Mike Mournighan will be one of several young professionals, all past IEEE Student Branch Chairs at their universities, who will share their recent and ongoing experience navigating their careers in a virtual world. Mike graduated from Columbia University in '13 (BS) and '15 (MS) in EE. In 2015 he left NYC for Austin, Texas to work for Silicon Labs, who he hosted several times as IEEE student chair. In early 2020, after leading firmware development efforts in IEEE802.bt Power over Ethernet controllers (Si3474/Si3471), he transitioned into a Systems Engineering role at Apple. Despite being at Apple in-person for only 2 weeks before lockdown, he was able to ramp up and play a crucial role in shipping the iPad8 on time in Sept. He misses travel (but not traffic); performing live comedy; and gathering in-person, but has found new joy in recording and streaming his video game sessions. Mike will be joined by a panel of several other former IEEE Students who will share their stories with the membership.

Speaker Bios

Natalia Baklitskaya
Nat is an Engineering Manager at Better.com, one of the fastest growing home ownership startups in the country. Prior to Better, she worked as a hardware and software engineer at both very large companies and small startups. Nat originally comes from the hardware world, having graduated from Columbia University as an Electrical Engineering major. Nat has been involved in the IEEE community from her college days and throughout her professional life. She has served as Chair of the Columbia University IEEE Student Branch and later as Chair of the Santa Clara Valley Women in Engineering (SCV WIE) board. Nat stays engaged with the IEEE community by giving talks and facilitating workshops at various IEEE conferences and events, such as Rising Stars, Future Leaders Forum, and local events.

Likhitha Patha
Likhitha comes from a Technical Program/Product Management background. She's currently leading the Technical Program Management team for Twitter's centralized Machine Learning organization called Twitter Cortex. For the past year, she served as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow to help build digital tools and services for the American public. Prior to that, she worked as a Senior Technical Program Manager at Amazon's Alexa AI on Natural Language Understanding stack and as a Product Manager at Microsoft's Intune for Education and Visual Studio products. She was the IEEE Student Branch Chair at Virginia Tech, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering. She is currently working part-time toward her MS in Computer Science at Georgia Tech.

Mike Mournighan
Mike Mournighan graduated from Columbia University in '13 (BS) and '15 (MS) in EE. In 2015 he left NYC for Austin, Texas to work for Silicon Labs, who he hosted several times as IEEE student chair. In early 2020, after leading firmware development efforts in IEEE802.bt Power over Ethernet controllers (Si3474/Si3471), he transitioned into a Systems Engineering role at Apple. Despite being at Apple in-person for only 2 weeks before lockdown, he was able to ramp up and play a crucial role in shipping the iPad8 on time in Sept. He misses travel (but not traffic); performing live comedy; and gathering in-person, but has found new joy in recording and streaming his video game sessions.

Christopher R. Ellis
Christopher R. Ellis has a bachelors in electrical engineering with a focus in power electronics from University of California, San Diego. While an undergrad he created an IEEE Student Branch at his community college, before transferring and serving as an IEEE officer at UC San Diego, including serving as the Chair in his final year. Chris also received the IEEE PES scholarship for 2 years, including being named a Schweitzer Meritorious Scholar his senior year. Post graduation, he has worked as a power systems engineer at Lockheed Martin and is currently the CTO of a startup company called SparkCharge. At SparkCharge he leads the design of their portable electric vehicle charging solutions including a compact 20kW DC fast charger and patented modular battery technology.