Technical Mentors

We are fortunate to work with a group of advisors that includes industry veterans with decades of leadership experience as well as mid- and early-career engineers. They represent small start-ups, mid-sized companies, and large companies with long histories. They provide different perspectives from their experiences in many different companies on the various career paths available to engineers today. They also help us maintain tight connections to industry to insure the success of our students.

Company Mentors

Past Distinguished Lecturers

  • Bev Mentzer, retired Exxon/Mobil Executive and Purdue ChemE Professional MS Program
    • Fall 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023: Team Alignment to Deliver Goals
  • Dr. Santokh Badesha, Fellow and Manager of Open Innovation, Xeorox
    • Spring 2021, Spring 2022: Addressing sustainability challenges via collaborative research; Soft Skills and Open Innovation Process
  • Jim Spohrer, retired IBM executive
    • Spring 2022: Service Innovation in the AI Era
  • Utpal Mangla, GM, Telco Industry & EDGE Cloud, IBM,
    • Spring 2022:, Accelerating Digital Transformation Using AI & Automation in a Post-COVID World
  • Mallik Tatipamula, CTO, Ericsson
    • Summer 2022: Convergence of 5G, Edge Compute and AI
  • Terry Tabor, CTO, Kodak
    • Fall 2022: Design for Sustainability; Customer inputs in defining product/Spheres of Influence
  • David Parillo, Packaging & Specialty Plastics and Hydrocarbons, Global Dow Center
    • Spring 2023: Role of AI and Data Science in Chemical and Materials Manufacturing and Research
  • Prith Banerjee, CTO, ANSYS
    • Spring 2023 
  • Marcus Weldon, former President of Bell Labs and CTO of Nokia
    • Fall 2023

Founding Advisory Board (2017-2018)

  • Dr. Santokh S. Badesha, Fellow and Manager of Open Innovation, Xeorox
  • Dr. Jean Wang, Director, Echo Frames, Amazon
  • Dr. Amitava Das, CEO, Tagore Technology
  • Dr. Thomas Dungan, Technical Staff Member, Broadcom
  • Harsh Kaushikkar, ASIC Design Manager, Apple
  • Dr. Ali Kesharvarzi, VP of R&D, Cypress Semiconductor
  • Dr. Srikanth Krishnan, Senior Director, Reliability, Product Engineering, and FA and Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, Texas Instruments
  • Dr. Konstantinos Laskaris, Principal Motor Designer, Telsa
  • Dr. Colin McAndrew, Fellow, NXP Semiconductors
  • Harish Suryanarayana, Principal Scientist, ABB US Research, Power Conversion and Electrical Systems
  • Brian Sutton, Principal Hardware Engineer, Microsoft
  • Kin Tan, VP, Gaas Labs, LLC
  • Steve Cuppy, Principal, Indiana Microelectronics, LLC