USD Engineer Magazine
Want to find out more about what is going on with our Engineering department and alumni? Check out our latest issue of the USD Engineer Magazine.
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What Have USD Engineering Alumni Been up to?
1991 EE Roy Raphael
Roy Raphael retired from the U.S. Navy and accepted an offer to stay on as director at the Navy Satellite Program Office. Raphael is responsible for overseeing the development, testing and porting of the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) air interface, a next-generation narrowband tactical satellite communications system designed to significantly improve ground communications for U.S. forces on the move. He is the proud father of an engineer; his daughter Torey graduated from USC last year with a degree in aerospace engineering and is now working at Pratt & Whitney.
1992 EE Michael Buckley
Mike Buckley has been on active duty with the U.S. Navy since graduating from USD. In addition to numerous squadron assignments and deployments around the world as a helicopter pilot, he most recently was assigned to Naval Aviation System Command where he addresses various program management and acquisition issues for the Navy. He was selected to be the next Naval Attaché to Turkey, starting training in January. Buckley, wife and three children will live in Turkey for three years starting June 2011.
1992 EE Glenn Hickok
Glenn Hickok has been working in the biometrics industry in Washington D.C. for the last four years, running Cross Match Technologies' largest business unit. He and his wife, Shannon, have two young children: Charles (3 years) and Reagan (18 months).
1993 EE Richard Nguyen
Richard Nguyen and his wife, Nikki, are the proud parents of a daughter, Audrey (5 years) who will be starting kindergarten soon.
1993 EE Mauricio Lopez-Hodoyan
Mauricio Lopez-Hodoyan forecasts global demand for wireless devices with Qualcomm's chipset division as a senior director of strategy. He and his wife, Gabriela, have been happily married for four years and has two young children: Valeria (3 years) and Mauricio Enrique (1 year).
1993 EE Tarek Derbas
Tarek Derbas has been working as a senior hardware development manager at Oracle Corporation since 2000. Derbas manages a team of 25 managers and senior staff engineers responsible for all server and storage system-level development and simulation modeling and power architecture. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and daughter.
1993 EE Rolando Ogot
Rolando Ogot works in the Bluetooth Group at Broadcom as a principal integrated circuit design engineer. He is married with two children.
1993 EE Ron Montehermoso
Ron Montehermoso is a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy, working as an assistant regional supply officer at the Fleet and Industrial Supply Center Sigonella in Rota, Spain. He lives with his wife, Renelynne (USD '95), have been married nearly 14 years and three children. They are expecting their fourth child in December.
1994 EE Don Jenkins
Don Jenkins is senior manager of event operations and data analytics at EnerNOC. In December he was awarded the MegaWatt, which is the award EnerNOC bestows upon its employee of the year. He lives with his is wife, Lorrie, who is studying for a degree in criminal justice, and his daughter, Alex, a senior in high school and competitor in the World Championship of Irish Dance.
1994 EE Dominic Pimentel
Dominic Pimentel has been with Synopsys for nearly 6 ½ years. He lives with his wife, Arlene, and three children. They regularly surf and play soccer.
1994 EE Daniel Ettlich
Daniel Ettlich has been in the Navy for 17 years, and is a repair and logistics officer at Submarine Squadron Eleven in Point Loma, Calif. He is responsible for the material condition of the seven tended Los Angeles Class Attack submarines. He and his wife, Jenna, just welcomed their 4th child, Caleb Isaiah, into the world this year.
1994 EE Barbara Hammack
Barbara Hammack and her husband, Fred, run Hammack Audio Video Solutions. They are also involved in many volunteering activities at Albert Einstein Academy, a San Diego International Baccalaureate and German immersion charter school that is the school of their son Joseph (9 years) and daughter Jacqueline (7 years) attend.
1996 EE Langford Wasada
Langford Wasada is director of Verification and Test in the Wireless Connectivity Group Business Unit at Broadcom.
1996 EE John Simbulan
John Simbulan investigates electronic crimes with the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) as a criminal investigator and special agent. DCIS is the Federal Law Enforcement arm of the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General. His primary duties as a DCIS Special Agent are investigating electronic crimes involving computer intrusions, child exploitation, and related activities to the misuse of Government computers.
1997 EE Thomas Mack
Lieutenant commander Thomas Mack is serving as an engineering duty officer for the U.S. Navy, and currently works as engineering advisor to the Royal Saudi Naval Forces in Riyadh. He is scheduled to transfer to the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), San Diego in February 2011.
1997 EE Christine Bridewell Keefe
Christine Bridewell Keefe works for Alcatel-Lucent in the systems engineering department of Long Term Evolution, a 4th generation wireless product. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Northern Virginia. Bridewell Keefe volunteers her time at both of her daughters' schools, as well as with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) and Avon walk for Breast Cancer.
1997 EE Scott Denton
Scott Denton founded uPlay, a GPS-enabled distance measurement device for golfers. The device won the 2009 Popular Science "Best of What's New" award. His company was bought by Callaway Golf, where he currently works as senior director of integrated devices. Denton works to develop a broader range of electronic products.
1997 EE Maureen Feiner Colucci
Maureen (Feiner) Colucci lives with her husband, Paul, and three sons in Carlsbad, Calif. She is working as a full-time mom to her three young boys.
1999 EE Zaldy Valenzuela
Zaldy Valenzuela is currently finishing up a tour on board the USS BLUE RIDGE (LCC 19) as the communication system officer and is slated to go to the Program Executive Office, SPAWAR San Diego, Calif. in December. He is happily married to wife Joanna and has two young sons, Zach (5 years) and Jacob (2 years).
2000 EE Ricardo Valerdi
Ricardo Valerdi, PhD, is at MIT doing research in a variety of areas, including cost modeling, unmanned and autonomous systems and process improvement. He recently traveled to China to lecture at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Software. Next year he will be the founding co-editor-in-chief of the Journal for Enterprise Transformation, a joint publication of IIE and INCOSE. He won the best paper of the year award in the Journal of Systems Engineering and the Best Faculty Advisor Award at MIT.
2000 EE Alika Vasper 2001 EE Michella Reyes Vasper
Alika Vasper is working as a nuclear engineer at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Michella Reyes Vasper recently left BAE Systems and joined her husband, Alika Vasper, as a nuclear engineer at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawaii. The couple recently married in Waikiki, and welcomed their first child, a son, AJ Kupono Vasper, on May 26, 2010
2000 EE Steve Reichert
Steve Reichert is at Entropic Communications, working as a staff hardware engineer, designing circuit boards in support of Entropic's latest flavors of silicon for enabling high bandwidth in-home networking over coaxial cable. He got married Deborah Mason in October 2009, and he and his wife just bought their first home. The couple is the proud parents of three cats.
2001 EE Mark Heffernan
Mark Heffernan's job took him to Israel earlier this year for the fourth time. While there, he proudly wore his USD Engineering shirt to meetings. Heffernan and his wife, Jenni, are expecting their first child in November.
2001 EE James Cena
James Cena transferred into the Engineering Duty Officer community and currently hold the billet of Shipyard Docking Officer at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. A major focus of his work is putting submarines, carriers and various surface craft on blocks in the middle of a dry dock. He and his family live in Bremerton, WA.
2001 EE Amanda Bishop
Amanda Bishop is senior product manager at WhitePages.com where she is leading a team of ten engineers and two designers. She is excited that the consumer product they have been developing since January 2010 is about to launch.
2002 ISYE Jaclyn Sonico
Jaclyn Sonico left Callaway Golf after eight years and began a new career in health public service. She is currently a management consultant with Accenture in Washington, D.C. Sonico married Joe Hebreo September 5, 2009. Her husband's military orders moved him from a small town in North Carolina to a fellowship program in Nephrology at the National Navy Medical Center, Bethesda.
2002 EE Lisa Duvall
Lisa Duval works as a senior account manager at Maxim Integrated Products. She lives in Escondido, Calif. with her husband and newdaughter, Lilly Ava, born February of this year.
2002 EE Jacalyn Thomas Azevedo 2002 EE Alcino Azevedo
Jacalyn (Thomas) Azevedo will finish the MBA program at San Diego State in December and works at Motorola as a project hardware engineer. Alcino Azevedo works at Lockheed as a Lead Software Test Engineer and Lab Manager. They live with their two dogs in San Diego, CA.
2003 EE Carlos Williams
Carlos Williams is a design and project manager at Naval Facilities Northwest in Bremerton, Wash. He works in electrical engineering design and manages facilities projects. Williams retired from the U.S. Navy as a lieutenant commander after 21 years of service. He has been married to his wife, Jody, for over 21 years. The couple has four children ranging in age from 9 to 21.
2003 EE Dalia Tawy
Dalia Tawy is working happily at Solar Turbines. Previously, she was a certification design engineer and now she is a full time six sigma black belt. She also teaches Arabic in a language school in Mission Valley in the evenings twice a week. In May, she graduated with an MBA from San Diego State University.
2004 EE Markos Kalemkeris
Markos Kalemkeris has moved to Melbourne, Australia so that he can see a new world.
2004 EE Eric Petersen
Eric Petersen is excited to have joined the engineering team at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.
2004 ISYE Meldoy Ablola
Melody Ablola is a logistics consultant for ARUP. She was among 13 engineers honored as New Faces of Engineering during National Engineers Week in February, and the second USD alumni in two years selected by the Institute of Industrial Engineers. This award recognizes young engineers who have been in the workplace less than five years who have shown outstanding abilities in projects that significantly affect public welfare or further professional development and growth.
2004 ISYE Jared Smith
Jared Smith recently left Raytheon, a defense and aerospace systems supplier, and now works as lead systems engineer at Northrop Grumman Information Systems in Kearny Mesa. Smith works with the Broad Maritime Surveillance System (BAMS) and Intercommunication System (ICS). BAMS will be the Navy variant of the Global Hawk UAV. ICS allows pilots and other operators to communicate with other crew members that are both in close proximity and remote.
2005 EE Michelle Esteban
Michelle Esteban recently graduated from the University of San Francisco School of Law, and is currently studying to take the California Bar Examination. After the Bar Exam, she plans to travel for two months, mainly through Southeast Asia and over the entire continent of Africa. In October, she'll begin work as an attorney for a large intellectual property law firm in San Francisco, and will also be running the New York Marathon in November, which is the fourth she will have run.
2005 ISYE Daniel Villalva
Daniel Villalva has been working with Northrop Grumman for the past five years. His current position is with the Master Planning and Scheduling group. Villalva is also very involved in coaching his son's little league team and traveling club soccer team, which competes in tournaments throughout San Diego County, Riverside and Los Angeles.
2006 EE Veronika Rice
Veronika Rice will begin studying for a Master's in Mechanical Engineering at the Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey, Calif. She previously served as an ensign onboard the USS SAN JACINTO (CG 56) based out of Norfolk, VA, and was deployed for seven months to Senegal (Africa), the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and spent six months on a counter-narco terrorism deployment in the Eastern Pacific. She currently holds the rank of lieutenant and is expected to graduate from NPS in July of 2012.
2006 ISYE Nancy Rodriguez
Nancy Rodriguez is currently a fourth year graduate student in applied mathematics at UCLA and expects to complete her PhD in June 2011. She is working with the Crime Research Group at UCLA under the guidance of Professor Andrea Bertozzi. Her research interests include the analysis of criminal behavior with mathematical tools and she is lead author on a paper on this topic that will appear this year in Mathematical Models and Methods in Applied Science.
2006 ISYE Sarah Berrera
Sarah Berrera is currently working for Cisco Systems in San Jose, Calif. as a system engineer in technical sales. She participates in business planning activities, supports technical training, works on solution selling and market strategies. Berrera enjoys the fact that Cisco is always working on cutting-edge technology and that her job has her interfacing with people who have tremendous experience in the industry.
2006 ISYE Leah Ribble
Leah Ribble transferred within Boeing about a year and a half ago and moved from Seattle to San Antonio. She's now working on the KC-135 Aerial Refueler Program Depot Maintenance, which is a military aircraft. She enjoys the fact that her job varies day by day.
2006 ISYE Matt Nelsen
Matt Nelsen is working as a program manager with DISH Network in Englewood, CO. He still owns Drop Shots Tennis & Golf for Kids. Nelson came back to San Diego to run in the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon in June where he proposed to his girlfriend, Aubrey, as they made it to the finish line. (She said, "Yes.")
2007 ISYE Mark Kondrat
Mark Kondrat is currently deployed to the South Pacific on counter-drug missions. He's flying the Navy's SH-60B helicopter with the world-famous HSL-43 Battlecats. He is the training officer for his detachment, which is called the "Narco Ninjas." In January, Kondrat was married to Brittney Murrieta Kondrat (USD '08). The couple just purchased their first home in Carmel Mountain.
2007 EE Ali AlMatrouk
Ali AlMatrouk is working with Zain Kuwait, a subsidiary of Zain Group as a core network engineer in the switch division. He managed the project involving the replacement of the existing telecom network from the legacy Release 99 (R99) to the IP-Based Release 4 (R4) configuration. The project was launched successfully in the live network on March 2010.
2007 ISYE Stephanie Hay
Stephanie Hay quit her job and traveled through Southeast Asia for six months in 2009 and 2010, visiting six countries, including China, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines.
2007 ISYE John Nisson
John Nisson left Callaway Golf to join the family business in Salt Lake City. PermaPlate makes automotive protection products and Nisson has been taking on a wide range of operations-related projects.
2007 ISYE Dana Hernandez
Dana Hernandez is pursuing a Master's in Art History at the University of Utah, and has been working as an assistant to the curator of Utah and Western Art at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.
2008 ME Amanda Sonen
Amanda Sonen is a supply chain engineer at Solar Turbines' Superior Gear in the Los Angeles Area.
2008 ME Rusty Holzhauer
Rusty Holzhauer is a manufacturing engineer at Solar Turbines in San Diego, Calif.
2008 ME Paul Howie
Paul Howie is a mechanical design engineer at Solar Turbines in San Diego, Calif.
2009 EE Chris Gianelli
Chris Gianelli is attending the University of Florida and will finish his Master's of Electrical Engineering in December 2010. He also passed the PhD written qualifying exam, but is still considering whether he will work toward a doctorate.
2009 ISYE Matt Irwin
Matt Irwin is stationed in San Diego with the U.S. Navy and working as the strike officer and MWR officer on the destroyer USS BENFOLD (DDG-65). He recently returned from a six month deployment to the Arabian Gulf and will be spending another year onboard.
2009 ISYE Yasser Abdulfattah
Yasser Abdulfattah is working at Schlumberger in Saudi Arabia. He develops systems for logistic coordination and improves current logistics systems to coordinate the movement of oil equipment around the world.
2009 ME Bryce Knudson
Bryce Knudson works for Navair North Island, and is in charge of a program that investigates areas of the F-18 super hornet, identifying areas of potential future problems.
2009 ME Stephen McGee
Stephen McGee moved to New York City and works as a researcher at the financial services division of Oliver Wyman.
2009 ME Spencer Anderson
Spencer Anderson is a writing systems engineer on a research and development team at Hewlett Packard in Rancho Bernardo, CA. The team is developing a high speed, variable data color printer for industrial use.
2009 EE Ricardo Sanchez
Ricardo Sanchez is an electronics engineer at SPAWAR Systems Center, and works to develop superior intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance technology products and services vital to our national interests.
