Steve Czarnecki
Associate Director, S3IP Center of Excellence
From early age growing up in the Chicago area, I was fascinated by how things work and by middle school decided to become an electrical engineer. My parents, who also were immigrants to the U.S., placed high emphasis on learning, a strong work ethic, and achievement. They, and others such as my teachers, and later, supervisors while I was an undergraduate student and my graduate research advisor gave me strong encouragement in my studies, as did camaraderie with classmates from elementary school through graduate school, some of whom remain lifelong friends. I attended General Motors Institute (now named Kettering University), a small college owned and operated by General Motors at the time for the purpose of training engineers to work in the company. It was a cooperative (co-op) education program, and every six weeks I alternated between work assignments in a GM locomotive factory and academic sessions at the college. After earning a bachelor degree in electrical engineering, I proceeded directly to graduate study at Princeton University, earning a PhD there. After completing the doctorate, I started a job with the IBM plant here in Owego, NY, which eventually became part of Lockheed Martin corporation. I retired from there as a director of advanced technology after 30 years with the company, and joined Binghamton University in 2013 to manage the S3IP Center of Excellence. Outside of work, my wife and I live on large rural property among woods and fields with our St. Bernard dog, Abby. Among other things, when not riding on my tractor mowing grass or plowing snow, I am driving my Corvette or busy with gardening, beekeeping, amateur astronomy, music listening, piano practice, making ice cream, cooking and baking, reading, cheering the NY Yankees, or just simply enjoying the outdoors and the company of friends.
