• Vijay
K. Dhir of Los Angeles. Dhir, dean of the Henry
Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science
at the University of California at Los Angeles,
earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering
at UK in 1972. He received his bachelor’s
degree from Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh,
India, in 1965, and his master of technology
degree from the Indian Institute of Technology
in Kanpur in 1968. He worked for a short period
in industry as an engineer before joining the
UCLA faculty in 1974. He has been a consultant
for several organizations, including General
Electric Corp., Rockwell International, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, and the Los Alamos and
Brookhaven national laboratories. Since he became
dean in 2002, the UCLA engineering
school has won five competitive research centers
from the federal government and private industry
that will bring more than $100 million into southern
California to spur research and development on
emerging technologies during the next five years.
Dhir leads the school’s boiling heat transfer
lab. Dhir and his wife, the former Komal Khanna,
are the parents of two daughters, Vinita and
Vashita.
• Billy
Harper of Paducah. Founder and president of Harper
Industries Inc., Harper built a holding company
that now has seven construction-related subsidiaries
with offices in Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas
and construction sites in more than 20 states.
He has been active in local and state economic
development efforts and was a vocal advocate
of education reform during 1989 and 1990, when
he was chairman of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.
A 1966 graduate of UK in mechanical engineering,
he and his wife, Laura, have four children.
• Edward
Lassiter of Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. A 1957
graduate of UK in electrical engineering, Lassiter
earned his master’s degree in electrical
engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in 1957. He also holds a master’s
degree in engineering from UCLA and was a 1980
graduate of the Harvard Business School. He directed
a major national security space program beginning
in 1966 and was named program director in 1974
for the Global Positioning System. In 1979, he
became general manager of U.S. Department of
Defense shuttle integration, in charge of all
its satellites on NASA shuttle missions. He currently
is president and CEO of Independent System and
Technical Evaluations Inc., a space systems engineering
firm. He and his wife, Mildred Geiger Lassiter,
have four children and 11 grandchildren.
•
Aubrey D. May of Lexington. A 1958 graduate in civil
engineering who got his master's degree in civil
engineering in 1960, May has been involved in many
major construction projects affecting Kentucky,
including upgrades of U.S. highways 119, 150, 421
and 68, new bridges over the Ohio River at Cincinnati,
Owensboro and Maysville, several sections of I-75
widening and others. He also guided geotechnical
engineering assignments on the former Island Creek
Coal Co. headquarters, Jerrico Corp. headquarters,
the Kentucky Horse Park, the
state Capitol Floral Clock, and the Kentucky Vietnam
Veterans Memorial in Frankfort. He is a past chair
of the Kentucky Board of Licensure for Professional
Engineers. He and his wife, Karen, each have two
children from previous marriages and three grandchildren.
• Corneilius
J. “Neil” Starkey IV of Lexington.
After starting his college education at Ashland
Community College in 1967, Starkey served in
the U.S. Army in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970. He
resumed his classes at ACC in 1973, transferred
to UK in 1974, and earned his bachelor’s
degree in electrical engineering in 1976. During
his senior year, he joined then-assistant professor
Lee T. Todd Jr. to form Cathodochromic Technology
Inc., which became DataBeam Corp. in 1983. At
DataBeam, he held leadership roles in developing
now widely used open standards for teleconferencing
and multimedia communications in the International
Telecommunications Union and the International
Standards Organization. He established and led
the International Multimedia Telecommunications
Consortium to promote adoption of open standards.
He served as the company’s executive vice
president and chief technology officer until
the firm was acquired by IBM in 1998. He was
named an IBM distinguished engineer in 2000 and
currently leads the strategic technology relationship
team for the chief technology officer of IBM
Federal. He and his wife, Katherine Hood Starkey,
have a son, who also is a UK graduate.
• J.
M. “Mac” Yowell of Versailles. Valedictorian
of the Class of 1954 at Bowling Green High School,
Yowell earned his bachelor’s degree in
civil engineering in May 1959. A week later,
he began his career with the Kentucky Department
of Highways, leaving in 1965 to work with various
contractors in Kentucky and Tennessee. He also
served as construction management engineer for
the Economic Development Administration in Huntsville,
Ala. He taught night courses in the engineering
technology department at Western Kentucky University.
The Kentucky Society of Professional Engineers
named him its outstanding professional engineer
in 1984. He was appointed state highway engineer
by Kentucky Gov. Brereton Jones in 1992, a position
in which he continues
to serve, overseeing planning, design, construction
and maintenance of the state’s 27,000 miles
of roadways. He serves on the state’s Board
of Licensure of Professional Engineers and Land
Surveyors. He has two children and three grandchildren.
