RAMBLIN' ROLL
Kovac Elected President of Sheridan Construction CHRISTY PEACOCK KOVAC, BC 91, has been elected as president of Sheridan Construction—making her the first woman to lead a major construction company in Middle Georgia. Kovac has more than 20 years of experience in the construction industry in both preconstruction and project management. The Macon native began her career with Sheridan Construction more than a decade ago as an estimator. She was promoted to vice president of preconstruction in 2011 and was named executive vice president in 2014. As president of Sheridan Construction, established in 1947, Kovac will lead day-to-day operations. Kovac graduated from Georgia Tech in 1991 and earned an MBA in finance from Mercer University in 1994. She chairs the Associated General Contractor’s Central Georgia Workforce Development Alliance and is vice president of the Macon Area Habitat for Humanity board. She is a LEED Accredited Professional, a member of the U.S. Green Building Council Central Georgia Branch Leadership Group and a member of the Downtown Macon Rotary Club.
2000s Aman Advani, IE 07, co-founder and president of Ministry, announced his company has opened its first retail store in Atlanta at the Shops Around Lenox. Ministry sells performance professional clothing for men and women. Paul Judge, MS CS 01, PhD CS 02, has been named in Fortune’s 40 Under 40. The serial entrepreneur founded PureWire, an
Internet traffic scrubber; Pindrop Security, which fights phone fraud; and Luma, which makes Wi-Fi devices. Erika Gemzer, ChBE 09, established Artocr.at, an art company that creates custom oil and watercolor paintings. Salil Sethi, CS 05, founded GoSchoolWise. com, an EdTech startup that helps high school students with college admission using data analytics and artificial intelligence.
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WEITNAUER NAMED ECE SENIOR ASSOCIATE CHAIR MARY ANN WEITNAUER, PHD ECE 89, has been appointed senior associate chair for Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She succeeds Douglas B. Williams, who has been named as the associate dean for administration and finance in Tech’s College of Engineering. Weitnauer joined the ECE faculty after graduating with her PhD in electrical engineering in 1989, becoming the school’s third female faculty member. She is the director of the Smart Antenna Research Laboratory and currently advises three PhD students. She has been active in course development, most recently by helping develop the blended method of teaching ECE 2040 Circuit Analysis and in recording some of the MOOC videos for ECE 3710 Linear Circuits. Weitnauer is the author or co-author of more than 190 refereed journal and conference papers, including four conference papers that won Best Paper awards. She also holds 23 patents and invention disclosures. She was an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing from 2009-2012 and is currently associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. Weitnauer is a senior member of IEEE, and has been a visiting professor at Aalborg University in Denmark and Idaho National Labs. Throughout her career, Weitnauer has been involved in many different Georgia Tech faculty governance committees, most recently as a member of the Institute's Statutes Committee and the Georgia Tech Executive Board, and in creating a supportive environment for women at Georgia Tech. From 2006-12, Weitnauer held the Georgia Tech ADVANCE Professorship, where she led activities to support the advancement of female tenure-track faculty in the College of Engineering. She has served on several search committees, including committees for the Steve W. Chaddick School Chair, the ELSYS lab director at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, and the vice president for Institute Diversity.