Submit your Questions
Mary Sage Early
W.L. Gore Engineer
Mary Sage Earley graduated from Virginia Tech with a BS in Chemical Engineering and a minor in Biomedical Engineering in 2018. During her time at Virginia Tech, she completed a co-op at DuPont and conducted undergraduate research related to tissue engineering. After graduation, she moved to Delaware and joined W. L. Gore & Associates as a Quality Engineer in the Medical Products Division. There, she spent the first 3.5 years as a Quality Engineer for commercial products in the General Medical Products Business. In June 2022 she transitioned to the Quality Compliance Team as an engineer focusing on divisional compliance efforts that benefit from strong technical skills. Throughout her time at Gore, she has also enjoyed planning and facilitating events for the Global Representation of Women diversity network.
Suinda Ossenkopp
Process Improvement Engineer
Suinda Ossenkopp graduated from Virginia Tech with a BS in Chemical Engineering and a minor in Computer Science in August 2022. During her time at Virginia Tech, she completed a co-op for AdvanSix, an internship at Celanese, and spent her time working with AIChE in various positions. After graduation, Suinda moved to Tennessee and joined Eastman Chemical as a Process Improvement Engineer.
Gina Gatto
Director, Membership & Volunteer Services
Gina M. Gatto is AIChE’s Director of Membership and Volunteer Services, a role she assumed in July of 2021. In this capacity, she leads the membership team in acquisition and retention for professional and students members, along with directly working with volunteers of AIChE communities to develop, enhance and grow their participation and community presence. Additionally Gina is responsible for the overall health of the membership base to include providing an increased level of benefits and services.
Gatto and her team also lead the Student Regional Conferences, as well as the AIChE Annual Student Conference. She works closely with IDEAL Communities at AIChE, including overseeing the launch of the AIChE K-12 Community and the Women in Chemical Engineering Community (WIC). She has worked with engineers, academics, and executives in a wide range of industries globally to coordinate volunteer efforts, speaking opportunities, and conference logistics.
Gina previously spent 4 years at AdvanSix (formerly Honeywell) as a Process Engineer and then Production Engineer in their Caprolactam and Ammonium Sulfate Plant in Hopewell, VA. Gina has her BS in Chemical Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) where she was an AIChE member.
Heidi Burch
UD Adjunct Professor & DuPont Technical Fellows
Heidi received the bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering summa cum laude from Virginia Tech and her Ph.D. in polymer engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she investigated mixing and morphology development in miscible polymer blends. She went on to do a post-doc in the materials science at M.I.T focused on developing edible photonic crystals, a project aimed at developing metallic-look pigments for the U.S. candy market. Heidi then joined Dupont in the Teflon® fluoropolymer research group at Washington Works in Parkersburg, WV, where she spent almost 10 years developing products for the wire/cable and semiconductor markets. She relocated to the Experimental Station in 2012, initially joining the Polymer Processing and Characterization group in Central Research. While in CR&D, she worked on novel materials for ultra-low wear, improving the properties of Corian®, and solid-state refrigeration. When CR&D was restructured, she transferred to Water and Protection, where she worked on scaling up the mixing process for a next-generation Kevlar® polymer and commercializing a Corian® with improved scratch resistance. She has since moved into the Electronics and Industrials’s Emerging Technologies Group, where she holds the rank of Technical Fellow. Some of her research interests include developing sustainable electronic materials, novel processing methods using traditional polymeric materials, and understanding and managing the use of fluoropolymers as materials of last resort. She holds nine United States Patents and has been the recipient of three DC&F Technology Excellence Awards. She is also a frequent instructor for DuPont’s internal Polymer University curriculum, the course she co-developed with a Polymer Processing and Characterization group colleague.
Deborah Baum Crain
Business Director, Eastman Chemical Company (Retired)
Deborah is the current Chairperson of the Virginia Tech Chemical Engineering Advisory Board. She has served as chairperson since 2016, and has been a member of the advisory board since 1998.
Deborah is a retired business director from Eastman Chemical Company, having worked in their Kingsport corporate offices for over 25 years. For much of her career at Eastman, she served in business management roles, taking increasingly high-level global responsibility for development and marketing of products ranging from acetyl chemicals to specialty plastics to custom and fine chemicals. She led new product launches for both Eastman Tritan™ copolyester and Perennial Wood™, both of which positioned Eastman in consumer-facing and retail markets.
Since retiring from Eastman, she has taken a strong interest in genealogy, writing more than 20 books and extracting thousands of genealogical records from the villages of Rocca Canavese and Corio in Piemonte, Italy. She also researched and wrote two extensive family histories tracing her maternal ancestors from those small villages in northern Italy to the United States and beyond. She has begun researching her paternal ancestors from the village of Buer, Melle, Germany for a future book.
She earned her Master of Business Administration from the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School in 1989, and received her Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from Virginia Tech in 1985.
Jenny Lo
Senior Instructor Department of Engineering Education
Jenny Lo is a senior instructor within the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech and has over 20 years of teaching experience. She graduated with degrees in Chemical Engineering from Tulane University (BS, 1994) and Carnegie Mellon University (PhD, 1999).