Engineer Your Career – Industry Panel Event

Join the Rice Engineering Alumni and the Rice Center for Engineering Leadership to learn more about what engineers do in the field and how your skill set can be used in the future.  The panel for this event is an experienced group of engineers from industry that will discuss technology, innovation, and how you can grow your career in technical roles.

Panel members include:

Chuck Fox ’82
B.S. Mechanical Engineering
Chuck started his career at Shell Oil Company where he worked as a drilling engineer in Houston and Damascus, Syria.  He left Shell in 1986 and received an MS in petroleum engineering from Stanford in 1988.  Later that year he rejoined Shell and worked first as a reservoir engineer, and then as a manager until 2000 when his subsidiary, Shell CO2 Company, was purchased by Kinder Morgan.  While he was at Shell he co-authored a book for the Society of Petroleum Engineers, “Practical Aspects of CO2 Flooding.” At Kinder Morgan CO2 Company he continued in the same role as Vice President of Engineering and Operations until 2013, when he left to create his own oil company, Windy Cove Energy.

David Van Kleeck ’81
PhD Chemical Engineering
David Van Kleeck joined the staff of RCEL in August 2014 following a 34 year career as a Technologist and Manager in Shell’s research and development organization. During his Shell career, he held a variety of positions in which he was responsible for process development, manufacturing technical service, and product support to several downstream refining and chemical businesses. He was also active in Shell’s recruiting efforts for over fourteen years as a campus interviewer.  Dr. Van Kleeck had a parallel career in the Army Reserve, retiring after 32 years of active and reserve service in 2005 as a Brigadier General.  During his Army career, he commanded troops at the Battalion, Group, and Brigade levels. His assignments included active duty tours in Italy and Germany. He returned to Rice after receiving his Ph.D here in Chemical Engineering in 1981.

Jennifer Pinnick ’08
B.S. Chemical Engineering
Jennifer started her career with Chevron in 2007 as a summer intern, and returned full time after graduation in 2008 as a Completions Engineer in Houston. Shortly thereafter she moved to Covington, LA to work as a production and reservoir engineer in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. Currently, she serves as Chevron North America Exploration & Production Reservoir Management Advisor.  Jennifer is a member of the Rice Engineering Alumni Board.

Cassandra McZeal ’99
B.S. Computational and Applied Mathematics
Cassandra joined ExxonMobil URC in 2000.  She began her career developing optimization software for oil and gas investment portfolio planning and management.  Until 2010, she was a member and/or Team Lead of the Optimization Technology Group working on optimization software for oil and gas investment portfolio planning and management.  From 2010-2012, she led the Visualization & Workflow Integration team responsible for ExxonMobil’s in-house visualization engine.  She is currently the supervisor for the Computational Methods section comprising teams focused on mathematical modeling of physical processes, data analytics, and optimization.