Medal of Excellence 2023 Honorees

The Medal of Excellence event raises scholarship funds and celebrates alumni achievement from among diverse engineering fields 

Rutgers University's School of Engineering will recognize the achievements of alumni at the Medal of Excellence and Distinguished Alumni Awards event on Thursday, September 28, 2023. Presented annually since 2006, the awards honor School of Engineering alumni who have distinguished themselves professionally since graduation while also raising scholarship funds to support student success.

Awards include the Medal of Excellence for lifetime achievement, Distinguished Achievement in Industry, Distinguished Achievement in Research, and Distinguished Young Alumna. During the event, the Rutgers Engineering Society, the school's alumni networking group, will present its Distinguished Engineer Award which recognizes technical achievement and has been awarded since 1960.

The 2023 honorees include:

Medal of Excellence 

John M. Sharkey (BS’79, MS’90 Industrial Engineering)
Corning Incorporated, Vice President, Chief of Staff to the CEO (retired) 
 
John Sharkey enjoyed a 36-year career with Corning Incorporated, which included several strategic planning, engineering, analysis, and senior business development roles, and culminated in his position as vice president-chief of staff to the CEO, from which he retired in 2018. During his tenure, he also served as director and chairman for several of Corning Incorporated’s Optical Fiber and Cable joint ventures. Before joining Corning in 1984, Mr. Sharkey was a project engineer/consultant for the BOC Group. 
 
A self-described “pay it forward kind of guy,” Mr. Sharkey and his wife, Chris, established the Elsayed A. Elsayed Endowed Scholarship in 2020, in honor of School of Engineering distinguished professor Elsayed A. Elsayed and to support underrepresented minority students studying industrial engineering with demonstrated financial need. Community service roles have included serving on the boards of the American Red Cross's Greater Steuben Chapter, Family Service Society, Inc., Boy Scouts of America’s Five Rivers Council, and Southern Tier Network, a public/private partnership enabling universal and affordable broadband services and promoting economic growth throughout the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes region of New York. 

Distinguished Achievement in Research Award 

Heidi A. Taboada, PhD (MS’05, PhD’07 Industrial & Systems Engineering)
Texas A&M University-Kingsville, Dean – Frank H. Dotterweich College of Engineering; Professor, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering

Heidi Taboada became the dean of the Frank H. Dotterweich College of Engineering in January 2022. Before her current appointment, she served at the University of Texas at El Paso as associate dean for research and graduate studies and a faculty member in the industrial, manufacturing, and systems engineering department.  

 Dr. Taboada’s research strengths involve the development of multiple objective optimization models, applied operations research, evolutionary game theory, artificial intelligence, and bioinspired computation, as well as systems optimization. She has led several multi-institutional, multi-million-dollar projects serving as the principal or co-principal investigator for over $13 million in successful grants from such agencies as the US Department of Education, US Department of Agriculture, National Science Foundation, Department of Homeland Security, and industry.  

A passionate educator, Dr. Taboada is interested in research related to engineering education, particularly lending towards increased participation of minorities and women in engineering. She has also published over 60 referenced manuscripts in technical journals, book chapters, and conference proceedings.

Distinguished Achievement in Industry Awards 

Rina Parikh (BS’88 Electrical & Computer Engineering)
MAG Aerospace, Executive Vice President; CoSo Cloud, Board Director 
 
 

Bharat Parikh (BS’86 Electrical & Computer Engineering)
MAG Aerospace, Board Director, Strategic Advisory Army C51SR; CoSo Cloud, Board Director 
 
Rina and Bharat Parikh each have over 30 years of expertise in the commercial and defense markets – senior systems engineering and contracts management and the technical and management fields, respectively. Rina Parikh began her career as an Army civilian working at the Communications and Electronic Command (CECOM) in Ft. Monmouth, starting AASKI Technology in 1997, to respond to niche demands in the commercial information technology market and specialized Department of Defense requirements. Together with Bharat Parikh as CEO, they built the company from two to over 475 scientists, engineers, managers, logisticians, and technical professionals before selling to MAG Aerospace in 2020. Today, Rina Parikh serves as a board director while Bharat Parikh is vice chairman. Rina and Bharat Parikh also were chairman and president, respectively, of CoSo Cloud LLC, a technology and services company they purchased in 2017 that was acquired in 2023 by Class Technologies, Inc., a global virtual classroom leader for which Bharat Parikh serves as a board observer.    
 
Rina Parikh serves on the Rutgers Engineering Industry Advisory Board, and Bharat Parikh on the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Industry Advisory Board. Each holds advanced degrees from Fairleigh Dickinson University – an MBA for Rina Parikh and MS in electrical engineering for Bharat Parikh. Recognized for their efforts, Rina Parikh was named one of the 2011 Best 50 Women in Business by NJBIZ. The couple was named a 2015 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award winner, New Jersey Program. She is involved in Ekal Vidyalaya, a non-profit organization that provides education to underprivileged children in third world countries, and he served as president and current trustee chairperson of Lad Samaj of North America, a non-profit community organization. Both support the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), helping Military personnel and their families.  

Distinguished Engineer Award

David Litton, PhD (BS’93, MS’95, PhD’98 Materials Science and Engineering)
Associate Director, Materials Engineering Pratt & Whitney

David Litton is an associate director in the Materials and Processes Engineering department at Pratt & Whitney. As an individual contributor throughout his career, his work has been focused on the development and deployment of new coatings technologies used in the hot section of gas turbines to improve performance and efficiency and to reduce fuel burn. David Litton has been granted more than 5 U.S. Patents. 

He currently serves on the Industrial Advisory Board for the materials science and engineering department at Rutgers, and on the Rutgers Engineering Alumni Engagement Committee.

Dean’s Award for Service and Lifetime Achievement

Peter D. Cherasia, (BS’84 Electrical Engineering)
Trade Informatics, Chairman (retired) 
 
Peter Cherasia is the former chairman of Trade Informatics, a registered broker/dealer to some of the world’s largest asset managers, hedge funds, and investment banks; the company was sold to Abel Noser in January 2022.  
 
Prior to joining Trade Informatics, Mr. Cherasia was a member of J.P. Morgan’s Investment Bank Operating Committee. Managing more than half of the investment bank’s staff through the Global Financial Crisis, he executed the merger integration with Bear Stearns, and launched a front-to-back re-engineering of the bank’s derivative and processing platforms. Mr. Cherasia joined J.P. Morgan from Bear Stearns, where he held multiple senior positions for over 23 years.  
 
Mr. Cherasia served as vice chairman of Rutgers University’s Board of Overseers, chairman of the Executive Board of the School of Engineering, and co-chair of Rutgers University’s Campaign Committee. He was also a board member of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research Advisory Committee. Mr. Cherasia is a current member of the School of Engineering’s Industry Advisory Board.  

Young Alumna Award 

Nicole DiStefano Gonzalez, BS’13, ME’17 Biomedical Engineering 
Principal Manager, Healthcare, Microsoft 
 
Nicole Gonzalez (nee DiStefano) began her career path while pursuing her undergraduate studies, working part time as a field engineer with GE Healthcare. Sponsorship of her senior thesis by Stryker lead to a full-time job offer immediately after graduation. During her nine years with the med tech company, she rose to lead staff engineer in Research and Development, responsible for leading design and manufacturing engineers to innovate on new joint replacement surgical implants and instruments. During this time, Ms. Gonzalez continued to sponsor the same thesis research for multiple senior capstone projects.  

Following a management position at Becton Dickerson where she led an international engineering team responsible for chemotherapy delivery innovation, she joined Microsoft as a delivery leader. She is responsible for bringing innovative solutions to healthcare through advancements in the cloud, data analytics, and artificial intelligence. Since graduating, she has mentored Rutgers students into industry and supported their medical device courses.