Career Pathways Panel

Tuesday, May 20, 2025 | 5:15 - 6:00 p.m. | Courtland

Explore the motivations behind career shifts, the skills and mindset needed to adapt, and the impact these transitions have had on both professional and personal growth. Whether you’re actively thinking about making a change or simply curious about the evolving career landscape in our industry.
Moderator: 



Zoé V. Knippa is a technical sales representative at Vanderbilt Chemicals, where she focuses on additives used in industrial lubricants, automotive lubricants and grease.  She joined the U.S. Navy after high school, where she spent several years working toward her degree during deployment and various duty stations. She received a bachelor of science degree in biology and theology, graduating cum laude from the University of St. Thomas in Houston. Her degree plan had a heavy concentration in chemistry, which she applies daily in her current role. She has a background in base oils and worked in oil and gas logistics prior to that. Although Vanderbilt Chemicals is based in Norwalk, Conn., she resides in Texas where she serves as a board member of the STLE Houston Section. She lives with her husband, two children and dog who thinks she runs the place. 




Panelists:

Dr. Christopher DellaCorte is a professor and holds the endowed Timken Chair in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Akron. He is the director of the University of Akron’s Engineering Tribology Laboratory (AETL). Prior to joining academia in 2022, he concluded a long career in federal service as NASA’s senior technologist for tribology and rotating machinery. He is a highly visible and widely recognized leader in the field of tribology, mechanical components, and aerospace technology. His academic background includes degrees in fluid and thermal sciences, mechanical and aerospace engineering with a deep emphasis in materials engineering. His career experience includes research on longstanding extreme tribology challenge areas such as the high temperatures, high speeds, and high loads often encountered in spacecraft and aircraft. Dr. DellaCorte is deeply engaged with professional technical societies. He is a Fellow of both the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and STLE. He was the founding editor of STLE’s highly regarded TLT magazine and has served as the editor-in-chief of STLE’s peer reviewed journal Tribology Transactions since 2016. 


Nick Garabedian is the CEO of datin, a newly established software startup pursuing scientific superintelligence through innovative approaches to research data management and sharing. Nick first delved into tribology during his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Delaware. After earning his doctorate, he relocated to Germany, gradually shifting his attention toward data science. Driven by the ambition to develop a unifying artificial intelligence model for tribology, he embarked on a journey that ultimately led him into entrepreneurship. 








Dr. Oliver Koch studied mechanical engineering at the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) in Germany, where he also completed his doctorate at the Chair of Machine Elements, Transmissions and Motor Vehicles. As part of his doctorate, he studied the friction in the roller/rib contact of cylindrical roller bearings. After that, he worked for Schaeffler for 14 years in various positions in R&D, most recently as vice president “R&D Analysis Tools and Methods.” In this role, he was responsible for the global development of the “Bearinx Simulation Suite,” Schaeffler’s rolling bearing analysis and design software. Since November 2021, he has been a full professor at the RPTU University of Kaiserslautern-Landau and heads the Chair of “Machine Elements, Gears and Tribology” (MEGT).