As one of the three founders and Managing Partners of PACE, Alexander Schneegans was instrumental in driving the enterprise from start-up to its current status as a trusted partner of leading aerospace organizations around the world. Alexander heads the business line Preliminary Design & Evaluation, which focuses on developing software solutions supporting the design and marketing of complex, highly engineered products such as aircraft and their sub-systems. Alexander earned his engineering degree in 1992 from Technische Universität Berlin, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, where he also served as a research assistant before starting his own company.
People Category: AIAA SciTech Forum 2021
Claudia Mowery
Claudia Mowery is Vice President of USAF programs, responsible for managing all domestic MQ-9A US Air Force, Air Force Special Operations Command, and Air National Guard programs. Claudia joined GA-ASI in January 2007 and has been in the unmanned aircraft industry since 2001.
While at GA-ASI, Claudia has held several positions including: Program Director of USAF Block 50 Ground Control Station responsible for managing development and test.
Technical Director / Chief Engineer of the Block 50 GCS. Claudia was responsible for successful technical design reviews: Preliminary Design Review (Apr 2016) and Critical Design Review (May 2017) as well as Contractor Testing and First flight of the Block 50 GCS (2019).
Integration Manager for the Army’s flagship MQ-1C Gray Eagle program ($100M Acquisition Category ACAT-1D). Claudia was directly responsible for the integration and testing of the system in preparation for an Initial Operational Test and Evaluation (IOT&E) and a Follow-on Test and Evaluation (FOT&E). Both of these milestone test events were successfully executed in 2012 and 2015 respectively and resulted in Full Rate Production (FRP) for the program.
Prior to 2007, Claudia worked at Northrop Grumman where she held various positions as an Engineer: Mass Properties Engineer, Mechanical Subsystems Engineer (fuel, bleed-air, hydraulic), Environmental Control Systems Engineer, and Guidance Navigation and Controls Engineer on the RQ-4A and RQ-4B Global Hawk program for 5 years.
Ms. Mowery earned her Mechanical Engineering degree from San Diego State University with the distinguished honor of “Summa Cum Laude” and Valedictorian of the College of Engineering (2001). She also holds a Systems Engineering Certificate from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena (2004) and is a graduate from the University of California San Diego’s Executive Perspective for Scientists and Engineers Program (2016).
Claudia was recently honored by AIAA for Outstanding Contribution to Aerospace Engineering (2019) and San Diego Magazine’s Rising Star (2018).
Sarah Shull
AIAA Associate Fellow and member of the Talent and Leadership Development Committee; Region IV Director
Kate Stambaugh
Kate is a Senior Systems Engineer in the Space Payload and Ground Systems Division at Northrop Grumman. She has a BS in Systems Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, an MS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland, and previously worked for nine years at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory on space and high-altitude balloon missions for NASA. She is a lifetime member of AIAA and has been active in various roles across the institute including former chair of the Space Automation and Robotics Technical Committee (SARTC), local section leadership, SPACE forum organizing committee, SMG and New Initiatives Subcommittee, SciTech keynote speaker, and most recently on the Talent and Leadership Development Committee. In her spare time Kate enjoys boating and crabbing on the Chesapeake Bay and coaches Track and Field at her local high school.
Jeff Puschell
AIAA Fellow and member of the Talent and Leadership Development Committee
Dr. Jeff Puschell is an internationally recognized Ph.D. scientist engineer with more than 30 years of comprehensive knowledge and experience in successfully developing state-of-the-art earth remote sensing satellite systems. He has been Principal Investigator, Program Manager, Chief Engineer, Chief Scientist, Technical Director or Co-Investigator on 15+ major projects sponsored by governments and private industry in space-based remote sensing, laser-based systems and observational astrophysics, including leadership roles in space-based imaging and remote sensing systems such as MTSAT-1R, VIIRS and CrIS. He is a Principal Fellow of the Raytheon Company, an honor awarded to less than 0.1% of the technical personnel in the Company and Chief Scientist for Space Systems. In their Principal Fellowship award statement, Raytheon’s executive management described Puschell as “… one of the world’s leading space-based remote sensing systems engineers…well known and highly regarded throughout the international remote sensing community as an innovative and insightful remote sensing system architect with exceptionally broad technical skill and knowledge…trusted by Customers … active in working directly with them to translate their remote sensing needs into system architectures and designs.” He is currently Principal Investigator for the NASA-funded Advanced Technology Land Imaging Spectroradiometer (ATLIS) Prototype development, a next generation land imager suitable for small satellites.
Anjaney Kottapalli
AIAA Senior Member, member of the Talent and Leadership Development Committee and Hypersonic Technology & Aerospace Planes TC, and AIAA DEFENSE Forum Technical Committee Chair
Therese Malinowski
Therese Malinowski is a freshman in First Year Engineering at Purdue University with the intent to major in Aerospace Engineering. She has been a Girl Scout since kindergarten and earned the honor of 2020 National Gold Award Girl Scout for her database “Project Dandelion,” the world’s first comprehensive campus sexual assault resource.
After learning that many colleges have purposefully covered up student sexual assault allegations from a documentary, and then finding that information regarding sexual assault on college campuses was incredibly difficult to find, Therese became motivated to create a resource for potential and current college students to understand the reality of sexual assault at a specific school. The database became known as “Project Dandelion,” and currently covers specific statistics, resources, and information on every college in Illinois, as well as general information that applies to every college in the nation. The database is still a work in progress, and developments are underway to grow this project to a national resource. Everyone needs to go to a college they feel safe attending, and information transparency is the first step to improving the dangerous culture of campus sexual assault.
Therese has always had a deep love for engineering and aviation. She currently participates in Purdue’s Engineering Projects in Community Service Program, serving as design lead for a mobility technology team, and is an active member of AIAA, and serves on the Vertical Flight Systems design team. Outside of school, she volunteers at a local airport through her EAA chapter to shadow A&Ps and help with the construction of an experimental aircraft.
Megan Loh
Megan Loh is a 2019 National Gold Award Girl Scout and a freshman at Stanford University interested in pursuing physics. She joined Girl Scouts when she was in Kindergarten. For her Gold Award project, she started a nonprofit organization, GEARup4Youth, to bridge the gender gap in technology, especially for underserved populations. With the help of over 200 volunteers and 200 partners, she has reached 13,500 girls and 24,000 youth worldwide.
Megan has been passionate about STEM, especially technology, ever since she was little. However, throughout her experiences working in the STEM field, she has seen the severity of gender stereotyping first-hand. When she realized that women, especially minorities, are critically underrepresented in technology, she set off to make a change. She launched her first girls-only programming class at a local library in 2015, and her programs began to gain popularity. Today, besides offering robotics/programming classes to underprivileged girls at eight Boys and Girls Clubs, she has hosted presentations in partnership with science museums, public libraries, and radio-stations; promoted familial support for girls in STEM during elementary school family events, and brought the fun of programming to Malaysia, making a global impact. She published her own book to reach a broader audience and stimulate more girls’ interests in STEM, which is available at online stores worldwide.
Since her Gold Award, Megan’s activism in the diversity, equity and inclusion sector has continued to grow. She has been a contributing author to two more books, one about socio-economic sustainable development with a focus on equity in education, and the other aimed to inspire young changemakers to incite change in their own communities. Academically, she has researched for three years with the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and has started a new project investigating dark matter detection with the LHC.
David W. Thompson
Thompson served as president and chief executive officer of Orbital ATK until 2018. Under his leadership, Orbital ATK carried out more than 1,000 rocket launches and satellite missions over a 36-year period. During that time, the company grew from a start-up to a NYSE-listed public company with an enterprise value of more than $9 billion.
In 1982, Thompson co-founded Orbital Sciences Corporation (one of Orbital ATK’s main predecessors), serving as chairman, president, and chief executive officer. Before co-founding Orbital, Thompson was special assistant to the president of Hughes Aircraft Company’s Missile Systems Group and was a project manager and engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. As a college student, he worked on the first Mars landing missions at California Institute of Technology’s (Caltech) Jet Propulsion Laboratory and on space shuttle projects at NASA’s Langley Research Center and Johnson Space Center.
Thompson was awarded the National Medal of Technology, was honored as Virginia’s Industrialist of the Year, and was named High-Technology Entrepreneur of the Year by Inc. magazine. Also, he received the National Air and Space Museum Trophy from the Smithsonian Institution and was honored with the von Karman International Wings Award by the Aerospace Historical Society. He was also selected as Satellite Executive of the Year, was recognized with the Arthur C. Clarke Lifetime Achievement Award, received a lifetime achievement award from Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine, and was presented with the World Technology Award for Space by The Economist magazine.
Thompson is an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA); a Fellow of the American Astronautical Society and the Royal Aeronautical Society; and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the International Academy of Astronautics. He was AIAA’s president for 2009-2010. Thompson also serves as a member of the Boards of Trustees of Caltech, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and the Hertz Foundation, as well as the Astronomy Advisory Council at Princeton University.
Thompson holds a bachelor’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in aeronautics from Caltech, and a MBA from Harvard Business School.
Pamela E. Cohn
Pamela Cohn is chief operating officer of Hyundai Motor Group’s (the Group) Urban Air Mobility Division. Cohn has a proven track record of helping aerospace and mobility organizations bring fresh thinking and innovative solutions to meet rising consumer demands, streamline operations and navigate complex regulatory systems. Prior to joining the Group, Cohn was founder and managing partner of Ascension Global, an aviation advisory firm sought after by industry and transportation leaders. Before Ascension, she founded McKinsey & Company’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Hub and was a leader in McKinsey’s aerospace & defense and infrastructure practices.
About the Urban Air Mobility Division
Hyundai Motor Group (the Group) is at the forefront of creating emerging mobility solutions that will foster development of human-centered cities. The Group’s Urban Air Mobility Division is designing an electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) aircraft tailored to the mobility needs of people and future cities. By integrating two-dimensional mobility systems into our three- dimensional world, the Division is poised to democratize flight and revolutionize air transportation. The Division fuses research in aviation, autonomy, robotics and services to define a new category of mobility for communities. We believe in inclusion, creative thinking and collaboration to help build a better mobility experience for everyone, enhancing people’s ability to move – whether for work or play.