Alumni News

If you would like for us to print news of your latest achievements, please send us an e-mail at gradcoor@lsu.edu.

In Memoriam

We were saddened to learn of the passing of the following alumni. We extend our belated condolences to their families and friends.

Alumnus Receives Distinguished Award

Ronald Rousseau (right) with co-winner Felder

Ronald W. Rousseau (B.S. 1966, M.S. 1968, Ph.D. 1969), who is currently the chair of Georgia Tech's School of Chemical Engineering, received the 2002 Warren K. Lewis Award for Excellence in Chemical Engineering Education along with Richard Felder, a professor of North Carolina State University. The two co-authored the text Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes, which has been the dominant introductory text in chemical engineering for over 25 years. The award recognizes distinguished and continuing contributions to chemical engineering education, and was presented to them at the annual meeting of the 2002 American Institute of Chemical Engineers. We congratulate Rousseau, as well as Felder, on receipt of this most prestigious award.

Alumni Updates

1940s

Davis Eugene Speeg (B.S. 1946) is retired and currently enjoys traveling abroad and taking cruises.

1950s

J. Giralt Mestre (B.S. 1950), who was known as Keeno Martinez Mestre while at LSU, is retired after working 10 years with Royal Dutch Shell in Cuba, five years with Armour Chemical in Chicago, and 28 years with Texaco Chemical in Houston. He has one son, two daughters with post college degrees and five granddaughters. On a recent visit to LSU with his wife Pola, he purchased a tile on the Tiger Walk in front of the Lod Cook Alumni Center and encouraged others to do the same.

1960s

Gary Guelfo (B.S. 1964) is a divisional engineering/services manager for BASF Corporation. He has spent most of his career in production management and is looking forward to retirement soon.

Rene L. Latiolais (B.S. 1965) is retired from Freeport-McMoRan Inc. in 1997/98. She is currently living on her horse farm and engages in foxhunting (English Chase).

Milan J. Turk (B.S. 1960) received his M.B.A. from LSU in 1962 and retired from EXYP International Paper. He was the former president of the College of Engineering. He married Margot M. Genre, who was the president of the College of Education and they have four children and five grandchildren. He is currently consulting with start-up companies on strategy formation, financing, and deal making. He also enjoys catching up on many hobbies.

1970s

Beth McKenzie Hebert (B.S. 1977) is a senior environmental engineer at Enterprise Products Company in Houston. She received her M.S. in environmental engineering at University of Houston in 1999. Since graduating from LSU she has worked in Lake Charles, New Orleans, Kentucky, New Jersey, and, for the past 10 years, Texas.

Stan Labat (B.S. 1976) has been employed by ExxonMobil since December 1976 (all in Baton Rouge except for one year in Florham Park, New Jersey in 1982).

Sam Scalfano (B.S. 1979) is currently managing a small specialty chemicals plant in north Louisiana with 27 employees. The privately held company's name is GEO Specialty Chemicals and is located in Bastrop. He has worked in R&D, process, pilot plant, project, and production. They are presently expanding their production capacity of one of their product lines.

1980s

Mike Achacoso (B.S. 1989) is currently the technical manager at ExxonMobil's Billings Refinery located in Billings, Montana. After graduating, he was employed by ExxonMobil's Baton Rouge Refinery, where he held several engineering, analyst, and supervisory positions. Since then, he has worked at ExxonMobil's downstream headquarters in both Houston, Texas and Fairfax, Virginia.

Karl Anderson (B.S. 1987, M.S. 1989) is a senior engineer in fluid mechanics group for Shell Global Solutions (technology company for Shell Oil). After receiving his M.S. from LSU in 1989, he completed his Ph.D. at Princeton in 1994. He currently lives in Houston, Texas with his wife Dawn and four sons: Caleb (11), Michael (9), Joseph (6), and Noah (2).

Mary Fagan Broadbridge (B.S. 1987) worked with Union Corbide Corportation for seven years. She is now at home, since 1996, raising three children.

Cheri Coates Buehring (B.S. 1983) is currently working as a project manager for an environmental consulting firm in Greenville, South Carolina. She has been married to Ken Buehring (B.S. ChE 1983) for 19 years. They would love to hear from their other classmates.

Sharon Hutchinson Cole (B.S. 1981) is currently the director of technology and R&D for a global business. She worked with Dow Chemical for 21 years. She has been residing in Freeport, Texas for the last four years. She has a camp at Belle River and enjoys visiting Baton Rouge frequently. She is still a member of the LSU recruiting team, but only as "back up" since she has moved to Texas.

Dwayne P. Cormier, P.E. (B.S. 1983) is an environmental engineer on the Navy Environmental Inspection Team working for the Naval Inspector General.

David A. Ivey (B.S. 1983) currently travels and speaks at conventions and seminars as a self-employed Christian motivational speaker. After graduating from LSU, he was employed by Lockheed Space Operations Company at KSC where he worked as a thermal protection system processing engineer on the Space Shuttle Fleet. He worked his way up to engineering supervisor two years later. He retired from KSC in 1995 and opened up a travel business. He retired from the travel business in 2001.

Bernie J. Lofaso, Jr. (B.S. 1980) is no longer in the chemical engineering profession. He received an M.A. in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin in 1989 and has worked at one of their research labs since 1984.

Edgar Neftaly Rodriguez C. (B.S. 1984) is the owner of a hardware store.

1990s

Patrick Alderman (B.S. 1999) is currently a production engineer for Ineos Oxide at Dow Chemical in Plaquemine. After graduating, he worked for Albemarle Corp. in process development for almost two years.

Bryan K. Butts (B.S. 1995) is currently a production engineer with Honeywell in Geismar, Louisiana.

Rachel Vicknair Atkinson (B.S. 1998) is employed as a product control engineer (economic planning) at Marathon Ashland Petroleum in Texas City, Texas.

Hugh Brian (B.S. 1997) is working at Du Pont's La Porte facility as a process engineer. He spent last year in Boston assisting the construction of an LNG vaporization unit. He has created a water garden in the backyard and stocked it with some goldfish, which have promptly reproduced.

John DeLaney (B.S. 1993) is a production engineer at Exxon Mobil in Baton Rouge. He is married to Tricia Comeaux, also a LSU chemical engineering graduate.

Tricia Comeaux DeLaney (B.S. 1994) has been employed by Exxon Mobil Chemicals in Baton Rouge for eight years. She is currently the operations supervisor of IPA and MEK units. She married John and they have two daughters Julie, born in 1999, and Maggie, born in 2001.

Steven M. Gardner (B.S. 1997) is a process engineer with SGL Carbon. He has a son named Jacob, a daughter named Ashley, and a third child on the way.

Benjamin Craig Hill (B.S. 1997) is a research engineer with Westinghouse Savannah River Company at the Savannah River site in Aiken, South Carolina. He is married to Rosa Dunkelberg, also a LSU chemical engineering graduate.

Rosa Dunkelberg Hill (B.S. 1999) is a system engineer with Westinghouse Savannah River Company at the Savannah River site in Aiken, South Carolina. She and her husband, Benjamin, enjoy scuba diving.

Pearl Kuan (B.S. 1998) is working for Petreco International as an applications engineer and pursing M.B.A. studies at the University of Houston.

Damon Lechtenberg, P.E. (B.S. 1996) is working as a process/environmental/ consulting engineer with Cox-Walker & Associates in Baton Rouge.

Lesley Lewis Lee (B.S. 1998) joined the Southern Company in 1999 as a project engineer in the area of power generation and is currently working as a power plant maintenance supervisor in the company's Leadership Development Program.

Todd Marcello (B.S. 1993) is employed at Vulcan Chemicals as an operational excellence engineer in Geismar, Louisiana. He lives in Baton Rouge with his wife, Dana, and his son, Taylor. They are huge fans of the Tigers.

Brad Martin (B.S. 1993) is a refining engineer with Marathon Ashland Petroleum in Garyville, Louisiana. He has been married for three years to Nikki Madere, also an LSU graduate, and they reside in LaPlace. He enjoys LSU sporting events, bowling, fishing, and traveling.

Regina Bourgeois Matthews (B.S. 1994) worked at Shell Chemical in Geismar for five years, and now works for Ondeco Nalco at Shell in Norco. She married Mark in April 2000 and had a daughter, Aidan Grace on June 9, 2002.

Jacob T. Richardson, P.E. (B.S. 1996) has been employed with IMC Phosphates since 1996 and is currently a process/area engineer for their Louisiana Operations.

Melanie Hebert Russell (B.S. 1993) worked for Exxon Chemicals in Baton Rouge from 1993 to 1996, and then moved to France in 1996 with Elf Atochem where she remained employed as a process engineer until the end of 2000. She married Carey Russell in 2000. Now she is just enjoying life in southwest France. She had a baby boy, Loic Thomas, on September 20, 2002.

Chad V. Scott, P.E. (B.S. 1996) is a project supervisor with Trinity Consultants, Inc.

Holly Logan Scott (B.S. 1997) is working as a process engineer with Marathon Ashland Petroleum in Garyville, Louisiana.

Rakshay R. Shah (B.S. 1997) is a business analyst for Dow Chemical in Plaquemine. He has worked for Dow Chemical since graduation and held various production and project positions in ethylene manufacturing at Dow's Freeport and Plaquemine sites. He is currently responsible for economic evaluation of large capital projects for chlorine/caustic production units in North America. Also, he is pursuing an M.B.A. at LSU and will be graduating in May 2003.

Diane White (B.S. 1993) is working as a controls engineer for Vulcan Chemicals in Geismar, Louisiana.

2000s

Abdul Alhusaini (B.S. 2001) is a sulfur recovery area contact engineer for Saudi Aramco (Uthmaniyah Gas Plant). He reports missing LSU and Baton Rouge very much.

Ned H. Issa (B.S. 2000) is employed by Dupont-Dow as an elastomers production engineer.

Steve Pudlewski (B.S. 2000) is currently employed as the operations manager of a HCFC production facility in El Segundo, California. In February 2003, he and his family will be relocating back to Baton Rouge with Honeywell as he will be transferring to the Geismar facility as an operations black belt.

Karen Rhodes (B.S. 2002) is employed as a process engineer for Jacobs Engineering Group in Baton Rouge.

Mamta R. Shah (B.S. 2002) works as a process engineer for Shell Chemical Company in Geismar, Louisiana.

Raman Thiruvenkatachari (M.S. 2000) is employed as a process engineer at the Intel Corporation in Santa Clara, California.

Allison White (B.S. 2002) is a process engineer (civilian) working for the United States Air Force.

Abdelqader (Ab) Zamamiri (Ph.D. 2000) is a senior development scientist in the Fermentation Development R&D Department at Abbott Labs, North Chicago, Illinois.

Lina Bustami Zamamiri (M.S. 2000) is the wife of Abdelqader and they were blessed with a baby girl named Noor.

Grettel Iveth Zamora (B.S. 2000) is pursuing a Ph.D. in polymer engineering at the University of Southern Mississippi. After college, she worked for two years in GE Operations Management Leadership Program. She loves traveling.

Guangyan Zhu (Ph.D. 2001) is working as a senior systems engineer for UTC Fuel Cells in South Windsor, Connecticut.

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