Mission

The mission of the Advisory Board is to help the Chemical Engineering Department achieve its academic mission. The advisory board is comprised of members from academic institutions, consulting firms, private practice, and industry. The members of the Departmental Advisory Board

• Function as constituents representing employers of our graduates
• Advise the department on mission statement, program educational objectives and outcomes   
• Serve as a lobby group to promote chemical engineering education
• Support department research activities
• Assist the department in communicating with local industries
• Assist the department in fund raising activities

Membership

The board shall consist of professionals from all pertinent Chemical Engineering disciplines with experience in the public and/or private sector. At the advice of the department faculty, six members were selected and were appointed by the Chair of the Chemical Engineering Department for a three year term (renewable).

Meetings

The advisory board will meet a minimum of once per year, for about one day. Prior to each meeting, the Chair of the Chemical Engineering Department will issue an agenda for distribution to all board members and to the Chemical Engineering faculty.

Advisory Board Members

Gordon Cheng

Mr. Cheng, President of ChemicaLogic Corporation, is a management consultant to chemical and related industries. For over 30 years he has been helping clients to resolve management issues from the perspectives of chemical technology and market competitiveness; for 18 of those years he was associated with Arthur D. Little, Inc.

Drawing on his expertise in process technology, process economics, project appraisal, and operations management, Mr. Cheng assists clients worldwide in selecting technologies for implementation, assessing market potential, evaluating project or venture feasibility, appraising business value, benchmarking technical and business process performances, debottlenecking for productivity improvement, and planning strategy for corporate development.

Mr. Cheng's assignments have taken him to a wide variety of situations in the chemical and allied process industries, including petrochemical, refinery, pharmaceutical, brewery, fertilizers, electronics, specialty chemicals and food processing. Mr. Cheng monitors emerging process technologies, including Gas-to-Liquids (GTL), fuel processing for fuel cell vehicles, hydrogen storage, CO₂ sequestration and fuels from biomass. Mr. Cheng also studies the market dynamics of chemical commodities in China.

Mr. Cheng consults extensively in Asia on venture feasibility, technology transfer, and development strategy. Mr. Cheng has conducted numerous assignments for government agencies and private chemical companies in Taiwan. For the Spark Program Office of China State Science and Technology Council, he delivered a training course on enterprise management and technology evaluation to a group of senior project managers. On behalf of the Asia Foundation, Mr. Cheng held a seminar in Pudong, Shanghai on “Pollution Prevention” to introduce techniques to minimize pollution in process industries.

Mr. Cheng received his master degree in Chemical Engineering from University of New Hampshire, and his Bachelor of Engineering from Chung-Yuan University in Taiwan. He is a member of the American Chemical Society and American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Earlier in his career, Mr. Cheng was a development engineer with Cryogenic Technology, Inc. and Kahn & Company.

Cryogenic Technology, Inc. and Kahn & Company.

Joanne Donoghue

Ms. Donoghue graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering in 1991 from the University of New Hampshire. She has a broad range of R&D experience having spent over 15 years at premier research institutions. From 1995 to 2003, she held research and engineering positions at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution working in mass spectrometry, including the National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometer facility. From 2004 to 2006, she held laboratory management positions in radioisotope and cellulosic ethanol technology laboratories at Dartmouth College. Since 2006, Ms. Donoghue has worked at Mascoma Corporation, a start-up cellulosic ethanol company located in Lebanon, NH. She is currently the operations director and has been involved in all aspects of operations including recruiting, laboratory/office start up and expansions, office and lab consolidations, and project management of a multi-million dollar laboratory and office building. She now oversees management of the laboratory spaces and operations, corporate administrative services, purchasing and safety. Ms. Donoghue also serves on the Small Business Advisory Council for Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.

Thomas G. Field III

T.G. graduated from U.N.H. in 1996 with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering, University Honors. Looking to broaden the technical and problem solving foundation gained at U.N.H., he went directly to law school, completing a J.D. and L.L.M. in Intellectual Property (IP) at Pierce Law in 1999. In 1998, T.G. joined Wolf Greenfield, a premier Boston IP firm, as a summer associate and practiced law there until 2003. T.G.'s work at Wolf Greenfield included a wide variety of IP topics and he was actively involved in the Chemical and Litigation Practice Groups as well as trademark practice. His subject matter exposure was similarly broad - from consumer goods to material science for both industrial and academic clients. In 2003, T.G. left private practice to become Intellectual Property Counsel at Saint-Gobain, a 200,000+ employee global company with a strong innovative materials focus. In this role, he managed the world-wide IP portfolios of several businesses in the material science field, including significant agreement work and litigation management. In May 2009, T.G. was promoted to Associate General Counsel - Intellectual Property and currently manages Saint-Gobain's North American IP group. His 7 years with Saint-Gobain have given T.G. broad experience in working with senior management in a global legal environment and provided numerous opportunities to travel abroad.

Joseph Paterno

Dr. Paterno attended the University of New Hampshire, graduating magna cum laude with a BS degree in Chemical Engineering in 1963. He was president of the NH Alpha Chapter of Tau Beta Pi, the national engineering honor society. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating with an MS degree in Chemical Engineering in 1965. Following MIT, he interned at Avco Corporation working on the re-entry heat shield for the Apollo spacecraft command module. He then attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute under a NASA Fellowship where he took his Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering, majoring in Polymer Science, in 1970.

From 1970 to 1991 he worked for the Norton Company in Worcester, Massachusetts and rapidly rose through the ranks from senior research engineer to research supervisor to director of R&D to divisional vice president to vice president of worldwide manufacturing and finally to corporate vice president. As part of Norton’s philosophy of developing management talent, in 1978 the company sent him to attend the Executive Summer Program at Dartmouth College’s Amos Tuck Business School. At one point in his Norton career, Dr. Paterno had operating responsibility for all abrasive manufacturing plants worldwide encompassing 13 plants in 8 countries with 2800 employees. He traveled extensively on business throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico as well as in England, France, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Japan and South Africa. He was an early advocate of bringing statistical methods to the factory floor to improve process control, quality and cost. He also taught strategic planning at Norton Company’s Management Institute.

Following his retirement from Norton in 1991, Dr. Paterno joined the University of New Hampshire staff as the Executive Director of the NH Industrial Research Center providing technical help to NH companies. He continues to serve as an adjunct professor of Chemical Engineering.

Although he formally retired from the University in 1996, he maintains close relations with the University’s College of Engineering and Physical Sciences volunteering his time to assist the College’s dean with industrial relations and as chairman of the College’s Industrial Advisory Council. He also serves on the Chemical Engineering Department’s Advisory Board. In appreciation of the fine undergraduate education Dr. Paterno received at UNH, in 2001 he and his wife Nancy gave the University a testamentary trust to establish the Joe and Nancy Paterno Endowed Scholarship Fund to support deserving NH engineering students with financial need.

Rick Pierro

Rick Pierro is co-founder and owner of Superior Controls and has over twenty years of control systems experience. Mr. Pierro is currently serving as President of the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) Boston Area Chapter and has served on the ISPE Board of Directors since 2004 as Chairman of Student Affairs. He is a Trustee for the New Hampshire High Technology Council and is Chairman of the Board of Advisors for the University of Massachusetts- Lowell, Chemical Engineering Department. Mr. Pierro's longtime support of the UMass Lowell's Francis College of Engineering earned him the "Francis College Distinguished Engineering Award" in 2003. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of Acumentrics Corporation, a leading fuel cell development and manufacturing company, and E-Trolz, a leading provider of technology for electrophysiological medical devices.

Prior to Superior Controls, Mr. Pierro held various positions in project engineering, sales, and sales management. His work experiences include serving as an automation engineer at a systems integrator, where he designed and implemented PLC-based control systems for both the chemical and food and beverage industries.

Mr. Pierro graduated from Boston University with a B.A. in Chemistry in 1981 and received his M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Lowell in 1983. He researched and wrote his thesis on the testing of advanced PID tuning techniques for process control applications, and also taught several process control courses. He later completed several business courses at Harvard Business School. He is a frequent guest speaker on topics ranging from biotech automation, batching, and FDA validation requirements such as 21CFR Part 11, Process Analytical Technology, and GAMP.

Denise Saltojanes

With a broad background in early medical product development and financial analysis, Denise Saltojanes holds a multifaceted skill set from her fifteen year engineering-based finance career. Denise received a bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of New Hampshire, graduated magna cum laude with an MBA from Babson College with an emphasis in finance, and has passed the Level I exam for the Chartered Financial Analysts designation. Currently, she is a Financial Specialist for the Electronic System Center of US Air Force Materiel Command. She continues to apply her financial modeling, valuation, financial reporting, and business development experience to various research-focused organizations, working along side management, research staff, and investors. Prior to joining the Department of Defense, Ms. Saltojanes served as Vice President of Investment Banking at Medical Capital Advisors where she was an integral part of the firm’s merger and acquisition team. As a Senior Executive at Cambridge Polymer Group, a biopolymer research and development company in Boston, she supervised daily operations as well as coordinating marketing, financial strategy, and new business development and licensing agreements. She has been involved in private financings for orthopedic device and other medical technology companies. Additionally, Denise has held financial positions at the Orthopedic Biomechanics and Biomaterials Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital and started her career as a process engineer at General Electric.

Recently, she entered her second decade as a competitive triathlete in the New England region.

Richard Stone

Dick has over 35 years of experience in the electric power industry and 20 years of experience in the competitive power industry. Dick joined Excelsior Energy in July 2006 and is responsible for development, engineering and environmental permitting. He was most recently based in Hampton, N.H. as vice president of business development for Wheelabrator Technologies Inc, responsible for developing and acquiring new projects and restructuring existing projects. A wholly owned subsidiary of Waste Management, Inc. of Houston, Texas, Wheelabrator Technologies in Hampton, N.H., owns and/or operates 17 waste-to-energy facilities and six independent power production facilities.

Prior to Wheelabrator, Dick was the president of Westmoreland Coal Company's independent power development company, based in Colorado Springs and vice president of business development of CogenAmerica, a publicly-traded independent power producer based in Minnetonka.  Prior to obtaining his competitive power experience, Dick had an 18-year career with Stone & Webster Engineering Corporation in Boston. He has a degree in chemical engineering from the University of New Hampshire and is a member of the Chemical Engineering Department's Advisory Board.

Ray Yang

Dr. Ray Y. K. Yang received his PhD at Princeton University and joined the faculty of West Virginia University in 1982.  His major research activities, both experimental and theoretical, lie in the field of biochemical and chemical reaction engineering, in particular Biochemical Engineering and Biotechnology, Chemical Reaction Engineering and System Analysis and Modeling. The aim of his research is to improve the productivities of biochemical and chemical reactors or to develop novel ones.

Currently, Dr. Yang's research concentrates on membrane processes for enzymatic saccharification of lignocellulose; controlled release of intracellular products from plant cells and tissues; spontaneous and forced oscillations in bioreaction systems; and self-sustained oscillations in enzymatic hydrogels.

In addition to his industrial research experience in petroleum industry, Dr. Yang also taught at Edinburgh University (UK), the University of Queensland (Australia), and Cornell University (sabbatical leave) before joining the faculty at West Virginia.