Ming Chang AIAA Domain Lead for Aeronautics; Senior Director of Flight Technologies General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (Retired)

2 October 2023
It is with a very heavy heart that we share Ming Chang, AIAA Aeronautics Domain Lead and AIAA Associate Fellow, passed away Sunday, 1 October 2023. Ming was a pioneer throughout his career in aeronautical engineering. Ming’s leadership driving AIAA to address the important challenges of the aeronautical world will be long remembered. His AIAA service is directly responsible for the Institute’s aeronautics domain leadership. Everyone at AIAA extends our deepest condolences to Ming’s family through this difficult time.

Ming Chang is an Aeronautical Engineer with 43 years in the aerospace industry specializing in the Flight Sciences area. His last 5 years were at General Atomics (GA) where he recently retired as the Senior Director of Flight Technologies overseeing Aero, Propulsion, CFD and Flight Controls/GNC activities. At GA he help publicize the GA brand name with the Predator product line, developed real time pilot-in-the-loop simulations for handling qualities assessment, assembled GA’s first  remote flight test control room for Predator flight test monitoring and participation and developed capture strategies for CRADs such as ASAPTR and SkyBorg programs. Previous to GA he worked for Lockheed Martin (LM) managing the Aero, Acoustics and CFD group, was the Flight Sciences IPT lead for JASSM and Nano UAV program. Prior to leaving LM he was a Lockheed Martin Fellow specializing in Aeronautics. In that capacity he managed flow control programs for drag reduction such as Plasma flow control and the AFRL ESMC program. Through the various years Ming has had the luck to work on many ground breaking programs such as hybrid airship programs to hypersonic programs and from Nano UAVs to Predator Drones that are either flying  today or have had successful demonstrations.