Alumni

Alumni spotlight | A new way to harvest solar energy "A lot of people think of solar panels as being all there is to solar" says Ron Van Dell, President and CEO of Austin-based SolarBridge Technologies. "They tend to think if panels were cheaper, then solar would be affordable. But, with the price of solar panels falling fast, what used to be the dominant cost is now less than half the total" Of the rest, the most important . . .

Vice Chairman, Board of Directors, Atlas-Copco Robbins, Inc. Richard J. Robbins graduated from the Michigan College of Mining and Technology (MCM&T) in 1956 with a BS in Mechanical Engineering. Since 1958, Dick has been a major contributor and a prominent influence in the mining and tunneling industry. In 1958, Dick joined The Robbins Company—established by his father, James S. Robbins, a 1933 MCM&T mining engineering . . .

Ellen Bauman graduated from Michigan Tech with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1990. She later returned to Tech and completed her master’s degree in electrical engineering in the spring of 1993. Bauman started her career in 1990 as a field service engineer for Industrial Services Technology in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She developed conveyor control systems and oversaw their installation in various Midwestern . . .

Dr. Tim A. Williams '76 is the CEO of Beach Technologies, LLC, a consulting company that provides intellectual property assessments and investment due diligence studies for large multinational companies and venture funds. He is also the chairman of Docco Tech, Inc., a company that trains engineers in wireless standards, VoIP, and RFID. Additionally, Dr. Williams holds the position of CEO at BEEcube, Inc., which builds . . .