As a young engineer fresh out of Purdue and working in industry, it didn’t take William (Bill) Uhrig long to recognize the importance of financial considerations alongside engineering decisions. So, he left his job at Lockheed Martin, and within the course of two years, earned an MBA from the University of Chicago and joined Three Cities Research, Inc. (TCR), a private equity firm in New York City that he now owns. The firm has converted dozens of struggling companies into profitable, growing industry leaders, resulting in regional job growth and economic development.

Uhrig is practically a household name in Purdue’s School of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AAE). He established a $2 million endowment to name the school’s headship, which allows greater flexibility to respond to urgent needs created by the school’s growth spurt. His generosity helped start the AAE Teaching Fellows program that formalized how AAE identifies, trains and supports PhD students to become instructors. His support of the Elmer Bruhn Professorship, the first “Rising Star” professorship in AAE, has enabled the school to recruit and retain outstanding junior faculty. In addition, Uhrig’s $1.25 million lead gift established the Purdue UAS Research and Test (PURT) facility, the largest indoor facility in the world for flying unmanned aerial vehicles.

His philanthropy also has been felt at the College of Engineering level with his kick-off gift of $5 million to initiate Project Bridge, the goal of which is to attract and retain underrepresented minority students, award scholarships, and prepare students for success on and beyond the Purdue campus.

He was recently named as a Distinguished Engineering Alumni recipient for 2023.

Sirisha Bandla’s earliest childhood memories involve lying on the roof of her family’s home in India and staring at the night sky.

“In India, your power would come in for hours at a time and then shut off. And when it shut off at night, the sky was just brilliant,” Bandla said. “There’s so many stars, and it’s hot there, so sometimes you sleep outside on the roof. Those are some of the memories I have, of me looking up and falling asleep under millions of stars. I think that slowly started my fascination with space.”

In time, she decided that she wanted to become an engineer and astronaut, too. And she applied to only one university, Purdue, because of her single-minded desire to reach that goal. Although not by the traditional path that most of the 25 previous Boilermaker astronauts had followed.

In July 2021, at just 34 years old, Bandla was one of four mission specialists on Virgin Galactic’s Unity 22 suborbital flight, which reached 53.5 miles above Earth. During a 90-minute mission on that July morning, the little girl who used to stare up at the stars was now among them.

As Virgin Galactic’s vice president of government affairs and research operations, Bandla provided an especially meaningful presence on the first fully crewed spaceflight by a private commercial company. Her mission is to help the company create opportunities for anyone to travel into space, and it did that very thing for her since poor eyesight prevented her from pursuing a coveted position as a NASA astronaut.

Simon Davidson is President of NobleReach Emerge, a program focused on transforming technology ideas and innovations from U.S. government-funded R&D initiatives into viable products and businesses.

Prior to the merger with NobleReach Foundation, Davidson was Executive Vice President for IQT Emerge, a wholly owned subsidiary of In-Q-Tel, Inc. Prior to founding IQT Emerge in 2020, he served as a managing partner and head of East Coast Investments for IQT, identifying and leading strategic investments in the field technologies practice. He has served as a board observer for several IQT portfolio companies.

Davidson was also an EVP at Allied Minds, an IP commercialization investor focused on early-stage development within the technology sector. He oversaw the technology portfolio, including origination of new deals and oversight of existing portfolio companies, and sat on the investment committee as part of the executive team.

He is a graduate of the University of Melbourne, Australia, where he earned a bachelor of commerce degree with majors in economics and accounting. Simon Davidson's son is a 2022 graduate of the School of AAE.

Dennis Drag is the retired vice president at Moffatt & Nichol, a global infrastructure advisory firm that provides engineering and consulting services to clients in the marine terminal, transportation, energy, environmental, federal, and urban development markets around the world.

In 2005, Drag and his wife Leslie (BA ’67) established the Dennis & Leslie Drag Distinguished Lecture Series that is designed to bring outstanding leaders in the field of civil engineering to the Purdue campus, with a preference for presentations on structural engineering.

Keyvan Esfarjani is executive vice president, chief global operations officer and general manager of Manufacturing, Supply Chain and Operations at Intel Corporation. He is responsible for the company’s worldwide manufacturing operations, including Fab Sort Manufacturing, Assembly Test Manufacturing and strategic planning, as well as corporate quality assurance, corporate services and supply chain.

Previously, Esfarjani led the company’s non-volatile memory worldwide manufacturing, responsible for leading the strategy and operation for Intel memory fabs, component assembly/test, and 3D NAND and Optane SSD manufacturing. In this capacity, Esfarjani oversaw internal fab operations, supply agreements and sub-contractor engagements.

Esfarjani earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in industrial engineering and operations research from Purdue University.

Viveca Fairbanks-Henderson is the Vice President and General Manager of Food & Beverage Manufacturing North America for Nalco Water, An Ecolab Company. Previously, she served as its vice president for Global Engineering – Industrial.

Prior to joining Nalco Water, she worked in several positions for Kellogg Company. While at Kellogg, she served as the Senior Director for R&D Cost Optimization where she delivered Food and Packaging reformulation savings across the North America business units, and as the Senior Director for Global Pringles Engineering.

Fairbanks-Henderson began her career as a Power & Controls Engineer at Procter & Gamble (P&G) in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1991. During her 21-year career at P&G, she progressed through regional and global roles of increasing responsibility. Most recently at P&G, she was the Associate Director of Global Pringles Engineering, Materials and Packaging Innovation.

A proud Boilermaker, she earned a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Purdue in 1990. While at Purdue, she served as President of the National Society of Black Engineers. After graduation, Fairbanks-Henderson maintained strong ties with Purdue serving on the NSBE Industrial Advisory Board, the Purdue Alumni Association Board of Directors and the Purdue Alumni Association Executive Committee. In addition, she served as President of the Purdue Black Alumni Organization for 10 years.

Reed Geiger is a PhD student in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue University, where he works as a graduate research assistant at Zucrow Laborators in Professor Carson Slabaugh’s research group. His research focuses on the study of combustion instabilities in hypersonic engines.

Raised in Churubusco, Indiana, he received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering at Purdue.

Reed currently serves as treasurer for the Zucrow Student Association (ZSA) and is a representative of ZSA on the Engineering Graduate Student Advisory Council. He also volunteers as a classroom educator for the Junior Achievement program, where he teaches financial literacy skills to local K-12 students.

Michael Graff chose to study engineering because it drew on his interests in math, chemistry and physics and allowed him to work with new and innovative technology. For him, it presented limitless opportunity in a changing world—a way to be a part of making it a better place. After getting his master's degree in chemical engineering at Purdue, Graff embarked on a long career that has led him to positions as president or CEO of chemical and polymer businesses across the Americas, Asia, and Europe.

He joined Air Liquide in 2007 and today serves as the chairman and CEO of American Air Liquide Holdings, Inc., executive vice president of the Air Liquide Group, and chairman of the board of Airgas. Based out of Houston, Texas, Graff leads the business operations for the Americas, the largest region of the Air Liquide Group, and is global chairman of the Group’s electronics business line while supervising the Group’s engineering and construction activities.

In addition to his work with Air Liquide, Graff serves on the board of directors of Westlake Chemical, as well as on a number of industry and civic boards. He became the American Chemistry Council’s newest board officer in January 2023. Graff is also a principal of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s American Energy Innovation Council, and a member of the National Petroleum Council and the United States Investment Advisory Council, chairing the Committee on Competitiveness for the U.S. Department of Commerce.

He was the recipient of the Davidson School of Chemical Engineering’s Outstanding Chemical Engineer award in 2002 and Purdue Engineering’s Distinguished Engineering Alumni award in 2008.

Sharon Hagle is CEO and Founder of SpaceKids Global, whose mission is to bring the possibility of space to kids everywhere by inspiring students to excel in STEAM+ (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and environment) education, ensuing girls are equally represented.

She completed her flight on Blue Origin's NS-20 that launched on March 31, 2022 as a member of Crew 4. Joining Sharon on the flight was her husband, Marc Hagle (EE '71, MBA '72), making them the first married couple to fly to space on a commercial vehicle. Sharon and Marc recently announced they will be returning to space with Blue Origin on a future flight.

Sharon shares her journey to space and encourages students through speaking engagements at schools, nonprofit youth organizations, science centers, universities and space organizations. To date, she has reached over 480,000 students globally with the goal of helping fill the 3.5 million STEM job vacancies predicted in the United States by 2025.

Since 2015, Sharon and Marc have funded 48 scholarships for members of the Purdue All-American Marching Band, as well as scholarships for the Astronauts Memorial Foundation.

Born in Cuba, Carlos M. Hernandez arrived in the United States with his parents as a political exile at the age of 8. He grew up in South Florida and attended Archbishop Curley High School where his affinity for math and science guided him to an education in engineering. Although there was no prior family or geographic connection, his college search identified Purdue as the best fit as a highly regarded coeducational engineering university with broad offerings in academics, athletics and social opportunities. He set foot in West Lafayette for the first time in August 1972 for freshman orientation.

After leaving Purdue, he enrolled at the University of Miami Law School, graduating in 1979, and thereafter joined a Miami law firm representing contractors.

In 2007, Fluor Corporation – the largest publicly-traded engineering and construction company on the New York Stock Exchange with worldwide projects – offered him the position of chief legal officer. In 2019, he took on the role of chief executive officer retiring in December 2020. Prior to joining Fluor, he served as general counsel for ArcelorMittal Americas, a major steel producer that is part of the ArcelorMittal steel group.

Hernandez brings decades of executive leadership experience in key industries. His career has spanned engineering, procurement, manufacturing and distribution companies, and his expertise includes risk management, safety and environmental matters, governance, compliance and law.

Rahul Kasat joined 3D Systems Corporation, a leading additive manufacturing solutions company, as its vice president in April 2022 after serving as CEO of Total Robotics, Ltd. for four years. Titan Robotics was acquired by 3D Systems in 2022.

After receiving his PhD in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University, Kasat joined Dupont where he rose from research engineer to technical team leader and marketing manager. In January 2014, he was named Project Leader for Strategy, Channel, Pricing and M&A before being promoted to Global Business Development Leader and Global Business Leader for 3D Printing. He joined Titan Robotics in April 2018.

At Dupont, Kasat led PhD chemical engineering recruiting for one of the company’s R&D division and served as corporate recruiter for PhDs at Purdue. He won the 2008 Separations Division Graduate Student Award given by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) in recognition of outstanding graduate students in one of seven Separations Division areas.

Peter Lambertus built the Charles River Development financial services company from the ground up, in part because he got a kick out of doing things that were hard. “I enjoyed taking on difficult jobs that others avoided or couldn’t do,” Lambertus says. “I was sometimes a maverick in wanting to remedy bad situations or technical designs even though it meant an uphill battle against status quo and bureaucracy.”

Today, the company Lambertus founded and ran until its 2018 sale to State Street Corporation supports over 300 clients in more than 40 countries, managing over $25 trillion in assets. As he looks back on the foundation for his success, he is grateful to Purdue for helping him learn how to approach problems.

He credits his Purdue education in playing a major role in acquiring the critical-thinking skills necessary for creating work products and solving problems. “Purdue engineering taught me to understand not just ‘what’ and ‘how’ in approaching situations, but just as importantly, ‘why,’” he said.

In June 2020, the Purdue Board of Trustees approved the naming of the second Gateway Complex building as Lambertus Hall in recognition of Peter and Ann Lambertus’ $10 million gift. The Complex was dedicated in April 2023.

David Li worked for more than two decades for Cabot Microelectronics Corporation (CMC), a leading global supplier of specialty materials focused on advanced semiconductors and energy industries. Early on after joining the company, he was identified as a future executive and was placed in various leadership roles to assist CMC in becoming a publicly listed company and firmly establishing itself as an industry leader for semiconductor materials.

During his tenure, Li streamlined upper management, revamped the company’s culture, drove the acquisition of two companies, and positioned CMC as a top supplier to companies like Samsung, Intel and TSMC. As a result, during his 8-year tenure as CEO, Li was able to drive record financial, organizational, and shareholder performance. Before assuming CMC’s top spot, he was vice president of the company’s Asia Pacific Region for eight years and holds a sense of pride for leading cultural change within the company.

Li retired as president, CEO, and board member of CMC Materials in 2022 after the company accepted a friendly $6.5 billion buyout offer from Entegris Corporation, representing approximately a four-fold return to shareholders over Li’s eight-year term in this role. At the time of Li’s retirement, CMC reported a revenue of $1.2 billion, operating profit of more than 30 percent, and 2,000+ employees.

Now a permanent resident of Singapore, Li sits on the board of directors at Coorstek, an advanced ceramics technology company, and is a limited partner at Novotellus, a technology based private equity fund. He also serves on the portfolio committee of A*STAR, a Temasek-backed fund focused on helping the next generation of start-ups thrive in Singapore. At Purdue, he serves as a visiting scholar and guest lecturer to enhance students’ preparation for careers in semiconductor manufacturing and beyond. He was honored with Purdue’s Outstanding Chemical Engineer Award in 2017.

Li is the founder and chairman of the Li Family Charitable Foundation. In 2019, he and his wife, Sophia Li, provided a major gift for scholarships to the Davidson School of Chemical Engineering. In addition, Li provides guidance and mentoring for Asian American students at Purdue and other organizations and institutions who are interested in leadership and managerial careers in industry. Li is also working on a book project to share knowledge and wisdom from the most accomplished Asian American leaders to inspire the next generation.

John Martinson has been a venture capitalist for 40 years, participating in more than 200 equity financings and serving as a director of 55 companies. He is well known in the software industry, Mid-Atlantic region business community, and nationally in the private equity industry.

Martinson Ventures makes investments ranging from $250K to $3.5M. He targets information technology businesses serving healthcare, education, financial and other applications.

He founded Edison Partners in 1986. Edison Partners has raised eight partnerships with more than $1 billion capital and has invested in over 210 growth businesses and exited more than 155 companies.

In April 2022, the Purdue University Board of Trustees approved naming the Honors College for Martinson in recognition of a $25 million gift. He has previously given nearly $9 million to the College of Engineering. His gifts established the John Martinson Entrepreneurial Center in 2019 and have supported the INSPIRE Research Institute for Pre-College Engineering, EPICS and Women in Engineering.

Beth Moses is an aerospace engineer and astronaut at Virgin Galactic, where she serves as the chief astronaut instructor. Her teams design and deliver the passenger cabin of SpaceShipTwo and train astronauts for their spaceflight. She is the first female to work in space as a member of the flight crew on a commercial vehicle on Virginia Galactic’s VSS Unity flight on Feb. 22, 2019 and earned her Commercial Astronaut Wings from the Federal Aviation Administration in April 2019.

Previously, Moses worked at NASA’s Johnson Space Center where she served as the Extravehicular Activity System Manager for the International Space Station from design through on-orbit construction. She led the global program of human-in-the-loop testing which designed, developed, and verified the spacewalk mechanisms used to assemble and maintain the station. As a result of her contributions alongside the global team, ISS received the Robert J. Collier trophy honoring the “greatest achievement in aeronautics and astronautics in America” in 2009 for “successful design, development, and assembly of the worlds’ largest spacecraft, an orbiting laboratory, promising new discoveries for mankind and setting new standards for international co-operation in space.”

As a student, she was awarded the National Science Foundation’s Microgravity Research Award to conduct materials research in parabolic flight. She is the recipient of Chicago’s Adler Planetarium annual Women in Space Science Award and a Google Science Fair judge. She was honored as an Outstanding Aerospace Engineer by AAE in 2018.

Ryan Ott is co-CEO at Ott Scientific, a family owned and operated group of specialty chemical manufacturing companies including Polysciences, Bangs Laboratories, Ethos Biosciences, and Creative Consumer Products. He currently is executive vice president of Polysciences, Inc., and serves as chief executive officer for Fishers, Ind.-based Bangs Laboratories and Ethos Biosciences, a bioscience company with three core capabilities: dye, stain, and reagent manufacturing, ELISA development and manufacturing with a focus in nephrology, and Lateral flow assay development and manufacturing.

Ott earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Purdue in 2007 and an MBA from Villanova University in 2014.

Ben Pekarek is a native of West Lafayette, Indiana, and an Electrical Engineering major who will begin his senior year in Fall 2023. He has led the largest student-run career fair in the nation, the Industrial Roundtable at Purdue. He also serves as president of the Purdue Engineering Student Council (PESC), a group whose goal is to serve students, industry and the community.

Pekarek has completed two internships with John Deere in Dubuque, Iowa—one as an electric drives intern and the other as an embedded software intern. He has also interned at Gentiam Electronics in West Lafayette and KA Components in Otterbein, Indiana.

Patricia Poppe (BSIE '89, MSIE '90) joined PG&E in January 2021 after five years as President and CEO of CMS Energy and its principal subsidiary, Consumers Energy, where she focused on connecting the utility more closely with its customers and adapting lean operating system principles throughout the business. In her decade-long career with the Michigan company, she also served as Senior Vice President of Distribution Operations, Engineering and Transmission; Vice President of Customer Experience, Rates and Regulation; and Vice President of Customer Operations.

Previously, Poppe served as a Power Plant Director at DTE Energy. Prior to joining DTE Energy, Poppe held a variety of plant management positions in the automotive industry.

Named to Crain's Detroit Business magazine's 2016 list of 100 Most Influential Women, Poppe enjoys sharing the insights she has gained throughout her career.

Daniel Rosckes is the vice president of global procurement at Apple, a position he has held since December 2000. Prior to that, he served as director of procurement at Compaq Computer Corporation from January 1987 to December 2000.

He currently serves on the advisory board for the Institute of Hard AI at Purdue.

Rajni Sah is a PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University and a graduate research assistant at Birck Nanotechnology Center focusing on the design and fabrication of Silicon Carbide power devices. She received a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Purdue in 2021 and a bachelor’s degree in electrical, electronics and communications engineering from Ramaiah Institute of Technology in Bengaluru, India, in 2018.

In addition to her studies and research, Sah has been involved in several Purdue student organizations working toward improving the lives of graduate students in academic, social and professional spheres. She was Secretary of the Nanotechnology Student Advisory Council in 2020, President of the ECE Graduate Student Organization in 2021, and Public Relations Officer for the Purdue Graduate Student Government in 2022. Currently she serves as a member of the Engineering Advisory Council.

Amy Schumacher is the Chief Executive Officer of The Heritage Group, overseeing the company’s portfolio of more than 30 businesses and 5,000 employees. She is also a member of its board of trustees.

Amy has been part of The Heritage Group family of businesses since 2008, when she founded Monument Chemical — THG’s specialty chemicals business — and served as Monument’s President and CEO for eight years. In that role, she was responsible for growing Monument from a small, Indianapolis-based business into a global company with operations in Europe and the US.

In 2016, Amy transitioned to President of The Heritage Group and was appointed CEO in 2020, marking the fourth generation of Fehsenfeld family leadership.

She graduated from Purdue University with a B.A. in Education and B.S. in Civil Engineering and received her M.B.A. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She serves on the boards of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, Central Indiana Corporate Partnership, Calumet Specialty Products, and the Purdue Engineering Advisory Council.

Amy enjoys spending her free time with her husband, Jim, and her two daughters.

Manahar (Manu) Shah came to the United States from India in the mid-1970s hoping to create opportunity for his family and for others with a natural stone company. He has done just that with remarkable success.

In 1981, while still operating out of their basement, Shah secured the contract to supply the black granite for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. With their entire savings invested in the project, they made sure it was executed perfectly.

Shah soon moved the company to Southern California near its focal distribution points. Since then, he has grown the company into a worldwide flooring, wall and countertop-surface business with nearly $2 billion in annual revenues and 2,500+ employees worldwide.

He has been recognized for his achievements with the 2007 Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Distribution, Manufacturing, and Security category. He also received the Outstanding Mechanical Engineer Award from Purdue in 2018.

In 2018, his family generously donated $2.5 million to launch the Shah Family Global Innovation Lab at Purdue Engineering. The lab is designed and equipped for exploration and problem solving to generate global impact.

Paul Stahura earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University in 1984 and an M.S in 1987. He is currently a board member for Donuts, Inc., a domain name registry company. Previously, Stahura served as CEO of Donuts.

Stahura started his professional career working as an engineer for Cybotech based out of the Purdue Research Park in West Lafayette. After Cybotech, he founded eNom, which became the second most successful domain name registrar in the world. Stahura was CEO of eNom until he sold it to Demand Media, where he became the president and a board member. In 2009, Stahura left eNom and Demand Media and co-founded Donuts, where he was CEO until he stepped down in 2017.

He holds eight patents, is on the board of seven different companies and is currently invested in 25 startups. The startup he is proudest of is iSpot.tv, a TV ad measurement and analytics company where he was the founding investor.

Stahura currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and three kids, all four of whom are either currently attending or have graduated from Purdue. His father was also an alumnus of Purdue (Northwest campus) back in the 1950s.

Jim Tompkins is an international authority on designing and implementing end-to-end supply chains. He has started 15 businesses that have done over $2 billion in worldwide revenue during his 50-year career, has worked with private equity, designed countless industrial facilities and supply chain solutions, and enhanced the profitable growth of numerous companies, giving him an insider’s view into what makes great companies even better.

He co-founded Brangent Inc. in 2022, focusing primarily on Leadership and Organizational Development, Organizational Transformation, Strategy and Talent Development. In 2020, he founded Tompkins Ventures LLC, a global hands-on solutions network that helps executive teams turn problems and challenges into competitive advantage. He previously spent 40+ years as founder and chairman of Tompkins International from a backyard startup into an international consulting and implementation firm.

Boon-Lock Yeo earned a BS in Computer and Electrical Engineering from Purdue University in 1992. He has served as a vice president of engineering at Google for 16 years and leads a global team responsible for Google Pixel software development and testing. Previously, Yeo led engineering and product at Alphabet Access/Google Fiber. He joined Google/Alphabet in 2007 and returned to Silicon Valley in 2014 after 11 years in Shanghai where he headed Google’s engineering and research efforts in Greater China and southeast Asia and co-led the Google China operations.

Before he joined Google, Yeo led R&D efforts for Intel in China, served as the general manager for Intel Asia-Pacific R&D Ltd., and oversaw the rapid expansion of Intel R&D efforts in Shanghai. He received two Intel Achievement Awards -- the highest Intel award recognizing outstanding accomplishments with significant business impacts.

Yeo received his PhD in electrical engineering from Princeton University. He is internationally recognized for his pioneering research work in data compression and compressed data processing and is an IEEE Fellow. In 2020, Yeo received an Outstanding Electrical and Computer Engineering (OECE) award from the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in recognition of his achievements.

Juan Ernesto de Bedout is the former group president of Latin American Operations for Kimberly-Clark, maker of Huggies, Kleenex, and Scott consumer products, where he was responsible for the business units in 22 Central, South American and Caribbean countries. He joined the company in 1981 as a managing director, and following subsequent roles as general manager, vice president, and president, he was elected group president in 1999.

He led numerous expansions, mergers, acquisitions, and strategic alliances, reaching a leadership position throughout the region, and being recognized on various occasions as the best place to work in Latin America by the Great Place to Work Institute. He is a former chair of Purdue’s Engineering Advisory Council.

Born in Medellin, Colombia, he earned his BSIE (1967) and MSIE (1968) degrees from Purdue and received the university's Outstanding Industrial Engineer (1998), Distinguished Engineering Alumnus (2000) and Engineering Alumni Association (2002) awards. Purdue bestowed him an Honorary Doctor in Engineering degree (2013) and more recently, the students selected him an Old Master (2014).

Of great pride are the strategically-impactful, mutual-benefit programs evolving from the Colombia-Purdue Institute that he has helped forge, also known as the CPI. His two sons and nephew are all engineers, two of them with Purdue PhD degrees.