At the IntersectionAUVSI Ridge & Valley

2nd Annual SymposiumPresenter Directory

ANDY ALden

Danette Allen

Andy Alden leads the Eco-Transportation and Alternative Systems Group at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. He also serves as the Executive Director of the Interstate 81 Corridor Coalition. Andy is a registered profes-sional engineer with experience in the environmental and information technol-ogy fields, and in the development and deployment of vehicle data acquisition systems and related naturalistic research methods.

His current focus is advancing safe and sustainable transportation through the application of emerging and alternative technologies. Recent research has focused on animal-vehicle conflict, road weather safety, bus transit efficiency, bicycle safety, road salt impacts, and unmanned aerial system applications in support of ground transportation.

Andy Alden leads the Eco-Transportation and Alternative Systems Group at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. He also serves as the Executive Director of the Interstate 81 Corridor Coalition. Andy is a registered profes-sional engineer with experience in the environmental and information technol-ogy fields, and in the development and deployment of vehicle data acquisition systems and related naturalistic research methods.

His current focus is advancing safe and sustainable transportation through the application of emerging and alternative technologies. Recent research has focused on animal-vehicle conflict, road weather safety, bus transit efficiency, bicycle safety, road salt impacts, and unmanned aerial system applications in support of ground transportation.

Group Leader, Eco-Transportation and Alternative TechnologyExecutive Director, Interstate 81 Corridor Coalition

Senior Technologist, NASA Intelligent Flight SystemsDeputy Lead, NASA “Autonomous Systems” Systems Capability Leader Team

Don Berchoff

Eric Bianci

Don is an Air Force Veteran with 35 years experience in the weather industry and logistics systems, includign a year serving as the Expeditionary Base Com-mander at Manas AB, Kyrgyzstan. He led the NationL Weather Services Direc-torate for Science and Technology from 2008-2012 wehre he executed a $120 million S&T portfolio. Don has provided aviation weather services nearly every-where across the globe, including as an airborne meteorologist with over 300 flight hours. In 2001, his team developed an award-winning aviation weather risk management process for the Tanker Airlift Control Center at Scott AFB. Don is a recognized leader in the weather enterprise with deep epxertise synthesizing complex weather data sets into simple decision insight for operators.

Eric Bianchi is a Masters student in the Structural Engineering and Materials program. He will be a PhD candidate under Dr. Hebdon in Spring 2019, funded by an NSF project. For the grant, Eric will be part of a multidisciplinary team us-ing drones to conduct bridge inspections. For his master’s thesis, Eric is building a dataset of bridge details to train a convolutional neural network (CNN). The main objectives of the dataset is to lay the groundwork for future bridge data collaboration and to conceptualize the workflow of using CNNs for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in bridge inspections. His interests are in bridge inspec-tions, structural forensic engineering, drones, artificial intelligence, and comput-er vision.

Founder and CEO, TruWeather Solutions

Masters Student, Structural Engineering and Materials

Richard Buchter

Jim Chapman

Mr. Richard Buchter is a retired U.S. Naval Officer and is a Subject Matter Ex-pert at the Army Research Lab’s Computational and Information Sciences Di-rectorate (ARL/CISD). He has both an MBA and an MS/Management of Infor-mation Systems from The Johns Hopkins University. As a former Naval Aviator he has logged over 3,000 hours conducting sea- and land-based ISR missions in ERA-3B, EA-3B and EP-3E aircraft. He is also a member of DEF (The Defense Entrepreneurs Forum).

Jim Chapman is a partner with the law firm of Crenshaw, Ware & Martin in Nor-folk, Virginia where he leads the Autonomous and Unmanned Systems Practice. He is a member of the Drone Committee of the ABA Air and Space Forum. Jim provides legal services and guidance to entrepreneurs, insurers, manufacturers, service providers and pilots to plan strategically and assist in resolving difficult challenges to help his clients stay ahead of the rapidly changing legal, risk and regulatory climates surrounding the autonomous and unmanned systems indus-try. Jim graduated from Virginia Tech and recently served on the university’s Board of Visitors.

Subject Matter Expert, Army Research Lab Computational and Information Sciences Directorate

Partner, Crenshaw, Ware & Martin

James Eanes

Michael Fleming

James Eanes is a Senior Associate of the Wagner Associates Hampton, VA Division, where he designs and develops algorithms and software for a variety of stand-alone, distributed, and cloud applications, focusing primarily on mission planning for manned and unmanned platforms, information flow optimization, and large-scale track management. He is currently completing his M.S. in Computer Science at Old Dominion University (ODU), and holds a Graduate Certificate in Cybersecurity from ODU and a B.S. in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary.

Mr. Michael Fleming is the CEO and co-founder of TORC, a leading provider of self-driving solutions based in Blacksburg, VA. Beginning operations in 2006 as a Virginia Tech student start-up, Torc developed the self-driving technology for team VictorTango in the DARPA Urban Challenge. Since its top three finish in this historic self-driving race, Fleming has overseen Torc’s rapid and organic growth to over 100 employees and commercialization of self-driving technology into automotive, mining, and military applications through OEM partnerships. Fleming received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from Vir-ginia Tech in 2002 and 2003.

Senior Associate, Wagner Associates

CEO and Co-Founder, TORC

Joe Gabbard

Gustavo GargioniResearcher, entrepreneur and engineer passionate about science, business and technology as means of building together change. Since teenager, experiments software coding focused in processes efficiencies. As both engineer and entre-preneur, allies science and business together for the continuous development of society. Amazed and driven for complex design engineering along with con-trolled AI implementation; endeavoring for a self-sustainable business in Aero-space Industry.

Currently studying autonomous spacecraft systems for on-orbit servicing in low Earth orbit (LEO) at the Hume Center and Space@VT at Virginia Tech.

Over 15 years of business experience with an engineering perspective and IT capability. Over 10 years of ERP, business processes and software engineer experience. Over 20 years of computer programming experience with multiple languages with client and server side, mobile, web and stand-alone applications.

Virginia Tech

Hume Center, Virginia Tech

LOU GLabb

Lou Glaab has been an employee of NASA Langley Research Center for over 30 years. During this time he has worked in transonic cryogenic and large-scale subsonic wind-tunnels, performed piloted simulations and manned flight tests in support of advanced synthetic and external vision systems displays, developed designs for Mars sample return vehicles and worked in unmanned aerial systems. He is currently the Assistant Branch Head of the Aeronautics Systems Engi-neering Branch and leads the ASEB UAS team.

Assistant Branch Head, NASA Langley Research Center Aeronautics Systems Engineering Branch

Javier Gonzalez-RochaRocha’s Ph.D. research consists of developing algorithms to sense wind in the atmospheric boundary layer using multirotor UAS . The theoretical aspects of his research involves theory from system identification, flight dynamic model-ing, and state estimation. The experimental aspect of his work consists of field experiments using off-the-shelf multirotor airframes and Pixhawk flight con-trollers to validate my wind sensing algorithms.

Virginia Tech

Robert W. Harrison

Michael S. Hsiao

Robert W Harrison, BS IEOR, VT 1971. US Army Aviator, NGO Pilot in Pap-ua New Guinea, Airline Pilot (ATP) American Eagle and Continental Airlines (Retired). Adjunct Instructor ( Unmanned Systems 107), Engineering, Design and Technology Department, New River Community College. FAA Remote Pilot Certificate.

Michael S. Hsiao is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. His research interests include design automation and applied artificial intelligence. Most recently, he has developed a program-ming platform for converting logical English into functional, executable code. He has a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a Fellow of IEEE.

Professor, Virginia Tech Electrical and Computer Engineering

Peter J. Kunz

Boeing HorizonX explores opportunities through strategy and experimentation with business models for emerging aerospace applications, leveraging nontra-ditional partnerships and a venture fund that invests in early-stage startups focused on aerospace and industrial innovations. Boeing NeXt builds and incu-bates new mobility solutions and the next-generation ecosystem that will bring flight closer to home. Kunz is responsible for all engineering efforts, coordinates and contributes to technical due diligence, and supports strategy development. He also serves as a liaison to Boeing Research & Technology and the broader Boeing technical community.

Most recently, Kunz was CTO of Insitu, Inc., which produces the ScanEagle and Integrator unmanned aerial systems (UAS). In this role, he was responsible for Insitu’s research and development investments, oversight of the product and intellectual property portfolios, and leadership of Insitu’s technical experts and product-line chief engineers.Prior to joining Insitu, Kunz was a senior engineer with Exponent Inc., where he worked primarily on the development and field evaluation of unmanned air vehicles and force protection technologies, including a field consulting role for the U.S. Army Rapid Equipping Force in Afghanistan.

Chief Technologist, Boeing HorizonXChief Technologist, Boeing NeXt

Andrew LacherAndrew Lacher has over 30 years of systems engineering experience mostly in the aviation and transportation systems domain. He currently has a leadership role in defining The MITRE Corporation’s research strategy in unmanned and autonomous systems where he is the lead for Autonomy Integration and Adop-tion in the Transportation Transformation Technical Center. He has focused on the safe and secure integration of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) in civil airspace as well as methods to calibrate the trustworthiness of autonomous systems. He serves on numerous study boards and advisory committees.

Mr. Lacher earned both an MS in Operations Research and a BS in Electrical Engineering at The George Wash-ington University.

MITRE

JEff LEvy

Hesham Rakha

Dr. Rakha is the Samuel Reynolds Pritchard Professor of Engineering in the Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Vir-ginia Tech, a Courtesy Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech and the Director of the Center for Sus-tainable Mobility (CSM) at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI). He is a Professional Engineer in Ontario. He is on the Editorial Board of the Transportation Letters Journal, the IET Intelligent Transport Systems Journal, and the International Journal of Transportation Science and Technology. In addition, he is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions of Intelligent Transportation Systems, the Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems: Technology, Planning and Operations and an Academic Editor for the Journal of Advanced Transportation.

New River Community College

Director, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute Center for Sustainable Mobility

David Schmale

Marco Rubin

Dr. David Schmale is a full professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Virginia Tech. He received his B.S. from the University of Califor-nia, Davis, and his Ph.D. from Cornell University. His laboratory uses unmanned systems to study the transport of microorganisms in the lower atmosphere and in water. Popular Science magazine named Dr. Schmale one of 2013’s Brilliant Ten. A feature highlighting his work was published in Scientific American in 2017.

Marco is responsible for sourcing, diligence and closing of seed and early stage investments on behalf of the CIT GAP Funds. He serves as a board representa-tive to a numerous portfolio companies and leads seed/early stage investment in aerospace/UAS, energy, and software sectors. Prior to CIT, Marco founded Exoventure Associates, LLC (“Exo”). There he con-ducted diligence, mentored entrepreneurs and served as a judge in global busi-ness plan competitions sponsored by the World Bank and the State Department in former CIS countries.

Prior to Exo, he was founder of Monumental Venture Partners, LLC (MVP) making investments in security, information technology, telecommunications, software and medical devices sectors. MVP produced acquisi-tions of portfolio companies to Dolby Labs and Level 3 Communications. Before MVP, Marco launched New Ventures, MCI’s venture capital unit. Prior to MCI, he served Fortune 500, Federal and emerging market clients while with Booz Allen & Hamilton.

He began his career as an engineer at the Johnson Space Center training astronauts and flight controllers. Marco holds an MBA from The George Washington University and a BSEE from the University of New Mexico. He has been a National Science Foundation reviewer since 2007 as well as an NSF SBIR grant winner.

Professor, Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Senior Investment Director, Center for Innovative Technology

Pratap Tokekar

Nathaniel Varano

Pratap Tokekar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Re-searcher at the GRASP lab of University of Pennsylvania. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota in 2014 and Bachelor of Technology degree in Electronics and Telecommunication from College of Engineering Pune, India in 2008. He is a recipient of the NSF CISE Research Initiation Initiative award. His research interests include algorithmic and field robotics, and cyber physical systems, and their applications to precision agriculture and environmental moni-toring.

Nathaniel Varano is the Chief Operations Officer of Aeroprobe Corporation, a leading aerospace instrumentation and avionics supplier located in Christians-burg, Va. Previously, Dr. Varano served as the company’s Technology Director for Measurement Solutions until 2016. At Aeroprobe, Dr. Varano has overseen the development of technologies and products for the UAV and turbomachinery industries.

Prior to joining Aeroprobe in 2014, Dr. Varano served as a lead research en-gineer for GE Global Research in Niskayuna, NY where he conducted aerodynamic experiments to facilitate design improvements of next generation turbofan engines.

Dr. Varano received his Doctorate degree in Aerospace Engineering focusing in experimental aerodynamics from Virginia Tech and a Bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University.

Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Chief Operations Officer, Aeroprobe Corporation

Tom Walker

JOnathan Washburn

Tom is the founder and CEO of DroneUp. DroneUp manages the most ex-tensive commercial UAV pilot fleet while simultaneously maintaining a fierce commitment to safe airspace through the Responsible Community Pilot (RCP) program. DroneUp has provided training to thousands of commercial and rec-reational pilots throughout the world. In addition to its commercial operations, DroneUp has supported humanitarian efforts, including emergency responses following hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Jose and dozens of other search and rescue missions throughout the world.

A former military officer, Tom is a recognized pioneer in military and government digital reform, having man-aged the extensive programming and web enablement of computer systems to support boththe U.S. and International Special Forces.

As a result of his thesis, The Point of Mobile Confluence , Tom was tapped as an advisor to the White House on innovative technologies and their impact on the emerging workforce. The data from the research, combined with his military search and rescue experience, led to the creation of DroneUp.

Tom is equally passionate about his community and a frequent speaker at various corporate and organizational events.

After graduating from Liberty University with concentrations in Aeronautics and Video Production, Professor Washburn was hired by NASC to fly the RQ-23A Tigershark UAS. Serving on multiple deployments around the world, Prof. Washburn logged more than 2,000 hours of flight time on the aircraft working both as an aircraft operator, and alongside the research and development teams creating new systems and procedures.

During his deployments, Prof. Washburn completed a Master’s degree from Embry-Riddle where he studied Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Space Operations. His thesis titled “UAS for the Manned Mars Missions” sums up his studies by pointing out the usefulness of UAS to the manned crews that will someday explore other worlds.

Prof. Washburn is currently a full time professor at Liberty University and is the director of the UAS Program

Founder and CEO, DroneUp

Professor, Liberty UniversityDirector, Liberty University UAS Program

Chester F. Watts (SKIP)

Craig Woolsey

Dr. Skip Watts received his B.S. in Geology from Virginia Tech in 1974 and a Ph.D. in Engineering Geology from Purdue University in 1983. He teaches Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology at Radford University and Geology Applied to Engineering at Virginia Tech. Skip received SCHEV’s Outstanding Faculty Award in 1998, Virginia’s highest teaching honor, and is a former Dalton Distinguished Professor at RU. In 2001, he began 18 months as a Congressional Science Fellow, serving Senator Joe Lieberman as a science and technology adviser. He was named the 2003 Jahns Distinguished Lecturer by the Geologi-cal Society of America, speaking nationally on the topics of Geology and Public Policy and Military Operations in Difficult Terrain. He appeared on The Weather Channel’s documentary series Storm Stories in an episode entitled SLIDE!, and as a guest on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition while rock climbing to examine land-slides in Yosemite National Park. Skip consults on natural hazards for federal and state agencies as well as for private industry. He is presently serving as director of the Radford University GeoHazards Research Center, specializing in the use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for mapping and investigating natural hazards of all types.

Craig Woolsey is a Professor in the Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering at Virginia Tech. His research and teaching focus on the modeling and control of ocean and atmospheric vehicles. Woolsey serves as Director of the Virginia Tech site within the Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (c-uas.byu.edu), an NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center. Woolsey is an associate fellow of AIAA, a senior member of IEEE, and an officer in AUVSI’s Ridge and Valley Chapter. He is active in the AIAA’s Atmo-spheric Flight Mechanics (AFM) Technical Committee (TC) and on the IFAC TC on Marine Systems. Early in his career, Woolsey received the NSF CAREER Award and the ONR Young Investigator Program Award. In 2016, he was honored with the College of Engineering Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research. Woolsey completed the bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech in 1995 and a doctorate in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University in 2001.

Director, Radford University GeoHazards Research Center

Professor, Virginia Tech Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering