The 38th BEYA STEM DTX Announces Full List of 2024 Winners

BALTIMORE - Dec. 15, 2023 - PRLog -- The BEYA STEM DTX Conference, presented by co-hosts US Black Engineer & IT magazine, the Council of Engineering Deans of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Lockheed Martin, technology host Google, and co-sponsors Actalent and RTX, has announced the complete list of the 2024 BEYA winners. The BEYA STEM DTX Conference will be returning to Baltimore February 15-17, 2024, as well as broadcasted through the BEYA 365 digital twin platform and STEM City USA.

The annual conference, which is now in its 38th year of production, recognizes industry leaders from Fortune companies, government agencies, educational institutions, and more for their dynamic leadership and ceiling-breaking achievements in STEM.

Flying under the banner of "People. Process. Technology.", the conference is honoring over 40 BEYA STEM Award recipients.

2024 BEYA STEM Honorees:

BLACK ENGINEER OF THE YEAR
Ken Washington, Ph.D.
Senior Vice President and Chief Technology & Innovation Officer
Medtronic

CAREER ACHIEVEMENT IN GOVERNMENT
Andrea Williams
Chief, Operations Division
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Carl Donahoo
Lead Engineer, Joint Program Office for both Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) and Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM)
AFLCMC/EB-E

CAREER ACHIEVEMENT IN INDUSTRY
George Coles Jr.
Biomechanical and Microelectronics Engineer
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

William Johnson Jr.
SVP Logistics & Mission Support Operations
Leidos

COMMUNITY SERVICE IN GOVERNMENT
Tony Harris
Systems Engineer
DEVCOM Analysis Center

COMMUNITY SERVICE IN INDUSTRY
Eric Biribuze
Global Sales Director, AGS
Corning Incorporated

Anthony Crutchfield
Vice President, Army Systems
The Boeing Company

DAVE BARCLAY AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
Allan Sonsteby, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Penn State Applied Research Lab

Duran Gunter
Director, Quality & Process Engineering
Pratt Whitney, a RTX Business

GEM OUTSTANDING YOUNG ALUMNUS
Nashlie Sephus, Ph.D.
Tech Evangelist/Senior Scientist at Amazon, AL
Amazon

LEGACY AWARDS
Asma Abuzaakouk, Ph.D.
Human and Organization Systems, Principal
MITRE

Tracy Barnes
Chief Information Officer
State of Indiana

Sunita Benson-Agwu
Manager Project Execution
Pepco Holdings

Angelys Cuello
Clinical Engineer II
Abbott

Bertrand Damiba
Director, Product Management
Google

Gilbert "Chip" Jones III, D.M.
Staff Engineer Systems Architect
Northrop Grumman Corporation

Robert McMeans
Manager
Spirit AeroSystems

Kamal Mohamed
Ship Manager
General Dynamics Electric Boat

Veronica Nelson
Executive Director
Advancing Minorities' Interest in Engineering (AMIE)

Sharon Parish
Director, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility
Department of Navy, Naval Sea Systems Command

Michael Patton Jr.
Vice President, Program Management
Lockheed Martin Corporation

Wayne Richards Jr., DBA
Senior Manager, Program Management
Raytheon, an RTX Business

Tiffany Spence
General Engineer
Missile Defense Agency

Ron Williams
Senior Vice President and General Manager
Jacobs

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Howard McKenzie
Chief Engineer and Executive Vice President of Engineering, Test & Technology
The Boeing Company

MOST PROMISING ENGINEER IN GOVERNMENT
Lowell Jones
Aerospace Engineer
Air Force Materiel Command

MOST PROMISING ENGINEER IN INDUSTRY
Nirupama (Pam) Bhattacharya, Ph.D.
Principal Data Scientist
MITRE

Nicole Jackson, Ph.D.
R&D S&E Systems Research and Analysis
Sandia National Laboratories

MOST PROMISING SCIENTIST
Shavonn Watkins, Ph.D.
Associate
Booz Allen Hamilton

Connie Kim
Health Program Analysis and Transformation, Lead
MITRE

OUTSTANDING TECHNICAL CONTRIBUTION IN GOVERNMENT
Nathaniel Bridges, Ph.D.
Research Biomedical Engineer
Air Force Research Laboratory

Chad Nash
Chief, QRC Branch
U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command

OUTSTANDING TECHNICAL CONTRIBUTION IN INDUSTRY
Tresha Lacaux
Vice President & 777X Chief Project Engineer
The Boeing Company

Christa Wright, Ph.D.
Research Director
CIRI of UL Research Institutes

PIONEER AWARD
Matice Wright-Springer
Senior Vice President
Booz Allen Hamilton

PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENT IN GOVERNMENT
Maj Roderick Ervin
Chief, Program Integration Branch
United States Air Force

LTC Michael Pope
Deputy Commander
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENT IN INDUSTRY
Nelson Akwari, Ph.D.
Director, Interiors Responsibility Center South Carolina
The Boeing Company

Brandon Cassimere, Ph.D.
Senior Technical Professional Leader
KBR

RESEARCH LEADERSHIP
Katherine Kim, Ph.D.
Consumer Health Informatics, Principal
MITRE

SENIOR INVESTIGATOR
Rigobert Tibi, Ph.D.
R&D S&E Geosciences Engineering
Sandia National Laboratories

Sridevi Polavaram, Ph.D.
Senior Artificial Intelligence Engineer
MITRE

SENIOR TECHNOLOGY FELLOW
William Agassounon, Ph.D.
Director, Research & Advanced Systems
Textron Systems

STUDENT LEADERSHIP – UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL
Jabari Bowen
Cadet
U.S. Air Force Academy Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

TECHNICAL SALES AND MARKETING
Victor Deal
Senior Program Manager, Business Development
HII

VISIONARY AWARD
Anthony Brown, Esq.
Attorney General
Maryland State Government

For more information about this year's honorees: https://intouch.ccgmag.com/mpage/beya-award-winners/

About BEYA & CCG

The BEYA STEM DTX Conference is produced by Career Communications Group, Inc. (CCG), the leader in workforce diversity, working with all types of companies to help support them in promoting multiculturalism and gender equity in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). For 38 years, the BEYA STEM DTX Conference has been a leading event for professional development, networking, and providing a resource for minorities to feel empowered. For more information about the 2024 BEYA STEM DTX Conference, visit www.beya.org.