STEM on FIRE

John FitzSimons earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering (EE) from Purdue University and has worked at Motorola, Northrop Grumman and now currently at GoogleX working on drones. At Motorola John helped design cell phones starting out in battery charging, moving into display technology, and then into high speed processor design. Jon then…

Jonna Gerken earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial and Management Engineering and an MBA in Technology Development from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and currently works at Pratt & Whitney managing manufacturing engineers. She indicates that in the aviation environment they have to design and manufacture engine parts that can be built at high…

Jon Butzine earned a Bachelor of Science degree in both Electrical and Software Engineering from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and a Masters in Healthcare Technologies Management from Marquette University. The knowledge of both Electrical and Computer Science has allowed him to span the breadth from Enterprise systems to embedded systems which has allowed him…

Dayna Johnson earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering and a Masters of Engineering Management Degree from Valparaiso University and is currently working at GE Energy and part of the Accelerated Leadership Program (XLP). She is also heavily involved in the Society of Women Engineers SWE as Director of Achievement. Dayna is involved…

Kerrie Greenfelder earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering with an Environmental Emphasis from the University of Kansas and currently is a Department Manger at Burns & McDonnell. The foundation in Chemical Engineering allows her to work on the chemistry and biological side of water. She works a lot with cities and municipalities to…

Christine Hofbeck earned a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and a Masters in Business Administration from MIT. She has been a pioneer in the area predictive analytics and holds an FSA status from the Society of Actuaries. She has held various executive level positions and was one of the last…

Kyle Ambert earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a PHD in Bioinformatics and is currently a senior research scientist in deep learning. His work integrates the fields of distributed computing, machine learning/deep learning, and applied analytics. Kyle touches on the differences between deep learning (his focus) and machine learning. This requires a very…

Ebtesam (Eb) Hazbavi has an Bachelor of Science in Architectural Engineering from Azad University and a Masters in Civil Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is currently working in Transportation for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. Eb touches on the different career options for Civil and Architectural Engineering and indicates that team work is…

Murthy Munagavalasa has a PHD degree in Chemical Engineering which he earned while working at SC Johnson. What is interesting is that Murthy was scared of Chemistry but comfortable with Math and Physics. It turns out the Chemical Engineering is more about math than chemistry. While working at SC Johnson, he has had the opportunity…

Tom Ganley earned an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State and a masters in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and recently completed an iOS app development course at DevMountain. He is currently a Senior iOS app developer at Move, Inc. While a 4 year undergraduate degree is not required, you could…

Jennifer Morikawa earned a Chemical Engineering degree from the University of Michigan and a Masters Degree in Interdisciplinary Engineering from Purdue University. She currently works at General Motors (GM) in Manufacturing. She chose Chemical Engineering over a Chemistry degree as she wanted to see things being manufactured and created. Being in the production area, she…

Aroon Viswanathan has a PHD in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech and an MBA from the University of Wisconsin Madison. He is currently a Manager of New Product Development at Generac. He started out working in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) where you can simulate very complex models like explosions and fluid flow for aircraft design.…

Kathryn McGill is a PHD student at Cornell University and currently doing research in Condensed Matter (a liquid or solid) vs Particle Physic. She has been focusing on graphene which is a 1 atom thick conductive material. Depending on the phase of the research she will either be working in a clean room wearing a…

Kaitlyn Bunker earned a PHD in Electrical Engineering from Michigan Tech University and currently works at the Rocky Mountain Institute in Boulder Colorado. She is an active member in the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) She focuses her work in Power and Energy specifically in the micro grid and renewable resources area doing a lot…

Kevin Crenshaw earned a Physics degree and a minor in Computer Science and Math and is now an entrepreneur, CEO, and Author of Neverboss. He is a leadership coach for hands off leadership. He says that because Physics Majors are not afraid to tackle very tough problems they are actually in demand in the financial…