The FAA will be represented at the Small Unmanned Systems Business Exposition to be held in San Francisco on May 8th and 9th. Jim Williams, FAA’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Office Manager will speak to the conference to explain the FAA’s responsibilities, and how the public rule making process works. Jim will be joined by an array of industry leaders including:
Chris Anderson
Chris is the CEO of 3D Robotics and founder of DIY Drones. From 2001 through 2012 he was the Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine. Before Wired he was with The Economist for seven years in London, Hong Kong and New York in various positions, ranging from Technology Editor to US Business Editor.
Geoff Bland
Geoff Bland is a Research Engineer based at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Wallops is a part of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and has traditionally brought quick response platforms and systems to the science community for world-wide deployments. Geoff has been working as part of Goddard’s Earth science program to develop and field unmanned aircraft and miniaturized sensor systems for a variety of scientific research activities since 1993.
Maha Calderon
Maha Calderon is a published writer and commercial photographer, as well as an FAA-certified flight instructor. Maha received her BA in journalism from Texas State University.
Gus Calderon
Gus Calderon is a commercially rated FAA-licensed pilot with a background in Geology and Environmental Science. He owns and operates IsisCopter, a small UAS manufacturing company.
His passion for aviation led Gus to start his own FAA Air Charter Operation in San Diego, California. He was granted an Air Carrier Certificate from the San Diego Flight Service District Office. After flying thousands of hours in turbine and high-performance aircraft, Gus realized that the escalating cost of aviation fuel and insurance was dimming the future of General Aviation.
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Doug Davis
Doug served as the Co-Chair of the ICAO UASSG, and the Vice-Chairman for EUROCAE WG-73. Doug resigned from the FAA in May/09, still staying in the Unmanned Aircraft community. Doug is currently with New Mexico State University Physical Science Laboratory where he is the Director for Global UAS Strategic Initiatives. Doug is co-chairing the SARP along with Dr. Steve Cook from Mitre and is the Civil Air Navigation Service Organization (CANSO) Representative to the ICAO UASSG. He is currently serving as the Technical Advisor to the Chairman of EUROCAE WG-73 and leads an independent team of UAS and Airspace Subject Matter Experts called the Global Airspace Integration Team (GAIT).
Patrick Egan
Patrick Egan is the Editor of the Americas Desk at sUAS News.com and Host and Executive Producer of the sUAS News Podcast Series. He consults to the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command Battle Lab, and has been in the unmanned aircraft field for 8+ years working as a proponent for the business use of unmanned aircraft systems.
Jonathan Evans
Jonathan Evans is a dual-rated professional pilot and nine-year Army veteran. He’s a co-founder and the CEO of a Portland-based tech startup called Rising Tide Innovations that’s building software for commercial UAS operators and their clients. He also sits on the board of the Cascade chapter of AUVSI, and is the contest director for “Drone Prize 2014”; a national contest connecting drone enthusiasts with the public good.
Harshil Goel
Harshil Goel is the Chief Executive Officer of VIRES Aeronautics, overseeing daily operations, R&D, and business development. Harshil is the inventor of the VIRES UAV Control Surface.
Danny Hajicek
Danny Hajicek started working with UAS in 2009 as a researcher and payload developer at the University of North Dakota’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Engineering laboratory. During his time there, he performed research related to phased array software and antenna design and was a member of the team that took first place in the 2010 UAV Outback Search and Rescue Challenge in Queensland Australia.
Danny received his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from UND in 2011. He then began working with Field of View on their intelligent agricultural aerial imaging systems designed to help service providers reliably deliver desirable data to the ag market.
Todd Jacobs
Todd Jacobs, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is currently the Deputy Superintendent for Operations and Administration for the Channel Island National Marine Sanctuary and a Project Scientist with the NOAA UAS Program. He has been with the NOAA National Ocean Service since 1989. His background includes facilitating research projects using research vessels, manned submersibles, aircraft and unmanned aircraft systems. He has been the principal investigator on more than 20 UAS science missions and has been involved with the NOAA UAS Program since its inception in 2004.
Gabe Ladd
Gabe Ladd is CEO and Founder of Advanced Concepts Consulting. He has spent the last twelve years working with UAV/UAS for civilian applications. He specializes in sensor and data system design and analysis. He helps his clients to build and implement custom data systems using a mixture of COTs and custom hardware and software to produce data products and analyses that are delivered in standard methods for easy dissemination and communication.
Rory Paul
Rory has a very strong background and interest in all things technical! He started his working career in product engineering roles in the graphic arts and communication industry working for international companies and startups. His technical interest took him to the field of nondestructive testing and he started his own business in 2003 in South Africa. He relocated to the US in 2005 and continued this business while investigating the uses of UAV systems with specific applicability to the US agricultural sector.
Douglas M. Marshall, J.D.
President, TrueNorth Consulting, LLC, an aviation consulting organization specializing in regulations, standards and legal issues relating to the integration of unmanned and remotely piloted aircraft into civil airspace. Division Manager, UAS Regulations & Standards Development at the Physical Science Laboratory, New Mexico State University, previously a Professor of Aviation at the University of North Dakota. He has been engaged full time on UAS related activities for over 9 years, is the co-editor of two books related to aviation, co-author of the recently published “Introduction to Unmanned Aircraft Systems” and is the author of numerous published articles on aviation law, regulations and remotely piloted aircraft. He has served on RTCA SC-203, ASTM F-38 and SAE G-10 Committees, the AUVSI Advocacy Committee, the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program UAS Expert Group, the Small UAS Aviation Rulemaking Committee and the current UAS Aviation Rulemaking Committee. He has also served on the Steering Committee, Civil Applications of Unmanned Aerial Systems Conference, Boulder, CO. and several other committees dedicated to the development of UA systems and has delivered presentations on international aviation regulations and airspace issues at conferences around the world.
Lorenzo Martelletti
Lorenzo Martelletti is the Sales and Business Development Manager of Pix4D, a Swiss company and global leader in UAV processing software solutions. Mr. Martelletti holds a master degree in environmental engineering and has an academic experiences as a scientific collaborator on webgis at EPFL, an intern on remote sensing of vegetation at NASA Ames Research Center and as a researcher on near-surface geophysics at University of Florence. Prior to Pix4D, he has worked for international projects for geophysical and hydrographical surveying, biofuels and carbon offsetting in forestry operation.
Knut T Moe
Mr. Moe has an extensive background from strategic business development, market operations analysis and management of key UAS projects. He has lead several large industrial UAS asset projects for Europe’s largest oil company and Norway’s largest power utility company.
Gene Robinson, RPFlight Systems, Inc. Gene Robinson founded RPFlight Systems, Inc. in March of 2004 and performed the research and development required to produce the flying wing as a stable payload platform. Gene’s formal education is in aviation science and is a full scale pilot. Utilizing his professional background as a computer programmer/analyst, the marriage of software image analysis and the use of computers for enhancing images was utilized early on. The small unmanned aircraft developed by RPFlightSystems have seen service in searches domestically from California, to Virginia, Wyoming to Texas and internationally in Mongolia, Mexico, Africa and Jamaica.
Eileen Shibley
The founder and champion of Cal UAS, Shibley has a 30-year career in DOD, where she was one of the Navy’s strongest advocates of unmanned systems at China Lake. She created the world’s first integrated battle space (IBAR), which still stands at China Lake as one of the premiere environments for testing every capability of modern warfare. She also served two assignments in Washington D.C., as China Lake’s liaison and advocate for technological advancement. She launched Cal UAS in 2012 as the most promising geographic, industrial and cultural environment to preserve our capabilities in the advancement of unmanned systems.
Vikki Stone
Vikki Stone is a veteran of the insurance and risk management industry, with more than 30 years of experience placing commercial and personal lines for middle market companies, manufacturers, distributors, property owners, technology firms, individuals and families. She is currently Senior Vice President at Poms Associates. She was previously President of Stone, Harris & Stone, which was acquired by Poms & Associates in March 2012. Vikki earned a Bachelor of Science in Finance/Business Administration from the University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business.
John Surmont
John’s professional experiences span combat action, military special projects to information technology startups. John has been instrumental in the successful development and integration of some of the earliest technical sensing capabilities to be fielded by the Department of Defense, Special Operations Forces and Naval Special Warfare. These capabilities include remote sensing, unattended ground sensing and GPS tracking systems.
James H. Williams
Jim Williams is the Manager of the FAA’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration Office. This office functions as the single agency focal point for all UAS-related activities and is uniquely positioned to develop and coordinate solutions to UAS challenges across the FAA and with external organizations. UAS are often described as the most disruptive aviation technology since the invention of the jet engine, and the FAA’s UAS Integration Office has the daunting challenge of accomplishing the safe, efficient, and timely integration of this technology into the National Airspace System (NAS), while balancing the political pressure and economic needs of the nation.
CEO DroneLife.com, DroneRacingLife.com, and CMO of Jobfordrones.com. Principle at Spalding Barker Strategies. Has enjoyed working with and around the commercial drone industry for the last 10 years. Attendance and speaker at Industry Events such as Commercial UAV, InterGeo, Interdrone and others. Proud father of two. Enjoys karate, Sherlock Holmes, and interesting things. Subscribe to all things drone at DroneLife here. Email is Harry@dronelife.com. Make Sure that you WhiteList us in your email to make sure you get our Newsletter. Editor1@dronelife.com.