INDUSTRY INSIGHTS PANEL: BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING
3:15-4:45 p.m. | Walls Lounge – ELC 213
Moderator: Prof. Theo Hopper
Prof. Jove Graham
Biomedical Engineering
Jove Graham, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Geisinger health system and a scientific consultant with expertise in medical devices and regulatory affairs. He has authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications and presentations, and been part of 40 investigator-led, externally funded research grants from PCORI, AHRQ, Commonwealth Fund, and others. Jove has over 10 years of experience working for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as an engineer and lead scientific reviewer of new device applications, and his goal is to improve the U.S. healthcare system through better use of real-world data and evidence.
Matt Mosquera ’14
Mechanical Engineering
Matthew (Matt) Mosquera holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University. Matt’s research was focused on designing biomaterials for next generation precision medicine, including working at the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College to identify new drug targets in prostate cancer. Matt has since worked at both large pharmaceutical companies and as a market research consultant, and most recently is in the early stages of launching a startup combining AI and precision medicine for fertility.
Carson Quigley ’16
Biomedical Engineering
Carson Quigley serves as a Senior Strategic Product Manager at KLS Martin, a medical device company based in Jacksonville, Florida. In her role, Carson specializes in the end-to-end development of innovative medical technologies. Her expertise spans the full product lifecycle—from initial concept and design, through regulatory strategy and approvals, to the successful launch of new product lines and ongoing lifecycle management of existing devices.
Paden Troxell ’15, M’17
Mechanical Engineering
Paden Troxell is a Senior Group Engineering Manager in the Digital Health group at Globus Medical. Paden began his career as an Associate Project Engineer designing instruments for robotic spine surgery applications. Paden holds 12 issued patents and contributed to the launch of the surgical technology platforms, including the ExcelsiusGPS robotic navigation system, Excelsius3D imaging system, and ExcelsiusXR extended reality navigation system. In his current role, Paden leads a multidisciplinary team of mechanical, electrical, software, biomedical and chemical engineers, who are working on developing next-generation musculoskeletal implant technologies.
INDUSTRY INSIGHTS PANEL: CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
3:15-4:45 p.m. | Gallery Theater – ELC 301
Moderator: Prof. Kat Wakabayashi
Kimmy Banks ’17
Chemical Engineering
Kimberly Banks, MBA, is a chemical engineer at Merck, currently working in long-term product management and supply chain planning for new oncology products. She has over eight years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry in various roles spanning technical, operations, analytics, project management and supply chain. She started in the Merck manufacturing rotational program, taking roles in Virginia, Ireland and Pennsylvania, before getting her MBA and a Master’s in Supply Chain Management from Indiana University Kelley School of Business.
Jayne Beckmann ’14
Chemical Engineering
Jayne Beckmann is a Process Engineer for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. She has over six years of experience in Wastewater Treatment, Regulatory Compliance and Research & Development, focusing on biological nutrient removal, sidestream treatment, solids handling and system optimization. Jayne holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from Bucknell University, an MS in Chemical Engineering from the University at Buffalo, and is a licensed NYS 4A Wastewater Operator.
Rob Jerman ’78
Chemical Engineering
Bio to come…
Ken McCauley ’78
Chemical Engineering
Kenneth W. (Ken) McCauley, B.S. Chem Eng, MBA, EIT, is an executive leading a company focused in the energy transition space. He has had key roles across a broad range of organizations including the largest global companies as well as public and privately held established firms and start-ups. He also co-founded his own company developing and building energy projects. Across all of these firms, he has worked in approximately 40 countries, including five years of expatriate life resident in Hong Kong and Japan. His career in renewable energy, energy storage systems and microgrids began in 2007 following many years in the business and technology of semiconductors and optical devices. Early in his career, he was a chemical process engineer working in industrial wastewater treatment and hazardous materials compliance. He volunteers time as an Executive Advisory Board member at the New York Institute of Technology, the Bucknell Engineering Alumni Association Board of Directors and is also a Board member of a privately held firm in the energy industry.
Amanda Shapiro ’14
Chemical Engineering
Amanda L. Shapiro is a product manager for Research Chemicals at Honeywell. Amanda has a degree in Chemical Engineering from Bucknell University and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. Her career began as a production engineer where she worked with polymer synthesis, catalysts and absorbents, and pharmaceutical film extrusion. As global product manager for Aclar, she managed a $200M portfolio including working closely with customers and the production site to help ensure product availability. She currently leads new product development for Research Chemicals.
INDUSTRY INSIGHTS PANEL: CIVIL ENGINEERING
3:15-4:45 p.m. | ELC 241 ABCD
Moderator: Prof. Kelly Salyards
Adam Curry ’07
Civil Engineering
Adam T. Curry, P.E., is a Project Executive for Keller North America’s Ground Water Control Division. He has more than 17 years of experience in the geotechnical construction industry specializing in ground freezing, dewatering, deep foundations and grouting. Adam has been involved in such notable projects as New York’s East Side Access and Washington D.C.’s Clean Rivers Project Tunnels.
Tara Earley ’13
Civil Engineering
Tara Earley, MBA, is a project executive at C3M Power Systems, LLC, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Clark Construction. Tara has more than 12 years of experience in the construction industry with time spent in project management, preconstruction and project pursuits, corporate strategic projects, and internal training & development programs. Tara has worked for both general contracting and self-perform divisions within the business. Her project management experience is both public and private work, concentrated in Washington, D.C. Some of her notable projects are the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Eisenhower Memorial, the National Air and Space Museum and the Museum of the Bible.
David Metcalf ’77
Civil Engineering
David D. Metcalf P.E., PTOE has extensive experience in traffic and transportation engineering, having contributed to projects of nearly every scale and level of complexity. His work ranges from collaborating with local communities to enhance safety and multimodal access, to partnering with State Departments of Transportation on billion-dollar interstate improvement initiatives. He is currently serving in his final assignment as the lead traffic engineer for the I-495 Express Lanes Northern Extension in Northern Virginia.
Bill Rinker ’92, M’94
Civil Engineering
Bill Rinker, MSCE, P.E. is the Area Manager for Kleinfelder, Inc. in Philadelphia, Pa. Kleinfelder is a responsive team of engineers, scientists and construction professionals providing solutions that improve clients’ transportation, water, energy and other private infrastructure. Bill has been in the consulting engineering business for the last 25 years. Prior to Bill’s operational management role, he served as the Geotechnical Engineering Manager. Bill also has experience as a Project Engineer and Manager working for specialty design-build contractors focused on subsurface barriers and excavation support systems.
Chris Shust P’28
Balzer & Associates
Christopher M. (Chris) Shust, M.S., P.E., serves as the Engineering Manager at the Richmond office of Balzer and Associates, a Westwood company. With over 25 years of experience in engineering and consulting for land development projects, Chris specializes in planning and designing commercial land development and landscape architecture projects in central and eastern Virginia. His expertise spans site planning and engineering design for shopping centers, commercial properties, healthcare facilities, high-density residential areas, religious institutions, independent and assisted living facilities, office buildings and industrial developments.
INDUSTRY INSIGHTS PANEL: COMPUTER SCIENCE
3:15-4:45 p.m. | Forum – ELC 272
Moderator: Prof. Annie Ross
Gia Hayes ’20
Computer Science & Engineering
Gia Hayes is a Software Engineer at Microsoft, where she works on Microsoft Teams and brings over five years of experience building scalable mobile apps and applying AI to real-world challenges. She is also the co-founder of an early-stage startup and a real estate investor focused on Arkansas-based properties. Passionate about giving back, Gia mentors aspiring technologists through programs like Break Through Tech. As a former member of Bucknell’s women’s basketball team, she brings the same grit and teamwork to tech, entrepreneurship and beyond.
Ben Love ’04
Computer Science
Ben Love is a Site Reliability Manager at Google. His team is responsible for serving ads on search. Ben has been part of the Site Reliability Engineering group at Google for more than 15 years, where he has worked on ads, machine learning and alerting infrastructure. For 10 years, Ben has been teaching new hires and transfers into the SRE organization what Site Reliability Engineering is all about.
Alec Pflaster ’15
Computer Science & Engineering
Alec Pflaster, B.S., is a Senior Technical Program Manager at Warner Music Group, where he leads cross-functional initiative to improve music distribution. He brings over a decade of experience across program management and software engineering, including prior roles at Oscar Health and Amazon. At Oscar, Alec spearheaded projects such as software and infrastructure migrations, the introduction of service-level objectives and incident management processes. He began his career as a software engineer and TPM at Amazon, working on reliability engineering efforts.
Chris Shadek ’18
Computer Science & Engineering
Chris Shadek earned a BS in Computer Science & Engineering and a Bachelor’s of Management. Based in Chicago, he splits his time between two ventures: BullsEye Social and MAXPAYLOAD. BullsEye Social is a social media app designed to bring friends together in person, featuring innovative tools such as a receipt scanner that helps groups split the bill seamlessly. MAXPAYLOAD is a transportation logistics startup born out of Logistics Capital and Strategy, a consulting firm with 30+ years of experience. The company focuses on delivering high-quality data and analytics for key stakeholders in the transportation industry, including airports, OEMs, airlines, trucking companies, and hedge funds. Across both ventures, Chris uses AI to accelerate software development and generate data-driven insights, enabling faster innovation and smarter decision-making.
INDUSTRY INSIGHTS PANEL: ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER ENGINEERING
3:15-4:45 p.m. | Center Room – ELC 256
Moderator: Prof. Peter Jansson
Colton Jiorle ’25
Electrical Engineering
Bio coming soon…
Nate Johnson ’09
Electrical Engineering
Nathan (Nate) Johnson, P.E., is the President & CEO of Citizens’ Electric Company, a regulated electric distribution company serving Lewisburg and the Buffalo Valley. Nate began his career at a large investor-owned utility and served in various distribution engineering roles for 10 years before joining Citizens’ Electric as their Senior Director of Engineering and Operations. He has served as the President since 2023. Nate’s engineering experience includes distribution reliability, customer support, design, and relay test.
Josh Mull ’06
Electrical Engineering
Josh Mull, BS EE, is a Senior Technical Program Manager at Amazon Lab126, focused on Consumer Robotics and GenAI integration. Josh has worked in product development for ~20 years, launching products across medical, industrial and consumer markets. He has lead development teams for both hardware and software products, and his experience spans a breadth covering R&D, technology development, manufacturing, quality assurance and operations. Josh has worked in companies of all sizes, ranging from small early stage startups to large multi-national corporations.
Kerri Piper ’25
Electrical Engineering
Kerri Piper is an electrical engineer for Talen Energy’s Montour Steam Electric Station. A recent graduate from Bucknell’s ECE program, Kerri navigated her changing interests that took her initial career trajectory from electronics to power. She has seen firsthand the effect AI and other technological developments have had on the power industry as her power plant went from running units infrequently, to both units staying on for months at a time.
John Venarchick ’00
Electrical Engineering
John Venarchick, BSEE, has spent the past 25 years of his career working across the entire lifecycle of system development. During his first few years while working in software and system requirement development and then software quality assurance, he earned a Technical Project Management Certificate and a MSCS from American University ‘03 as part of a company sponsored education program. John’s next assignment saw him join a team as a junior software engineer working on navigation and hardware software integration. He now provides subject matter expertise, software development leadership and software development assistance to his customers. John currently works for a small two-person consulting business (of which he is one of the two owners) and is currently helping his customer manage a transition of their development operations (DevOps) into a cloud-based architecture while also adopting more Agile methodologies. His current work has him developing tooling to assist with improving automated build pipelines.
INDUSTRY INSIGHTS PANEL: ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
3:15-4:45 p.m. | Arches Lounge – ELC 304
Moderator: Prof. Kevin Gilmore
Ryan Iwata ’22
Environmental Engineering
Ryan Iwata is a Senior Staff Engineer at Brown and Caldwell, based in Honolulu, Hawaii. In his role, Ryan is part of a team that provides technical and process support to the City and County of Honolulu’s Wastewater Treatment and Disposal Division. He works directly with operations and maintenance teams across the city’s nine treatment plants, supporting major facility upgrade projects. Additionally, he also contributes to the City’s ongoing Training, Development, and Retention program, helping to strengthen the City’s workforce.
Nick Moss ’20
Environmental Engineering
Nick Moss is an Assistant Engineer at Hazen and Sawyer. Nick has over five years of experience working at Hazen on large-scale Drinking Water Projects that involve upgrading/rehabilitating the facilities along the Catskill Aqueduct that feeds NYC drinking water. He mainly focuses on developing the process mechanical design components and project management related tasks.
Kim Shust ’18
Environmental Engineering
Kimberly (Kim) Shust, P.E., is an Associate Process Mechanical Engineer at Brown and Caldwell. Kim has more than seven years of consulting experience in the process design and project management of water, wastewater, and reuse projects for municipal and private sector clients. She is currently serving on the program management teams for two of the largest reuse projects in the U.S., the Pure Water Southern California Program and the Los Angeles Groundwater Replenishment Project.
Elyse Thompson ’20
Environmental Engineering
Elyse Thompson is a Water Resources Engineer at Kleinfelder with five years of experience working on the planning and design of water engineering projects. She has applied her technical experience to a wide range of wastewater, water, and stormwater projects including sewer rehabilitation and replacement design, municipal wastewater treatment plant upgrade design, industrial water and wastewater treatment, stormwater sampling and permit compliance, and bidding and engineering services during construction phase of projects.
Oswaldo Galicia ’14
Civil Engineering
Oswaldo Galicia, M.S., is a Principal Civil Engineering Assistant at Los Angeles County Public Works. Oswaldo has dedicated over nine years to the public sector, with his recent work focused on developing and implementing a risk-based rating system to prioritize essential capital projects for the county’s drinking water systems. Before joining the county, Oswaldo served three years in the Peace Corps as a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Volunteer and Program Coordinator in Panama, all while earning his Master’s in Environmental Engineering from the University of South Florida.
INDUSTRY INSIGHTS PANEL: MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
3:15-4:45 p.m. | Terrace Room – ELC 276
Moderator: Prof. Anurag Roy
Kevin Fine ’17
Mechanical Engineering
Kevin Fine is a mechanical engineer with a strong background in process optimization, new product development and manufacturing engineering. Kevin founded and currently runs Fine Laser Designs, a successful small business focused on custom product design and manufacturing in the remoted controlled hobby space. His most recent corporate job was a Process Engineer at Tesla, where he supported the launch and improvement of V4 charging products, driving efficiency through simulation tools and continuous improvement initiatives that saved the company significant costs. Previously at Lutron Electronics, Kevin led multiple high-impact product launches and quality initiatives using Lean/Six Sigma principles.
Jaden Lee ’23
Mechanical Engineering
Jaden F. Lee, E.I.T., is a Mechanical Engineer in the Equipment Team at Westfalia Technologies Inc. Deriving inspiration from his engineering and music career, Jaden advocates for interdisciplinary collaboration and making engineering accessible across multiple disciplines. His work centers on designing conveyors for Automatic Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS) across the U.S. and Mexico. Within his role, he creates not only technical drawings for the Production Floor but also develops instructions for installing conveyors in the field. Notable accomplishments include the productization of a pallet squaring device that integrates within warehouses, sold up to $40M, including one in Bethlehem, Pa.
Michelle Lesh ’00
Mechanical Engineering
Michelle Lesh is Founder & Principal of Prescient Horizon, a boutique advisory firm that provides strategic counsel to boards and executive teams in the energy and technology sectors. With over 25 years of experience in multiple global multinationals and high-growth companies, she specializes in navigating strategic inflection points, driving market expansion, and delivering sustainable growth. Michelle holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Bucknell University and an MBA from the University of California, Irvine.
Rick Mottram ’21
Mechanical Engineering
Rick Mottram is a technical program manager working on research and development projects for the U.S. Department of the Navy. Rick studied mechanical engineering and played linebacker for Bucknell’s football team. He graduated in 2021 and has previously worked at Lockheed Martin and the MITRE Corporation supporting various government agencies. Rick recently received a master’s degree in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia and is working on a degree in International Security from George Mason University.
Jill Rodgers ’21
Mechanical Engineering
Jill Rodgers is a Quality Engineer for the U.S. Army Quality Engineering and System Assurance Directorate based in New Jersey. Jill works directly with contractors on engineering and life cycle management of army assets, including requirement development, contract management, testing, failure investigation and analysis, and configuration management with a focus on quality, reliability, and safety of large caliber munitions. Jill is also currently a graduate student in the Engineering Management program at Johns Hopkins University.