Outstanding students, staff, and a special alumni were honored Friday (April 16) during Michigan Tech’s 27th Annual Student Leadership Awards Virtual Ceremony.
Keynote speaker Kaitlyn Bunker ’10 ’12 ’14 (BS, MS, PhD Electrical Engineering), won the Outstanding Young Alumni Award along with Megan Kreiger ’09 ’12 (Mathematics and Materials Science and Engineering).
By Student Leadership and Involvement.
Dr. Anindya Ghoshroy (PhD ’20) begins the new year with a postdoctoral researcher position at California Institute of Technology. Ghoshroy will be working under the direction of Dr. Lihong Wang, a world-renowned researcher in the imaging field, and the inventor of the fastest optical technology in the world, called compressed ultrafast photography (CUP), capable of 10 trillion frames per second.
Wang and Ghoshroy are interested in the next big step – investigating the near field implementations of ultrafast photography, and the resolution of nanoscale transient scenes. An integration of the CUP framework with “active convolved illumination” (ACI), an image-capturing technology that Ghoshroy and his PhD advisor Dr. Durdu Guney have been developing, and will potentially lead to a significant first step towards this direction.
ACI, being immune to “noise” will potentially enable imaging of live cells, virus, and bacteria with fine details, not accessible with the state-of-the-art imaging systems.
Michigan Tech alumna Archita (Sivakumar) Fritz ’06, recently launched and co-founded the Nine Oh Six podcast. The Nine-Oh-Six is a global podcast co-hosted by lifelong friends Meha (Pandey) Chiraya (Houghton High School ’06) and Fritz.
The name of this podcast is the area code (906) of the Upper Peninsula, which is where Meha and Archita’s friendship began, and is an ode to the sense of community they both experienced as young adults in Houghton. This podcast originated from a desire to share the stories of the extraordinary women in their lives, within their networks and communities, who are forging a path forward.
Too often podcasts and interviews are focused on women at the top of the proverbial ‘success ladder’. Yet, they were constantly amazed by women in their lives who are doing extraordinary things as they define success on their own terms. The podcast provides a platform to share and inspire others with these stories.
On the most recent episode they interview a fellow Michigan Tech Alumna, Andrea (Taglione) Bouman ’11 and MBA ’12 who is an ER Physician at UP Health System – Portage in Hancock. She shares how her time at Michigan Tech helped shape her journey towards becoming a physician wanting to serve the community while building a family.
You can tune into the episode. For more inspiring stories about women who are defining success on their own terms, one can subscribe to The Nine Oh Six on any podcast platform such as iTunes, Spotify, Stitchr and others. or you can listen to the episodes at www.thenineohsix. You can follow us on Facebook at The Nine Oh Six Podcast or on instagram @thenineohsix.
James A. (Jim) Klungess passed away on July 16, 2019. Jim graduated from Michigan Tech in 1949 with a bachelor’s in electrical engineering. After graduation, he returned to the Iron Mountain area where he established himself as a business leader. He, along with a partner, built Iron Mountain’s first cable TV system and went on to found Cable Constructors Inc. (CCI), which specialized in constructing cable TV systems both regionally and nationally.
Jim was recognized by Michigan Tech on several occasions. In 1990 he was awarded the Board of Control Silver Medal. He was inducted into the Electrical Engineering Academy in 1997 and was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus award by the Alumni Association in 1998. In 1999 he was Tech’s spring commencement speaker and was presented an honorary doctorate degree.
He was an extremely good friend of the University lending both his time and energy to numerous initiatives. He served three consecutive terms on the Michigan Tech Fund Board attaining Life Trustee status in 2002. He was co-chair for the campaign to fund the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts and served on Tech’s International Advancement Advisory Committee in 2003.
Jim, along with his wife, Verle (who passed away in 2004), were very generous with their philanthropic dollars investing in numerous University programs over the years. These include the Annual Fund, the Rozsa Center, and cultural and international initiatives. In 1991 they established the James A. Klungness Endowed Scholarship to assist Iron Mountain-Kingsford area students attending Michigan Tech. They were members of the Hubbell Society, as well as charter members of the Second Century Society.
View Jim’s full obituary online.
By Michigan Tech Advancement.
Michigan Tech Alumna Ankitaa Gohain Dalmia was among the women featured in the story “Women That Make a Difference,” in Recycling Times. She is the founder of the digital marketing firm Anksimage in Rudrapur, India.
Long gone are the days when many believed that women belonged in the private sphere of family while men belonged in the public sphere of business.
With the advances of society, more and more educated women join the workforce, demonstrating they can make a difference not only in their lives but also to the industry they are serving.
Ankitaa Gohain Dalmia is a passionate digital marketing specialist with more than ten years’ experience. She writes regularly for Recycling Times magazine, helping the printing consumables industry readers enhance digital marketing skills with her knowledge and expertise.
When she graduated as a computer engineer from Michigan Technological University in 2004, she had no idea she would end up in marketing the way she is today.
Starting this year, Aniktaa has been raising her voice in online discussions pertaining to digital marketing and content marketing.
More than 360 bachelor’s, master’s and PhD recipients are expected to attend Midyear Commencement Saturday (Dec 16). Ceremonies will take place at 10:30 a.m. in the Wood Gym of the Student Development Complex.
James Parm, partner at Inc. CEO Project, will deliver the commencement address for Michigan Tech’s Midyear. Parm graduated from Michigan Tech in 1981 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and was inducted into the ECE Academy in 2012.
In his current position, Parm provides business strategy to corporate CEOs. He has a long and distinguished career leading international technology companies including Stratos, Inmarsat PLC and Shell Offshore Services Company.
Parm and his wife Jean, a 1982 Tech graduate, have established the Jim and Jean Parm Endowed Scholarship. The Parms live in Casey Key, Florida. At the commencement ceremony, Parm will receive an Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy.
Welcome to another Monday morning edition of FWF. As was the case earlier this month, all the action last week took place at the end of the week, so I needed the weekend to catch my breath. But what a week it was: final exams, commencement, and a very special recognition ceremony in the ECE Department.
The spring commencement ceremony was held Saturday morning in the hockey arena at the Student Development Complex. This is always a wonderful celebration and I love being a part of it. This spring the department sent off 7 PhD students, 76 MS students, and 92 undergraduates, and most of them were there to walk across the stage and receive their diplomas. These are some pretty big numbers for us, especially the graduate students, and that contributed a little bit to the ceremony being some 3 hours long this year. Here’s a little confession: on Friday a number of guests in the department asked me how many students we were graduating, a number that someone in my position would know, one would think. This happens every year and I am always caught short. I usually don’t know until I open my commencement program and start counting!
One of those students was Marco La Manna, my first PhD graduate at Michigan Tech. Marco did his PhD dissertation in radar signal processing, and is now a post-doc at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was a very nice moment to be a part of Marco’s hooding ceremony, and I know the same is true for all of our other PhD graduates and their advisors. Growing the PhD program is a key component of our departmental strategic plan, so being able to make an individual contribution to that effort was very gratifying. The personal and professional relationship that I have developed with Marco and his wife Samantha over the past few years is equally satisfying.
The main event for me this year was not commencement itself but rather a special event that took place the day before and rolled right into commencement. This year we recognized the first woman graduate of the ECE Department, Patricia Anthony, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of her graduation in 1967. Pat was inducted into the ECE Academy on Friday afternoon, in a well-attended ceremony in the social area on the 5th floor of the EERC.
Pat came to Michigan Tech in 1963 following graduation from high school in Grandville, Michigan. She entered with interests in math and science, as one might imagine, and while here she was VP of the Lambda Beta sorority, a DJ at the Wadsworth Hall radio station, and was a member of the U.S. Army ROTC auxiliary, the Silver Stars. She graduated from Michigan Tech in 1967 with the degree Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, the first woman to do so at Tech. Immediately after graduation Pat took a position with IBM, where she spent most of her career. Her first assignment was in Kingston, NY, as a diagnostic engineer for large mainframe computers. She later transferred to Detroit as a systems engineer working in data communications. She become well-known within IBM as an expert in the area, and later took on responsibility for teaching data communications management to IBM customers. Her later assignments were in Dallas, Tampa, and Midland. Throughout her professional career Pat found time for community service activities, including Junior Achievement, United Way, and the Girl Scouts.
Again, one would think that someone in my position would have been aware of Pat’s story for a long time, but in fact I did not know about it until I received an e-mail this past January from her brother, Col. Stephen Anthony (USAF retired), nominating her as a distinguished graduate. At first I did not believe that the first woman graduate of the department would have been as late as 1967, but I checked with Brenda Rudiger, head of Michigan Tech Alumni Relations, and indeed it was true. Brenda also pointed out that this was Pat’s 50th anniversary year. That set everything in motion which eventually led to this weekend’s events. Not only was Pat honored in the ECE Department, she was recognized briefly by the provost during the Board of Trustees meeting on Friday morning, and she attended commencement in the presidential skybox and got a shout-out from President Mroz in his opening remarks.
Pat was inducted into the ECE Academy on Friday afternoon, in a ceremony that was unusual for us for recognizing a single individual. We had a number of speakers lined up, all of whom were insightful, inspirational, and brief: Jackie Huntoon, Provost and Vice-President for Academic Affairs; Wayne Pennington, Dean of the College of Engineering; Martha Sloan, Professor Emerita in ECE and the first woman president of the IEEE; Linda Ott, Professor and former Chair of the Department of Computer Science; Glen Archer, Associate Chair of the ECE Department; and Rachel Kolb, Treasurer of the Michigan Tech student branch of the Society of Woman Engineers. In one way or another, everyone spoke to the value of pioneers like Pat in paving the way for other women in STEM fields. Pat herself got the last word, and recounted her experiences at Tech, her experiences in industry, and in an emotional closing she touched on the importance of service activities like Junior Achievement that encourage young people of all stripes to pursue their dreams.
One thing that really struck me about Pat’s remarks was how extraordinarily generous she was to the male professors in the EE Department in the 1960s who simply did not know what to make of a women engineering student. It would be easy to dismiss these men as dinosaurs, but Pat chose a different path. She realized that these were men who were raised in an earlier generation by both their fathers and their mothers to treat women in a certain way, and a woman in the engineering classroom was disruptive to their worldview. Pat was able to persevere in spite of their resistance, and in the end her talent and skill won the day. One could probably make the argument that being able to see the world through the eyes of another is a highly valuable interpersonal skill, and one that Pat used to her advantage as she moved up through IBM. (Note: I realize full well that one should only take this argument so far.)
An event like this, recognizing the first woman graduate of the EE Department, gives us the opportunity to reflect on where we have come in the past 50 years with regard to women enrollment in STEM fields. To this day we still struggle in the ECE Department, with undergraduate female enrollment hovering around 10%. I believe in my heart that we can and should do a better job of attracting more young women into ECE. At the same time, however, I have a deep admiration and respect for the pioneers like Pat who have struggled against the odds and have come out ahead. I feel the same way about the extraordinary women that I have met in the Presidential Council of Alumnae, the advisory group to President Mroz, all of whom have become leaders in industry and civic affairs. Female students at Michigan Tech are represented in student leadership positions campus-wide in numbers much higher than their proportion of the undergraduate population, and that has been true in the ECE Department as well. There is a spirit of Sisu in the Husky women students and alumnae that sets them apart, on campus and in their careers, and being here in small numbers probably has a lot to do with that. I am not suggesting for a second that we should slow down our efforts to bring more women into ECE, nor should we ever tolerate ANY attitude that would make the ECE Department less than fully welcoming, inclusive, and comfortable for all students (that goes for faculty and staff too.) I guess I am just being somewhat wistful and counting myself as lucky for having had the opportunity to get to know the amazing women like Pat who have been, and continue to be, on the leading edge of the movement to change the face of electrical and computer engineering.
– Dan
Daniel R. Fuhrmann
Dave House Professor and Chair
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Michigan Technological University
This story is the second in a four part look at ‘Robots and Michigan.’ Check back next week, when we’ll bring you part three.
Jacob Staniszewski is always looking for trouble.
I strongly believe that within the next 20 to 30 years, everything that can be automated, will be,
Staniszewski says.
Armed with an electrical engineering degree from Michigan Tech, he’s signed on to his first post-college gig with FANUC (FAN-uck) – the juggernaut Japanese company behind most of the industrial robots on American assembly lines today. Now it’s Staniszewski’s duty to stir up trouble with the factory-working robots of the future.
A born-and-raised Michigander, Staniszewski’s one of a growing number in the Great Lakes State looking towards a future in industrial robotics.
Dr. Paul Juodawlkis, assistant leader of the Quantum Information and Integrated Nanosystems Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and ECE alumnus, has been named a Fellow of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers).
Fellow is the IEEE’s highest grade of membership and only one-tenth of 1 percent of the entire membership can be awarded the honor in a given year. The Fellows program honors “those who have contributed greatly to the advancement of engineering, science, and technology.”
Juodawlkis is recognized for his contributions to optically sampled converters and waveguide amplifiers.
“I am happy and deeply honored to be named an IEEE Fellow,” says Dr. Juodawlkis. “I’ve been a member of the IEEE since my undergrad days in electrical engineering at Michigan Tech. Those days were critical to sparking my technical interests in solid-state devices and optoelectronics through classes taught by faculty like Professor Emeritus Anand Kulkarni. More recently, I’ve truly enjoyed having a front-row seat to watch the development and growth of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering over the past 16 years as a member of the department’s External Advisory Committee. When I am on campus, I am sometimes jealous of the opportunities and resources available to today’s Michigan Tech students, and wish that I could go back and do it all over again. Well, maybe except for finals. When I get a chance to offer advice to today’s students, I usually recommend that they make time to meet with their professors even if they don’t need help to learn the course material or to get the grade that they want. One of the main advantages of Michigan Tech is that most of the faculty care about teaching the students, and this teaching involves both explaining the course material and sharing the life lessons that they have learned outside of the classroom.”
Dr. Juodawlkis is also a Fellow of the Optical Society (OSA). He has authored or coauthored more than 130 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications. He has participated on a number of technical program committees, including serving as program co-chair (2010) and general co-chair (2012) of the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO). He was an elected member of the IEEE Photonics Society Board of Governors (2011–2013), served as vice president of membership for the society (2014-2016), and is currently secretary-treasurer for the society. Juodawlkis holds a BS degree from Michigan Technological University, an MS degree from Purdue University, and a PhD degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, all in electrical engineering.
1938-2016
Retired Michigan Tech Professor Theodore “Ted” Grzelak of Dollar Bay passed away Sunday at St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Rapids following a lengthy illness. He was 78.
He was born in Detroit and earned his bachelor’s of science in electrical engineering from the Michigan College of Mining and Technology in 1960. While at Tech, he was involved with Phi Kappa Tau fraternity. He received his master’s and PhD degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He married the former Mildred Savalox in 1959 and in August the couple celebrated their 57th anniversary.
In 1965 he accepted a position with Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory near Buffalo, New York. According to his obituary, concern about heavy local pollution at the time convinced him to accept a position in the department of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Tech.
He taught here from September of 1966 until his retirement in 2000. He was a coach for the Copper Country Junior Hockey Association, a member of the the Copper Country Ski Club and an official of the Central Division of the United States Ski Association. He was Dollar Bay’s Little League and Senior League baseball coach for several years.
He was an active member of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Hancock where he sang in the choir for nearly 40 years.
He is survived by his wife, Mildred, his three sons and eight grandchildren.
Funeral Services for Ted Grzelak will be held at 11 a.m. Friday (Nov. 18) at Gloria Dei in Hancock. Friends may call from 5 to 8 p.m. tomorrow at the Memorial Chapel Funeral Home in Hancock and Friday from 10 a.m. until the time of the service at the church.
A complete obituary can be found on the Memorial Chapel website.