Alumni honored for their successes

Seven alumni took the spotlight on Friday of Homecoming weekend as they received this year’s Presidential Citation for Outstanding Achievement awards, while another pair of graduates were honored at halftime of the Homecoming football game.

At the Friday ceremony, UD President Patrick Harker and Monica Taylor, vice president of development and alumni relations, presented the Presidential Citations that celebrate the recipients’ dedication to public service and professional contributions.

“Know that we at the University are very proud of you and what you have accomplished,” Harker said in his welcoming remarks. “Although your individual experience and your accomplishments vary, you all share an important quality—you have remained engaged with this University. Such engagement is crucial.”

The following are the winners of this year’s Presidential Citation Awards.

Menbere Alemayehu, CHEP ’90, owner of Menby’s Design, a studio based in her native Ethiopia, graduated from the apparel design program. She achieved her first goal—to become a successful self-employed businesswoman in her home country. Her second, related goal is to improve the lives of other Ethiopian women by hiring and training more women as weavers and seamstresses while providing good pay and better working conditions.

Robert Boudwin, BE ’97, is the mascot and event specialist for the NBA’s Houston Rockets. As a student, he helped launch the YoUDee mascot from 1993-95 before becoming Houston’s own Clutch the Rocket Bear. Named the fifth most recognizable mascot in sports by USA Today in 2005, Boudwin continues to create impromptu comedy at Houston Rockets basketball games, cheerleading, signing autographs, performing skits and cavorting with power dancers to the beat of his own drum.

Sean Dalton, EG ’92, earned his degree in electrical engineering from UD, a master’s degree in the same subject from the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard. He is a managing general partner of Highland Capital Partners in Boston, a venture capital firm with $3 billion of committed capital that backs entrepreneurs within the technology, life sciences and consumer markets.

Sunita Gangopadhyay, AS ’93PhD, an executive director at Seagate Technology, earned her doctorate in physics with a specialization in magnetism and magnetic materials. She leads teams of up to 50 professional engineers at Seagate Technology, the world’s largest manufacturer of hard disk drives, magnetic disks and read-write heads, an innovator in tape drives and a leading developer of business intelligence software.

George E. Heimpel, AG ’91M, an associate professor in the department of entomology at the University of Minnesota, has traveled to far-flung places to find biological control solutions that are more effective in discouraging insect pests and less toxic than some chemical solutions.

Aklilu Kidanu, CHEP ’90PhD, director of the private and independent Miz-Hasab Research Center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, researches the impact of population, poverty and health issues on the social and economic development of African societies and suggests ways of using this knowledge to improve people’s lives. He has provided job opportunities to more than 450 individuals in his native country.

Mark B. Shiflett, EG ’98M, ’02PhD, is a researcher at the DuPont Experimental Station in Wilmington, Del. He and his research team at DuPont developed new refrigerant mixtures to replace those that were linked to the depletion of the Earth’s ozone layer.