Announcing the nominees for the 2008 Engineer of the Year.

• Position: Drum Roll Please

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Every year, Alaska Business Monthly lists the nominees for Engineer of the Year. This year is no different. There are nine vying for the honor, nominated by associations they belong to such as the Institute of Transportation Engineers or the Society of American Military Engineers.

One of this year's nominees will be awarded the 2008 Engineer of the Year Award for Alaska during the 2009 nationwide E-Week Celebration, Feb. 15 to 21.

The National Engineers Week Foundation is a formal coalition of more than 100 professional societies, major corporations and government agencies, according to a press release from its Web site. It is "dedicated to ensuring a diverse and well-educated future engineering work force by increasing understanding of and interest in engineering and technology careers among young students and by promoting pre-college literacy in math and science."

Last year's winner, named the 2007 Engineer of the Year, was Dr. Alex Hills.

Dr. Alex Hills

Hills is a technology pioneer who has many years of experience in wireless networks and telecommunications systems. He heads Alex Hills Associates, a consulting firm based in Palmer and holds faculty appointments as Distinguished Service Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and Professor Extraordinario with the Universidad Austral in Chile.

Hills created the vision of "Wi-Fi," having conceived and created Carnegie Mellon's Wireless Andrew system, the first Wi-Fi network in the world. He is also an information technology leader; he has served as chief information officer (CIO) at two major universities, the University of Alaska and Carnegie Mellon, where he led the universities' development and use of information technology and networks. After his CIO service at Carnegie Mellon, it was voted the nation's "most wired" university. As a result of his success, he has been invited to lecture and consult across the U.S. and in many foreign countries.

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Although he is well known and respected nationally and internationally, he has long been an Alaskan, having been instrumental, for example, in developing the telecommunications systems in the Alaska Bush. Recently he has been engaged in developing Alaska high-tech entrepreneurship and engineering education through his work with Venture Ad Astra, an Anchorage-based high-tech start-up company, and UAA in expanding and improving its engineering programs.

Hills is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and he lives in Palmer with his wife, Meg, who is a nurse practitioner.

ABM wants to thank Hills for all his work pulling together this year's selection of nominees and wish all who are competing for the prestigious title the best of luck.

Capt. Billy Alien, USAF

Capt. Billy Allen is a civil engineering officer in the United States Air Force. He is currently stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, and, as the programs flight commander, is responsible for programming and design of repair, maintenance and new construction projects for 40 active and inactive radar sites throughout remote Alaska. He is joined in Alaska by his wife, Danica, and two children, Wyatt and Avigail. He graduated from Washington State University in 2001 and was stationed in Washington and Nevada before moving to Alaska. In Alaska, he has overseen the installation of Pacific Air Force's first wind turbine project at Tin City, Alaska.

Shortly after arriving, he was deployed to Baghdad, Iraq, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. While in Iraq, he maintained Coalition infrastructure within the 5 square mile International (or "Green") Zone. His team in Iraq designed and constructed more than $6 million in renovation projects solely supporting the Iraqi people, including renovating several schools and the only civilian clinic in the International Zone to repairing a dilapidated high-voltage electrical substation serving 25 percent of...