New to CEE - 2018
Megan Keene joined CEE in May of 2017 as an accounts representative after working at Cornell in the University Budget Office for just over four years. She holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s degree in corporate finance, and she is a lover of animals.
Andrea Ippolito M.Eng. ’07
Andrea Ippolito joins the school as the first Executive Director for the Engineering Management Program working alongside Professors Patrick Reed, Ricardo Daziano, and Francis Vanek. One of the goals of this position is to modernize the program to best serve our students, which includes increasing partnerships with industry and government and improving connections with the 900+ program alumni. Prior to her appointment, Ippolito served as a Presidential Innovation Fellow based out of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and director of the Department of Veterans Affairs Innovators Network. She is a co-founder of Smart Scheduling, a software application acquired by athenahealth in 2016, and co-leader of MIT’s Hacking Medicine. Ippolito holds a B.S. in biological engineering and an M.Eng. in biomedical engineering from Cornell, as well as a M.S. in engineering management from MIT.
Michael Rolband ’80, M.Eng. ’81, M.B.A. ’82
A new position of professor of practice has been established in the college and the first person to have been hired in CEE in this role is Michael Rolband. Rolband founded Wetland Studies and Solutions, Inc. in 1991, based in Gainesville, Virginia. It grew into a 150+ person consulting firm with four offices focused in the Mid-Atlantic, and is now a subsidiary of the Davey Tree Expert Company. Wetland Studies and Solutions, Inc. is a recognized leader in the natural and cultural resources issues, dealing with the Clean Water Act and the Chesapeake Bay Act. They support public infrastructure and private development, wetlands delineation, archeology, stream and wetland banking, storm water and floodplain analysis, erosion control, stormwater permits and inspections, and wetlands and stream restoration design with all the engineering and science disciplines needed to implement such work on a turn-key basis. The professor of practice position aims to bring industry experience into the classroom and Rolband brings a wealth of career experience in environmental engineering, business ownership and management to our educational programs. Rolband is a Cornell CEE graduate and holds a B.S. in engineering, M.Eng. and M.B.A.
Stacey Shirk is CEE’s new finance specialist, having joined the staff in February of this year. She is a certified research administrator (CRA) and has been at Cornell for 18 years, most recently as the team lead in the sponsored research administration center for Computing and Information Science. Her role provides critical financial administration support and post-award management of faculty grants and contracts.
Jim Strait is the new Bovay Lab Manager and he joined the staff in April 2017. This is Strait’s first position at Cornell. Strait brings a strong mechanical skillset from previous jobs that he worked at in the Ithaca area, notably: Macom Technology Solutions as a mechanical test engineer, Kionix, Inc. as a test engineer, and BorgWarner Morse TEC. Strait holds a B.S. in electrical mechanical engineering technology from Rochester Institute of Technology.
Celia Szczepura-McLean joined the staff in August 2017. She fulfills the position of Center Manager in the school and currently works closely with principle investigator, Associate Professor and Director of Systems Engineering at Cornell, Oliver Gao, on the initiatives and goals of the Center for Transportation, Environment, and Community Health (CTECH). Celia has 18 years of Cornell administrative management experience. Her last role before joining CEE was as the director of administration for the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, where she worked for four years.