Alumni Updates

Alton D. Romig Jr. to speak at university's Earth and Mineral Sciences baccalaureate ceremony on May 5.

 

Alton D. Romig, Jr. B.S. '75, M.S. '77, Ph.D. '79 was selected to address at Penn State's baccalaureate degree commencement ceremony for the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. Romig will deliver the address on Friday night, May 5, at the Pegula Ice Arena at the school's main campus in University Park.

 

If Tom Gillis ’15P ’17P ’19P could physically move Lehigh University to Silicon Valley, he might consider the possibility. Instead, the tech entrepreneur is bringing the two together any chance he can through his vision, involvement, expertise, and personal and technical connections.

 

Gillis, co-founder and CEO of Bracket Computing Inc., was the catalyst for the successful LehighSiliconValley (LSV) entrepreneurship program in the start-up hub of California, while his son was a first-year student at Lehigh in 2012.

 

As a child, Geoffrey Andrews ’15 dreamed of being an aerospace engineer. “I was one nerdy ten-year-old,” he admits.

 

But there’s nothing nerdy about the modern push toward hypersonic transport and affordable space access―and Geoffrey, a product of Lehigh University’s aerospace program, has launched himself right into orbit.

 

Lehigh alumna Dr. Christine Seymour '89 was named President-Elect of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE).

 

Seymour, the youngest person ever elected as an AIChE Fellow (in 2011), will serve as President-Elect this year, AIChE President in 2018 and AIChE past President in 2019.

 

Patrice Banks '02 is standing behind a table strewn with an assortment of car parts— rusty rotors, worn brake pads, dirty filters and frayed timing belts—at the edge of an oil-stained parking lot of an auto parts and service store outside Philadelphia.

 

Listening attentively and taking notes, a dozen women and one man who have signed up for her monthly Girls Auto Clinic stand in a half-ring in front of Banks. “They’ll up-sell you on everything,” Banks says about car mechanics and dealers. “They bank on us being uneducated consumers.”

 

On June 23, after Britain voted to leave the European Union, Stacey Cunningham ’96 stayed up most of the night reassuring nervous Wall Street traders, money managers and regulators, many of whom believed the surprising “Brexit” vote would have an adverse effect on the U.S. equities market.

 

Just one year earlier, Cunningham had been appointed Chief Operating Officer of the New York Stock Exchange Group. Now, as Britain’s choice became clear, she worked the phones to explain NYSE’s plans to ensure an orderly market opening the following morning.

 

Nearly 70 years after chasing an engineering degree at Lehigh, Michael Yonkovig returns to Bethlehem.

 

Life seemed full of promise when Michael M. “Mickey” Yonkovig enrolled at Lehigh in the spring semester of 1946.

 

Sterling Ashby '92, best known as co-founder of Umoja House, died in November 2017 after a year-long struggle with brain cancer. He was 48.

 

Sterling earned his bachelors in industrial and systems engineering at Lehigh University. In 1989, he and fellow students approached the University with a proposal outlining their ideas to improve campus diversity. Umoja House was the result, and it has been a resource, community and residence for students of color ever since.

 

Umoja, in Swahili, means "unity."

 

Lehigh computer science alumnus named IEEE Fellow

 

Stephen T.C. Wong '89G '91PhD, an internationally acclaimed bioengineer and imaging scientist with the Houston Methodist health network in Texas, has been awarded the distinction of fellow from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

 

Tang '85G '88 PhD named CEO of Bethlehem-based OraSure Technologies

 

Minted at the Ben Franklin Technology Center at Lehigh University in 1987, OraSure Technologies has grown to reach a global market with innovative products that enable healthcare providers to improve and protect the well-being of their patients.