Aaron Ripley of Cox Communications has been named the 2007 Young Engineer of the Year.
Ripley, 31, and Cox’s director of quality and strategy, will be formally recognized at the SCTE Conference on Emerging Technologies 2007 confab in Houston, which runs Jan. 23-25, 2007.
The award, sponsored by Scientific Atlanta and Multichannel News, recognizes an engineering professional under age 35 who has demonstrated outstanding achievement.
Ripley joined Cox after working at General Electric, where he served in business and quality roles and, during this period, was awarded Six Sigma Black Belt certification. At Cox, he designed a five-day Six Sigma class that covered the fundamental elements of measurements, statistical analysis, process design and customer-based metrics. To date, more than 100 people at the MSO have participated in the training.
Ripley also was key in a network operations application project and software development process that has reduced fielded bugs by 83 percent.
“Process design and improvement was a newer skill set and competency for Cox Communications, so Aaron took on the role of educating the Network Operations team on key improvement skills and creating partnerships with our internal customers, the markets, where our end customers are served,” said Debbie Simmons, Cox’s executive director of network operations, who nominated Ripley for the award.
Ripley will receive $1,000 and an all-expenses-paid trip to next month’s conference.