Members

Professor Avinash Muthu Krishnan is an assistant professor in the College of Aviation at Embry-Riddle. Avinash received his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and is presently a doctoral student in Mechanical Engineering.

Mr. Cabrera holds the positions of Chief UAS Pilot, Director of Flight Operations (UAS) and Research Support Specialist at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach. Joe created and presently coordinates the UAS Flight Instructor program at Riddle. He is presently pursuing his master's degree in Aviation.

Mr. Copenhaver is a student in Embry-Riddle's Master of Science in Uncrewed Systems program. He is also the founder and owner of AeralFlix.

Kaleb is originally from Atlanta, Georgia, and is pursuing a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering.

Logan is pursuing a B.S. in Uncrewed Aircraft Systems with a minor in Geographical Information Systems (GIS).

Mr. Zink is an undergraduate student from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, majoring in Uncrewed Aircraft Systems with a minor in Meteorology. He has always been intrigued by the atmosphere and weather but fell in love with meteorology quickly after taking his first few courses in it. While Mr. Zink has an abundance of excitement for meteorology, his passion is for uncrewed aircraft systems. Learning from his father, he has been flying fixed-wing aircraft almost every weekend since early childhood. Introduced to computer-aided design and coding in high school, Mr. Zink continued growing these skills and currently works as a CAD designer for a utility engineering company.

Mr. LaRose retired from the U.S. Army in 2020 with 26 years of service in the Motor Transport and Chemical Warfare fields. Flying R/C planes as a hobby has been his passion for over 15 years. He holds a Part 107 license and is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in Uncrewed Aircraft Systems.

Dr. Compere is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. His background is in physical systems modeling, nonlinear dynamics, multi-vehicle scenarios, instrumentation and sustainability. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in vehicle dynamics, electric power systems, instrumentation, modeling and simulation, and sustainable design courses, including Capstone Senior Design.

Nickolas D. "Dan" Macchiarella, Ph.D., is a Professor of Aeronautical Science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, Florida. At the university, Dan has held research, teaching and administrative leadership positions. His research portfolio includes serving as principal investigator and operational test pilot on varied projects. Dan’s research expertise focuses on the creation and application of virtual environments to meet research, educational and training needs. His recent projects apply photogrammetric techniques that use unmanned aircraft system (UAS) captured imagery and LIDAR data to build detailed and correctly scaled virtual objects that are exportable and reusable. This work includes modeling telecommunications infrastructure, historically significant buildings and environmentally sensitive locations within coastal areas. Dan has extensive experience flying and sensing with infrared systems in operational settings. These systems include aviation Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) and target acquisition and designation infrared systems. He serves as a standing member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Modeling and Simulation Technical Committee.

Dr. El-Sayed is an Assistant Professor in environmental engineering in the Civil Engineering Department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Dr. El-Sayed’s research interests lie in characterizing the processes and sources of atmospheric pollutants to better understand how humans perturb these processes in order to ultimately quantify their impact on climate change, policy-making and human health.

Dr. El-Sayed received her Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in Chemical, Biochemical & Environmental Engineering, working on air pollution projects that focus on characterizing atmospheric aerosols, particularly in the eastern United States. She holds a master's degree from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom in Engineering for Sustainable Development. She received M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees in Chemical Engineering with honors from Cairo University in Egypt.

Dr. El-Sayed joined Colorado State University as a postdoctoral fellow in the Atmospheric Science Department, where she conducted several field studies to investigate the air quality in the western United States. Prior to her doctorate degree, El-Sayed worked as a research fellow at the National Research Center of Cairo, where she applied the concepts of cleaner production in Egyptian industry. In addition, she worked as an environmental consultant for several projects in the Middle East and Europe.

Dr. Ronny Schroeder's background is in geoinformatics, physical geography and earth system research, with a strong emphasis on satellite remote sensing, GIS applications (ESRI and QGIS), and climatology. Dr. Schroeder's specialty is in the synergistic fusion of various satellite remote sensing data sets and platforms for the long-term study and assessment of environmental processes and change. Dr. Schroeder has previously worked at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, where he collaborated with internationally recognized scientists on various research projects on earth science satellite and airborne missions.

Dr. Schroeder's current research activities include using NASA and NOAA satellites that support National Weather Service (NWS) snowmelt streamflow forecasts in the Red River of the North Basin. Dr. Schroeder has also initiated collaborative seed research with Dr. Adkins to investigate sources of convective initiation and suppression within the orographic planetary boundary layer (PBL) over Arizona during the North American Monsoon using a unique suite of meteorological instruments mounted onto both uncrewed and crewed Embry-Riddle aircraft.