Class Notes
The 1950s and ’60s featured a Winter Weekend hosted by the junior class, which included all sorts of winter fun.
2004
Last Energy’s 20 MWe micro power plant.
Megan Prucnal was selected as an associate technical fellow with The Boeing Company. As a structural analyst, her areas of focus are optimization and additive manufacturing. Her husband, Rich Davis ’04, is a production engineering manager with Boeing. They have two sons, 8 and 11, and reside near Philadelphia.
Posted 2024-01-17
Katie Karaffa reports that Amanda Camadine and Neeraj Joshi had a son named Nolan Atlas Joshi on March 26. They are both in love with him and overjoyed.
Posted 2024-01-17
Jennifer (Ganesh) Davda has been named Loeb & Loeb law firm’s first chief diversity officer. Based in the Los Angeles office, Jennifer will work closely with firm leadership to continue to build upon the firm’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Posted 2023-03-24
Sherwin Gandhi — who co-founded Jeeves, a company that brings together global finance and technology for businesses and initially raised $131 million from investors — has raised another $57 million for the business.
Posted 2023-03-24
Lt. Col. Michael Hastings is the commander of the New York Army National Guard’s 101st Expeditionary Signal Battalion. The battalion, headquartered in Yonkers, New York, has elements in Orangeburg and Peekskill. He leads soldiers who specialize in handling satellite communications for military units over vast areas of operation.
Posted 2021-09-30
Ben Barr is the new head coach for the University of Maine men’s hockey team, becoming the fifth head coach in program history. Ben most recently served as associate head coach and recruiting coordinator for UMass. At Rensselaer, he earned 64 points (25g/39a) in 140 career games. He was the team MVP in 2002-03 and served as captain during his senior season in 2003-04.
Posted 2021-09-30
Michael House has been appointed vice president of business development for Siemens Government Technologies. He brings more than 25 years of technical, program, and business development experience, most recently leading AECOM’s Energy Consulting Services Business in the Americas.
Posted 2021-09-30
Benjamin Wolfe, P.E., joined CPL, a full-service design firm that has served public and private sector clients for more than 45 years in Albany, New York. In his new role, Benjamin will serve as senior highway engineer, responsible for planning and over-seeing design plans for new and rehabilitated transportation systems.
Posted 2021-09-30
Wafa Batayneh is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST). She is currently on sabbatical leave at Iowa State University, working for her promotion to become a full professor. During her integrated experience, she has had several research projects, prototypes, awards, a U.S. patent, and publications in these areas, where she is an author and coauthor of more than 30 journals and conferences publications.
Posted 2021-02-26
Mary Beth Cooley was named program chief engineer at Pratt & Whitney. In 2019, she got the ASME Distinguished Engineer of the Year award and the George Mead Medal.
Posted 2021-02-26
Congrats to David Parker for his appointment as the chief operating officer for Cleverciti Systems, where he will leverage his more than 15 years of experience in the technology business to help position the smart parking company into new markets and manage sustained growth.
Posted 2020-05-21
Business
The President’s Commission on White House Fellows selected Jermon Bafaty, M.S. ’04, into the 2019-2020 class of White House Fellows, where he will be given the opportunity to engage in public service for one year with the Department of Energy.
Posted 2020-05-21
Engineering
Shawn Newman has volunteered to support Rensselaer by serving as the class correspondent. Shawn is active-duty Navy and is currently stationed in the Norfolk, Va., area. If you have updates to share such as a promotion, earning a new degree, a new addition to the family, meeting a life goal, or anything significant in your life, please submit your updates to Shawn at RPI.Class04.Alum@gmail.com.
Posted 2020-05-21
Richard Off has been promoted to senior staff architect at Hoffmann Architects. His projects have included rehabilitation of Countee Cullen Library in Harlem, and historic façade restoration and roof replacement at First Presbyterian Church in Greenwich Village.
Posted 2019-10-01
Heather Gozdiskowski was named assistant project manager at Grand Canyon Development Partners, a Las Vegas-based construction and real estate development and construction management company. A registered architect, Heather previously worked in project management with Shawmut Design and Construction, executing multimillion-dollar projects in the hospitality industry.
Posted 2018-10-10
Matthew House, M.S. ’04, was appointed vice president of homeland security and national security at eGlobalTech, an IT solutions, cybersecurity, and management consulting firm in Arlington, Va.
Posted 2018-10-10
Architecture
Richard Off was promoted to project coordinator at Hoffmann Architects, where he has provided architectural support for projects at New York City’s historic First Presbyterian Church, Washington Irving and Countee Cullen Libraries, and the 1385 Broadway “Bridal Building.” He earned his bachelor of architecture degree at Rensselaer, and a master of architecture and urban design at Columbia.
Posted 2018-10-10
Science
Nathan Cook (Comp.Sci.) recently received his MD degree from Wayne State University in Detroit, Mich., and has relocated to Mt. Lebanon, Pa., for his pathology residency at the Pittsburgh Medical Center with an intended focus on genomics. Between RPI and medical school, Nathan worked for IBM doing software performance testing, completed a post-baccalaureate pre-med program at Harvard University, worked in a neuroscience lab at Yale University, and was a credited contributor to a number of published research papers.
Posted 2018-10-10
Engineering
Jeff Alvarez (B.S., ME) and his wife founded Naya Health, which has developed a smart breast pump. A recent article in Bloomberg covered their struggle fundraising for a women’s product in the male-dominated VC community. They also launched a crowdfunding campaign around their second product, a smart baby bottle. Jeff says he has used the knowledge and know-how he gained at RPI every day since graduation: “RPI gave me a strong technical foundation that helped me build what I believe has been a successful business.”
Posted 2018-03-15
Ethan Dobson was named senior vice president of growth and marketing by B12, an early stage human-assisted AI company. He most recently served on the executive team at SinglePlatform, a division of Constant Contact. B12’s first product uses human-assisted AI to build and design websites in a completely new way.
Posted 2018-03-15
Tina Williams, M.S. ’04, is founder of TCecure, a Maryland-based cybersecurity company. She was recently named the University System of Maryland’s cybersecurity academic innovation officer for the new Federally Funded Research & Development Center.
Posted 2018-03-15
