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The UMass Amherst College of Engineering has announced the 10 recipients of its 2025 Outstanding Alumni Awards (OAA), five Distinguished Alumni and five Outstanding Young Alumni who represent the college’s five departments.

Visionary leaders in their field, the recipients of the Distinguished Alumni Award have reached exceptional levels of professional and personal achievement. This award recognizes distinguished leadership, service, teaching, innovation and other exemplary accomplishments that positively impact society and the engineering profession.

This year’s Distinguished Alumni Award honorees are:

• Daniel J. Riccio Jr. ’86, ’24 M.S. mechanical engineering, Apple
• Charissa Williar ’98 civil engineering, United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps
• Marvin Schlanger ’72 M.S. chemical engineering, UGI
• Jeremy Stevenson ’96 computer engineering, awarded by biomedical engineering, Formulatrix
• Pinar Ormeci ’00 M.S. electrical engineering, Timus Networks

Emerging leaders in the early stages of their careers, the recipients of the Outstanding Young Alumni Award are generally no more than 10 years out from receiving their UMass Amherst engineering doctorate or no more than 15 years out from receiving their UMass Amherst engineering undergraduate degree. This award recognizes outstanding professional and personal achievements and highlights the recipient’s ambitions and potential to positively impact UMass, the commonwealth, the nation and the world.

This year’s Outstanding Young Alumni Award honorees are:

• Steven Tupper, ’09, ’11 M.S., civil engineering, Cape Cod Commission
• Eydis Lima ’12, chemical engineering, C3 Medical Device Consulting, LLC
• Destenie Nock ’19, Ph.D., mechanical engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
• Abigail Risse ’20, mechanical engineering, awarded by biomedical engineering, Cerity Partners Ventures
• Jared Lucey ’07, electrical engineering, NASA

Several recipients of this year’s awards remained in Massachusetts after graduating from UMass and have established themselves as engineering leaders within the commonwealth. Tupper, for example, serves as deputy director of the Cape Cod Commission, the regional land use planning, economic development and regulatory agency for Cape Cod. In this role, he leads a multi-disciplinary team dedicated to preserving Cape Cod’s unique character and quality of life by addressing the region’s most pressing challenges, including advancing infrastructure and planning for climate change.

In addition, several of this year’s recipients maintain close ties to the College of Engineering. Riccio is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council; Nock has participated in the UMass Amherst INFORMS speaker series; and Ormeci returned to campus to serve as a judge for this year's Tech Challenge.

The OAA recipients will be celebrated during an invitation-only event in the Campus Center on May 1. To learn more about their accomplishments, visit the College of Engineering website.