College Announces 2025 Outstanding Alumni

Community
2025 OAA

The UMass Amherst College of Engineering is proud to announce the recipients of its 2025 Outstanding Alumni Awards (OAA). Awardees represent the college’s five departments and this year include five Distinguished Alumni and five Outstanding Young Alumni.

Visionary leaders in their field, recipients of the Distinguished Alumni Award have reached exceptional levels of professional and personal achievement. This award recognizes distinguished leadership, service, teaching, innovation, and other exemplary accomplishments that positively impact society and the engineering profession. This year’s Distinguished Alumni Award honorees are:

  • Daniel J. Riccio Jr. ’86, ’24 MS Mechanical Engineering, Apple
  • Charissa Williar ’98 Civil Engineering, United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps
  • Marvin Schlanger ’72 MS Chemical Engineering, UGI
  • Jeremy Stevenson ’96 Computer Engineering [Awarded by: Biomedical Engineering], Formulatrix
  • Pinar Ormeci ’00 MS Electrical Engineering, Timus Networks

Emerging leaders in the early stages of their careers, recipients of Outstanding Young Alumni Award are generally no more than ten years out from receiving their UMass Engineering PhD or no more than fifteen years out from receiving their UMass Engineering undergraduate degree. This award recognizes outstanding professional and personal achievements, and highlights the recipient’s ambitions and potential to positively impact UMass, the Commonwealth, the nation, and the world. This year’s Outstanding Young Alumni Award honorees are:

  • Steven Tupper, ’09, ’11 MS Civil Engineering, Cape Cod Commission
  • Eydis Lima ’12 Chemical Engineering, C3 Medical Device Consulting, LLC
  • Destenie Nock ’19 PhD Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
  • Abigail Risse ’20 Mechanical Engineering [Awarded by: Biomedical Engineering], Cerity Partners Ventures
  • Jared Lucey ’07 Electrical Engineering, NASA

Several recipients of this year’s awards remained in Massachusetts after graduating from UMass and have established themselves as engineering leaders within the Commonwealth. This includes Steven Tupper ’09, ’ 11 MS who serves as the Deputy Director of the Cape Cod Commission, the regional land use planning, economic development, and regulatory agency for Cape Cod. In this role, he leads a multi-disciplinary team dedicated to preserving Cape Cod's unique character and quality of life by addressing the region’s most pressing challenges, including advancing infrastructure and planning for climate change.

In addition, several of this year’s recipients maintain close ties to the College of Engineering: Daniel J Riccio Jr ’86, ’24 MS is a member of the Dean's Advisory Council; Destenie Nock ’19 PhD has participated in the UMass Amherst INFORMS speaker series; and Pinar Ormeci ’00 MS returned to campus to serve as a judge for this year's Tech Challenge.

The OAA recipients will be celebrated during an invitation-only event in the UMass Amherst Campus Center on May 1. Learn more about their accomplishments here.

Article posted in Community for Faculty , Staff , Prospective students , Current students , Alumni , and Public