John Cavallaro

John Cavallaro comes to Arizona State University with more than two decades of wide-ranging engineering, science and business experience in both academia and industry.

Cavallaro spent much of that time with Bristol Myers Squibb, one of the largest multinational pharmaceutical companies, where he was immersed in research and development engineering, management consulting, strategic planning, and technical management in life science fields.

He had prepared himself for those pursuits by earning a master’s degree in engineering-economics systems and operations research and a doctoral degree in management science and engineering at Stanford University, along with a master’s degree in business administration at Dartmouth College and studies in biology and biomedical engineering at Brown University.

Among the things that lured him into his journey through higher education and have kept him enthralled in the years since are the expanding capabilities of information systems and technologies.

“Today we are generating more insights from data to reveal things that are not obvious at first but become apparent after doing the analytics,” Cavallaro says, “and those insights can drive strategy and decision-making in positive ways.”

His interest in such impactful advances is what attracted him to the opportunity to teach in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at ASU.

Cavallaro sees the potential for the multifaceted interests reflected in the Fulton Schools’ degree programs and courses to open pathways to innovation through collaborations of experts in multiple areas of science, technology, engineering and industry.

“I’m keenly interested in the interfaces between engineering and other disciplines like business and life sciences,” Cavallaro says. “I’d love to get involved in joint degree programs or other interdisciplinary initiatives, ideally as an instructor, or an advisor or mentor.”

For now, Cavallaro will bring to his classrooms the extensive lessons learned from his work in business and industry, including as a biomedical development engineer at Medtronic, a biomedical engineer at Organogenesis, a decision scientist at GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals and a consultant at Genentech, before his years with Bristol Myers Squibb.

In teaching the courses IEE 485 Systems Design Capstone I and IEE 486 Systems Design Capstone II, Cavallaro will also draw on several years of experience as a teaching assistant and academic tutor at Stanford University, as well as the Stanford Executive Institute, plus a decade as a guest lecturer at the Rutgers Business School at Rutgers University.  

Cavallaro’s goal for the coming years in his new job as a university teacher is a simple one.

“I’d like to be known as someone who made a difference in the lives of students,” he says.

Meet the newest faculty members of the Fulton Schools of Engineering here.

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Written by Joe Kullman