ABOUT

Our industrial advisory board assists in the evaluation of senior design projects and provides feedback for ABET. Thanks to them, the several senior design teams that graduate every semester, are able to get excellent feedback from their performance and projects, which allows them to improve and create better and more efficient solutions.

MEMBERS

David Axel Virzi is a Program Manager at the Boeing Company where his role is to manage major production engineering projects within the airplane factory. A large part of his effort has been focused on supporting the production of the new KC-46 Tanker for the U.S. Air Force. David received his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering degree from Florida International University and has since held a variety of engineering roles.

Mr. Sumil Musali received MS MSE from FIU in 2007. Mr. Musali has a rich experience in design and surface engineering in Oil & Gas, Energy, Refinery, and Aerospace industries. Mr. Musali is a Sr. Process engineer at FW Gartner (Curtiss Wright facility in Pearland, TX), he has been with the company since 2009 working with a wide array of Thermal spray coating applications.

Christopher Lazzara is the President of Neptune Research Inc. He also serves as the Chairman of the Board of directors. Chris holds a bachelor’s degree in Finance from The Florida State University College of Business. He leads NRI’s business focus on three fundamental aspects: leading the industry with quality composite solutions; Fostering innovation and development of new cutting edge composite technology; and Expanding into new global markets.

Timothy N. McKechnie is President of Plasma Processes LLC. Plasma Processes was founded by Mr. McKechnie in 1993 and is a state-of-the-art coating and material fabrication center with production capabilities in all thermal spray processes for several aerospace, defense, and energy applications.

Shawn M. Kroll is the Vice President of Robotics Development at Stryker. Throughout his tenure, Shawn has enjoyed growing with Stryker’s Joint Replacement business. He also holds 4 US patents for innovative instrumentation concepts developed during his work in leading the revitalization of Stryker’s Upper Extremity reconstructive business. Shawn is a graduate of The New Jersey Institute of Technology with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.

Mr. Riken Patel received MS ME from FIU in 2009. He works on R&D projects of thermal spray coatings with various universities, Navy and Government agencies Riken and his team perform coating failure analysis, coating evaluations using metallography, robot programming, mechanical testing & evaluation, per ASTM and military standards, including thermal and stress analysis. Mr. Patel is the Vice President of Engineering and Quality.

Dr. Baburaj Eranezhuth is the Director of Materials Research at Clarkson Aerospace Corporation, which manages the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Research Collaboration Program spread over about twenty universities in the US. His own research areas in the Air Force program are on (i) ultrahigh temperature materials for thermal protection, (ii) electronic thermal management materials and (iii) personal armor protection.