2019 Hall of Fame Inductees

Denis Bilodeau graduated in 1991 from UCI School of Engineering earning a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering. He is a registered civil and traffic engineer. Since graduation, Denis has made significant contributions to the field of engineering, especially in the area of water resources.

In 2000, Denis was elected to serve on the board of the Orange County Water District (OCWD), a global leader in groundwater management and water reuse. He is presently the longest standing board member at OCWD. Denis led the effort to design, finance and build the world’s largest water recycling facility, the Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS). The GWRS has received more than 50 awards, has been featured by prominent national and international media, and is hailed as the global model for water sustainability. It produces 100 million gallons of water per day, which accounts for one-third of the water supply for north and central Orange County. The GWRS is undergoing a final expansion and when completed will produce 130 million gallons of water a day, enough water for one million people.

Denis is a longtime public servant and was also elected, in 2006, to serve as Council Member for the city of Orange where his term ended in 2014.

Denis’ knowledge and experience have served him well while participating on critical Orange County committees and commissions including: Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority, Orange County Vector Control, Orange County Waste Management Commission, Orange County Transportation Authority, San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency, Foothill Eastern Transportation Corridor Agency, Orange County Sanitation District, Orange County Emergency Medical Care Committee, Orange County Housing and Community Development Commission, Orange County Water Task Force, and the Los Angeles and San Gabriel River Watershed Taskforce.

Denis recently assumed a position at the County of Orange as manager of traffic and development services.

He and his wife Suzanne, a UCI alumna, have three children and are long-time residents of Orange.

Jon Gribble was born an engineer; he made his own toys from IBM punch cards and tape. He participated in the first three years of UCI’s SAE Mini Baja project (1981, 1982 and 1983). Upon his graduation in 1983, he was honored as Outstanding Mechanical Engineering Student of the year. He became a registered Mechanical Engineer in 1987. In 2001, Jon graduated with honors from UCI with his MBA. He’s a contributing member of SAE and ANSI/ITSDF Safety Committees.

In 1983, Jon started as an engineer with Taylor-Dunn Manufacturing. In 2010, he took over as Taylor-Dunn’s President until Polaris Industries purchased the company in 2016. Presently, Jon is the Director of Engineering for the Polaris Commercial group, consisting of Taylor-Dunn, GEM and Pro XD work vehicles. His expertise in vehicle design, troubleshooting, contract negotiation and accident investigation requires him to travel world-wide.

Over the years, he has contributed materials and countless hours to UCI’s and other universities’ SAE Mini Baja and Formula racing teams. He orchestrated the donation of 15 low speed electric vehicles to the engineering program of local high schools for their participation in UCI’s Energy Invitational Competition. Jon is a judge for UCI’s Beall & Butterworth Student Design Product Development. In his off hours, Jon has restored and remodeled two of his homes, welds metal sculptures and enjoys driving electric cars and ORVs. Husband, dad, engineer, are his favorite titles.

Laura Teclemariam brings over 15+ years of high-tech experience working in product management, marketing and software engineering to Electronic Arts, one of the world’s largest Game Publishers. As a Lead Product Manager, Laura leads EA’s Mobile studio products as well as growth in subscription. Managing a portfolio of over $200 million across EA’s mobile platform, she works cross-functionally to scope, define, and deliver EA’s premiere player experience. She has helped increase revenue for several products including Star Wars Battlefront, Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, Pogo, Plants versus Zombies, FIFA Mobile and Mirror’s Edge, just to name a few.

Prior to EA, Laura led the platform solutions strategy and implementation for a $100 million mobile advertising company, Tapjoy. She also founded and ran her own marketing and advertising startup for seven years, which focused on the Sports and Entertainment industries. She has also worked for a number of Forbes Top 100 Companies, including Deloitte Consulting as an Oracle Consultant and Microsoft Corporation as a Technical Partner Manager. At Microsoft, she led the technical and marketing analysis for Microsoft Business partners in the Southern California region. Early in her career at Microsoft, she worked in the MS Office Excel group as a Software Development and Test Engineer.

Laura received her Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and minor in Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine and her M.B.A. at the Haas School of Business from the University of California, Berkeley. She is in the process of acquiring her Masters in Computer Science specializing in artificial intelligence at Georgia Tech. Laura serves the next generation of youth by being a board member of Gameheads, a nonprofit focused on exposing inner city youth to game development and technology. Lastly, Laura lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her three daughters and husband.

When Ravikanth Gudlavalleti gave the UC Irvine Engineering Student Commencement speech in 2002, the world he & his fellow graduates would enter had changed dramatically in just a few months since 9/11. Concerns over the use of science and technology for war, and caregiving his parents through various crises, led this Mechanical and Aerospace alumnus to leave the corporate engineering sector in 2005. STEM would remain central in his life, as now going by the stage name Ravi Valleti, new careers in acting, writing, and teaching would utilize his science background and organizational skills from engineering. In 2016, as the United States began to enter a new, even more dangerous period for people of color, Valleti began to volunteer for social justice through the encouragement of his sister, Rajani Gudlavalleti. As more and more engineers and scientists started to become politically engaged, Valleti saw need for nimble interdisciplinary voices on intersectional issues. The A in STEAM would be where the art and the artist would come in handy for this futurist. Progress outside and inside the new movements that have arisen since the 2016 U.S. Election have been arduous for many, especially for queer, transgender, and/or women of color. As a cisgender, heterosexual man, Valleti continues to advocate for better treatment of marginalized people in STEAM - whether in academia, in companies, in society-at-large. Valleti is a voice for equity & justice in STEAM, including helping reform the March for Science movement through a #MarginSci lens. #MarginSci centers black, latinx, and indigenous people in STEM and their communities to end Scientific Racism once and for all.

Based in Oakland, Valleti grew up in Silicon Valley, after an early childhood in a 1980's Northern Maine that persecuted its very few children of color. Ravi survived. Reruns of the Original "Star Trek" inspired him. Serving as a U.S. Space Camp Counselor & Simulated Space Shuttle Mission Director in the last two summers of his undergraduate years propelled Ravi's dreams further. Valleti would return to the ‘final frontier’ as a 'Starfleet Academy Cadet' in the 2009 J.J. Abrams feature film "Star Trek.” This month he joins his partner, Nima Slone to World Premiere their supporting roles in the feature film "Overwhelm the Sky" at the 2019 San Francisco Independent Film Festival. Valleti’s first lead-role feature film "Devised" - one that explores the ethics of technology - has hopes to also premiere soon. Ravi’s next goal, to finish writing and publish "Rocket Scientist" his 'Posthuman Memoir' - autobiography mixed with a fictionalized future descendant's perspective. Ravi, a son of immigrants from India, was the first UC Irvine Homecoming King to represent the School of Engineering & the Campuswide Honors Program. Valleti credits his 2002 senior honors thesis advisor, Dr. Ken Mease and the UCI Flight Dynamics and Control Lab for showing compassion for students from marginalized backgrounds, like himself. He thanks Lou Gill, his former supervisor at UCI's Arroyo Vista Housing and current Director of UCI's Mesa Court Housing, for gathering supporters to help induct him into the 2019 UCI Engineering Hall of Fame. Valleti is overjoyed to return full circle to his engineering roots and to his beloved alma mater UC Irvine.