Arkansas Academy of Electrical Engineering Inducts 14 New Members at Banquet

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The Arkansas Academy of Electrical Engineering inducted 14 members at its annual banquet held on April 14. Inductees included John Bourne, Johnny Carlock, Tushar Dhayagude, Bobby M. Hawkins, Mike Hughes, Sathish Kumar, Ashutosh Mauskar, Gavin Mitchell, Ricardo Morales Kercadó, Ardeshir Sidhwa, Kevin Speer, Rajesh Subramaniam, John Thomas and Michael Thompson.

Bourne received his B.S.E.E. and B.S.M.E. from the U of A in May 2007. He then received his M.S. in mechanical engineering in May 2011, also from the U of A, and completed postgraduate studies in embedded systems engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He has recently begun working with Amazon's Project Kuiper to develop conversion systems for satellite applications.

Carlock received his B.S.E.E. from the U of A in August 1985. He has completed a number of hours toward the M.B.A. program at UA Little Rock and continues his education through attendance at conferences, workshops and short courses to stay abreast of both power and oil and gas industry standards, best practices, new products and emerging technology.

Dhayagude received his M.S.E.E. from the U of A in 1992 after receiving his Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Bombay in 1990. He also received a Master of Business Administration and Engineering Management from Northwestern University in 2001. He has been the vice president of WW sales and field applications at Transphorm Inc. in San Jose, California, since 2021. Transphorm is a leading manufacturer of energy-efficient power semiconductors. In that position, he has built and leads a WW team of sales management and operations, field applications, consultants and solution development in Asia, the U.S. and Europe, helping create a multi-year sales pipeline of over $250 million since joining the company.

Hawkins received his B.S.E.E. and M.S.E.E. from the U of A in 1975 and 1977, respectively. Hawkins retired in 2019; his last position was as a senior reliability engineer for II-VI Incorporated. His duties included designing reliability test and production qualification plans, conducting reliability/quality tests, analyzing test data and writing reliability and quality test reports.

Hughes received his B.S.E.E. from the U of A in 1982. He is also a Dale Carnegie graduate and an SPP Leadership graduate. He is the manager of entity engagement for ReliabilityFirst. He started working at Arkansas Power & Light (Entergy Arkansas) as an electrical engineer in 1981 and remained there until 1985. His career moves took him to Mayes, Sudderth & Etheredge, Trans-Tec Consulting, the City of Bentonville, the City of Clarksville Light & Water Department, Power Systems Solutions and Southwest Power Pool Regional Entity.

Kumar received his M.S.E.E. degree from the U of A in 1993, following the receipt of his B.S. in instrumentation and control engineering from the Government College of Technology in India. He also holds an M.B.A. from Golden Gate University in San Francisco. He is a seasoned business executive with 25-plus years of experience in operations, finance and engineering management. He is currently a co-founder at Accel4 Inc., which is a start-up that offers business applications as a service for early-stage companies, enabling them to focus on delivering the product to the market.

Mauskar received his M.S.E.E. from the U of A in May 1992 after receiving his bachelor's degree in electronics engineering from the University of Bombay. He is also a graduate of the Executive Leadership Program at UC Berkeley. He is currently vice president of product management/business development for Cadence Design Systems, where he is responsible for more than $1.2 billion of Cadence's custom IC and PCB design, IC packaging and Multiphysics system analysis product portfolios.

Mitchell received his B.S.E.E. from the U of A in 2006. Since 2022, Mitchell has been a regional engineer for Square D by Schneider Electric. The focus of this role is power system studies and arc flash mitigation design, with an additional focus on the protection, control and automation of low- and medium-voltage power distribution equipment. The role is a combination of design and field work to implement custom solutions.

Kercadó received his M.S.E.E. from the U of A in May 2005. He had previously received a Bachelor of Science in electronic technology from the University of Puerto Rico. In August 2022, Kercadó joined Emerge Engineering and Wiring, where he is a system protection and control supervisor in the Relay Construction and Maintenance Department. He is a shareholder of the company, which specializes in carrier line protection and provides services to Georgia Transmission and the municipalities power companies in Georgia.

Sidhwa received his B.S.E.E., M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. from the U of A in 1991, 1993, and 2002, respectively. He is currently vice president of operations worldwide for Pure Water Inc. In that position, he manages Prescott, Arizona, and San Jose, California, operations and new product development. He has authored and co-authored more than 100 publications in multiple journals, symposiums and conferences and has received several awards.

Speer holds a B.S.E.E. from the U of A, and as a NASA Research Fellow, he earned a Master of Science in engineering and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, both from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the technology director for the SiC Power business unit at Microchip Technology. Kevin joined Microchip in 2020, and he has participated in strategic planning, new product development and advanced R&D. Since 1999, Speer has published a range of SiC research spanning materials science to applications, including crystal growth, defect-related device degradation, SiC MOSFET and diode device design and processing, and advanced power packaging.

Subramaniam received his M.S.E.E. from the U of A in 2001. In 2004, through a collaboration with others from Atoga, he founded embedUR Systems, where he is the CEO and founder. EmbedUR is the go-to company for wireless networking, embedded engineering services and telecom product development, earning a reputation for on-time, on-budget delivery.

Thomas received his B.S.E.E. and M.S.E.E. degrees from the U of A in 1985 and 1987, respectively. He went on to earn his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder and is a graduate of the Stanford Executive Program. Currently, he is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Zact Inc., a financial technology company. Thomas has over 33 U.S. patents, eight journal papers, multiple conference papers and has contributed six chapters to a book titled Radargrammetric Image Processing by F. W. Leberl.

Thompson received his B.S.E.E. from the U of A in 1993. Thompson is the IT director and an active member of the FutureFuel Chemical Site Executive Team. While working on the Site Executive Team, he was charged with managing the transition of all Eastman corporate IT services to FutureFuel, which included negotiating and managing IT transition services from Eastman, establishing all necessary IT policies and procedures, negotiating all IT service and software agreements, and leading the effort to select and implement the newly formed public company's enterprise resource planning system (SAP).

Zhong Chen was awarded the William D. Brown and Margaret A. Brown Faculty Excellence Award, and Christina Jamieson received the William D. Brown and Margaret A. Brown Staff Excellence Award. Professors Yue Zhao and Karin Alvarado were also awarded the 2022 William D. Brown and Margaret A. Brown Faculty and Staff Excellence Awards.Gabriela Mendoza also received the Exemplary Student Leadership Award. The next day, AAEE held a formal business meeting and elections.