During a gala event on May 1st at the Storrs campus, the School of Engineering honored 15 exceptional alumni as 2014 inductees into the UConn Academy of Distinguished Engineers. Nearly 100 attendees helped to honor the new inductees, each of whom spoke of the profound influence of the UConn School of Engineering in shaping their careers. Distinguished Professional Achievement Awards were presented to:
Robert A. Eckel (B.S. ’80) – Chief Executive Officer of MorphoTrust USA, a Safran company. Under his leadership, MorphoTrust has become a leading provider of identity solutions and services to government agencies in the areas of biometrics and secure credentialing, including U.S. driver’s licenses and passports, the TSA PreCheck program, border management and applicant vetting services. He holds five patents in electronic and optical systems.
Michael Georgiopoulos (Ph.D. ‘86) – Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida. Dr. Georgiopoulos has published more than 60 journal papers and 170 conference papers in a variety of conference and journal venues.
Anindya Ghoshal (M.S. ’96; Ph.D. ’97) – Oversees the Propulsion Materials Research Competency within the Propulsion Division of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. Dr. Ghoshal has authored over 180 technical publications and is a co-inventor on three U.S. patents. His current research focus is on high temperature propulsion materials, propulsion material state awareness and material damage precursors.
Jeanine Armstrong Gouin (B.S. ’87) – Vice President and Managing Director of Milone & MacBroom, Inc., oversees technical operations of the firm’s Water Resources Engineering and Environmental Science disciplines. Since joining the company in 1994, she has been instrumental in its six-fold growth and expansion into five additional states, from Maine to South Carolina.
Lucas A. Hellerich (B.S. ’97; M.S. ’99; Ph.D. ’04) – Senior Project Manager with AECOM, Rocky Hill, Connecticut. Dr. Hellerich leads AECOM’s Connecticut remediation engineering group, provides technical direction of major environmental remediation programs and develops innovative strategies to address significant environmental contamination issues.
D. Britton (“Britt”) Johnston (B.S. ’85) – Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft Corporation, oversees technical direction for Microsoft’s worldwide incubation organization, a portfolio of varied businesses, including public cloud, cloud integrated storage and large format touch devices. Career highlights include working on the first generation of relational database products and SQL query engines, and database programming tools
Jeffrey P. Kubala (B.S. ‘81) – System z Distinguished Engineer at IBM’s Systems and Technology Group, Poughkeepsie, New York, responsible for the architecture, design, and delivery of the System z Logical Partition manager. He directly contributed to the delivery of more than 15 generations of IBM’s multi-billion dollar system zSeries processors. He has 44 technical patents, including 23 filed globally.
Christopher Lettiere (B.S. ’88) – Senior Vice President of Engineering at DRS Defense Solutions/Integrated Defense Systems and Services, Fort Walton Beach, Florida, directs all engineering activities at nine plants nationwide, developing and supporting the company’s Range Instrumentation, Weapon Controls, Unmanned Aircraft, Communications, Avionics, Nuclear Controls, Signal and Imagery Intelligence Sensors product lines.
Michael J. McKeon (B.S. ’90) – Principal in the Washington, DC office of Fish & Richardson P.C., a respected intellectual property and patent trial and litigation attorney representing some of the world’s best known technology companies. He has presented cases before Federal District Courts throughout the country, the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Martha Poulter (B.S. ’88) – Vice President & Chief Information Officer for GE Capital, responsible for the company’s global information technology strategy, organization and deliver of customer value through technology. Her career spans a range of information technology, e-Business and quality leadership roles at GE Capital, Americas, GE Capital Solutions, GE Corporate Financial Services and Southern New England Telephone.
Anne Silberstein (Ph.D. ‘87) – International Training Manager for Saint-Gobain Matériaux de Construction, Paris, France. Dr. Silberstein focuses on sustainable habitats; she is responsible for coordinating the leadership training program for the sector worldwide, and developing new cross-training programs on building physics and competence paths to ensure mastery of key operational functions.
Michael E. Splain (B.S. ’81) – Executive Vice President of the Microelectronics Group at Oracle, responsible for the definition and development of all SPARC processors and chipsets, including the T3, T4, T5, M5 and M6 SPARC microprocessors. Prior to the 2010 Oracle/Sun merger, he worked at Sun Microsystems, Inc., Digital Equipment Corp., Encore Computer Corp. and Ridge Computers.
Leo J. Veilleux, Jr. (B.S. ’85) – Chief Engineer with United Technologies Aerospace Systems (UTAS), responsible for the technical adequacy and safety of engine and aircraft systems. Holder of 27 patents and pending patents, he provides technical leadership for the Engine & Control Systems business unit, developing and advancing technology-leveraged partnerships across government, industry and universities.
Donald J. Victory (B.S. ’81) – Process & Risk Engineering Manager for ExxonMobil Development Company in Houston, Texas. He leads a global team responsible for process design, process safety and facilities layout for major upstream projects, including conventional oil and gas, heavy oil and oil sands, and helium recovery and liquefaction.
John Wyatt (B.S. ’73) – Senior Advisor for Carmagen Engineering. Dr. Wyatt retired from ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company as Team Leader for the Photobioreactor Development team. Co-inventor on seven reactor engineering patents, he was instrumental in the development of experimental capabilities and testing protocols to assess the exothermic potential of new catalysts and chemical processes.
