College Announces 2026 Outstanding Alumni

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2026 OAA Recipients

The UMass Amherst Riccio College of Engineering is proud to announce the recipients of its 2026 Outstanding Alumni Awards (OAA). Awardees represent the college’s five departments and this year include five Distinguished Alumni and six 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:

  • Alyssa Panitch ’90 Chemical Engineering, ’97 PhD Polymer Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University
  • Cristina Thomas ’92 PhD Chemical Engineering, 3M
  • Heather Gilmer ’96 MA, ’97 BS Civil Engineering, Pennoni
  • Steve Sanghi ’78 MS Electrical Engineering, Microchip Technology 
  • Fred Boelitz ’86 Mechanical Engineering, Blue Origin

Emerging leaders in the early stages of their careers, recipients of the 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:

  • John Carchio ’21, ’26 MS Biomedical Engineering, Johnson & Johnson MedTech
  • Corinne Carpenter ’13 Chemical Engineering, MIT
  • Radhameris “Radha” Gomez ’12 MS, ’17 PhD Civil Engineering, PlanTrain, LLC
  • Jose LaSalle ’16 Electrical Engineering, florrent 
  • Ian Goodine ’21, ’22 MS Mechanical Engineering, rStream
  • Ethan Walko ’21, ’22 MS Mechanical Engineering, rStream

Several recipients of this year’s awards have established themselves as entrepreneurial leaders within the Commonwealth and beyond. These include Outstanding Young Alumni Award recipients Ian Goodine and Ethan Walko, whose robotics-based recycling startup rStream is based in Somerville, and Jose LaSalle, whose bio-based materials and energy storage company florrent is based in Northampton. Steve Sanghi, a Distinguished Alumni Award recipient, has led Microchip Technology through decades of sustained growth as one of the semiconductor industry’s longest-serving CEOs and has made significant philanthropic investments in engineering education.

In addition, several of this year’s recipients maintain close ties to the college and the university. Cristina Thomas has been a supporter of the university for many years, including establishing an endowed fund to provide scholarship support to undergraduate chemical engineering students; LaSalle serves as a member of the Advisory Board for the Commonwealth Honors College; and Goodine and Walko recently returned to campus to pilot their newest recycling innovation: a mobile trailer that uses AI to separate trash and recycling.

The OAA recipients will be celebrated at the 2026 Outstanding Alumni Awards Celebration, an invitation-only event held in the UMass Amherst Student Union Ballroom on Wednesday, April 29. Learn more about their accomplishments here.

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