Alumni Achievements – Missouri S&T 150

Making the perfect snacks

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 21:01:34 +0000

Frito-Lay’s Topeka, Kansas, plant operates 24 hours a day, so while most of us are sleeping, Catherine Swift, a 2010 graduate in mechanical engineering, is monitoring production lines that produce bagged snack foods, ready for supermarket shelves. Swift helps monitor the plant’s production process for moisture and oil levels, and each shift compares its batches to a reference product for appearance, flavor and texture. Swift ensures that the snacks that leave the Topeka plant are the same quality as the ones made in other locations.

Y2K debugger

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 20:59:22 +0000

As the clock ticked down to the year 2000, computer scientists around the world were fretting about the so-called “Y2K bug,” which many feared would wreak havoc on our heavily computerized society. In the late 1990s, a computer program created by Rex Widmer, a computer science graduate in 1972, put many minds at ease. Widmer’s Portfolio Analyzer could quickly and efficiently locate lines of code that needed to be changed before the clock struck midnight on Jan. 1, 2000. The program could “munch through 100,000 programs – perhaps millions of lines of code – in a day,” he said in a 1998 interview. Unfortunately, Widmer never lived to see the success of his software. He died in a car accident in January 1999 while returning home to Shawnee Mission, Kansas, from a campus visit.

Quality U.

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 20:53:59 +0000

At the height of the total quality management (TQM) movement, organizations across the nation sought to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award as validation to their pursuit of performance excellence. In Missouri, the Midwest Excellence Institute established a similar recognition program — the Missouri Quality Award — based on the same criteria as the national award. Under the direction of then-chancellor John T. Park, Missouri S&T became the first university in the state to win the Missouri Quality Award.

For the love of circuits

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 20:50:35 +0000

Emily Hernandez, who earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 2016, began recruiting minorities to STEM fields even before she started college. She started in eighth grade during a camp called Girls Experiencing Engineering near her hometown of Germantown, Tennessee.

Today, Hernandez works at CelLink in San Carlos, California, where she designs and builds flexible circuits for high-speed applications. She says she’s fascinated by hardware design, signal integrity and power electronics in addition to their evolution as technology continues to advance.

Cheryl D.S. Walker: engineer, curator, lawyer, poet

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 20:46:36 +0000

Cheryl D.S. Walker is dedicated to serving her community and the UM System.

Cheryl D.S. Walker, who earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1986, has many talents and many pursuits. Dedicated to serving her community and the University of Missouri System, she’s also devoted to music and the arts, especially poetry.

The S&T community may best know Walker from her service to higher education. A member of the University of Missouri Board of Curators in the mid-2000s, she became the first African American woman to chair the board in 2008. She also co-chaired the UM System’s presidential search committee in 2016. But beyond the university, she has lent her time, talent and expertise to several St. Louis-based organizations and causes, including the Deaconess Center for Child Well-Being; the Regional Health Commission (chair); the St Louis Poet Laureate Selection Committee; (task force chair); St. Louis Social Venture Partners; Sheldon Art Galleries; and the Ferguson Commission, where she was appointed as pro bono general counsel by Missouri Gov.r Jay Nixon following the death of Michael Brown. In 2017, she received a St. Louis Business Journal’s Most Influential Women honor, and in 2012 she received the National Society of Black Engineers’ Excellence in the Legal Profession award.

Now with the Chicago law firm Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila LLP, she still finds time to express herself through poetry. Two of her poems have been accompanied by musical scores: one for chamber music, performed and recorded by the St. Louis Women’s Chorale, and the other for jazz, performed and recorded by the Bosman Twins, two St. Louis-based musicians.

Creating fashion for feet

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 20:46:03 +0000

When Darla Ellis, a 2006 graduate in chemical engineering, began a summer internship with Nike, Inc. during her senior year at Missouri S&T, she already owned a well-loved pair of their shoes. She returned to campus at the end of the summer with eight pairs.

Today, Ellis continues to wear Nikes to work as a process engineering manager at the company’s location in St. Charles, Missouri. “We’re a pretty casual bunch here,” says Ellis. “There are days I might have to crawl behind a big piece of machinery, and that’s not really something you want to do in a business suit.”

Studying the past to improve the future

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 19:11:52 +0000

Katy Bloomberg, who earned her bachelor’s degree in history in 2006, believes that her experience working in S&T’s Archives prepared her for her work in the federal government. Bloomberg has worked in the Defense Department in Washington, D.C., as a program analyst at the Commission on Wartime Contracting. The contracting commission develops recommendations to improve government contracting during war. Bloomberg’s group studied sustainability and reconstruction.

Leading a national lab

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 19:10:35 +0000

At Sandia National Laboratories, Joan Woodard, a mathematics graduate in 1973, was the executive vice president and deputy laboratories director for more than 10 years. Woodard, who retired in May 2010, joined Sandia in 1974 and held various positions of increasing responsibility. She served as executive leader for the nuclear weapons program, as the executive for all programs in nonproliferation, military technology and systems, energy, environment and waste management technology, and intelligence, and as chief operating officer responsible for all operations of areas within the laboratories.

Once-in-a-lifetime cab ride

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 19:05:09 +0000

Tamerate Tadesse is a SCADA automation engineer but started his career as an airport taxi driver.

“I like to talk to people, I like to ask questions,” says Tadesse, a 2015 electrical engineering graduate. One day, Tadesse gave Peter Desloge, chairman and CEO of Watlow Electric Manufacturing Co., a ride to his home.

After seeing Tadesse’s adapted laptop charger, Desloge inquired about Tadesse’s hobbies and plans for the future. Tadesse told Desloge he has always enjoyed fixing things, especially electronics. Desloge encouraged Tadesse to pursue engineering, and even shared some of his own experience with his cab driver.

“Something clicked in my mind,” he says. “It was kind of a miracle for me.” The chance experience encouraged Tadesse to further his education and study engineering at S&T. He still keeps Desloge’s business card in his wallet for good luck.

Giving others an opportunity

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 19:04:05 +0000

Steven Frey works to ensure others have the opportunity to attend graduate programs at S&T like he did. Frey says that he was only able to attend graduate school – he earned a master’s degree in physics in 1986 – because of a teaching assistant position and an anonymous donor.

“My master’s degree really differentiated me from others looking for jobs when I graduated,” says Frey.

Frey is now a member of the Order of the Golden Shillelagh donor recognition society and has also given to the physics development fund. He currently works as a principal systems engineer at L3 ISR Systems.