Faculty
Our ECE Major Design Experience Faculty Mentor Team
Dr. Joe Adams earned a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University and a M.Sc. in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Arkansas. His Ph.D. is in Computer Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, where his research focused on network security and trust-based access control in mobile ad-hoc networks. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, a Member of the ACM and Eta Kappa Nu, and a CISSP.
Before joining the ECE faculty, Joe retired from the US Army as a Colonel in the Signal Corps, where he held a number of operational positions before serving as an Associate Professor at the US Military Academy and later as the Chief Information Officer at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. Following retirement, he created the Michigan Cyber Range, an internationally utilized platform for education, training, and testing in cyber security. He provided his expertise to over 27 states and a number of European countries and was awarded the Legion of Merit by the Michigan National Guard for his contributions to cyber force training and readiness.
Kelley Andrews grew up in Hampden, Maine a suburb of Bangor--the former lumber capital of the nation. After graduating from Hampden Academy, she set her sights on achieving a degree in engineering. She received her B.S. from the University of Maine and has been working as an electrical engineer in industry for the last 36 years.
She worked as a field engineer in several industries including pulp and paper, power systems, marine, and mining. She ran projects such as upgrading paper machines both domestically and internationally. Her field experience led to teaching other field engineers, and to running a field engineering program for more than 10 years at General Electric.
As a result of teaching, Kelley became intrigued with Renewable Energy. She has been working with wind power converters for nearly twenty years. Her current responsibilities include validation engineering with the design engineering team for wind power converters at GE as well as managing manufacturing testing for four factories, located in China, Vietnam, Brazil and India. She is responsible for testing of new onshore power converters sized between 1.5MW to 6.5MW. These wind turbines are capable of supplying power to between 800 and 3800 homes per wind turbine. Her mentoring position with the MDE allows her to leverage her experience in field engineering, project management, and teaching.
Dr. Daniel Connors received a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. He is a senior member of IEEE and members of SIAM, INFORMS and ASEE and holds several patents.
Dr. Connors worked at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York, for more than twentynine years on a wide variety of problems including semiconductor manufacturing, personal computer production, supply chain management, optimization, business analytics and cognitive computing.
After retiring from IBM, Dr. Connors became an Associate Professor at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) in Johnson City, Tennessee, where he helped develop ETSU's first engineering program in General Engineering. He developed courses in circuit analysis, engineering economics and ran the senior design courses.
Dr. Connors joined Virginia Tech in Fall 2023.
Ken Schulz graduated from Grove City College with a BSEE in 1982. In 1984 he graduated from Virginia Tech with an MSEE studying Control Theory. Mr. Schulz has more than 33 years industry technical and leadership experience with Lockheed Martin Corporation and recently served as Chair of the Advisory Board for the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech (2016-2018).
Significant Accomplishments Include five US Patents (latest one awarded August 21, 2012) and two Lockheed Martin Evening of Stars Awards (2007 and 2010).
Special Leadership roles in Lockheed Martin include Senior Manager of the Lockheed Martin RFIC Design Center, Corporate Advanced Technical Leadership Program (ATLP) and Engineering Leadership Development Program (ELDP) Manager for Lockheed Martin. Also created a nearly 300-person organization spanning ten locations in nine states integrating a portion of Lockheed Martin’s technical leadership development. Mr. Schulz has also served as the Hardware Manager for the Manassas, VA facility and began technical management as the Analog Circuits Design Manager in Manassas, VA.
Special Technical roles include Globalstar Electronics Design. This work was patented and resulted in over 2000 devices being launched into orbit as part of the Globalstar constellation. Also led the RF, ADC, and DAC work on the ACeS Channelizer payload enabling satellite phone coverage for nearly 1/3 of the world’s population.
Specialties: Analog Design, RF, Power Electronics, Space Electronics, Management, Leadership Training, Recruiting.
Professor Shelley Stover has over 30 years of experience as an engineer in the aerospace industry, working primarily in Federal and contract positions for NASA.
Her diverse experience ranges from systems engineering support of international organizations to embedded software development for spaceflight destined microcontrollers. She earned her MSEE at Georgia Tech and her BSEE from Auburn University. She is all but dissertation, ABD, in her PhD program at Georgia Tech where she focused on embedded AI. In pursuit of life long learning, she has also continued her education with numerous graduate courses at William and Mary. In addition to being a mentor for the ECE MDE program, she currently serves as the Business Development Lead in the NASA Langley Research Center Science Directorate.