Summer 2017 CHEE Class Notes: Travel Edition

Bonnie Curtis

Class of 1980, BS in Chemical Engineering
curtis.ba2@gmail.com

I am retiring from Procter & Gamble after 37 years, and working on what’s next for me. I was based in China for eight years, and have had a global job for the past 15, so I have lots of great stories and pictures.

I ran a P&G plant in China with 1,000 employees, and we had a joint-venture partnership with the communist government. It was the most exciting job I have ever had, as we were growing the business in China. The people I worked with there were bright, passionate, hard-working and so eager to learn. They are still some of my best friends today.

I learned enough Chinese to be able to get on stage and make a simple speech, although I usually goofed up a word or two and made the audience break out laughing, but I got credit for trying! The photo is of me and my family at Mount Everest.

Betsy (Villaescusa) Wilkening

Class of 1982, BS in Chemical Engineering
ewilkening1@email.arizona.edu

Jeannie Wilkening

Class of 2016, BS in Chemical Engineering
jeanniewilkening@gmail.com

Here is a photo from October at Churchill College in Cambridge, U.K. It has me, Betsy (Villaescusa) Wilkening, with my daughter, Jeannie Wilkening. Jeannie is in Cambridge this year on the Churchill Scholarship earning an MPhil in earth sciences, and her dad and I visited her this past fall.

Neal Gallagher

Class of 1992, PhD in Chemical Engineering
Co-advised by Jost Wendt and Thomas Peterson
nealg@eigenvector.com

Here’s a photo of me and my wife, Keri, at Chamonix, France. We attended the International Spectral Imaging Meeting in 2016. I will co-chair the IASIM 2018 meeting in Seattle next summer.

Daniela Carvajal

Class of 2007, BS in Chemical Engineering
Class of 2009, MS in Chemical Engineering
carvajal.kottmann@gmail.com

I am working in the aerospace industry for Gulfstream Aerospace, which is part of General Dynamics Co. This is a picture of me visiting the Boeing Co. in Seattle.

Laura-Ann Chin

Class of 2010, BS in Chemical Engineering
lchin@email.arizona.edu

Amanda Eskinazi

Class of 2010, BS in Biosystems Engineering
Class of 2011, BS in Biomedical Engineering
amanda.eskinazi@gmail.com

Engineering Ambassador ‘besties’ share an epic vacation together swimming with turtles on Redang Island in Malaysia. Both Amanda and Laura graduated from the UA in 2010, and they currently live in Orange County and Philadelphia, respectively.

Ningxin Wang

Class of 2012, BS in Chemical Engineering

I am pursuing a PhD degree at the chemical engineering department of Carnegie Mellon University. My current research area is atmospheric science, and I am expected to defend by the end of this year.

In May 2016, I was lucky enough to take part in the Finokalia Aerosol Measurement Experiments (FAME-16) field campaign on the island of Crete in Greece. We measured atmospheric particles using state-of-the-art instruments, including online mass spectrometers at a remote weather station in the village of Finokalia. Here is a picture taken during the campaign where it so happened that I was wearing a pair of Wildcat shorts and a Wildcat baseball cap!

Justin Neal

Class of 2013, BS in Chemical Engineering

I graduated on June 17 from the University California Riverside with my PhD in chemical and environmental engineering. My dissertation was on the modeling of electric double layer capacitors using ionic liquid mixtures and carbide-derived carbon materials to increase the energy storage of supercapacitors.

We worked with a research consortium called FIRST (Fluid Interfaces, Reactions, Structure, and Transport), a Department of Energy Frontiers Research Center. It was great to help the experimentalists with our predictions, and also have confirmation of our model from their results.

This picture of me not at work, which is where I like to be most of the time. It was taken at Nojoqui Falls in California.

Margarita Acedo

Class of 2013, MS in Chemical Engineering
PhD Student in Chemical Engineering
acedom@email.arizona.edu

I received the Mickey Leland Energy Fellowship and went to Washington, D.C., for the orientation, followed by an internship at the Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. This is a photo of me in front of the White House!

Sidney Stuffle

Class of 2014, BS in Chemical Engineering
stuffle@email.arizona.edu

Back in May, I solo kayaked the upper Salt River (class III whitewater). This is a classic Arizona experience on the White Mountain Apache reservation that I was lucky enough to have all to myself on my 25th birthday.

Christian Montoya

Class of 2015, BS in Chemical Engineering
christianmontoya@gmail.com

One of my hobbies is visiting different universities across the U.S., exploring the campus, attending campus and local events, trying to find the Bent, and returning home with a hat from the school. I aim to collect all of Pac-12, but I’m also trying to collect as many hats as possible. This photo of me was taken in April with the Bent at Oregon State University. It was a nice weekend getaway from Seattle and one of the few blistering-sunshine days in the spring!

Vicky Karanikola

Class of 2015, PhD in Environmental Engineering
vkaranik@email.arizona.edu

Christopher Olivares

Class of 2011, BS in Chemical Engineering
Class of 2015, PhD in Environmental Engineering
olivarec@email.arizona.edu

Jorge Gonzalez

Class of 2014, PhD in Environmental Engineering
jorgegonzaleze@email.arizona.edu

Sarah Moore

Class of 2014, BS in Chemical Engineering
PhD Student in Chemical Engineering
smoore4@email.arizona.edu

Lucia Rodriguez

Class of 2014, PhD in Environmental Engineering
luciar@email.arizona.edu

Several alumni of the environmental engineering doctoral program – and a current chemical engineering doctoral student – presented their research at the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors Conference at the University of Michigan on June 20-22.

From left to right are Christopher, Sarah, Vicky, Jorge and Lucia.

Iesha Betts

Class of 2016, BS in Chemical Engineering
imbatts@email.arizona.edu

This is a picture of me celebrating my 25th birthday in ValuePenguin.com’s seventh best city for chemical engineers in the country, the Tri-Cities area in Washington State. I moved here at the beginning of July, and am excited to network my way into a company that will help me grow into being a highly skilled professional in chemical engineering!

Alejandro Castilleja

Class of 2017, BS in Chemical Engineering
alecast1773@gmail.com

Here’s a pic of what I’ve been up to this summer. Spending some time in New York before the start of my career as a process engineer for Procter & Gamble at their Lima plant in Ohio. It’s their biggest plant by volume and revenue.

Aaron Ben

Class of 2017, BS in Chemical Engineering
aaronben96@gmail.com

I’ve been at home in Gallup, New Mexico, for most of the summer, which has been a great experience. I’ve also been working at the Tesoro refinery in Gallup.

Here are two photos. One [at the top of the page] is me on Pyramid Rock, a great hiking location west of Gallup that I’ve run/hiked up this summer in preparation for a 10K that I’m running in July. The other photo is of me with one of the dozen or so sheep at my house that my mom takes care of.

When I’m home, I help herd and shear. It’s a great experience that I’m learning to appreciate!