Background
McClendon grew up in Lawrence, Kansas (his childhood home, Meadowbrook Apartments in Lawrence, is the default center point of Google Earth).
McClendon grew up in Lawrence, Kansas (his childhood home, Meadowbrook Apartments in Lawrence, is the default center point of Google Earth).
He graduated from Lawrence High School in 1982 and from the University of Kansas in 1986 with a degree in electrical engineering.
He was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2015. He spent 8 years with Silicon Graphics developing high-end workstation 3D graphics including GT, GTX, RealityEngine, and InfiniteReality, and then was Engineering Director with Home Network. McClendon holds twelve issued patents, including seven relating to KML, the eXtensible Markup Language-based language schema for expressing geographic annotation and visualization in two-dimensional maps and three-dimensional Earth browsers.
KML became an open standard for geographic information system or geographical information science data in 2008.
McClendon was a Vice President with Google before joining Uber in June 2015 to work on mapping. Although he lives in California, he maintains close ties with his alma mater, the University of Kansas, serving on advisory boards for both the School of Engineering and the Department of Electrical Engineering and computer science.
In 2013, he served as Grand Marshal of the University"s homecoming parade.
