Joel ’77 and Heidi ’77 Douglas have established the Joel S. and Heidi S. Douglas Engineering Scholarship. The scholarship fund will support freshmen enrolled in the School of Engineering who demonstrate academic achievement and financial need. Preference will be given to female students who graduate from eastern Connecticut high schools.
“We are pleased to be able to help qualified, deserving students achieve a college education,” comments Heidi. “We are also passionate about the need for more young people to pursue careers in science and engineering in order to maintain our country’s technology leadership. We feel very fortunate to be able to ‘pay forward’ the help that we’ve had in our lives.”
Joel adds, “Helping others is an important part of the human experience. This scholarship is an investment in smart, capable students who will go on to build successful careers.”
The Douglases, who met when they were undergraduates at UConn, serve on the School of Engineering Advisory Board. Both have had extraordinarily successful careers. Joel was inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Engineers by the School of Engineering in 2005 in honor of his accomplishments in the field of engineering. He holds 70 U.S. patents, 29 FDA product clearances and numerous foreign patents. In 2004, Joel was named one of the 100 Notable People in the Medical Device Industry by Medical Device & Diagnostic Industry magazine. Heidi, who has held management positions at Pfizer and Syntex and served as partner at Deloitte Consulting, was named a 2006 Women of Innovation finalist by the Connecticut Technology Council.
The couple founded and now runs MysticMD, an advanced materials company, in Groton, Conn. The company develops coating solutions based on proprietary carbon nanotube formulations for a variety of commercial and defense industry applications. Previously, Joel founded and sold start-ups Sterling Medivations and Amira Medical, which developed AtLast—the first alternate-site blood glucose meter.
To support the School of Engineering, please contact Brian Otis, Vice President for Development, at 860-486-5960.
