HOMECOMING 2023 HOMECOMING 2023 HOMECOMING 2023

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3

Homecoming is nearly here! Be sure to save the date for our 60th annual Engineers Breakfast on Friday, November 3. Enjoy delicious food, catch up with old friends and celebrate the college award winners.

Check out the website for more details. We’ll see you at Homecoming!

2020s

Roslyn Norman, BS/ME 2020, and Christian Davila-Peralta, MS/ME 2018 and PhD/ME 2022, founded Paramium Technologies, together with Justin Hyatt. The company was awarded $1.25 million in grants from the National Science Foundation’s Small Business Innovation Research program to build a full-scale commercial production line of highly customized curved reflectors for nextgeneration satellite applications.

Camila Leite Madeira, MS/EnvE 2016 and PhD/EnvE 2020, is a postdoctoral fellow at the State University of Campinas in Brazil. She will soon join the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso as a tenuretrack assistant professor, where she will establish a research group focused on the development of sustainable and cost-effective solutions for wastewater treatment and bioremediation.

2010s

Leah Kaplan, BS/ChE 2018, is a PhD candidate and National Science Foundation graduate research fellow at The George Washington University. She was selected to participate in the 2023 Design & Technology Program of the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics. She will work with other graduate students and early-career professionals to grapple with their roles and responsibilities as designers of built environments/technology, as well as identifying and confronting the ethical issues facing architects, engineers, designers and other technologists today.

Benjamin

Cromey, BS/OptE 2015, was named a 2023 Optica Ambassador by the Optica Foundation. The ambassadors are selected based on demonstrated volunteerism and mentorship skills to provide guidance and advice to a global network of young optics and photonics researchers. Cromey is a senior optical engineer at Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado and a sponsor mentor for the college’s Interdisciplinary Capstone program.

Jack Lundin, MS/MGE 2016, and his brother, William, successfully summited Mount Everest as part of Project No Limit, a campaign to raise awareness and funding for glioblastoma research in memory of their father, Lukas Lundin. The campaign has raised nearly $1 million in addition to the Lundin family’s initial donation. The climb was filmed for inclusion in a documentary with a working title of “No Limit.”

2000s

Otakuye Conroy-Ben, MS/EnvE 2004 and PhD/EnvE 2006, was recognized with a leadership award from the UA Indigenous Resilience Center. ConroyBen is an assistant professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on the biological effects of polluted water. Conroy-Ben is advisor to the ASU chapter of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES).

Kathleen Hofmann, BS/CE 2005, is a civil and cost engineer and sustainability coordinator with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Little Rock, Arkansas. “I get to help solve problems and translate regulations/concepts to something tangible and understandable to others,” she said.

Jennifer Wilcox, PhD/ ChE 2004, is the principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management in the U.S. Department of Energy.

Class Notes

Jennifer Wipf, BS/AgBE 2003, was appointed to the board of directors of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, an organization with a mission to advance Massachusetts’ leadership in the life sciences to grow the industry, add value to the health care system and improve patient lives. Wipf is head of commercial cell engineering at Ginkgo Bioworks Inc. in Boston.

1990s

Jonathan Higgins, BS/CE 1995, was named CEO of Rimkus, a provider of engineering and technical consulting services. Higgins was previously COO and has worked at the company for more than 20 years.

Kini Knudson, BS/CE 1995, was recently named deputy city manager of Goodyear, Arizona. Knudson was previously director of street transportation for the city of Phoenix.

Scott Bellamy, BS/ME 1992, works in NASA’s Planetary Missions Program Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Bellamy is the mission manager for the Europa Clipper mission launching in 2024. He retired from active service with the U.S. Air Force in 2009.

1980s

David Jansen, BS/EE 1985, was appointed interim CEO of Solid Power, a developer of battery cells for electric vehicles

From The Archives

Jonathan Weinberg, who earned MS and PhD degrees in materials science and engineering in 1991 and 1995, wrote to identify himself as the subject of this photo, taken around 1997. Weinberg worked at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory with Peter Smith, who was the principal investigator for both the Imager for Mars Pathfinder (IMP) and Stereo Surface Imager/Robotic Arm Camera (SSI/ RAC) instruments on the NASA Mars Pathfinder and Mars Polar Lander missions, respectively.

“Since the IMP and SSI cameras were nearly identical, I can’t tell which one I’m holding, but it is more likely to be the SSI,” Weinberg said.

in Louisville, Colorado. Jansen has been the company’s president since 2017.

Eric Kalivoda, BS/CE 1980 and MS/CE 1983, was recently named secretary for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development. He has worked in transportation for 40 years.

Marla Peterson, BS/SE 1983, was recently elected to the executive council of engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi. Peterson is a senior technical manager for continuous improvement at Honeywell.

1960s

Thomas Thoma, BS/EE 1969, is the founder and CEO of T-Squared Enterprises in Fairfax, Virginia, where he is a consultant for IT industry clients and the federal government. He is retired from the Department of Defense, where he worked for 51 years.

Terry Keith, BS/MinEng 1962, was featured in a Discover article as a pioneer in volcanology and petrology and one of the first people to explore the devastation in the wake of Mount St. Helens’ 1980 eruption. Her work helped establish the igneous petrology – the study of magma – and geothermal branch of the United States Geological Survey. She is now retired from USGS.