans affect marginalized communities.

“I want to learn how they’re incorporating equity so that low-income and other marginalized communities are not left behind—and how management programs can ensure all people receive the support they need,” Curtis said.

This project and the opportunity to engage with people from around the world to work for a more sustainable, equitable future reflects Curtis’ belief in the purpose of engineering—to serve humanity. It speaks to the spirit with which he approached his time at Pitt, one of endless curiosity and a desire to uplift those around him.

University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering alumnus Samarth Chopra BS ECE '25 received a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to join the University of Maryland and pursue a PhD in electrical and computer engineering. He has joined the UMD GAMMA Lab (Geometric Algorithms for Modeling, Motion, and Animation), under the guidance of Professor Dinesh Manocha.

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) supports individuals who have demonstrated the potential to make significant contributions to STEM-related fields. The purpose is to strengthen the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States. The program is open to full-time students in master’s and doctoral programs and provides three years of support over a five-year fellowship period. The 2025 Fellowship was awarded to approximately 1500 US students.

Chopra is the recipient of the Vikram Manikonda Endowed Distinguished Graduate Fellowship in Electrical and Computer Engineering. The award was established by ECE Alum Vikram Manikonda (M.S. ’94 / Ph.D. ’97) to provide merit-based support to students studying controls or microelectronics with the intention of enhancing diversity, including but not limited to racial or gender diversity in engineering. 

Other awards include the University of Pittsburgh ECE Outstanding Graduate Award and Senior Design Expo SSOE Best Overall Project Award and SSOE ECE Department First Place Award.

At UMD, Chopra will focus on photorealistic and geometrically accurate Gaussian Splatting for autonomous robot navigation, as well as ground robot navigation stack in partnership with Army Research Labs (ARL).

Luke Mattar (BioE PhD ‘23), postdoctoral research associate in the Orthopaedic Robotics Laboratory, is a recipient of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) F32 Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Individual National Research Service Award. Mattar will use this three-year award to investigate the effectiveness of knee braces in preventing and mitigating ligamentous injuries. 

“Going from my PhD to my postdoctoral position, I'm doing much different work now than I used to.” Mattar said. “For my PhD, I investigated changes in patient reported outcomes and in-vivo joint function in individuals with rotator cuff tears following exercise therapy using human movement analyses. For my postdoctoral work, I’ll extend my knowledge in solid mechanics through utilization of a robotic testing system and computational modeling to evaluate the effects of knee bracing on joint function and their ability to prevent medial collateral and anterior cruciate ligament injuries, especially in the context of athletics.”

The purpose of the NIH F32 postdoctoral fellowship is to enhance the research training of promising postdoctoral candidates who have the potential to become productive, independent investigators in scientific health-related research fields relevant to the missions of the NIH. For Mattar, this project will help him develop the additional skills he needs to become a productive researcher in the field of sports and injury biomechanics. 

“This award not only supports my ongoing research but helps equip me with essential skills to achieve my long-term goal of becoming an independent researcher in injury biomechanics,” Mattar said. “I'm honored to receive this award, and I’m truly grateful to both the NIH and to my mentors—Richard Debski, Volker Musahl, and Martin Fagerström— for this opportunity and for their invaluable support. I'm excited to continue advancing critical insights into sports injury prevention.”

Today, Yates is the president and CEO of NiSource Inc., an energy company that serves over four million customers. His journey from a working-class household outside of Philadelphia to the top of a leading energy company may have seemed improbable even to Yates himself, yet at every step he’s had amazing mentors, an endless drive to learn more—and his degree in mechanical engineering.

“If you can do that, you can do anything” 

For Yates, mechanical engineering was a natural fit. As far back as he can remember, he was always fixing things. “I just had an inclination to take things apart and fix them—cars, lawnmowers, appliances,” he said. “I drove my father crazy, always using his tools.”                                                              

After graduating high school, Yates chose the University of Pittsburgh in part because he liked the atmosphere around Oakland and on the Pitt campus. “It felt inclusive,” he said.

During his first year in the engineering program, though, he struggled academically. “I probably didn’t have proper preparation. As a freshman, I had to work hard, but I got caught up and finished the year with a 3.9 GPA.”

Though money was tight, and Yates was never sure he could cover his next semester, it was an exciting and rewarding time. “Engineering is four hard years,” he remembered. “Those semesters, I didn’t get out much, but I did well academically and had fun.”

Beyond overcoming challenges such as linear algebra, he was learning a skill that would prove as vital today as it was then. “This was where I first learned to think critically,” Yates said. “And that matters so much in industry and in business.”

With his mechanical engineering degree, he felt more prepared for the MBA he would later earn at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. He felt equipped with key skills that would help him negotiate new responsibilities and unexpected challenges. As he said of his four years at Pitt, “If you can do that, you can do anything.” 

Do what you love doing

After graduating, Yates took a job as a startup engineer at PECO (formerly Philadelphia Electric Company), a company where he interned during the summers of his third and fourth years at Pitt. He had other opportunities, but, as he said, “I took the lowest-paying offer I had, because I liked the work. I liked what I was doing.” 

This principle—doing what he loves—has guided Yates since that first job, and it has been a key source to his success. He remembers those first days of his internship, when his classroom learning became suddenly tangible. “After I walked into a power plant and saw turbines and pumps and compressors, when I had to figure out how to put these million pounds of steam through that line, thermodynamics really started to mean something.” 

For Yates, the work was and remains fascinating. “Energy was considered stodgy, boring,” he said. “But the energy sector is always evolving. I’m never bored.” 

Like the field in which Yates has dedicated his career, his road to becoming president and CEO of NiSource, which has included senior positions at Duke Energy Corporation and Progress Energy, has also evolved dramatically. “I’ve had 19 jobs. I’ve kept growing, progressing, and getting more experience—trying new things and figuring them out.” 

The power of persistence, people, and failure

If his love of the work and its dynamic nature have helped Yates reach seemingly improbable heights, so have his mentors along the way—starting with his father and his mother.

“At the time, I don’t think I realized the influence of my parents,” Yates said. “I inherited my father’s work ethic—his no-nonsense attitude. ‘That’s your job, go do it.’ And I inherited his impatience, which can be good.”

From his mother, he gained valuable interpersonal skills. “She was a people person,” Yates said. “She worked in a psychiatric hospital, and from her I learned that you treat people with respect and understanding.”

Throughout his career, as he has taken on more leadership roles and has managed more people, he’s seen more acutely how the influences of both his parents have shaped him as a leader. As Yates said, “People don’t follow you because you’re a good engineer but because you’re a good leader. If you want to manage and lead people, there are skills you need to develop.”

Yates also credits leaders in the energy field like John Doering and William “Bill” Johnson. These pivotal figures, as Yates said, “Let me fail. They gave me jobs and let me fail, but they kept pulling me up as long as I was learning from my failures.”    

Changing the trajectory

Since graduating with his engineering degree, Yates has returned to Oakland and the campus that first drew him to Pittsburgh. In 2012, he was recognized as the Distinguished Alumnus in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and in 2022, he received the Swanson School of Engineering’s Distinguished Alumnus Award. On May 2 this year, he delivered the graduate commencement address for the Swanson School.

While honors like these may suggest someone approaching the end of their career, for Yates there’s still much more to do and learn. “I love what I’m doing,” he said. “I’m not done yet.” He still wakes up every morning ready to solve problems in an ever-changing energy sector and improve the lives of the people he serves. 

“I’m grateful to have earned my engineering degree at Pitt,” Yates said. “It changed the trajectory of my life, and I still want to use it to change the trajectory of the communities where we operate and the people who work in our company.”

“I am honored to host my first Distinguished Alumni Award Banquet,” said Manuel. “This year’s cohort of Distinguished Alumni represent the very best qualities that we nurture at the Swanson School—creativity, risk-taking, persistence, compassion, curiosity. Their achievements and the impact they continue to have in our society are inspiring and serve as a testament to the history of this school.”  

The 2025 Class of Swanson School Distinguished Alumni includes:

Robert P. “Bob” Colwell, PhD, BSeE '77

Swanson School of Engineering Distinguished Alumnus

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Damion Shelton, PhD, BSBioE '01, A&S '01

Distinguished Alumnus in Bioengineering

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Charles F. Bleil, BSChE '78

Distinguished Alumnus in Chemical & Petroleum Engineering 

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Jeffery Mascaro, BSCE '93, MSCE '04

Distinguished Alumnus in Civil & Environmental Engineering

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Ravi Rahangdale, MSEE '74

Distinguished Alumnus in Electrical & Computer Engineering

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Michael Howard, MSIE '83

Distinguished Alumnus in Industrial Engineering

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Elayne Arrington, PhD, BSME '61

Distinguished Alumna in Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science

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“It is a privilege to recognize Ravi Rahangdale and his inspiring journey,” said Alan George, Department Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “From staying at the YMCA and selling chimney sweeps door to door to attending night school at Pitt to turning a defunct North Carolina transformer manufacturing plant into a bustling company, Ravi embodies the quintessential immigrant story. With his wife, Shashi, he has made a tremendous difference in the lives of so many people through their businesses and many charitable contributions.”

About Ravi Rahangdale

Ravi Rahangdale was born in Central India (later Maharashtra) before India's independence from Great Britain and while World War 2 was still raging. At age 9, he moved away from his village to obtain an education. You will hear many impressive things about Rahangdale, but this is what impresses his grandchildren the most.

He was admitted to Nagpur Science College and Jabalpur Engineering College and was the highest-ranking student in electrical engineering in his state. He began his engineering career in India as a civil servant working for B.H.E.L, where he was responsible for distributing electricity to rural communities.

In 1970, Rahangdale immigrated to the United States. His first job in the U.S. was as a door-to-door salesman.

Rahangdale started his U.S. engineering career at Uptegraph Transformer in Scottdale, PA. His wife, Shashi, and 3-year-old son joined him in 1971. His daughter was born in 1973. He went to night school at the University of Pittsburgh and graduated with a master's degree in electrical engineering in 1974.

After graduating, he moved to Lynchburg, VA, and worked for H.K. Porter Co., now Delta Star. In 1988, at 48, he took a chance and bought the defunct FayTranCo., a small transformer manufacturer in Fayetteville, NC. Rahangdale proved himself by providing high-quality products and services. He was soon able to build Fayetteville Transformer Company's facility in Raeford, NC, with 15 employees.

In 1996, he purchased the Canonsburg, PA, factory that once housed Cooper Industries, formerly McGraw Edison. This larger facility represented another opportunity in the transformer industry. Combined with the expanding plant in Raeford, the new company was named Pennsylvania Transformer Technology, Inc. (PTTI). PTTI manufactures power-class substation transformers of medium and large core-form design. Rahangdale was awarded a Key to the City of Canonsburg in 1998.

Rahangdale has employed as many as 400 employees. He prides himself on never having laid off any employees and on the positive economic impacts of his companies on the rural communities where they operated.

In November 2023, Rahangdale and Shashi retired after 35 years, selling their business to Quanta Services.

In January 2024, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper awarded Rahangdale the Order of the Long Leaf Pine award, the governor's highest honor. The award is for persons who have made significant contributions to the state and their communities through their exemplary service and exceptional accomplishments.

Through the businesses he and his wife built, they have helped hundreds of people through jobs and millions through access to electricity, and they have made numerous charitable contributions. They have raised two children—Sandeep (A&S ’89) and Lisa—and have helped raise their five grandchildren.

“It’s a great honor to celebrate Michael Howard and his impressive career,” said Lisa Maillart, Interim Department Chair of Industrial Engineering. “Michael received his master’s degree in engineering management here at Pitt while working at Westinghouse, and he credits the experience with developing his leadership and managerial skills. He has gone on to cofound and lead companies from startups to venture capital firms to a power electronics organization. A consummate leader and innovator, Michael has earned numerous accolades, including a 2019 Distinguished Energy Award for the many ways he has advanced global energy innovation.”

About Michael W. Howard 

Dr. Michael Howard is dedicated to fostering a sustainable and equitable energy future. He blends his business acumen with extensive technical knowledge and deep experience in the electric utility industry. With over four decades of global executive leadership, he is known for his collaborative, entrepreneurial, and innovative approach across organizations of all sizes, from startups to large public companies.

Most recently, Howard served as CEO of EPRI, a $500 million global organization headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with several offices across the U.S. and internationally. For ten years, he led EPRI in developing technological innovations related to electricity production, delivery, and consumption, including advancements in nuclear power, renewable energy, energy storage, and electric vehicles.

Howard began his career at Westinghouse after earning a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Tennessee. He was selected for a four-year management trainee program at Westinghouse while completing his MS in engineering management from the University of Pittsburgh. He later earned his PhD from the University of Tennessee's College of Engineering, focusing his dissertation on advanced artificial intelligence.

Following a decade at Westinghouse and its subsidiary, Howard cofounded a technology company specializing in advanced image processing systems for automated microscopic material and biological image analysis. After three years, the company merged with an affiliated firm in Pittsburgh, creating a roll-up of related companies. Post-merger, Howard led a venture capital firm that provided equity and debt investment to early-state tech companies. He was also an adjunct professor at the University of Tennessee, teaching various master's and PhD courses in industrial and systems engineering.

During the mid to late 1990s, Howard was the president and CEO of a technology-driven power electronics company that offered power quality solutions to large industrial customers and electric utility companies. EPRI acquired the business in 1999, after which Howard held several leadership positions within EPRI. In 2010, the EPRI Board of Directors appointed him president and CEO, a role he held until his retirement at the end of 2020. He was then honored with the title of CEO Emeritus by the board.

Howard is an advisor to a private equity firm and serves on the board of four technology-based, energy-focused companies. He is also a Carnegie Mellon University’s Scott Institute advisory council member and Chair of the World Energy Council based in London. Howard recently contributed to a technical committee at the U.S. National Academies of Sciences. In 2019, he received the Distinguished Energy Award in Washington, D.C., recognizing his lifetime contributions to global energy innovation and leadership. Additionally, Howard is an active member of IEEE.

“What an honor it is to recognize Jeff Mascaro as the 2025 Distinguished Alumnus in Civil and Environmental Engineering,” said Radisav Vidic, Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor and Department Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Jeff has played a vital role in championing sustainability at Pitt and across the Pittsburgh area. A hands-on engineer who values the opportunity to engage with our students and monitor projects here on campus, he is a champion of the Swanson School and a key to its success.”

About Jeffrey Mascaro 

Jeffrey Mascaro is an executive vice-president and chief operating officer of Mascaro Construction Company, L.P., a multifaceted regional general contracting firm that performs various construction services to the commercial and heavy/industrial markets. The company, which has an average revenue of $400 million, is consistently ranked in the Engineering New Records Top 400 Contractors and Top 100 Green Contractors in the nation. Mascaro’s father, John (Jack) Mascaro, an alumnus of the University of Pittsburgh, started the company on April 12, 1988, and since its beginnings, his son has worked there.

Mascaro works side by side with his brothers: John, president and CEO, and Michael, executive vice-president and chief communications officer. Beginning his career as a construction laborer in 1989, he progressed through the company, holding positions that include surveyor, estimator, project engineer, superintendent, project manager, and chief estimator. He traveled and worked on various projects in the tri-state area and eventually settled into his current role in 2006, overseeing accounting and legal aspects of the organization as well as assisting with supporting services and construction operations.

Mascaro has a bachelor's degree in civil and environmental engineering and a master's degree in construction management from the University of Pittsburgh. He serves on the advisory committee for the University’s Construction Management Program and on the committee for the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) department, and he recently served as the chair of the visiting committee during the ABET accreditation for the CEE program. He obtained his Legacy LEED AP designation during his professional career, served on the board for Phipps Conservatory, and currently presides on the Board of Directors for Beadling Soccer Club.

Mascaro and his wife, Michelle, have resided in Peters Township for the past 18 years with their three children: Ashley, 21; Brooke, 18; and Ryan, 15.

“At a recent exhibit in Benedum Hall celebrating women in engineering, Elayne was one of many pioneers highlighted who have made a difference in the field and inspired countless young engineers,” said Brian Gleeson, Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. “Of her time at Pitt, Elayne recalls fondly the competitions during Engineers Week, particularly a debate against a classmate in the metallurgical department. Elayne had to defend the affirmative position of a topic she felt favored the negative. Fifty-five years after that debate, she received an email from her debate opponent, recalling the ‘aggressive tactics’ she had used to try to win. Elayne’s tenacity, ingenuity, and courage are just a few of the characteristics that make her remarkable, and it’s a privilege to celebrate her achievements at this banquet.”

About Elayne Arrington

Dr. Elayne Arrington is a native of West Mifflin, Pennsylvania. She graduated first in her class at Homestead High School (now Steel Valley High School). Arrington was the first Black female to graduate from the University of Pittsburgh Engineering School and the 17th Black female in the United States to earn a PhD in mathematics. Upon graduation from the University of Pittsburgh, Arrington was employed at the Foreign Technology Division (FTD) of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base as an aerospace engineer. She was the first female employed in such a capacity at FTD. After earning her doctorate, she came to Pitt as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics and remained for 44 years until her retirement with emeritus status.

Arrington is the author of several published papers on the theory of finite solvable groups, and she is profiled in Complexities: Women in Mathematics, published under the auspices of the Association for Women in Mathematics. Arrington had the honor of giving a keynote address for the National Society of Women Engineers inaugural WE Local Conference in Pittsburgh in 2017. She has been the Black History Month speaker and honoree of the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering for priority in engineering, and she has been honored by the University of Pittsburgh African American Alumni Council as a Distinguished Alumna. Arrington has been honored as a History-Maker, receiving the 2018 Heinz History Center Education Award for priority in engineering, mathematics, and education; she was also awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Pittsburgh chapter of NEED in 2019. In 2021, she earned her Master of Theological Studies degree from the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, receiving the Middlesex Memorial Prize for Biblical Studies. In 2024, she was honored to be a recipient of the National Council of Negro Women Legacy Award and an inductee into the Steel Valley Hall of Fame by the Carnegie of Homestead.

Arrington serves on the Board of Trustees of the Community College of Allegheny County. She is Director Emeritus of Christian Education of the Allegheny Union Baptist Association and Dean Emeritus of the Pennsylvania Baptist State Convention.

“It is my great privilege to recognize Robert ‘Bob’ Colwell with our 2025 Distinguished Alumnus Award,” said Michele Manuel, U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering. “A native Pittsburgher who followed his dream of becoming an electrical engineer, Bob has challenged the status quo and relentlessly pursued innovation—be it here at Pitt where he earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, at Bell Labs, or at Intel. Indeed, through his work as chief architect of the Pentium Pro microarchitecture as well as the Pentium II and Pentium III processors at Intel, Bob helped fundamentally transform microchip design.

“Already recognized as the 2000 Distinguished Alumnus in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Swanson School, Bob reflects a spirit that I see throughout Pittsburgh and our university. I can’t think of a more deserving recipient of this highest honor.”

About Robert P. “Bob” Colwell

Dr. Robert P. “Bob” Colwell is a distinguished electrical engineer known for pioneering microprocessor architecture work. A Pittsburgh native, he earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 1977 and later obtained a master's and doctorate degree in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. His early career included roles at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Perq Systems, and Multiflow Computer, where he worked on very long instruction word supercomputers.

In 1990, Colwell joined Intel and became the chief architect of the P6 (Pentium Pro) microarchitecture, as well as the Pentium II and Pentium III processors, and initiated the Pentium 4 project. Recognized for his technical expertise, he was named an Intel Fellow in 1996. His contributions played a key role in shaping modern microprocessor design. In 2000, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award for the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh for his outstanding achievements in the field.

After leaving Intel in 2001, Colwell focused on consulting and writing. He authored The Pentium Chronicles, offering insights into microprocessor development, and contributed as the “At Random” columnist for IEEE Computer Magazine. In 2005, he received the ACM Eckert-Mauchly Award, and in 2006, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his transformative work in computer architecture. In 2012, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is an inventor or co-inventor on 40 U.S. patents.

Beyond engineering, Colwell has diverse interests, including restoring analog music synthesizers, woodworking, and playing guitar. His legacy continues to influence the field of microprocessor design and computer architecture.  

“It is my honor to recognize Chuck Bleil,” said Steven Little, Distinguished Professor and Department Chair of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering. “A world traveler who worked in many capacities at Proctor & Gamble, Chuck has always maintained his commitment to Pittsburgh and to the Swanson School of Engineering—be it through volunteering at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, serving on the O’Hara Township Planning Commission, or establishing a scholarship for Chemical Engineering students. With his wife, Mary, herself a Distinguished Alumni, who he met here at Pitt and married soon after graduating, he has helped countless engineers early in their education or careers find the resources they need to thrive.”

About Charles F. Bleil

Chuck Bleil worked at the Proctor & Gamble Company in Cincinnati, OH, for 30 years, retiring as Purchasing Group Manager. He graduated from Pitt in 1978 with a BS in Chemical Engineering. He started at P&G as an engineer in Laundry & Cleaning Products Research & Development (R&D), running spray drying trials of an environmentally improved Tide formula in ten plants across the U.S. and Canada. He received a patent for a granular detergent formulation with improved solubility. Bleil transferred to International R&D in 1986, where he ran processing trials in Japan, the Philippines, and France.

In 1990, he transferred from R&D to Purchasing with assignments in hair care (Pantene and Head & Shoulders packaging), feminine care (Always and Tampax materials), home care (Swiffer non-woven materials), global capital, and upstream baby care (Papers materials). As part of buying capital equipment, Bleil managed a global group of procurement specialists and took two “around the world” trips, visiting equipment suppliers in Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Japan. His last assignment involved strategic sourcing of new materials and technologies, including negotiating contracts with Japanese material suppliers.

Upon his retirement, Bleil moved back to Pittsburgh and began volunteering. He has volunteered at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History for over 13 years. He has been a member of the O'Hara Township Planning Commission for the last 12 years and was on the O'Hara Township/Fox Chapel Long Range Planning Team for the last two years. Bleil also volunteers at the Shaler North Hills Library, running an engineering camp every summer with his wife, Mary T. Zeis, who also holds a BS in chemical engineering from Pitt. Bleil is active in STEM Outreach programs of the Society of Women Engineers with his wife, supporting 10 or more events every year for the past several years.

In 2019, Bleil established the Bleil Family Scholarship for chemical engineering students at Pitt. Bleil appreciated the financial assistance he received during college, including work study his junior and senior years in the Department of Chemical Engineering with the equipment manager, Larry Herman, supporting the graduate students' labs and the unit operations labs. Bleil and Zeis also established the Bleil/Zeis Engineering Legacy Fund in 2006 in support of the Department of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering.

In 2013, when Dubé enrolled in Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, he had no intentions of running a startup. He was unsure which branch of engineering he’d pursue. He just liked to understand how things worked. He liked solving problems.

During his second semester, while writing what he thought was a bioengineering paper, he realized, “What I was drawn to—what I was really doing—was chemical engineering.”     

What followed his sophomore year, as he took his first chemical engineering courses, “was humbling.” Yet he would take a class with Professor Christopher Wilmer, who would become an invaluable mentor, pushing Dubé to take risks and to put himself into positions so that “something can happen.”

An unlikely outcome of early rejection

During his sophomore year, like so many in his class, Dubé applied for internships, but in the competitive landscape, he didn’t land one. Though he wasn’t surprised, it was a setback. He figured he’d return to something familiar—his hometown of York, Pennsylvania, and the grocery store where he’d worked so many summers.

But Dubé hoped to stay in Pittsburgh and be closer to his girlfriend, now wife. He found a research opportunity in Wilmer’s lab, where he would work with a future business partner, graduate student Alec Kaija.

That summer and into his junior year, Dubé threw himself into computational research, exploring the limits of gas storage using hypothetical materials. With Kaija, he helped formulate an idea to create portable, efficient, lightweight oxygen tanks for personal use.

That spring, he and Kaija entered Pitt’s Randall Family Big Idea competition (now the Big Idea Competition), where Pitt students gain firsthand experience developing and pitching ideas. The competition, understanding the power of diverse ideas, requires interdisciplinary teams. Dubé turned to his longtime friend Mark Spitz, in Pitt’s School of Education, whose entrepreneurial spirit always impressed him.

The team won first place, receiving $25,000.

Getting in the reps

As the idea of starting a company took hold, they applied for a provisional patent, and Spitz, Aeronic’s COO, began looking for any opportunity to practice their pitch. “We’d pitch to anyone who would listen," Dubé said. "Mark even signed us up for a competition at the business school, to pitch ways to improve pizza sales.”

Recognizing that public speaking wasn’t a strength, Dubé threw himself into jobs that would require him to talk to groups. He worked as a docent at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and later delivered tours of the Swanson School of Engineering.

In the spring of 2017, at Princeton University’s TigerLaunch Competition, they fended off many Ivy League teams to win second place and a $10,000 prize. At Pitt’s Blast Furnace Demo Day, they placed first.

These highs were great but never lasted long. The team would miss out on competitions or fumble a pitch. New doubts about starting a company would surface.

To risk or not to risk

During his junior year, Dubé again applied for internships and this time got one. He loved it. The company, BASF, set him to work on one project: devise a system to cut through a polymer used in jounce bumpers without melting it. Countless of Dubé’s solutions failed until he found and presented one that would work: water.

The company offered Dubé a job and with it came anguish. He enjoyed the work, but could he give up his plan of starting Aeronics? They’d made it so far. But—what if it failed? What if he was giving up an amazing, stable opportunity?

He asked anyone who’d listen what he should do. It was his professor Steven Little who said, “You’re the only one who knows that answer.”

Dubé earned his BS in engineering—and declined the job.

Free falling

What followed were more swings up and down. “Our product didn’t exist,” Dubé said. “It took a lot of research and development."

The team attended a 14-week Quake Capital accelerator program in New York City, meeting entrepreneurs, delivering their pitch, and gaining invaluable experience.

They opened an office and found a manufacturer willing to give them a shot.

Finally, in the fall of 2018, it was time to launch. They had 10,000 units. But because of an unforeseen chemical reaction that they found during quality control, the team realized they couldn’t bring it to market yet.  

They had invested so much time, energy, and money. Dubé felt like he’d just run off a cliff, like Wile E. Coyote in the old cartoon, and was suspended in midair, about to plummet. 

Don’t fall in love with your ideas

“The thing about these highs and lows,” said Dubé, “is that if you try to chart them, it looks dramatic, but in the moment, your actual feelings sail way off the page.”

Luckily, this lowest of lows couldn’t linger too long. Dubé and Spitz had been renting a house from a veterinarian who’d already inspired a new idea: portable oxygen systems for animals.

In the background, the Aeronics team had been working on the idea and within two months launched their second product, Pawprint Oxygen, lightweight tanks that vets and pet owners can use to keep pets alive during an emergency.

The new system didn’t involve their novel technology, but it met a need and saved pets’ lives. As Dubé said, “I learned an important lesson about not falling in love with your ideas.”

“An Out-of-Town Mask Designer”

It was slow at first, selling a new product, but with the same energy they’d put into practicing pitches, they visited as many veterinarian offices and conferences as they could. Word spread, and orders increased.

Then Covid hit and they adapted, finding new ways to connect online.

Positive reviews of the product rolled in, and a year after the launch, Pawprint Oxygen was in 100 animal hospitals. A year later, that number had jumped to 1,000.

While each milestone brought new highs, Dubé still experienced the lows of growing a company and finding the right employees. It helped when they made the right hire, or when they solved a new problem, like building a canine lung model so that they could design and patent their own oxygen mask for pets.  

The company reached a new plateau when they could begin donating their products. It was in Denver, in June of 2023, doing just that, where Dubé was given a new title. A reporter, reporting on the donation of 120 pet oxygen masks to firefighters, referred to him as an “out-of-town mask designer.”

The title amused Dubé and his friends, but it revealed something significant: the products that he helped to develop were making a difference not just around Western Pennsylvania and the surrounding states, but across the country.

Across the pond

In September of 2024, after a two-year effort, Pawprint Oxygen shipped to Europe. More recently, the company launched a pet oxygen chamber and, during the fires that ravaged Los Angeles, matched donations to provide enough pet masks for every L.A. fire truck.

With these new highs, the initial launch of their novel product seems further and further away, and while he knows new challenges await, Dubé feels more prepared to come up for air.

Although he has less time to actively engineer these days, he is still buoyed by his four years at Pitt. “They teach you how to solve problems and how to work hard. I was lucky to have mentors who pushed me to buck the constraints and accept uncertainty.”

He is also inspired by the team that he and Spitz have assembled. Their Bloomfield office bustles with dogs and activity as employees pack orders and talk directly to customers.

“I understand now,” Dubé said, “the importance of taking time to pause and celebrate successes and the team here that makes this office so amazing.”

Coley, now an assistant professor in engineering at the Polytechnic School of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, is “pushing the boundaries of traditionally heteronormative engineering environments through transdisciplinary approaches, qualitative research, and art-based methods,” according to the university’s website. Her projects have received national recognition and garnered millions of funds  in support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). 

“A lot of my work is about getting close and personal to the lived experience,” Coley said. “When I meet with individuals to further this work, I try to amplify their stories for awareness and accountability.” 

Coley has been experimenting with her approach through virtual reality by using these narratives and translating them into immersive scenarios that encompass experiences students face in navigating engineering. These scenarios target faculty, who play the role of an avatar, to – quite literally – see from the perspective of a minoritized student. In one scenario, The Silent Library, the avatar is a student with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and who is trying to complete a virtual lecture in a library despite myriad distractions. As the distractions pop up, the player must disable them through sustained focus to continue with the lecture. At the end of the module, the player is quizzed on the material. 

Coley noted that all who have taken it have failed the quiz after as a result of the distractions. 

The project has been praised by members of the ADHD community and informed empathetic orientations in professors that have completed it. 

“When I started doing this kind of work, I was really inspired by my own inquisitiveness about the landscape around me in the engineering that was and the empirical evidence needed to transform it,” Coley said. 

Much of Coley’s work has been cultivated and spread to other institutions and collaborators through the Center of Research Advancing Racial Equity, Justice, and Sociotechnical Innovation Centered in Engineering (RARE JUSTICE) at Arizona State University. The Center, with Coley as Founding Executive Director, operates to model “a radically just engineering future through an actionable, antiracist orientation applied across the realms of scholarship and metrics, dissemination, workforce development, and community engagement and outreach.” The center has expanded through both research and workshops and was recently part of an $800,000 NSF award to help build mentorship and provide evidence-based psychological support systems for Black engineering academics. Coley serves as co-principal investigator on the project. 

Pushing Through Boundaries at Pitt 

There has always been a societal implication to Coley’s work. 

While at Pitt, she studied slips, trips, and falls in older adults (those 65 and older) to explore whether a biomechanical strategy could minimize the severity of perturbations. She joked that it was difficult to find individuals who would willingly fall in her laboratory, but with the help of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UMPC) and the Claude D. Pepper Center, specifically, she was able to complete her research. 

For Coley, her work at Pitt was her first dabble in understanding how engineering could help others. 

“It was really my first research experience that had a direct application,” Coley said. “I could see that the work I was doing could impact someone’s life.” 

Her time at Pitt was formative in her own personal experience as well. 

Coley – a Black woman – felt like an outsider for much of her tenure, and particularly, following her experience as a Meyerhoff Scholar at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) She learned that a lot of other students of color had the same feelings. 

“In that time, only a small percentage of my peers graduated as intended with their PhD,” Coley said. “I was lucky to find community and support in the Pitt EXCEL program, which is committed to helping underrepresented students succeed, and push through.” 

She also credits Mark Redfern, the current Interim Chair of Pitt’s Department of Bioengineering, and Sylvanus Wosu, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and associate dean for diversity affairs, for their willingness to help Coley find where she fit in the world outside of Pitt. 

Redfern, who then was Coley’s mentor, remembers those conversations with Coley vividly and saw that she was struggling with what she actually wanted to pursue in her career. However, he noted that he could only guide her while she needed to discover her path on her own. 

“I remember my talks with Brooke fondly,” Redfern said. “Those conversations were hard. Anytime you are thinking about changing your path, it should be hard. Once she thought it through, she found a new direction, and it was perfect for her.”

While at Pitt, Coley formed one of her best friendships and professional connections in Kurt Beschorner, who was also a PhD student alongside Coley. Most notably, they learned from one another and built a friendship rooted in honesty.  

“Dr. Coley’s friendship stood out for our honest conversations on topics that are not often discussed,” said Beschorner, who is now associate professor and associate chair of graduate student professional development for the Department of Bioengineering. “We could spend part of a conversation discussing our PhD projects but also discussed racial inequities in university settings and how individual identity influences the graduate school experience. In these conversations, it always felt like we trusted each other enough to be honest and to challenge each other. Even now, I routinely think back on these conversations as this incredible gift that has provided me with an improved perspective in my career and life.”

Defining a New Type of Leader 

Coley’s work is far from over. 

As political climates become more tense, Coley fears that leaders are becoming more silent when, she believes, they need to be more vocal and vigilant than ever. 

“It’s very disheartening to be of a minoritized identity in this country,” Coley said. “The world doesn’t seem like it wants everyone to thrive. With so many supporting divisions in society, it’s becoming critical that leaders actively disrupt the status quo.”

For Coley herself, to be silent and inactive are to be complicit in these times.

“I want to be in a position that doesn’t succumb to performative change,” Coley said. “I want to be an agentic leader that makes actionable decisions which translate to more people thriving in engineering environments anchored in equity and justice – and to not lose myself in the process.” 

A student of many interests, from neuroscience to English and history, Amoafo knew he wanted to create a positive impact through whatever career path he pursued. After weighing the potential of neurosurgery or corporate law, Amoafo instead decided on an engineering degree at the University of Pittsburgh.

His motivation to make a positive impact through engineering paid dividends in less time than the traditional engineering student. Beginning this fall, Amoafo will attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a GEM PhD Engineering and Science Fellow focusing on novel problems in control theory. GEM is designed for underrepresented students who have completed, are currently enrolled in, or have received admittance into a PhD program directly from a bachelor’s program.

“What’s stopping you from what you want to accomplish today?” Amoafo asked. “A lot of times, people make an excuse or say they’re busy, but truthfully there’s nothing stopping you. You just need the will to work and get it done.”

Amoafo graduated in December 2023 from Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering with a bachelor's degree in engineering science, concentration in engineering mechanics, and an honors degree from the David C. Frederick Honors College. He leaves an incredible legacy of academic excellence, community service, and an intellectual curiosity that shows he’s always challenging himself – in and out of the classroom.

“From the day Mychal first stepped into my office, he had a clear vision of what he wanted to accomplish,” said Paul Ohodnicki, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and director of the engineering science program. “He exhibited key success factors that allowed him to excel in his studies, even beyond the classroom. He was organized and focused on what he needed to do in order to accomplish his goals. He ended up graduating in three and a half years, which is rare for an undergraduate at our school.”

Amoafo explains that he models the behavior he wants to see from his engineering peers. If others see him working hard, he hopes it inspires them to put in the same amount of effort. He believes it is critical for engineers to stay curious about the world outside of engineering while possessing a strong technical background and knowledge base.

Learning to Control Complicated Systems

For Amoafo, curiosity about human interaction with each other and technology is critical in ensuring his work benefits people. He seeks to understand why these interactions make the systems he works with amorphous and complicated.

“I’m not the kind of mechanical engineer people typically think of,” Amoafo said. “I’m interested in the theory side of control, and my Bachelor’s of Philosophy dissertation was on applied control and well-understood approaches, like a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) control or a Bang-Bang control, which are straightforward and easy to deploy in industry applications.”

At MIT, he plans to pivot from classical control techniques and explore more innovative and exciting pathways like statistics and machine learning to more accurately model systems in real time and develop more robust controllers.

“We have so much new computing power and machine learning techniques that aren’t being deployed in distributed and industrial systems because they’re not straightforward systems,” Amoafo said. “I’m trying to understand from a theory perspective how we can develop more straightforward proofs of stability and how to best help assist people in deploying these controllers in very complicated systems, like integrated energy systems.”

Breaking the Financial Barriers

As Amoafo steps into the first year of his PhD program, he won’t have to stress about where he gets his funding as a PhD student. The GEM Fellowship includes full tuition and fees through the fifth year; a $16,000 stipend during the first year with additional stipend support from the GEM Member University to match the stipend amount of other funded PhD students in that department; and a minimum of one paid summer internship with a GEM Employer Member. He’s grateful for the freedom and control he has to complete his PhD program the way he sees best.

“I have no doubt that Mychal will thrive as a GEM Fellow,” said Yvette Moore, Director of Pitt’s EXCEL and Equity and Inclusion for Undergraduate Strategic Initiatives. “He’s so intelligent, giving, caring, and humble. He doesn’t flaunt these things. He didn’t just do a lot in the classroom, but in the community, too.”

Keeping the Community Strong

Amoafo’s calling goes beyond school and engineering. 

“How can I make the world better?” Amoafo asked. “How can I set others up to succeed when I’m gone?”

He knew the first step to make the world a better place starts within his own community.

As the treasurer for Pitt’s National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), Amoafo was key helping the organization navigate the COVID-19 pandemic as it functioned in hybrid, remote, and in-person settings. The pandemic made him reevaluate the chapter’s annual budget depending on the setting.

“When we shifted back to in-person, we were spending more money, so I focused on increasing our revenue and decreasing operational costs,” Amoafo explained. “I wanted to make sure that even if we don’t bring in the same amount of sponsorships on a yearly basis, the future of our chapter would be secure.” 

Establishing a solid foundation for NSBE wasn’t Amoafo’s only accomplishment as a student leader. During his last semester at Pitt, Amoafo served as the co-chair for the Student Advisory Board (SAB) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Material Science. There he established the foundation for a more vibrant and dynamic environment by cultivating long term, effective communication between students and faculty.

As co-chair, Amoafo viewed the department as if it were a company which exports a product – in this instance, according to Amoafo – its students, curriculum, and opportunities for incoming faculty members. He also utilized Pitt EXCEL - an undergraduate program within the Swanson School committed to the recruitment, development, and graduation of historically underrepresented scholars - to speak with faculty and students about their experiences.

Exposing the Next Generation to a Future of Possibilities

Throughout his undergraduate career, Amoafo volunteered with Pitt’s Community Engagement Center (CEC) in the city’s Hill District to help develop summer STEM programs for students. During his time with the CEC, he became familiar with Hill District residents by regularly attending volunteer events. Through CEC Saturday community service events he nurtured STEM interest in many younger students.

Amoafo believes it’s a disservice to push young students toward a certain career since not everyone shares the same passions, but exposure to different fields can benefit them in the future. He believes STEM influences the way people think, so even if children and adolescents don’t grow up to pursue a science or engineering career, they’ll have a broader base of knowledge and improved critical thinking skills.

“When I see the future of Pitt EXCEL, I look at Mychal as an example,” Moore said. “His goal with the CEC was to be present in the community so kids could see someone who looked like them, and maybe that would influence them to work hard and do something they never thought they could do. He was like that with the young students in his volunteer work and even with his peers at Pitt. All he wants to do is raise others up.”

Once Amoafo settles at MIT, he hopes to continue his community service work. This summer he plans to explore subjects he didn’t have the time to learn while at Pitt, like electrical engineering and chemical engineering, and how these can be applied to sustainable energy systems for emerging market regions around the world.  

“Obviously my life in four months will focus on my PhD program until I graduate,” Amoafo said. “But I want to learn as much as possible until it starts.”

“I want to say how truly impressed my colleagues and I are with this year’s awardees,” Shroff said. “The breadth and depth of their collective accomplishments are truly inspiring, and a testament to the history of engineering at the University of Pittsburgh.” 

The 2024 Class of Swanson School Distinguished Alumni includes:

Tracey T. Travis BSIE '83

Swanson School of Engineering Distinguished Alumna 

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Kevin Toosi, MD, BSBioE ‘03, MSBioE ’06, PhD BioE '11

Distinguished Alumnus in Bioengineering

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June Yee Felix BSChE '78

Distinguished Alumna in Chemical & Petroleum Engineering 

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Thomas “Tom” Zagorski, PE, BSCE '86

Distinguished Alumnus in Civil & Environmental Engineering

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Sankar Basu MSEE ‘78, PhD EE ’80

Distinguished Alumnus in Electrical & Computer Engineering

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Kim LaScola Needy, PhD, PE, CFPIM, CPEM, BSIE ‘84, MSIE ’87

Distinguished Alumna in Industrial Engineering

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Richard Bennett BSMetE ‘69, Katz MBA ’74

Distinguished Alumna in Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science

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Kenneth Balkey, a highly accomplished alumnus of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Material Science at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, was recently named as one of Pitt’s Varsity Letter Club's 2024 Awardees of Distinction. Balkey earned his bachelor's and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering in 1972 and 1980, respectively.

“I am so deeply honored and humbled to have been selected to be a member of the 2024 class,” Balkey said.

Since 1961, the Pitt Varsity Letter Club has honored letterwinners who have distinguished themselves in their profession or community, and who – by their accomplishments – have enhanced the value of the intercollegiate athletics programs at Pitt.

Balkey is currently a member of the ASME Philanthropy Committee and serves as an Adjunct Faculty Lecturer for the Stephen R. Tritch Nuclear Engineering Program in the Swanson School of Engineering. He was previously a consulting engineer for Westinghouse Electric Company and the Senior Vice President for ASME Standards and Certification. 

The 2024 Awardees of Distinction will be honored at the 62^nd Anniversary Varsity Letter Club Awards Dinner on Friday, Feb. 23, 2024  at The Westin Pittsburgh, beginning at 6 p.m., then again on Saturday, Feb. 24 at the Pitt-Virginia Tech Men's Basketball game at 5:30 p.m.

To learn more about Balkey's journey with Pitt, read his Alumni Focus here.

Kate Gundlach stands on the sunbaked track at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, bracing a tablet against her hip. She’s debating with driver Pato O’Ward about the merits of maintaining momentum through turn seven.

She knows laying off the brakes is a gamble — drivers have crashed out for less. But it may be just what O’Ward needs to shave those precious tenths of a second off his time and challenge the rest of the NTT IndyCar Series for the coveted pole position — the most advantageous starting position on the track — on qualifying day at the Gallagher Grand Prix.

“That’s playing with fire, bro,” O’Ward says, grinning and peering down at Gundlach’s tablet. “How much are we losing?

“It’s just a tenth,” Gundlach assures him.

O’Ward sighs and grabs the brim of his baseball cap with both hands, still unsure: “Gotta pick your fights, you know?”

Gundlach does know. She’s been an IndyCar engineer since 2012 and O’Ward’s performance engineer at team Arrow McLaren for nearly four years. Her job is to use data and driving simulations to devise strategies that will improve his lap time and, ultimately, notch wins. Together, she and the fiery, unpredictable 24-year-old racing phenom have been through some really high highs — like contending for the series championship in 2021 — and some pretty low lows — like crashing out at the Indianapolis 500 on this very track in May. Every decision, every tweak, every tap of the brakes could be the difference between landing on the podium or heading back to the pit. In this seesawing 2023 season, they’re intimately familiar with both outcomes.

Read the full article. 

As a child growing up in China at the start of intensified industrialization, Shugong Wang watched as factories sprang up around him like flowers blooming after a spring rain. He also watched those factories alter the environment, with the water and air becoming increasingly polluted.

“Since I was a kid, I was very curious about how we can use engineering to thrive our living standards without destroying the environment,” recalled Wang. “I have a very strong interest in protecting water and other related resources. This is what led me to engineering.”

And learn he did. Wang pursued a bachelor’s degree in hydrogeology and engineering geology from Lanzhou University and earned a master’s in geography from the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, all the while taking extra courses in math so he could better understand the theory behind what he was learning.

His journey would then lead him to the University of California Berkeley as a visiting researcher to work with Xu Liang, then an Assistant Professor at Berkeley. When Prof. Liang joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, Wang followed her and joined Pitt as a PhDstudent in 2006.

Liang’s research includes hydrological modeling, which investigates how the physical and hydrological processes interact along the landscape and within the soil in which water moves from the land to ocean and evaporates to the atmosphere and back to the land and ocean surface in the form of precipitation. It has diverse applications including flood and drought predictions, pollutant transports, stream flow estimates and long-term trend analysis, water resources management, soil erosion, and more. While in Liang’s lab, Wang worked with her on enhancing the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model. Professor Liang is a pioneer and leading scholar in the field of land surface modeling, which is important for the understanding of the water and energy cycles of the earth.

After graduation, Wang’s experience with the VIC model landed him an out-of-this-world opportunity.

NASA’s Hydrological Science Laboratory was on a mission to combine the VIC model to their other models and Wang’s expertise in the topic makes him extraordinarily valuable to the mission. 

“To better predict the impact of weather, we need a better way to couple together the weather model and the hydrological model,” explained Wang. “Traditionally, model coupling is done by scientists, but most scientists aren't software engineers. On the other hand, if you ask a software engineer to do this work, they don't know the science. And that makes the model coupling work a big challenge.”

After a couple months of investigation, Wang reported to his supervisor that he had indeed found a way to automate this model coupling work. What used to take several years now, with Wang’s tool, would only take a couple of weeks.

When his wife, who earned her PhD from Carnegie Mellon University, got a job at Duke University, he had another difficult decision to make. He could continue working remotely for NASA, with frequent five-hour drives to Maryland, or he could end his 10-year tenure at NASA and pursue another job closer to home. Ultimately, he chose to walk away and soon became a senior scientist at Applied Research Associates.

“I was happy to work with so many smart people at NASA. I learned a lot, and especially about problem solving at a large scale,” said Wang. “I think engineering students should know that it's not a guarantee you'll find an engineering job in your exact field after you finish school. But what can help you have a successful career? Problem solving skills and a solid foundation in math.” 

This theory proved sound in Wang’s next career move. His new role—a Senior Scientist at ARA—was in a field that, at face value, seemed foreign to him: satellites and remote sensing. During his technical interview, however, the questions directed to him were not about satellites, sensing, or even civil engineering—they were all about math. Wang had the building blocks he needed to succeed at this job.

“My supervisor asked me, ‘Do you want to try computer vision?’ I said, ‘I have no idea what this is, I've never done it,’” Wang recalled. But his supervisor pointed out that his research background, heavy in math and optimization, would be perfect for solving the fundamental problems of computer vision. 

Wang said, “If you say so.”

A few weeks and a few textbook reviews later, Wang was up to speed and charging ahead on his new project—work he continues today while at the same time he also mentors junior scientists at ARA.

“In the beginning, you may not think that the math you’re learning is useful, but later, when you go to do a real job, those dots might connect into lines, into a surface, into an object,” said Wang. “This is the key for many people: Math is the common language of engineering and applied science. It builds a great foundation for all kinds of opportunities”

Mountain ranges that are hundreds of millions of years old; rivers that snake across the landscape; a rich history of mining and industry: Southwestern Pennsylvania’s landscape creates challenges—and exciting projects—for civil engineers.

Matthew Geary knows these challenges well. 

When aging infrastructure, landslides or other geological issues interrupt Duquesne Light Company’s power grid, Geary, a consulting civil engineer at Duquesne Light, answers the call.

“Pittsburgh has a proud industrial legacy, and Duquesne Light has been a part of that since the beginning,” said Geary. “My area, asset management, is about making the best decision with limited funds as to what is the next project to replace, and how do we manage the assets we have.”

Geary’s interest in geotechnical engineering began in his undergraduate years at the Swanson School of Engineering, when he attended a seminar where a local engineering company recounted its work on PNC Park, including the geotechnical challenges involved.

“I got an internship in the field and have been playing in the dirt, concrete, grout and mud ever since,” said Geary.

Choosing to attend Pitt was an easy choice to make—Geary’s family has a long history of attending the University, and he always knew it would be a good fit. Studying engineering, too, was an easy choice. Growing up, Geary’s favorite hobbies were building with LEGOs, using sticks and rocks to construct dams in the creek near his house, and creating tracks for his Matchbox Cars. 

Each class he took at the Swanson School confirmed that he’d made the right choice. 

"We have a rich Pitt history in my family, and I'm proud to be a part of that,” said Geary. "I always thought I wanted to pursue engineering, and as I got into it, it only reinforced that, yes, this is the right decision."

When he graduated with his BS in civil engineering in 2009, Geary had to make a decision. Should he enter the risky job market just after the 2008 financial crisis, or pursue graduate work in civil engineering? His work with William Kepler Whiteford Professor Julie Vandenbossche—and her engaging style of teaching—helped convince him to continue working in her lab as a master’s student.

“When I was graduating from Pitt, I made a decision that I was going to pursue a Masters instead of a PhD. But the professors I had at Pitt, like Dr. Vandenbossche, really inspired me, and a part of me was sad because I really wanted to be able to have that effect on students. It felt like that door was closed to me without a PhD,” said Geary.

Luckily, he was wrong. 

After graduate school, while working at a local civil and environmental engineering consulting firm, Geary continued to be involved as a volunteer at the Swanson Schools’ Design EXPO. Because of his involvement, he was top of mind when the department was searching for someone to teach the engineering geology course.

Now, he’s teaching the next generation of Pitt Engineers to understand how the geology of a region impacts the structures that it can support. As an adjunct faculty member at Pitt, Geary teaches the Engineering Geology course, sharing his love of geotechnical engineering with the next generation of engineers.

“That’s really been a blessing,” he said. “When I started practicing in a consulting engineering firm, I had a geotechnical background but didn’t have an appreciation for geology. It was only after working on real problems in the field that I realized this geology component is actually really important to a lot of what we do. My goal in coming back was to educate students to fill in these gaps. But mostly, I’m just really happy to still be in the Pitt community.”

“I am just amazed and humbled at our honorees’ diverse contributions to the engineering profession and the betterment of human society. Together, their careers represent nearly 300 years of engineering excellence and we are excited to add them to our pantheon of outstanding Pitt Engineers,” Dean Shroff said. “I cannot thank them enough for their passion and dedication as well as their generosity of time and experience to help mentor and encourage the next generation of engineers.”

The 2023 Class of Swanson School Distinguished Alumni includes:

N.C. Joseph Lai PhD ChemE ’73

Swanson School of Engineering Distinguished Alumnus

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Donald P. Taylor, MBA, CLP, PhD BioE ’13

Distinguished Alumnus in Bioengineering

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Mark G. Papa BSPetE ’68

Distinguished Alumnus in Chemical & Petroleum Engineering

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Patrice M. “Patty” Bubar BSCE ’78

Distinguished Alumnus in Civil & Environmental Engineering

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Stephen Mozelewski BSEE ’87

Distinguished Alumnus in Electrical & Computer Engineering

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Greg Coticchia BSIE ’82 MBA ’86

Distinguished Alumnus in Industrial Engineering

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Daniel T. Giel BSME ’75

Distinguished Alumnus in Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science

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“On behalf of the Swanson School, I am humbled to honor a Pitt Engineer who has leveraged his interdisciplinary expertise to not only advance his career but also improve human health through engineering, said Sanjeev G. Shroff, Interim U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering. ”Following an impressive undergraduate career at Cornell, Joseph entered Pitt for his PhD under the direction of the remarkable Chung-Chiun Liu and would engage in pioneering research in blood gas sensors. Following Pitt, Joseph led the teams that developed the first portable pulse oximeter, the first infra-red based anesthetic gases monitor, and non-invasive blood pressure monitor. Thanks to this life-saving innovation and his passion for translational research, Joseph now uses his expertise to invest in the next generation of healthcare innovations. We are proud to honor his legacy and contributions to improving human health."

About N.C. Joseph Lai

Naichiu Joseph Lai received his PhD in 1973 from the University of Pittsburgh and his BS from Cornell University in 1966, both in Chemical Engineering. Lai says that coming to Pitt in 1969 was a life changing event, as he did pioneer research in blood gas sensor development for real-time blood gas monitoring under Professor  C. C. Lui.  He explaines it opened up a new dimension for him to utilize his background in chemical engineering to pursue product development and ventures in the medical healthcare industry, eventually becoming a serial entrepreneur. Upon graduation, Lai continued biosensor development for real-time and bed-side monitoring at General Electric Medical System Group in Milwaukee, Wis., and then at other companies. He co-founded several companies:  Biochem Inc. and Criticare Systems, both vital-sign monitors manufacturing companies; Immtech (biotechnology); Gaztec & Telaire Systems Inc. (both made environmental gas monitors); and Fastgen (TB screening test). Biochem, Criticare, and Immtech went public on Nasdaq in 1981, 1986, and 1996.  He was also founder, chairman and later director (2000-2010) of BioForm Medical Inc. with product in aesthetics treatment (wrinkles).  It went public in 2007 and was acquired in 2011 by Merz Pharma GmbH. At Criticare, Lai led the team to develop the first portable pulse oximeter, the first infra-red based anesthetic gases monitor, and non-invasive blood pressure monitor (NIBP) which are now the standard of care in hospitals and clinics around the world. Lai is currently General Partner & Co-Founder of Puck Ventures, L.P. and continues to invest in early start-ups in pioneer technologies and health care industries. He met his wife, Helen, in Boston and has enjoyed her unequivocal support for 52 years.

“From Naval Nuclear Submarines to improving the lives of humans and animals, Dan truly is an interdisciplinary engineer,” said Brian Gleeson, Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. “He utilized his expertise and experience in mechanical and nuclear engineering to begin an outstanding career in radiology, and eventually a successful practice in radiation oncology for animals, treating a menagerie from a Siberian tiger to dolphins and others. We are honored to recognize him for his dedication, passion, and engineering excellence.”

About Daniel Giel

Daniel T. Giel served in the United States Navy, attending Nuclear Power School and serving on submarines for seven years. After discharge from the Navy, Giel worked in radiation safety for the University of Pittsburgh and enrolled in engineering school, attended part-time and graduated from the school of mechanical engineering. Giel then worked at Montifore Hospital from 1972-1977. Enrolled part time in the Graduate School of Public Health, Giel received a Master of Science in Hygiene, with concentration on Radiation Health. He is certified in both radiation therapy and diagnostic radiology by the American Board of Radiology. Giel also received a master’s degree in Safety Science from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He practiced medical physics until retirement in 2013 and is an emeritus member of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine. After retiring, Giel held a consulting role with a veterinary radiation oncologist in the treatment of cancer in animals. Giel is a member of the Rotary Club of Hampton Roads and was Rotarian of the Year in 2019.

"Since his time at Pitt, Greg has become a self-described ‘serial entrepreneur,’ participating in 14 startups and founding four of them," said Lisa Maillart, Interim Department Chair. “From raising venture capital, overseeing mergers and acquisitions, and serving as CEO, President, and COO, Greg has built a successful career of product and company launches and transformations. “We are truly excited to honor Greg tonight as our Distinguished Alumnus in Industrial Engineering.”

“I’m honored to receive this Distinguished Alumni Award from the institution that provided such a rock-solid foundation for my business career,” Coticchia, chief executive officer of Sopheon, said. “It has been a privilege to remain involved with the Pitt community in various capacities through the years. I look forward to continuing to help train and mentor the business leaders of the future.”

About Greg Coticchia 

Greg Coticchia is an award-winning entrepreneur, business leader, professor, and author with over thirty years of experience in tech products and services. He serves as the CEO and a Board Member of Sopheon (LON: SPE), a leader in enterprise innovation and product management software and services. Prior to Sopheon, he created and launched Carnegie Mellon University’s Master’s Program in Product Management (MSPM), the world’s first product management degree, serving as its founding executive director. 

Earlier in his career, Coticchia was a serial entrepreneur, participating in 14 start-ups (founding four), and participating as an executive in various size organizations, from “$0M to over $1B” in revenue. He has raised over $73M in venture capital in his career and has actively participated in over seventeen mergers and acquisitions. He has served as CEO (four times), President and COO, and has been involved or responsible for the launch of over 100 products and solutions, and several companies. Coticchia has served on many boards, both profit and nonprofit. 

A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh in Industrial Engineering, where he also received his MBA, he teaches several courses, including B2B marketing at the University of Pittsburgh Katz School of Business. He holds certificates in Entrepreneurial Management from Carnegie Mellon University and Professional Coaching from Duquesne University. Coticchia was named as a finalist three times for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and for the Tech 50 CEO of the Year. He was also named a 2006 Distinguished Graduate of the University of Pittsburgh (Katz). His book, “Start Your Startup Right” is available on Amazon.

“Steve is another remarkable Pitt Engineer who is a testament to the interdisciplinary nature of engineering, and how earning a degree in one field can catapult you to success in another," noted Alan George, Department Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Following his role as a clinical engineer at The Ohio State University Medical Center, he began a nearly three-decade career at Philips, where he is now senior product development leader in the company’s sleep & respiratory care division. He is an innovator and inventor who is dedicated to helping Philips recruit the next generation of engineer, and we are privileged to honor him as this year's Distinguished Alumnus in Electrical and Computer Engineering.”

About Stephen Mozelewski

Stephen Mozelewski is a Senior Product Development Leader in Philips’ Sleep & Respiratory Care division.  He is responsible for leading the development of new medical products and associated software applications used in diagnosing and/or treating various sleep disorders.  Throughout his 26-year career with Philips, Mozelewski has advanced in position from Electrical Engineer through Senior Engineering Manager, assuming increasing leadership responsibility for the release of numerous products. His teams have released more than 20 new medical devices and 25 significant software application updates. One product developed under Mozelewski’s leadership, the Alice PDx™, was awarded a “gold” Medical Design Excellence Award from Canon Communications.  He is also the author of 7 invention disclosures on new product innovations.

Prior to his work at Philips, Mozelewski was employed by The Ohio State University Medical Center as a Clinical Engineer. In this role, he was responsible for leading a team in repair and preventive maintenance of medical equipment, advising nursing staff on selection of new medical equipment, assisting in investigating device failure reports, and training staff on the safe use of medical devices.

Mozelewski received a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh (1987), where he graduated first in his class in the School of Engineering. He also received an MS in Biomedical Engineering from The Ohio State University (1991) and remains active as the Vice Chair of the External Advisory Council for the Biomedical Engineering Department. Mozelewski is a licensed Professional Engineer in the states of Pennsylvania and Ohio and received the highest score in the state on the Electrical Engineering P.E. licensure exam the year that he sat for it. He is a member of the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE). He is also active in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), currently serving as both the Chair of the Pittsburgh Section of IEEE and the Chair of the Pittsburgh Section of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS). Mozelewski is a member of the Project Management Institute (PMI), through whom he has achieved Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.

“Patty’s education at Pitt established the foundation of nearly four decades in government service at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department Of Energy. She became one of the leading experts in environmental and energy policy, from water management and environmental remediation to nuclear safety," explained Radisav Vidic, Department Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “She later served as both deputy and acting director of environmental programs for her home county in Maryland, utilizing her wealth of expertise to expand sustainable environmental programs as well as education and outreach. And with an appointment from the governor of Maryland, she now serves as on the public service commision to set utility rates and ensure that the state meets zero emissions and sustainability goals.

“In many ways, patty’s dedication to a more sustainable future still resonates with our students to day, who can look to her as an inspiration for environmental excellence and securing a safer, more sustainable world for the next generation." 

About Patty Bubar

Patrice “Patty” Bubar graduated from the University of Pittsburgh Civil Engineering school in 1978.  She started her career with the U.S. government at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) immediately after graduation. Over the next 37 years, she worked at EPA, Department of Energy (DOE) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Responsibilities at these various agencies included senior leadership roles in ensuring clean water by addressing stormwater runoff, ensuring safe and environmentally responsible cleanup and closure of nuclear waste sites managed by DOE and a strong regulatory framework for operation of nuclear reactors.  These opportunities allowed Bubar to be recognized as a knowledgeable expert in environmental and energy policy and program development. 

After retiring from the federal government, Bubar served as the Deputy Director and Acting Director of the environmental program for Montgomery County, Maryland where she lives. In this position, she was responsible for many operational programs serving the residents of the county, such as advanced recycling and integrated solid waste management, stormwater management infrastructure, and educational workshops focusing on green infrastructure. She was an active participant in the county’s effort to implement a pilot program to provide clean energy to the residents through a community choice aggregation program. 

In 2022, she was appointed by the Governor of Maryland as a Commissioner on the Public Service Commission. In this role, she works with the 4 other commissioners to set the rates charged to customers by the energy utilities in Maryland as well as ensure that the environmental and energy goals set by the Maryland legislature related to zero greenhouse gas emissions are met. Patty says her Pitt education provided the necessary foundation for a successful career by creating a love of learning how to solve problems as well as working as a member of a team.

“Like many who graduated from the program during the 1950s and ‘60s, Mark didn’t have to wait long to find a job in the oil and gas sector, which is why so many of our alumni from that time are now in Texas and the southern states,” noted Steven R. Little, Department Chair of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering. “With five decades of experience and insight in the industry, as well as his ability to navigate future trends, Mark understands that today’s students must have the engineering expertise and ingenuity to help that transition take place, especially as so many oil and gas employees from his generation retire. He has been instrumental in helping us adapt our program to produce the chemical engineer of the future."

About Mark Papa

Mark Papa grew up in Monroeville, just 15 miles from the Pitt campus. He graduated from Pitt in 1968 with a BS in Petroleum Engineering degree and later received an MBA from the University of Houston in 1980.  Papa worked for Conoco in various engineering roles 1968-1981 in Corpus Christi, New Orleans, Houston, and Dubai. In 1981 he joined Belco Petroleum, a company that, after several mergers, became Enron Oil & Gas. In 1999, Papa led the company in a split from Enron just two years before Enron imploded. He became the first Chairman and CEO of the renamed oil & gas company – EOG Resources. During his tenure of leadership 1999-2013 the company’s market cap grew from $2 billion to $54 billion and the stock value increased 2200%. EOG was the first company in the world to develop the horizontal drilling and fracturing technology to make shale oil commercial, which made the US self sufficient in oil production for the first time in over 50 years, and substantially affected global oil markets. 

After retiring from EOG in 2013, Papa started another smaller oil company in 2016, Permian Resources. He retired from that company in 2019. Today, Papa is Chairman of SLB, the world’s largest oilfield service company, employing 100,000 people globally. He has been married to his wife Susan for 53 years and has one daughter and two grandchildren.

“Aside from being a brilliant engineer and entrepreneur, Don finds purpose in giving back to the Swanson School in part by mentoring or teaching our students and educating by example," noted Mark Redfern, Interim Department Chair of Bioengineering. “Don’s leadership as assistant vice chancellor for the health sciences and executive director of SciVelo accelerated translational research and commercialization at the university level. SciVelo trained over 50 of our bioengineering graduate students in the discipline of supporting faculty to commercialize their research and many of those students have gone on to use their degrees in ways that they otherwise would not have been able to do. We are proud to honor him this evening.”

About Dr. Donald Taylor

Donald P. Taylor, PhD, MBA, CLP is the Executive Director of Licensing for The Ohio State University since 2021. Just prior, he served as Assistant Vice Chancellor for Commercial Translation in the Health Sciences, Executive Director of sciVelo and Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh, which included responsibilities for working across the six Pitt health sciences schools and the Pitt School of Engineering to advance the commercialization of Pitt’s health sciences research and intellectual property. He also served Pitt Engineering by acting as associate director of entrepreneurship for the Center for Medical Innovation and taught classes including Medical Product Entrepreneurship and Medical Product Ideation.

Taylor’s basic and translational research investigated mechanisms of breast cancer metastatic latency through computational models and human, 3D-perfused micro-scale tissue bioreactors under Dr. Alan Wells. He explored approaches for diagnostic and therapeutic treatment of quiescent lesions, and his research supported that targeting therapeutics to adjacent noncarcinoma cells is a viable strategy to treat metastatic disease. This research has led to publications in high impact journals such as Cancer Research and he was an invited speaker to present his findings at the American Association for Cancer Research in 2014. Taylor is also a co-inventor on a Pitt patent filed from his research in the related field of wound healing.  

A five-time life sciences entrepreneur, Dr. Taylor previously served as vice president of corporate development for Cellumen Inc., a bio-tools company, and for its spin-off company, Cernostics Inc., a cancer molecular diagnostics company. Prior to these positions, Taylor was the global pharmaceutical and biotechnology market segment manager for Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., where he led product marketing campaigns involving a sales team of more than 500 people and $400 million in revenue. Prior to Thermo Fisher, Taylor served in a life sciences business development role with an artificial intelligence company (Vivisimo) that was later acquired by IBM as part of their big data platform expansion. He has served on the board of directors of several biotechnology companies and spent 6 years in life sciences economic development as an Executive in Residence with the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse. 

Taylor received his BS in information systems from Carnegie Mellon University and his MS and PhD degrees in bioengineering from the Swanson School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. He earned an MBA at Pitt’s Katz Graduate School of Business and conducted postdoctoral research in pathology at Pitt’s School of Medicine.

Lisa Stabryla was excelling in her AP math and science courses at Carrick High School in Pittsburgh when her teachers suggested she look into engineering as a career.

She knew she liked math and science, but engineering? She wasn’t sure.

“I didn’t really know what it meant to be an engineer,” she said. “I went in kind of blind. I didn’t know exactly what kind of engineering work I would want to do.”

But today, Stabryla is a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where she works in the Complex Microbial Systems group as an environmental engineer. Her time at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering helped her shape a career path that was just right for her. 

When deciding on an engineering program, she thought the Swanson School stood out from other schools in the area because of the many paths it offered her and the different opportunities she could pursue there. 

“I felt I could learn the most the quickest here,” she said, referring to Pitt’s faculty, state-of-the-art labs, research opportunities, and other resources she saw available to her. 

Stabryla chose to enter the Engineering Science program, which allowed her to design her own interdisciplinary curriculum around interests like materials science, nanotechnology, and bioengineering. She didn’t realize it at the time but this would equip her with the fundamentals for her graduate studies and eventual work in the environmental engineering field.

“I was taking a bunch of different courses and trying to figure out what exactly I was passionate about,” said Stabryla. 

During her studies, Stabryla completed three co-op rotations and an internship. Those experiences showed her what she didn’t like—an important part of anyone’s journey—but also what she did like: open-ended, discovery-based research. She pursued several undergraduate research opportunities in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and her path became clear.

After graduating in 2015, she joined Associate Professor Leanne Gilbertson’s lab as a graduate student researcher. There, she was introduced to the idea of using nanomaterials for water treatment and bacterial disinfection. Stabryla’s Engineering Science track, with its focus on materials science and nanotechnology, provided solid footing for her to pursue interdisciplinary work beyond the traditional tenets of environmental engineering on nanomaterials. 

“Traditionally, you might think of environmental engineers as designing and managing drinking water and wastewater treatment systems,” she said. “But my work uniquely combined materials science and microbiology to guide sustainable design of next-generation antimicrobial agents using nanotechnology, like nano-enabled antimicrobials, to combat antimicrobial resistance.” 

Stabryla says she never would’ve considered graduate school if it wasn’t for the support and encouragement of Pitt EXCEL, the Swanson School’s undergraduate diversity program, and her undergraduate research advisor, Dr. Kyle Bibby.

“As a commuter student, Pitt EXCEL helped me feel like I had developed a family on campus,” said Stabryla. “And importantly, they encouraged me to continue on to graduate school, something I had never even considered a possibility before until my final semester of undergrad.”

Today, Stabryla has a PhD in environmental engineering, which she completed in 2021. Her work at NIST employs molecular and culture-based microbiological methods to study and enable better detection of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, which pose a serious threat to global public health. It specifically addresses measurement challenges associated with antimicrobial resistance, an important part of NIST’s core mission. 

Stabryla says working with early- and mid-career female faculty members in engineering during her graduate work solidified her passion for engineering and a career in academic research. She hopes her work at NIST will give her a unique perspective to bring back to a university setting, where she plans to continue exploring creative solutions that protect public health and the quality of the environment. 

“I had a female advisor (Leanne Gilbertson) and my PhD committee was made up entirely of female experts in their fields. It has been empowering to work with strong women who are at the top of their fields, especially in traditionally male-dominated fields like engineering,” said Stabryla. ”That has given me the confidence I need to pursue my own career in academic research.”

When Yan Wang went to college to pursue her undergraduate degree in 2005 at Sun Yat-sen University in China, the field of environmental engineering was just beginning to take off. Wang knew she wanted to get on board.

“Environmental engineering was a very new, emerging area. People were just starting to get excited about it,” said Wang. “I started to see a bright future there.” 

She pursued a Master's degree in environmental engineering at Zheijiang University, also in China, after her undergraduate study, but she was hungry for more. When she and her husband—a mechanical engineer—began planning their next move, the University of Pittsburgh’s research focus caught their attention. Both she and her husband joined the Swanson School of Engineering as graduate students in 2015. 

Wang joined Associate Professor Leanne Gilbertson’s research group, focusing primarily on sustainable design of carbon nanomaterials for advanced energy, environmental, and biological applications. Her research sought to better understand the relationships that correlate material properties to their functional performance and potential hazard to human health and the environment. A second focus of Wang’s research was life cycle assessment, proactively quantifying life cycle impact and benefit trade-offs of emerging products and processes to evaluate their feasibility and identify improvement opportunities that ensure net benefit realization.

She says that learning to disseminate her findings and receiving criticism from the peer-review process sharpened Wang’s communication skills—a key to her success today. 

“You have to be able to tell people what you’re doing and why you’re doing it,” she said. “I learned to communicate with colleagues and present my findings to people, and I gained experience writing grant proposals during my PhD. I really appreciated having that experience when I moved on from Pitt.”

After graduating from Pitt in 2020, Wang took a postdoctoral position at the University of California, Berkeley & the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, where she focused on systems-level analysis of energy systems, including process design, techno-economic analysis, and life cycle assessment. She primarily leveraged modeling and data science skills to understand the life cycle of energy systems to reduce economic and environmental impacts.

Today, Wang is a techno-economic engineer at Shell Hydrogen, where she works to make renewable energy more practical and economically beneficial. Her experience in lab work and systems-level analysis from her graduate and postdoctoral work gave her the perfect mix of skills to solve energy and environmental challenges. 

“One thing led to another and another. Every step of my career has given me a very strong foundation for the next step,” said Wang. “I feel really excited for this industry. There are a lot of challenges and uncertainties, but I know now I want to be in an industry that is solving real-world problems.” 

He did not yet know that not only would he earn three engineering degrees from Pitt, but that he’d also eventually be directly involved in preserving and repairing those bridges.

Kasan began attending Pitt in 2003, knowing that he was interested in engineering but not sure of his eventual track. A lifelong fly fisherman, Kasan initially thought he might be interested in environmental engineering so that he could help clean up the local creeks and waterways through acid mine drainage remediation. After taking Dr. John Oyler’s course on mechanics, though, Kasan discovered a love of the subject—and the first piece of the puzzle of his career. His co-op at an environmental engineering company confirmed the idea that the field was not the right fit.

“I was kicking around other ideas, and Dr. Oyler's mechanics course was sticking in my mind,” said Kasan. “I thought, ‘This makes too much sense for me.’ I started to pursue that direction. I ended up taking a left turn, got a co-op with American Bridge Company, and never looked back.”

Kent Harries, professor of civil and environmental engineering and Kasan’s future advisor, gave an introductory presentation in one of the undergraduate seminars—another puzzle piece that influenced Kasan’s view of the field and eventual interest in structural engineering.

“Knowing what I liked with American Bridge Company, and some of the work that was possible through Dr. Harries’ lab, I knew I wanted to get involved,” he said. “A lot of times when you talk to structural engineers, you're either a concrete or a steel person, and I didn't want to go that route. I wanted to be able to understand how these materials behave and the rest would work out.”

Soon, Kasan was a graduate student working in Harries’ lab. There, he had the chance to do work that directly impacted the local community by helping PennDOT develop their approach to prestressed concrete bridge girder repair, directly contributing guidelines still used today. 

“I was hoping to do something that had an impact. I wasn't expecting to reinvent the wheel with my graduate research, but I wanted something that would be useful, and something that would be reasonable in practice,” said Kasan. “I was excited that it all came to fruition.”

Since leaving Pitt with a masters and PhD, both earned while working in Harries’ lab, Kasan has been involved in exciting projects from coast to coast. Today, he works at HDR Inc., completing bridge designs and - looking at the big picture - ensuring constructability of designs. 

“As you put together a bridge project, you have to consider everything, not just the final structure,” he said. “You have to dig into the details to ensure everything fits together and the bigger picture makes sense.”

Kasan’s big-picture-building career today can be attributed to his time at Pitt, where faculty, staff and other students took the time to help him think through big ideas.

“When I look back at Pitt, the thing that sticks out is the incredible people who work there and the amount of effort they are willing to help, provide insight and provide guidance,” added Kasan. “I think of the Co-Op Program, I think of Dr. Harries, Dr. Brigham and Dr. Oyler, Charles Hager, and I think of the many other professors who would be willing to take the time to help you flesh out your ideas. I was fortunate to be able to find individuals who were incredibly talented, ready to help, and interested in my success.”

Bhavna Sharma’s career has taken her all across the world, but the connections she forged at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering helped her map her own unique career path.

With an eye toward historical restoration and preservation, Sharma (CEE PhD ‘10) left her hometown of Honolulu, Hawaii, to pursue a BS and MA in architecture and art history, respectively, at the State University of New York at Buffalo. While she learned about the historical perspectives of architecture, she wanted to do more.

“I realized quickly that I didn't really have the skill sets to complete a restoration, so I got interested in structural engineering,” said Sharma. “I actually went back home, to the University of Hawaii, and did a masters in structural engineering, to get that engineering perspective and go into preservation work.”

Once there, however, Sharma says she “got the research bug” and discovered a passion for sustainability. She became an NSF IGERT (Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship) Fellow at the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (MCSI) at the University of Pittsburgh and was able to craft her own PhD to study the performance of bamboo structures in northeast India with Kent Harries, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Pitt.

“I reached out to Kent Harries, because his work aligned with a lot of my interests. I shared my full background in architecture, architectural history, and structural engineering, and he shared a project he had been trying to work on with a former student in Northeast India looking at Bamboo,” recalled Sharma. “It brought all of my expertise together perfectly, and with the IGERT Fellowship, I was able to focus on that as part of my PhD.”

In pursuing her degree at MCSI and the Swanson School of Engineering, Sharma made rewarding connections—both local and international—that influenced her career for years to come. After graduating with her PhD in 2010, she stayed on with MCSI as a postdoctoral researcher and then visiting assistant professor. Since then, she’s criss-crossed the globe, from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Cambridge University and the University of Bath in England.

Returning to the U.S. in 2019, Sharma is now an assistant professor at the University of Southern California and is on the USC President’s Working Group for Sustainability. The connections she made at Pitt continue to be an integral part of her career. 

“Over the many years we've known each other, first as a student, and then as a postdoc, and now as an assistant professor, Dr. Harries continued to mentor me and provide guidance,” Sharma said. “We've actually managed to kind of collaborate along the way, as well. I can’t overemphasize the impact those connections have had and continue to have on my career.”

Growing up in a small eastern Pennsylvania borough, Kareem Rabbat never once thought his passion for problem-solving and nascent engineering career would transport him to the Southwest to work for the federal government.

Yet today, the person one professor described as the “poster child for environmental engineering” is part of a team of engineers tasked with designing and constructing water, wastewater and solid waste facilities on federally recognized tribal lands. 

“It hadn’t crossed my mind that I’d be working with Native American communities here in New Mexico,” he said. “But if I take a step back to get a more peripheral view of my experiences, it makes sense.”

Rabbat honed his passion for environmental engineering at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in spring 2020. A native of Bangor, Pa., he relocated to Albuquerque in May 2022 to start a new chapter in his career as an environmental engineer for Indian Health Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that supports American Indians and Alaska Natives. 

At Pitt, Rabbat developed a deep interest in environmentalism and climate activism. In his sophomore year, he co-founded Ecotone Renewables, a student-led sustainable agriculture startup that transforms food waste into fertilizer and natural methane gas. He also worked to identify bacteria and fungi capable of degrading environmental contaminants as part of a summer research project funded by Pitt’s Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation.

“He was – and still is – a very imaginative and quite an out-of-the-box thinker. He had some crazy ideas, but a lot of solutions to big problems come from crazy ideas,” said Sarah Haig, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Pitt, who selected Rabbat to join her research group. 

Haig described Rabbat as the “poster child for environmental engineering” and remembered him bringing high energy, enthusiasm and dedication to his work at Pitt.

“He’s passionate about the world around us and how we need to leave it in a better state for our children and our children’s children,” she said, “and he deeply wants to help people with his degree.”

Helping underserved communities

That zeal drives Rabbat in his work at Indian Health Service in New Mexico – home to 23 federally recognized tribes and more than 212,000 Native Americans. As an engineer for the agency, he works to bring critical infrastructure to communities which today still face high rates of poverty, substandard housing, unsafe water supplies and unsanitary wastewater disposal.

Across the United States, fewer than half of Native households on tribal lands are connected to public sewer systems, and more than a third of Native families live in overcrowded homes that lack plumbing, heating, refrigeration and other basic amenities, according to the National Congress of American Indians and the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Such living conditions often lead to environmental hazards that can adversely affect the health status of Native populations – which is why Indian Health Service operates on a mission to support the well-being of tribal communities.

Rabbat, who works with the Nambé, Cochiti and Tesuque pueblos, said no two workdays are the same, given the changing needs of each community. One day he might connect a new home to a sewer or waterline, and the next, he may supervise an emergency repair at a wastewater treatment plant. One critical aspect of his job involves inspecting existing sanitation facilities to ensure that the communities he serves have continuous access to clean, safe water. 

“It’s mind-boggling to think that there are people here in the United States still living without water connections and stuff like that,” he said. “It’s great to serve these people who, for much of history, have gone underserved, unnoticed and persecuted.”

He added: “I never thought I’d be working for the government, and now I have a job where I interface with two governments. It’s been a great learning opportunity and very humbling.”

Before joining the federal workforce, Rabbat worked as a research chemist for a private company. Nearly a year into that role, he knew he wanted a more fulfilling career. As he looked for other jobs, he reached out to a friend and fellow Pitt alumnus who was working for Indian Health Service in Arizona. Rabbat wasn’t familiar with agency but quickly became intrigued when he learned of work opportunities in environmental engineering.

“I applied and later heard back from the offices in New Mexico, which offered me a job,” he said, adding, “I accepted without hesitation.”

It’s a career path that comes as no surprise to David Sanchez, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Pitt, who remembers Rabbat as a creative, ambitious and hard-working student. 

“Kareem wants to have an impact,” Sanchez said. “I think what’s most exciting and what I’m proud of when it comes to Kareem is seeing him take what he’s learned and translate it to have an impact. He does a wonderful job representing some of the things we see in our engineering students at Pitt.”

Making the ‘right choice’

Rabbat had never considered becoming an environmental engineer – until he arrived at Pitt. Growing up, he was fond of the outdoors but felt he needed to pursue a more conventional career path and entered college as a business major. 

Soon, though, his interest in business waned, and he ended up switching majors. He gave himself two options: environmental science or environmental engineering. If he could pass a required math course, he told himself, he would choose the latter.

“It was basically contingent upon this one class,” he said. “So, I took this math class, and I was like, ‘All right. This is all right. I’ll do environmental engineering.’ I felt like I would be able to do more with an engineering degree.”

His decision was also deeply personal. 

“I grew up doing all sorts of outdoor activities with my dad before he passed away when I was 15 years old,” he said. “I want to be sure that I’m able to do the same activities with my son, and that his son can do them with his son, and so on. That’s why I want to do my part to make sure we still have forests and clean water and stuff like that for future generations.”

Now, working for Indian Health Service, Rabbat is sure he made the right choice.

“I know this is where I can best use my talents and passions,” he said.

Rabbat said he’d like to spend a few years working for the federal government before branching out on his own to become a licensed professional engineer and build a career around his many interests.

“I am very interested in bioremediation. I love being outside. I love animals, and I love growing things,” he said. “If I could do all that with my own company and be the change I want to see in the world, I’d be very happy.”

By Carlos Andres López

Givi, who earned his master’s and PhD in engineering from Carnegie Mellon, will be honored with his fellow alumni on Friday, October 28. 

“I am humbled and thankful to Carnegie Mellon to be acknowledged along so many distinguished alumni from engineering and education to the performing arts and public policy,” Givi said. “My career path could not have been possible without the foundation built by my education at Youngstown State and CMU. My gratitude to Carnegie Mellon and the selection committee for including me with such an outstanding cohort of alumni.” 

From the Carnegie Mellon Award site: 

While Peyman Givi’s work may be highly theoretical, his impact on his field, his students and his community are far from it.

A modern-day rocket scientist, Peyman is widely recognized as a world leader for his work in computational simulation and mathematical modeling of reactive systems of importance in propulsion. He is equally lauded as a uniquely talented researcher, scholar and mentor.

His education began at Youngstown State University where he received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering before earning a master’s degree and Ph.D. from CMU’s College of Engineering. Over the span of his career, he has been credited as one of the original developers of direct numerical simulation of turbulent reacting flows and is currently developing new techniques for large eddy simulation of such flows. Peyman has significantly influenced NASA's advanced propulsion programs and impacted private industry, where engine companies have used his concepts in their design codes for turbojet engine development and design. Peyman currently serves as the Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh where his work focuses on investigating the potential of quantum computing for solving problems in aerospace science and engineering.

In recognition of considerable contributions to his field, he has received numerous honors including NASA’s highest civilian award, the Public Service Medal, and the Presidential Faculty Fellowship, which he received at the White House. He is the first and only member of the University of Pittsburgh faculty to have been elected as a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, an honor he shares with Neil Armstrong and Wernher von Braun. Additionally, he is also achieved Fellow status in every prime professional society for his field.

Peyman generously gives his time and services to the scientific community, serving as a mentor to Ph.D. students, many of whom have gone on to become successful researchers, scientists, engineers, and distinguished educators themselves. He helps to organize large conferences and workshops in the United States and abroad, delivers numerous lectures throughout the year and serves on editorial boards of several top ranked journals.
 

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