Alumni Bulletin - Fall 2008 - (Page 49)

Victoria Berenholz ’08 engineering honors society her senior year. Her independent research project, which was completed with Christopher Barrett ’08, received third place in an undergraduate research symposium. Her Lehigh experiences prepared her to take full advantage of the opportunities presented by the internship. Berenholz spent the fall 2006 semester and the following summer—a total of almost eight months—at Johnson & Johnson as part of Lehigh’s engineering cooperative education program. She started out working in the skin and wound care department, where she led a project team formed to create a distribution center on the West Coast. By employing a model she learned in class, Berenholz reduced the lead time by 75 percent and cut costs by $300,000. The following summer, she worked in the company’s baby supplies division, under Lehigh alumna Joanne Strout ’99, a senior supply chain planner. “She performed extremely well,” Strout says. “I was sad to see her go. She took a lot of initiative and she excelled.” As a senior, Berenholz wanted to expand her knowledge of industrial engineering from health care to finance. So in the fall 2007 semester, she and Barrett conducted a research project for the financial services firm Morgan Stanley. Their work was advised by Aurelie Thiele, professor of industrial engineering. The students compared two methods that portfolio managers use to minimize risk associated with different investment portfolios. The simpler method minimizes all variance from the expected return, even unexpected gains. The other, more complicated, method penalizes a portfolio only when it falls below the expected return. Through their research, the students discovered that the investments made using the two methods were very similar—too similar to recommend using the more complicated one. Berenholz and Barrett presented their results to a senior vice president at Morgan Stanley, Wilson Yale ’73, ’75 M.S., ’78 Ph.D., in January. This spring, their project won third prize at the David and Lorraine Freed Undergraduate Research Symposium of the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science. “What has impressed me with Victoria is that she’s learned very quickly about finance,” Thiele says. “A key sign of students who are going to do well in the workforce is that, no matter what you throw at them, they will be able to understand it quickly.” Berenholz also seeks ways to give back to the community. At Lehigh, she volunteered with the Healthy Hawks, educating students about nutrition and exercise, and helped with community outreach programs, such as the annual Spring Fling, which welcomes neighborhood children to campus for games and food. To give back to the industrial engineering department, Berenholz presided over Lehigh’s chapter of the national industrial engineering honors society, Alpha Pi Mu. As last year’s president, she spearheaded a meet-and-greet for first-year engineers to encounter current industrial engineering (IE) faculty and students. “It was important for us, because many people are unaware of IE,” says Nicholas Odrey, professor of industrial engineering and the group’s faculty adviser. “Many people are aware that mechanical engineers design and build various things, including cars; civil engineers design and build bridges; and electrical engineering has many things that go snap, crackle, pop. IE is more nebulous—we build integrated systems.” Both Odrey and Thiele predict that Berenholz will excel in the business world. Thiele says, “She is someone who is apart from the crowd.” —Becky Straw photo by ALISoN CoNKLIN A promise Kept Dev Chanchani ’08 seemed to have it all: a successful career, a thriving business, and a loving family. But there was always one thing missing—a college degree. In 1995, Chanchani and two of his Lehigh University classmates, Kenn Wagenheim and Scott Walters, created a Web development/hosting company based on a business plan Chanchani created for a business class at Lehigh. “We knew that the Internet was going to explode. We knew that we loved computers and had some skills that businesses could use to get a jump start on fALL 2008 49

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Alumni Bulletin - Fall 2008 Contents From the President's Desk Mailbox On Campus Research Arts & Culture Sports Cover Story: The Dalai Lama at Lehigh Heart of a Champion Around the World in 80 Years Fighting for Children wth Autism Keepers of the Flame From the Publisher's Desk Alumni News The Last Word

Alumni Bulletin - Fall 2008

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