Arkansas Academy of Electrical Engineering Inducts Nine New Members at Banquet

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Pictured are (back row, from left) Drew Alexander Clem, Pavan Kumar Narendra, Chris Cathercole; (front) Robert A. Post, Justin Northcutt, Jeremy H. Duck and Robert Brandon Pinkerton. Not pictured are Vijaylaxmi Gumaste Khanolkar and Kirk P. Pond.

The Arkansas Academy of Electrical Engineering inducted nine members at its annual banquet held on April 9. Inductees included Drew Alexander Clem, Jeremy H. Duck, Chris Cathercole, Vijaylaxmi Gumaste Khanolkar, Pavan Kumar Narendra, Justin Northcutt, Robert Brandon Pinkerton, Kirk P. Pond and Robert A. Post.

Clem currently serves as senior manager of transmission grid operations for Entergy Arkansas Inc., where he is responsible for managing the transmission line and substation operations, infrastructure and maintenance for 465 substations and approximately 4,900 transmission line miles across the state of Arkansas. He received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the U of A in 1992.

Duck joined Schneider Electric as a staff engineer in 2020. He has worked for Synergy Tech, TME Inc. and started Architectural Engineering Consultants in North Little Rock in 2009. He graduated from the U of A with his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 2004.

Gathercole joined Virgin Orbit in Long Beach, California, in 2017. As the senior manager in systems engineering, he built the systems engineering, integration and test team from the ground up for the innovative LauncherOne program. He currently serves as director of mission management and systems. He received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the U of A in 2002 and his master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California in 2005.

Khanolkar is a distinguished member of the technical staff of Texas Instruments in the Strategic Research and Development - SC Packaging Group. Her work has resulted in the launch of new product families with new revenue opportunities for that company. She has six United States Patent and Trademark Office granted patents and eight under filing. She received her bachelor's in electrical engineering from the College of Engineering in Pune, India, in 1995, and her master's degree in electrical engineering from the U of A in 1998.

Narendra has been a staff software engineer for Walmart in the health and wellness area since 2018. He is currently working in the cloud to design robust, fault-tolerant and large scale, low latency distributed systems using both traditional registered diagnostic medical sonographer (RDMS) and non-tabular databases (No-SQL Databases). He received his master's degree in electrical engineering from the U of A in 2007. Prior to receiving that degree, he worked as a project engineer for Wipro Technologies Pvt. Ltd., in Bangalore, India.

Northcutt has worked with Ozarks Electric Cooperative since 2006. His position there includes the supervision of staff electrical engineers and the mapping department. That group is responsible for digitizing Ozarks Electric's substations, transmission lines and the distribution system in their service territory across eight counties in Northwest Arkansas and Northeast Oklahoma for use by operations crews and for engineering modeling. He received both his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering at the U of A in 2005 and 2009, respectively.

Pinkerton started HP Engineering Inc. in 2007 with his business partner and co-owner, Bill Hodge. HP Engineering has grown to be one of the largest engineering design firms in the region, with almost 100 employees and five offices across the country, located in Rogers, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Dallas and Phoenix. He received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the U of A in 2000.

Pond has an extensive electrical engineering career that includes stints at Texas Instruments, Timex Corporation and Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation, where he retired as chief executive officer in 2005 and as chairman of the board in 2007. Pond was a member of the U of A college committee for the Campaign for the 21st Century and was inducted into the College of Engineering Hall of Fame in 1999. He received the Citation of Distinguished Alumni Award in October 2003. Through the Pond Family Foundation, he supports local, national and international nonprofits, including the U of A schools of business, education and engineering. He received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the U of A in 1966 and his master's in business administration in 1968 as a Wharton Graduate at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Post joined Xtralight Manufacturing in Houston as the director of engineering and product development in 2021. Xtralight designs and manufactures custom and premium commercial luminaries. Post leads a highly experienced engineering team with new product development and current product support. He received both his bachelor's and master's degree from the U of A in 1990 and 1995, respectively.

AAEE members held a business meeting the following day and elected new officers and board members for 2022-2023. Phillip Crippen will serve as president, Bill Luther as vice president and Robert Saunders as secretary/treasurer. The remaining board members are Robert Post, Brian Rowden and Brian Sepko. Eugene Jenkins and Lee Warren rotated off the board. Warren is the outgoing AAEE president.