Jeff Lydecker – Lead Engineer, Aerodynamics & Performance, Insitu

The market for small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is expanding and evolving every day. In order to stay relevant, UAV suppliers must provide a robust, easily adaptable platform that meets or exceeds customer expectations. For the aircraft designer, this provides a fun yet challenging problem.

About the speaker...
Jeff graduated from the University of Michigan SGUS program in 2008 with his Masters in Aerospace Engineering. He spent the first 7 years of his career working with aircraft designer Abe Karem designing next-generation tilt-rotor aircraft for both civilian and military applications. While at Karem, Jeff was responsible for the aerodynamics and performance of Karem’s designs for the US Army’s Joint Heavy Lift (JHL) and Joint Multi-Role (JMR) Technical Demonstrator (TD) programs in addition to an unmanned tilt-rotor for DARPA’s VTOL X-Plane program. Jeff joined Insitu’s team in 2015 as the senior aerodynamics and performance engineer. While at Insitu, Jeff has designed new vehicle platforms, integrated numerous new payloads and propulsion units on both ScanEagle and Integrator (RQ-21A Blackjack) as well as increased the company’s Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) capabilities.