The University of Texas at Austin
College of Engineering

External Advisory Committee

Enrique (Rick) Barrera, Ph.D.



Photo of Enrique Barrera
  • Position: Chair/Professor, Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science
  • Company: Rice University
  • Term: Fall 2005 — Spring 2008

Shaunna Flynn Black



Shaunna Flynn Black
  • Position: Vice-President, Manager of Worldwide Facilities
  • Company: Texas Instruments, Inc.
  • Term: Fall 2006 — Spring 2009 (Invited for 2nd term)
  • Ms. Black is responsible for the design, construction, operation and leasing of TI facilities worldwide and ESH management.
  • After a five-year teaching career, Ms. Black joined TI in 1985 as a mechanical engineer. She supported manufacturing facilities construction, operations and maintenance for the company until 1994.
  • Ms. Black was inducted into the Women in Science and Technology Hall of Fame by Women in Technology International for her contribution to the science and technology fields.
  • Ms. Black holds Bachelor of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering from New Mexico State University and in Education from the University of Texas in Austin.
  • TI site

Frederick P. Buckingham, Ph.D.



Frederick P. Buckingham

  • Position: General Manager/Executive Engineer
  • Company: MPR Associates, Inc.
  • Term: Fall 2006 — Spring 2009
  • Dr. Buckingham has concentrated his efforts on combustion systems for gas, oil and coal fired boilers, safety systems, process control, project management and business development.
  • Dr. Buckingham has been certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP) and has successfully executed numerous projects for electric utility, petro-chemical, and marine clients.
  • Dr. Buckingham has managed and been in responsible charge of many burner management systems for oil, gas, and coal fired boilers.
  • BSME (1975), The University of Texas at Austin; MSME (1980), The University of Texas at Arlington; Ph.D. (1993), The University of Texas at Arlington.
  • MPR site

Denise Elston, P.E.



Denise Elston

  • Position: Global Manager - Engineering Services to Projects
  • Company: Shell Global Solutions — Westhollow Technology Center
  • Term: Fall 2006 — Spring 2009

Jeannie Falcon, Ph.D.



Jeannie Falcon

  • Position: Principal Engineer, Control and Simulation
  • Company: National Instruments
  • Term: Fall 2003 — Spring 2011
  • Dr. Falcon works with top controls and mechatronics professors worldwide to incorporate new LabVIEW software and NI hardware technology into their education and research.
  • She leads academic business development efforts in controls, mechatronics and robotics; providing consulting and training in controls and simulation for NI field sales engineers, marketing managers, and application engineers.
  • Dr. Falcon is a lecturer in both Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin.
  • Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1994; M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1990; B.S. in Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, 1988
  • National Instruments site

Scott Fish, Ph.D. — 2008 - 2009 Chair



Scott Fish

  • Position: Deputy Director
  • Company: Institute for Advanced Technology
  • Term: Fall 2005 — Spring 2008
  • Dr. Fish is responsible for technical leadership across the IAT, and supports new research area development.
  • Technical Experience in: Power system control, Weapon systems design/Effectiveness, Robotics perception and navigation, Networked combat system control, Ship and submarine design, and Hydrodynamics.
  • Experienced in negotiations for collective benefit between Government, Industry, and Academia.
  • BSME The University of Texas at Austin, 1982; MSME MIT, 1984; M.S. Naval Arch. MIT, 1984, Ph.D. ME Univ. of Maryland, 1989
  • Institute for Advanced Technology site

Israel Garcia, Esq.



Israel Garcia, no photo available

  • Position: Law Clerk to the Hon. U.S. Magistrate Peter Ormsby
  • Company: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Texas
  • Term: Fall 2008 — Spring 2011
  • Currently completing one-year federal judicial clerkship with the United States District Court of the Southern District of Texas.
  • Joining the intellectual property practice group of the Houston office of Bracewell & Giuliani in September 2008 as an associate.
  • Has worked for the Central Intelligence Agency as a Satellite Imagery Analyst; as a consulting engineer designing mechanical systems for buildings and physical plants; and as a software consulting engineer serving as the firm liaison to the Latin American market.
  • BSME University of Texas at Austin 1997; Juris Doctorate, University of Houston Law Center 2006
  • Bracewell & Giuliani LLP site
  • Southern District of Texas Bankruptcy Court sites

Stacy A. Genovese



photo of Stacy Genovese

  • Position: Technical Director
  • Company: Good Housekeeping Research Institute; Hearst Communications, Inc.
  • Term: Fall 2008 — Spring 2011
  • Ms. Genovese is responsible for all testing methods and protocols within the Good Housekeeping Research Institute. The purpose of which is to protect the integrity of the Good Housekeeping Seal by evaluating potential products for seal usage and clearing products for advertising.
  • She is also responsible for all projects including idea generation, test methodology development, testing implementation and report writing.
  • Ms. Genovese has also worked for Northrop Grumman as a Propulsion System Cognizant Engineer, and GE Transportation as a Control Systems Engineer.
  • She has her M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, from The University of Texas at Austin, 1998; and her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, from the Polytechnic Institute of NYU, 1996.
  • Good Housekeeping site

Danny A. Hlavinka — 2008 - 2009 Scribe



Danny A. Hlavinka

  • Position: Technical Advisor
  • Company: Schlumberger — Sugar Land Product Center
  • Term: Fall 2007— Spring 2010
  • Mr. Hlavinka reviews and audits the mechanical aspects of all new product development for the Wireline segment at the Sugar Land Product Center.
  • In this role he acts as an advisor to all mechanical engineers and a mentor to many young mechanical engineers as they learn Schlumberger's product lifecycle management process.
  • BSME The University of Texas at Austin, 1984
  • Schlumberger site

L. Ben Houston, Jr., P.E.



L. Ben Houston

  • Position: Managing Director
  • Company: TDIndustries
  • Term: Fall 2007 — Spring 2010
  • Ben has been with TDIndustries since 1961, after having spent three years in Italy with the Navy rebuilding the area.
  • TDIndustries is an employee owned company
  • Ben Houston has been recognized as one of the Top 25 Newsmakers in the construction industry by Engineering News — Record honoring the significant contributions of construction industry members.
  • He graduated from The University of Texas at Austin in Mechanical Engineering in 1958
  • TDIndustries site

David K. Leigh



David K. Leigh

  • Position: President
  • Company: Harvest Technologies, Inc.
    Rapid Prototyping and Production Services
  • Term: Fall 2006 — Spring 2009
  • Following his undergraduate work at UT, he worked at DTM Corporation, the start-up for the SLS process developed at UT through the Mechanical Engineering Department.
  • After 5 years with DTM, and its spin-off (the internal DTM service bureau), he started Harvest Technologies in 1995, with his father David E. Leigh.
  • Harvest Technologies has grown to be one of the largest providers of rapid prototyping (RP) in the US.
  • Graduated from the University of Texas in 1991 with a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering.
  • Harvest Technologies site

Carlos R. Levy



Carlos R. Levy

  • Position: Director, Business Development
  • Company: Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc.
  • Term: Fall 2007 — Spring 2010
  • Mr. Levy's responsibilities include managing the business relationships between the company and major international Oil and Chemical clients.
  • During the last five years he has been part of the Jacobs Engineering sales team in Houston, Texas, where Jacobs currently has a workforce of over 3,000 people.
  • Mr. Levy has worked in the Engineering & Construction industry for various contractors operating in the private sector. He has also been involved in the design and installation of many large industrial plants for the pharmaceutical, power, chemical and refining industries.
  • Graduated as a Mechanical Engineer from The University of Texas at Austin in 1972.
  • Jacobs Engineering Group site

Kaveh Massoudian



Kaveh Massoudian

  • Position: Program Director, System Architecture & Design
  • Company: IBM Systems & Technology Group - Austin
  • Term: Fall 2007 — Spring 2010
  • Mr. Massoudian has an executive management position of high responsibility that leverages 20 years of experience in the fields of Computer Systems Design and Manufacturing that spans all aspects of end to end systems design, including chip design, board design, firmware, device drivers, OS, system management, virtualization, user experience.
  • He has most recently focused on cross-industry collaborative innovation initiatives and cross geography and multi-cultural collaborations.
  • Kaveh Massoudian's specialities are System Design and Architecture, Business Development, Negotiations, Multi-lateral deal making, Customer Empowerment, Development Process expert, Business Process consulting, Operations and Management of high performance teams.
  • MSEE and BSEE in Electrical and Computer Engineering, from The University of Texas at Austin, 1981— 1987.
  • IBM site

Scott McMillan, P.E.



Scott McMillan

  • Position: Professional Associate, Project Engineer
  • Company: HDR, Inc.
  • Term: Fall 2007 — Spring 2010
  • Scott specializes in the design of building infrastructure systems including central chilled water, heating water, steam distribution, hydronic, and HVAC systems supporting projects within all HDR architecture business classes (healthcare, civic/justice, and science/technology).
  • His day-to-day functions include the design and application of heat transfer components, energy transfer/recovery systems, and building management/control systems.
  • Scott is a member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers and Vice-Chair of the ASHRAE technical committee TG9J.F Justice Facilities. He is a registered Professional Engineer in seven states. He is currently serving a 3-year commitment as a member of the UT Mechanical Engineering External Advisory Council.
  • Mr. McMillan earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in 1993
  • HDR site

Doug Nelson



Doug Nelson

  • Position: Director — DAO Fulfillment Engineering
  • Company: Dell, Inc.
  • Term: Fall 2004— Spring 2010
  • Dell site

David Paul



David Paul

  • Position: Chief Engineer, CMP — Global Operations Manufacturing Organization
  • Company: Applied Materials, Inc.
  • Term: Fall 2008— Spring 2011
  • Hired as a Manufacturing Technologist with subsequent promotions to Mechanical Engineer I & II, Project Manager, Manufacturing Engineering Manager, Engineering Manager, and Chief Engineer — CMP (Chemical Mechanical Planarization).
  • Responsible for 35+ manufacturing engineers and managers who support volume manufacturing of CMP tools including New Product Introduction, New Product Transition, Customer Engineering Specials, Configuration Engineering, and manufacturing support for both internal and outsourced assembly and test.
  • Involved in the development and transition of several major platforms from design engineering to manufacturing.
  • St. Edward's University (Austin, TX), M.B.A., 2004 with Academic Excellence Award (4.0 GPA); The University of Texas at Austin B.S. Aerospace Engineering, 1993.
  • Applied Materials site

Vern E. Radewald



Vern E. Radewald

  • Position: Senior Engineering Technology Specialist 3M Design & Engineering Solutions — Engineering Analysis
  • Term: Fall 2006 — Spring 20099
  • Mr. Radewald has been working at 3M for +20 years.
  • Vern does technical work in the area of mechanical and thermal simulation and design.
  • He has a patent for "Thermal conductor for high-energy electrochemical cells."
  • MSME from The University of Texas at Austin in Mechanical Engineering (Mechanical Systems), 1986; B.S. from Michigan State in Agricultural Engineering (Power and Machinery), 1982
  • 3M site

Arthur C. Ratzel III, Ph.D.



Arthur C. Ratzel III

  • Position: Director, Engineering Sciences Center
  • Company: Sandia National Laboratories
  • Term: Fall 2006 — Spring 2009 (Invited for 3rd term)
  • Dr. Arthur (Art) C. Ratzel III is currently the Chief of Staff for the Nuclear Weapons Program at Sandia National Laboratories. He has twenty-nine+ years of experience, in both theoretical and experimental work in the areas of fluid/thermal sciences and energetic materials, at Sandia as a staff member and manager.
  • He joined Sandia in June 1976 in a Thermal-Fluids group in the present-day Engineering Sciences Center. Art was selected to participate in the Sandia Doctoral Study Program in 1979 and completed his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin in 1981.
  • Dr. Ratzel's work as a staff member at Sandia has included applied engineering, as well as research and development efforts supporting a broad spectrum of major Lab initiatives including: design and analysis of innovative solar collection systems, development of computational tools and experimental analysis of hydrogen combustion phenomena, development of instrumentation and analysis of data from underground nuclear tests, and support of Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) discrimination programs.
  • He earned his BSME (1974) and MSME (1976) from the University of Houston; and his Ph.D. from the The University of Texas at Austin in the Mechanical Engineering Department in 1981.
  • Sandia National Laboratories site

Eric C. Sirgo



Eric C. Sirgo, no photo available

  • Position: North America Regional IT Manager
  • Company: Chevron — Global Upstream
  • Term: Fall 2008 — Spring 2011 (visitor in Spring 2008)
  • 20+ years with Chevron, working on numerous positions with increasing responsibility in Texas, Louisiana and California.
  • BSME The University of Texas at Austin 1987
  • Chevron site

Glenn Edwin Staats, Ph.D.



Glenn Edwin Staats

  • Position: Retired/Investments, Funding of Technology Startups, Rancher
  • Company: Service Dealer Technologies
  • Term: Fall 2006 — Spring 2009
  • Investor/Rancher - Equities, Bonds, Hedge Funds, Real Estate, Rancher
  • Founder, Chairman, CEO - Service Dealer Technologies, Inc.; Founder, Chairman, CEO - Internet AutoParts, Inc.; Founder, President, Chairman, CEO - Cooperative Computing, Inc.
  • Director of Graduate Studies/Associate Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering at the University of Missouri-Columbia
  • Ph.D. Operations Research/Computer Science, University of Texas at Austin, 1970; M.S. Numerical Analysis/Computer Science University of Texas at Austin, 1968; B.A. Major: Mathematics; Minor: Physics, University of Texas at Austin, 1966

Karen A. Thole, Ph.D.



Karen A. Thole

  • Position: Professor, Department Head
  • Company: Pennsylvania State University
  • Term: Fall 2007 — Spring 2010
  • Dr. Karen A. Thole is the head of the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University.
  • Dr. Thole's areas of expertise are heat transfer and fluid mechanics, specializing in turbulent boundary layers, convective heat transfer, and high freestream turbulence effects.
  • Her academic career began in 1994 when she became an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1999, she accepted a position in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Virginia Tech where she was promoted to Professor in 2003. She was appointed as the Department Head in July 2006 at Penn State.
  • She holds two degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.
  • Penn State Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering site

Robert (Bobby) A. Viktorin



Robert (Bobby) A. Viktorin

  • Position: Engineering Manager
  • Company: ExxonMobil Development Company
  • Term: Fall 2005— Spring 2008

Judy Wright — 2008 - 2009 Vice-Chair



Judy Wright

  • Position: Global Customer Supply Business & Process Manager, Mfg Division
  • Company: Freescale Semiconductor, Inc.
  • Term: Fall 2006 — Spring 2009 (Invited for 2nd term)
  • Operations Manager with P & L responsibility
  • Metrowerks Director of Software Services Worldwide
  • Patent holder for enabling existing test process with software & equipment redesign saving $30M in capital expenditures and $50M in product costs. Went from a x2 process to x1600.
  • Masters in Engineering in Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin 1997
  • Freescale site