Corporate Relations

Anders assumed the role as President and Division Manager for the Power Systems Division in North America on May 1, 2010.  He formerly held the position of Senior Vice President & General Manager for Business Units Grid Systems and Substations within the Power Systems Division in North America.  Anders has more than 21 years with ABB, working in several countries in different management positions. Before moving to US in late 2004 Anders worked in Switzerland at ABB’s headquarters.

Andy Rindos is the head of the RTP Center for Advanced Studies (CAS), which coordinates university relations for the IBM community in NC. Andy is also the World Wide CAS Strategist, responsible for creating new centers - with currently 26 centers across the globe. Previously, Andy has headed Tivoli performance, as well as the WebSphere Technology Institute. Andy is an IBM Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM), an executive technical resource, as well as an adjunct professor at NC State. He joined IBM in 1988, after receiving his PhD in Electrical Engineering (Control Theory) from the University of Maryland (College Park). Prior to IBM, he was a neurophysiologist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda MD.

Caren Andersis vice president, transmission operations and planning for Progress Energy Carolinas. She is responsible for operations, maintenance, testing, construction, engineering, planning and asset management of the transmission system, including substations. 

Don Broeils is Vice President of the Solid Fuels and Environmental Compliance Business Line within Fluor Corporation’s Power Group.  The Business Line provides engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning services to power producing clients for greenfield solid fueled power plant projects and environmental control retrofit projects around the world.  The business is based in Greenville, South Carolina with operations at multiple domestic and international Fluor offices.

Don began his career in 1975 as a plant electrical engineer in the pulp & paper business with assignments in Alabama and Oregon.  He later joined Duke Energy in Charlotte, North Carolina where he spent twelve years in a variety of engineering roles with responsibility for scoping, estimating and engineering capital upgrade projects for Duke’s nuclear, coal and hydroelectric generating assets.  In 1989 Don joined Duke/Fluor Daniel, a partnership formed by Duke Energy and Fluor Corporation to provide EPC services to power clients.  He remained in this partnership for fifteen years, serving in engineering management and project management roles.  Don subsequently joined Fluor Corporation in 2004 where he has since served as a Business Line manager.

Don attended North Carolina State University where he received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering.  He is a licensed Professional Engineer and is the Fluor Foundation Executive Sponsor for NCSU.

E.C. Sykes is the CEO of SWITCH Lighting who are makers of the only liquid-cooled LED replacement A-Lamps in true 40W, 60W, and 75W equivalents. SWITCH generated significant consumer and commercial demand by being the first manufacturer to announce a full line of LED A-lamps that serve as true replacements for conventional A-19 incandescents and CFLs. SWITCH A-lamps have the best thermal management in the industry due to their unique cooling technology, the LQD Cooling System?, which produces a warm, incandescent-quality light while consuming a fraction of the energy.

Prior to accepting his current role in 2013, Mr. Sykes was president of Industrial and Emerging Industries at Flextronics, a $30B, industry-leading, Fortune Global 500 electronics manufacturing services provider with more than 200,000 employees and operation s in 30 countries. In this role, he leads an international business group with an emphasis on providing contract manufacturing services for emerging and high growth companies. He joined Flextronics in 1999 through the acquisition of Circuit Board Assemblers, a small and fast growing contract manufacturing and design company where he served as chief executive officer. In addition, he has held positions at Underwriters Laboratories, Nortel Networks and Memorex Telex.

Mr. Sykes received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in management from North Carolina State University.

Jan van Dokkum is an Operating Partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers with the specific task of assisting the Greentech ventures toward commercialization. He brings many years of experience in building organizations to achieve rapid growth in the areas of sales, marketing, manufacturing, product development, quality and supply chain development.

Prior to his role at KPCB, Jan served as president of UTC Power, a division of United Technologies, Inc., for 7 years and was instrumental in advancing UTC Power's on-site power generation product and service offerings. These include stationary fuel cells, renewable power solutions, such as geothermal and solar, and combined cooling, heating and power applications for the commercial building markets. He led United Technologies’ effort to improve and optimize energy use in commercial buildings by offering in depth analysis of a building’s electrical and thermal systems. In addition, he focused the company's fuel cell activities toward transportation, working closely with the world\'s leading automotive manufacturers and seeking out other early uses for fuel cells in transit buses.

Before joining UTC Power, Jan was with Siemens for 17 years where he served the last 6 years as president and chief executive officer of Siemens Power Transmission & Distribution, Inc. In those years he augmented the company’s traditional power equipment such as switchgear, power breakers, transformers and regulators with intelligent systems and controls. His vision was to create a smart electrical power delivery system to provide greater reliability and functionality, while at the same time adapt to deregulation and improve competitiveness. Under his leadership, the product lines expanded to include metering and billing systems, power system information technology, distribution automation and high voltage controls.

John Toebes, Director, Patents Effectiveness, Tools and Processes at Cisco is responsible for evaluating patents and encouraging innovation at Cisco.

John has been awarded 54 US patents for his work in MPEG video and XML compression, IP telephony, distributed computing and distributed network services. He currently has over 60 additional patents pending with the U.S. PTO.

Previously at Cisco, John was the Chief Architect of the Cisco Media Solutions Group, responsible for evaluating technologies, both internal and external to improve the content experience for consumers. Prior to that, he was a Senior Manager in Cisco’s Technology Center, where he managed a team of software engineers who evaluated, designed, and developed innovative technologies. John and his team worked at the bleeding edge on a wide variety of technologies, including Network Search, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Network Gaming, and XML Applications.

John joined Cisco in December of 1999. Prior to this, he was Founder and Vice President of Research & Development for SouthPeak Interactive, a division of SAS Institute. While at SouthPeak, John was the Producer for Men in Black: The Game.

John received a BS in Computer Science from North Carolina State University and went on to be stationed at the Pentagon as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Air Force. He has also worked at SAS Institute and Nortel Networks as a Manager and Systems Developer.

John resides in Cary, NC with his wife where he likes to tinker with electronics and help coach high school Robotics and Science Olympiad teams. John was honored as the 2011 FIRST Tech Challenge Volunteer of the Year for development and support of their robot communications system.

Nelson Peeler is vice president of system planning and operations for Duke Energy’s U.S. Franchised Electric and Gas organization. He leads the group responsible for the real-time monitoring and control of the bulk electric transmission and distribution systems, as well as transmission system planning for Duke Energy. He was named to his current position in January 2010.  Previously, Peeler served as vice president of performance support. He led the power delivery support team for five states served by the company, including the areas of business planning, contract management, IT integration, training, labor strategy, resource planning and process improvement.  He joined Duke Power in 1988 and  has held a variety of leadership roles within the power delivery and engineering departments.

The Faith, N.C., native graduated from North Carolina State University with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and an MBA from Queens University. He is a registered professional engineer in North Carolina and South Carolina.

Peeler serves on the board of directors of the North American Energy Standards Board and is a member of the Edison Electric Institute’s Distribution Executive and Reliability Executive Advisory Committees. He chairs the Carolinas Energy Workforce Development Consortium and serves on the board of directors of the North Carolina State Engineering Foundation and the advisory board of the Computer, Electrical, Electronics, Engineering Technology (CEEET) department at Central Piedmont Community College.

He and his wife, Lorie, have a son and a daughter.

Robbie is the Director of Advanced Technologies at Troxler Electronic Laboratories in Research Triangle Park, NC.  Troxler Electronics was founded by Robbie\'s father, William Troxler, a 1953 NC State graduate.  Robbie received his BS in Electrical Engineering from NC State in 1983 and his MS/PhD in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.  The Troxler Family has been a long time supporter of the ECE Department making major donations the Troxler Design Center, the ECE Department and the College of Engineering. 

Tony Montalvo joined Analog Devices in 2000 and founded the Raleigh design center on NCSU’s Centennial Campus.  He earned a B.S. in Physics from Loyola University in 1985 and an M.S.E.E. from Columbia University in 1987.  From 1987 to 1991 he was with Advanced Micro Devices where he was involved in the design of flash memories.  He received the Ph.D. degree from North Carolina State University in 1995.  

He was with Ericsson from 1995 to 2000 where he led the RF IC design group.  He has been an Adjunct Professor in the ECE department at NCSU and was named the Outstanding Teacher in 1995.  He served on the technical program committee of the International Solid State Circuits Conference from 2000 to 2008.  He has 25 patents granted or pending.