Nearly 4,000 alumni and parents call the Bay Area and Silicon Valley region their home – here’s your opportunity to connect with them. The Rensselaer Silicon Valley Executive Council was created to better connect our regional alumni to their alma mater and to each other.
Engagement in the council is designed around shared career and business interests, related topics that tie alumni back to campus through conversations and forums around pressing global challenges and opportunities that align with the Institute’s expertise in groundbreaking interdisciplinary research, and innovative pedagogy. The council offers opportunities for engagement around business development, career advancement, graduate recruitment, and student placement, and seeks to facilitate strategic partnerships among individuals, companies, foundations, government agencies, and the Institute
NETWORK at a glance
TOP EMPLOYERS
- Apple
- Applied Materials
- Cisco
- Cypress
- Hewlett-Packard
- IBM
- Intel
- Juniper Networks
- NVIDIA
- Oracle
- Qualcomm
- Salesforce
- ViaSat
TOP JOB TITLES
- Engineer
- Manager
- Director
- President
- Vice President
- Consultant
- Physician
- Owner
- Professor
- Partner
- CEO
- Systems Engineer
- Principal
- Mechanical
- Engineer
- Project Manager
EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
To succeed, the RSVN needs an exemplary group of leaders and influencers to set the pace and light the way toward a more meaningful Rensselaer alumni experience. We are asking you to join the Executive Council to provide guidance and advisory expertise that will further harness the strength of the RSVN, and to provide leadership in support of the Rensselaer capital campaign, Transformative: Campaign for Global Change.
As a council member you will have a front row seat to research insights from renowned Rensselaer faculty, access to the highest levels of Institute leadership, and opportunities to foster fruitful connections with other notable alumni in the region. All membership dues are contributed to the Rensselaer Annual Fund to support scholarships and are fully tax deductible.
EXECUTIVE COUNCIL CHAIR
JOHN CAPEK ’83, M.E. ’84, M.E. ’85, MBA ’87, PH.D. ’88
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Trustee
Executive Vice President, Ventures, Abbott
Dr. Capek was appointed to his current position in June 2015. In this role, he leads Abbott’s venture investment organization. Previously, he had served as executive vice president, Medical Devices, and senior vice president, Abbott Vascular, heading up Abbott’s global vascular business.
Before joining Abbott, Dr. Capek served in various management roles at Guidant Corporation, including president, Guidant Vascular Intervention and vice president and general manager of Bioabsorbable Vascular Solutions.
He also served as vice president and general manager of Guidant Germany and vice president, marketing, Guidant Cardiac Rhythm Management Group. Before joining Guidant, Dr. Capek was manager of New Product Technology at Eli Lilly and Company.
Dr. Capek has a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering, a master’s degree in biomedical engineering, a master’s degree in electrical engineering, a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, and a master’s degree in business administration, all from Rensselaer.
Executive Council Vice Chair
Dr. Shekhar Garde
Dean of Engineering
Dr. Shekhar Garde is the Dean of Engineering and Elaine and Jack Parker Chaired Professor in the Howard P. Isermann Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Background: Garde received his B. Chem. Eng. (University of Bombay, 1992) and Ph.D. (U. Delaware, 1997) in Chemical Engineering. He was Director’s post-doctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1997 to 1999. He joined Rensselaer in 1999 as an Assistant Professor, was promoted to Associate in 2004, and to Full Professor in 2006. He was appointed the Parker Chaired Professor in 2006, and as the Head of Chemical and Biological Engineering Department in 2007 and served in that role for seven years before becoming the Dean of Engineering in 2014.
Leadership: As the Chief academic and executive officer of Rensselaer Engineering, Garde provides leadership, including strategic planning and implementation, academic programs, personnel, budgets, government and industry relations, alumni engagement, communications, and fundraising in collaboration with Institute portfolios. The School of Engineering enrolls approximately 3000 undergraduate students (>30% women) and >700 graduate students (450 PhD Students), representing >50% of the Institute student body. The school includes 7 engineering departments that offer 11 undergraduate and 18 graduate degrees. Engineering faculty of over 150 (tenure and non-tenure track faculty) include members of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors, Fellows of many National and International Societies, and many winners of NSF, ONR, DOE, and other young investigator awards. The school is home to many interdisciplinary centers, including NSF funded Engineering Research Centers, NY State funded centers for technologies, and has overall research expenditures over $50M.
Research and Awards: Dr. Garde employs statistical mechanical theory and molecular modeling and simulation tools to understand the role of water in biological interactions. He has published over 100 papers in leading scientific journals, which have been cited over 11,000 times (h=54). He has given over 150 invited talks at leading universities, industries, and international conferences, including many keynote lectures, and moderated panel discussions on a range of topics focused on emerging areas of technology. He has received several awards including the prestigious CAREER Award by the US National Science Foundation (2001), School of Engineering Research Award (2003), Rensselaer Early Career Award (2004), and the 2011 Robert W. Vaughan Lecturer-ship at California Institute of Technology. He was elected Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers (2014) and of American Association for Advancement of Science (2015).
STEM Outreach: Dr. Garde co-led the Molecularium Project, aimed at exciting the next generation about the world of atoms and molecules. He has pioneered integration of data from large-scale molecular dynamics simulations into Disney-Pixar style animations. He is a co-executive producer of the movie Molecules to the MAX, available in 2D- and 3D-IMAX and DVD versions. Garde was honored with the 2011 Explore~Imagine~Discover Award by the Children’s Museum of Science and Technology, in the Capital District, NY. The Nanospace gaming portal of the Molecularium project received ‘Best of the Web’ award in Education by the Center for Digital Education in 2013.
Council Members
Sujit Banerjee ’94
Managing Director, K1 Operations
Sujit Banerjee is a Managing Director at K1 Operations. He is responsible for leading K1 Operations and its proprietary IOps initiative throughout the portfolio.
Previously Mr. Banerjee formed the sourcing team alongside Neil at Element Partners. Mr. Banerjee also worked in the venture capital group at Bluerun Ventures and was a management consultant at PriceWaterhouse Coopers. Mr. Banerjee began his career at Synoptics Communications where he designed networking equipment. Mr. Banerjee is a graduate of the Wharton School of Business, where he received an MBA, and of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he received a BS in Electrical Engineering with Eta Kappa Nu academic honors.
Mr. Banerjee has served as a director and founder of numerous technology companies.
Chris Lundquist ’91, ’92 MBA
President Enformion
Mr. Lundquist ’91, ’92 MBA is an accomplished business leader and data and technology strategist who sets the vision to meet business objectives.
Mr. Lundquist aligns business strategies with an inclusive and diverse culture to foster creativity, collaboration, and accountability and solve customers’ most challenging problems.
Mr. Lundquist’s 30-year career in building data- and analytics-driven technology businesses began in 1989, when he founded LCI. He built the company into a leading innovator of credit risk analysis and business management solutions, enabling customers to recover more than $1 trillion from bankrupt consumers and businesses.
Mr. Lundquist is a widely recognized expert on credit and merchant risk, speaking regularly at industry conferences and media events. He has published extensive research, analytics, and best practices on at-risk consumer behavior and worked to develop legislative policies for credit risk management, bankruptcy process improvement, and financial counseling. He launched the first national bankruptcy database and has secured three patents for his process and methodology inventions.
Mr. Lundquist holds an MBA, with a focus in finance, management information systems, and AI/machine learning, and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, both from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He also completed Verisk’s Harvard Leadership Excellence Program and the University of Virginia’s Data Science Program.
Mr. Lundquist is the vice-chair of the board of The Marine Mammal Center. He’s also an enthusiastic aviator of twin, turbine, historic military, and high-performance aerobatic airplanes.
Siva Sivaram ’85G, ’86 Ph.D.
Trustee, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
President, QuantumScape
A tech executive with exceptional experience across the semiconductor, data storage and solar industries, Dr. Sivaram has held key leadership positions at Western Digital, SanDisk, Intel and Matrix Semiconductors over the last four decades. He also founded and led Twin Creek Technologies, a company specialized in novel solar cells and equipment.
Dr. Sivaram has authored numerous technical papers and a textbook on chemical vapor deposition and holds several patents in semiconductor and solar technologies.
Dr. Sivaram currently sits on the board of directors for the US-India Business Council, and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO dedicated to feeding school children.
He earned his Doctorate and Master’s degrees in Materials Science from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and is a Distinguished Alumnus of the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, where he received a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering.
FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Regional Director of Development, Northern and Southern California
Office of Institute Advancement
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
(518) 276-3944 (p) | (518) 704-7076 (c) | whiter10@rpi.edu