Engineering Management Faculty Profiles

Kathryn Abel is the Director of the Engineering Management Program at the School of Systems and Enterprises. She has held several professional service positions including President (2007) and Vice President (2005) of Engineering Management Honor Society (Epsilon Mu Eta); and Engineering Management Division President (2006) and Program Chair (2005) of the American Society for Engineering Education. Abel has been published several times including chapters in the books Eshbach's Handbook of Engineering Fundamentals and Engineering Economic Analysis; in journals such as the Engineering Management Journal and the Journal of Engineering Education; and several conference proceedings. She is a member of several professional societies including ASEE, ASEM, ASME, and EMH. Abel holds several degrees from Stevens Institute of Technology including a Ph.D. in Applied Psychology and Technology Management, a M.S. in Technology Management, and a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering.

Anthony Barrese, PhD

Anthony Barrese came to Stevens from NCR where he was a company officer, and Vice President & General Manager of the Teradata Industry Application Division and the Network Products Division. He has had thirty-five years of corporate planning, systems engineering and architecture, product management, product development, manufacturing and quality management experience. Prior to NCR, he worked at Bell Laboratories and AT&T on a variety of voice and data communication programs. He teaches courses in System Engineering.

Leon A. Bazil, PhD

Leon Bazil came to Stevens from the University at St. Petersburg, Russia where he was the Chair of the Cybernetics Department His research and consulting interests are in the areas of organizational development and computer-aided design, and modeling and simulation. He has authored or co-authored 4 books, over 20-refereed publications and approximately 50 other technical publications. He has served as a consultant to companies and to governments during their transition periods (privatizations, conversion, mergers and acquisitions). From 1967 to 1987 Dr. Bazil has held positions in several areas from Project Management to Academia. From 1987 through 2000 he has served as founder and Professor of the first private Estonian Business School, the sole internationally recognized in 1992 for Education of MBA by American, British and German colleges. He left Russia to the West in 1992 to become a Professor of the US International University in London and to Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey in 1993. Since joining Stevens, he has created new masters and PhD courses in Management and chaired i new BizTech undergraduate program. He is a member of the American Society of Engineering Management, of International Federation of Operations Research Societies and of System Dynamics Society.

Howard G. Berline

Professor Howard Berline has a distiguished background in corporate development, acquisitions and divestitures, and strategic and operational planning that spanned international businesses in the telecommunications, information services, and computer/technology fields. Berline has broad experience in market research, marketing planning, information systems, financial analysis, and busines modeling. Before joining Stevens as an industry Professor, Berline was the Vice President of Planning and Development at McGraw-Hill, and Vice President of Strategic Planning at GTE Corp.

John V. Farr, PhD

John V. Farr is a Professor of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management and Associate Dean for Academics in the School of Systems and Enterprises at Stevens Institute of Technology. He was the founding Director of the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at Stevens from 2000 to 2007. Before coming to Stevens in 2000, he was a Professor of Engineering Management at the United States Military Academy at West Point where he was the first civilian professor in engineering and Director of their Engineering Management Program. He is a former past president and Fellow of American Society for Engineering Management, a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and a member of the Army Science Board and Air Force Studies Board of the National Academies. His is a former editor of the Journal of Management in Engineering and the founder of the Engineering Management Practice Periodical. He has authored over 100 technical publications including one textbook. He earned his undergraduate degree from Mississippi State University and Masters and PhD in Civil Engineering from Purdue and the University of Michigan, respectively. He is a registered Civil Engineer in the states of Mississippi and New York.

Eirik Hole

Eirik Hole came to Stevens from HOOD Consulting in Munich, Germany where he was implementing Systems Engineering and Requirement Management methodology and tools, mainly in the automotive industry. Before that he was a Systems Engineer in the aerospace and defense industry as well as a pre-sales consultant in the introduction and application of Systems Engineering tools. Professor Hole received an MSc Aerospace Engineering from the University of Stuttgart, Germany.

Rashmi Jain, PhD

Prof. Jain has consulted on large and complex information technology (IT) projects involving substantially the entire life cycle from business requirements, systems requirements, high level design, detailed designs, development, testing, prototyping to production. She also has extensive experience in business requirements gathering from stakeholders and translating them into systems requirements. The clients have ranged from Fortune 100 companies to new dotcom startups in industry sectors like energy, telecom, utilities and financial services (foreign exchange, investment banking and capital markets). She has led teams responsible for designing and implementing IT systems using diverse kinds of technology/systems including SAP, Oracle, Unix, Sybase, Electronic Commerce Systems and several Database Management Systems (DBMS). Many of her consulting projects involved business process reengineering in areas like order management; contracting; invoicing; accounts payable/accounts receivable; brokerage, clearing and exchange fee management. Prior to joining Accenture in 1997, Prof. Jain worked with management research and consulting organizations in India from 1985 to 1992. Her work was in industry sectors like cement, oil and natural gas, light commercial vehicles, engineering projects consultancy, management institutions, financial Institutions, chambers of commerce and industry. Clients were large corporations, the Indian federal government, the state governments, state financial institutions, the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG), UK etc.

Donald N. Merino, PhD

Dr. Donald N. Merino is a tenured full Professor of Engineering Management at Stevens. Prior to joining Stevens, Dr. Merino spent 25 years in industry in executive positions in Standard Brands, Exxon, Mobil and Celanese (Hoescht). During his industrial career, Dr. Merino helped initiate the Quality Management Program at Celanese, developed the corporate technical plan and directed corporate new business activities.

John Mikruk

John P. Mikruk is a Project Management professional with over 25 years experience in project and engineering management. He is a member of the International Electrical Electronics Engineering Society (IEEE), Project Management Professional Membership (PMP) and American Society for Engineering Management (ASEM).

Retired from AT&T, Mikruk was a member of the technical staff of AT&T Labs involved in projects across the globe. As Director of Project Management, he has managed numerous domestic and international large-scale deployments of communications systems including installations in the Middle East, Far East and Central America.

Mikruk had been actively involved in the development and delivery of management and leadership education and training programs throughout his career at AT&T. In addition, he has developed and taught courses for Parker Associates International and is currently an adjunct professor for Stevens Institute of Technology.

He has authored a paper “System Implementation Strategies, A Case Study in Re-Engineering a Project for Success” which was presented at the ASEM Conference.

Mikruk has a Bachelor of Science from Thomas Edison State College, a Masters of Science in Project Management from Stevens Institute of Technology and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Management Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology. His research focuses on analysis of social networks within organizations. He has worked in both industry and academia and provides a unique perspective.

David R. Nowicki, PhD

Professor Nowicki brings over 15 years of industry experience to the academic world. He has focused his efforts in the areas of Supply Chain Management (SCM), technology architecture and logistics modeling. Mr. Nowicki has held executive positions at i2 Technologies where he built i2’s European development organization and later ran their Consumer Packaged Goods consulting and solution practice. Professor Nowicki also held executive positions at Servigistics and Tools for Decision (TFD). At Servigistics, David was responsible for product management in the field of Service Parts Management. At TFD, he focused his efforts on modeling LCC, Spares Optimization, LORA solutions to drive new business. In his earlier years, Mr. Nowicki conducted supportability studies for the SDI program while working for DRC and programmed sonar displays for IBM. Professor Nowicki received his Masters Degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech and both his bachelors and doctorate degrees in Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Professor Nowicki’s research efforts now focus on applying advanced analytical techniques to solve Supply Chain Management problems from a Systems Engineering context. Specifically, Professor Nowicki research is concentrated on Performance Based Logistics modeling and multi-asset optimization. Additional areas of interest are in the fields of reliability theory and spares optimization.

Carl Pavarini, PhD

Dr. Pavarini is currently an active investor in, and advisor to, technology-based start-up companies in the telecommunications, internet infrastructure, optical/communications components, and applications software markets. He works actively with angel investors and venture capitalists, and serves on the Board of Directors of several private high-tech companies.

He is also Visiting Executive at Stevens Institute of Technology, and adjunct professor in the School of Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He previously taught entrepreneurship in telecommunications and electronic media in the MBA program of the Graduate School of Business of Columbia University.

Jose E. Ramirez-Marquez, PhD

Dr. Ramirez-Marquez comes from Rutgers University where he was involved in research focused on developing methods for optimizing system performance. He has also worked on modeling complex systems that have numerous performance levels.

Brian Sauser, PhD

Brian Sauser holds a B.S. from Texas A&M University in Agricultural Development with an emphasis in Horticulture Technology, a M.S. from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in Bioresource Engineering, and a Ph.D. from Stevens Institute of Technology in Project Management. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Systems & Enterprises at Stevens Institute of Technology. He teaches courses in Project Management of Complex Systems, Designing and Managing the Development Enterprise, and Systems Thinking. In addition, he is a National Aeronautics and Space Administration Faculty Fellow, Editor-in-Chief of the Systems Research Forum, an Associate Editor of the IEEE Systems Journal, and the Associate Editor of the ICST Transactions on Systomics, Cybernetics, and e-Culture.

Teresa Zigh, PhD

Dr. Teresa Zigh received her Bachelor of Engineering (1978), her Masters of Managment Science (1985) and her Ph.D. (1997) from Stevens. Her Ph.D. work examined the use of neural networks to discern meaning in English-language stories. Since receiving her doctorate, she has taught in both the Howe School of Management and the newly-formed School of Systems and Enterprises. She teaches a ranch of subjects: MIS, statistics and probability, artificial intelligence, operations research, and forecasting.

She successfully developed and taught one of the first online courses in the Center for Improved Engineering and Science Education program, teaching elementary school teachers to use the Web to enhance instruction in science and mathematics. Her areas of interest include statistics and probability, stochastic processes, applied neural networks and linguistics. She's currently employed at Stevens in the School of Systems and Enterprises, where she has teaches full-time and advises undergraduate students in the Engineering Management program.

She has spent most of her career in industry, working as an engineer and a programmer for firms such as Combustion Engineering, Computer Sciences Corporation, UPS, and most recently, Computershare, where she was responsible for the generation of over 50 million documents a year.