People Category: Electric Aircraft Technologies Symposium (EATS)

Cong Li

Dr. Cong Li is currently a Senior Power Electronics Engineer and EMC Lead at GE Aerospace Research, Niskayuna, NY, USA. His research interests include aviation high voltage, high power, high density wide band gap (WBG) power electronics systems, and EMI mitigation techniques. He is currently leading multiple flight demo EMC projects at GE Research. He has authored more than dozens of technical papers, and patent applications in the area of power electronics and EMC. He is a voting member of commercial aviation DO-160 EMI standard working group.

He has been given EMI webinars and tutorials at multiple IEEE conferences such as ECCE, APEC, EMC Symposium, etc. He is currently a Senior Member of IEEE, and Associate Editor at IEEE Open Journal of Power Electronics. He is serving as secretary of IEEE-EMCS-SC5 Power Electronics EMC, as well as Technical Committee member of IEEE APEC, ECCE, ITEC, EATS conferences.

Michael J. Garrett

Michael Garrett is the Lead Test Engineer at the NASA Glenn Research Center EMI Laboratory. Prior to joining the EMI Lab, he worked as a test and development engineer on several NASA GRC space experiments and power converters for electric space propulsion and electric aircraft propulsion including the X-57 High Lift Motor Controller. He currently provides EMI/EMC technical support to NASA’s Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration. Michael has a B.S. in electrical engineering from MIT and a M.S. in electrical engineering from The Ohio State University.

Gaudy Bezos-O’Connor

Ms. Bezos-O’Connor has over 3 decades of project management and R&D experience delivering high-risk, high-pay-off aerospace solutions for NASA in partnership with the FAA, the aerospace industry and academia. A highly collaborative leader, she brings a solid history of success in public-private partnerships and innovative project management strategies. For the past decade and a half, Ms. Bezos-O’Connor has been at the forefront of enabling Sustainable Aviation through NASA’s Environmentally Responsible Aviation Project, and Advanced Air Transport Technology Project and the FAA CLEEN Program. Currently she is the Project Manager of NASA’s aviation industry-led MW-class electrified powertrain flight demonstration project that could transform the aerospace industry and result in a dramatic reduction of aircraft emissions and enable sustainable aviation.

Sara Roggia

Sara Roggia (IEEE SM’20, M’16) completed her Bachelor’s degree and her Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering at the Politecnico di Bari, Italy. She received her PhD in electrical machines design at the University of Nottingham, UK, as a Marie Curie Fellow in 2017. She has worked extensively on the development of novel electrical machines technologies for aircraft ground operations within the context of the more electric aircraft initiative. In May 2017, Sara joined Motor Design Limited (MDL) working on the design of different topologies of electrical machines. In September 2018, she is joined SAFRAN in France as senior research engineer. Since December 2020, she has been with magniX. WA, USA. Sara joined magniX as a senior electric propulsion system engineer and she became technical fellow in March 2021. In November 2022, she has been appointed Head of Protection and Controls. Her main area of interests are the definition of protections and control algorithms and their implementation onto the inverters of the electrical power units. She holds five patents mainly focused on motor design and control, and more than 18 scientific publications.

 

Ralph Jansen

Mr. Ralph H. Jansen is a member of the Aeronautics Mission Office at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. He currently serves as the Deputy Project Manager for Technology on the NASA Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration Project. Prior to his current assignment, Ralph served as a senior advisor for the Advanced Air Transport Technology (AATT) project, as a principal investigator for the Convergent Aeronautics Solutions (CAS) project, and as the Glenn Research Center (GRC) advisor and liaison to the X-57 effort being conducted at Armstrong Flight Research Center. In addition, he serves as the Hybrid Electric Technical Integration Manager at GRC where he coordinates project activities focused on EAP to maximize unique contributions and leverage progress across projects; he has also led a number of cross-center activities related to EAP. Prior experience includes work on energy storage systems for the International Space Station, leading the power system team for the Ares I upper

stage, working collaboratively with Kennedy Space Center on ground-based power system integration, and systems analysis of advanced concepts for use in low earth orbit. He began his career working on bearings for spacecraft and magnetic bearings for aircraft engines. Ralph’s career at GRC has been characterized by addressing multidisciplinary problems to enable space and aeronautical system technologies across a wide range of technology readiness levels.  He holds a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a B.S. in Fluid and Thermal Engineering from Case Western Reserve University.

Lee Noble

Lee Noble is responsible for the overall planning, management and evaluation of the directorate’s efforts to conduct experimental flight research, and to test the most promising concepts and technologies from across the ARMD portfolio at an integrated system level.

He supports the ARMD associate administrator in a broad range of mission directorate activities, including strategic and program planning, budget development, program review and evaluation, and external coordination.

Previously, Noble was the deputy director for the Integrated Aviation Systems Program within ARMD at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. In collaboration with the program director, Noble was responsible for day-to-day operations in the program office, including coordinating with NASA and industry personnel to ensure that program efforts were aligned with ARMD strategy and complementary to other ARMD initiatives.

Noble served as chief engineer for ARMD’s Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) project. Prior to this position he was the ERA project’s lead systems engineer, where he established a formal systems engineering process and led a team of systems engineers.

Noble began his NASA career in 2009 as a systems engineer in the Mechanical Systems Branch at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. He supported Orion Water Impact Testing at Langley, including development and check-out of the water basin, as a lead systems engineer. Following Orion, he served on project teams for several small research efforts. His final position prior to coming to NASA Aeronautics was to serve as the deputy project manager for the Inflatable Re-entry Vehicle Experiment – 3 (IRVE-3) — that launched from the Wallops Flight Facility and successfully demonstrated sub-orbital flight and re-entry.

Prior to NASA, Noble worked for the Triumph Group in Newport News, Virginia, where he developed wind-tunnel models for aerospace customers and led turbomachinery projects to produce hardware for advanced propulsion technology demonstrations. He later joined the Triumph management team, serving as director of turbomachinery programs, director of engineering, and director of business development.

Noble has been awarded two NASA Group Achievement Awards as well as the ARMD Associate Administrator Award for Technology and Innovation, and was recognized as a member of the ERA project at the 59th Aviation Week Laureate Awards. The ERA project was the selected winner in the “Technology” category for developing and demonstrating performance-improving technologies that could be used to make the next generation of civil aircraft more efficient, economical, and environmentally friendly. While at the Triumph Group, Noble received the President’s Award for innovation and outstanding leadership. He is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Noble received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of California in Irvine, California.

Official Bio

Sean Clarke

Sean Clarke is a senior Research Systems Development Engineer at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center. He is Principal Investigator for NASA’s X-57 ‘Maxwell’ aircraft technology demonstrator and the architect of NASA’s Hybrid Electric Integrated Systems Testbed research program. He was NASA’s Avionics Systems Integration Lead for the Orion Abort Flight Test project, and Lead Vehicle Operator for the Pad Abort 1 Flight Test. Before joining NASA, Mr. Clarke was a senior Operations Engineer at several US Bureau of Reclamation hydroelectric power plants. He is a member of NASA’s Electrical Power Systems Capability Leadership Team, and he earned his BSc in Electrical Engineering at the University of Florida, Gainesville.

Herb Schlickenmaier

Mr. Herb Schlickenmaier is a 1975 graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, with a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering. He began his career working at the Federal Aviation Administration as a research engineer providing solutions for aircraft engineering certification and operational certification challenges. The culmination of his 18-year career with the FAA was the Airborne Windshear Detection and Avoidance Program, part of a national effort that eliminated windshear as the leading cause of accident fatalities from the 1960s through the 1980s. Mr. Schlickenmaier was selected as the Program Manager for Aeronautics Controls & Guidance by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1991. He led efforts in advanced air traffic technologies, propulsion-controlled aircraft technologies, vehicle systems programs, and concluded his NASA career as SES Program Director for Aviation Safety research. In 2008, he worked for CCI, leading aerospace systems programs in alternative fuels for the FAA and advanced studies support to NASA. In 2017, Mr. Schlickenmaier created HS Advanced Concepts LLC to support aerospace-unique challenges that balance innovative research & technology with standards and certification. Currently, he is supporting the NASA Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstrations (EPFD) Project to advance the state-of-thestandards for integrated MW-class powertrain system. He supported the successful adoption of certification practice within the NASA X-57 Distributed Electric Propulsion Flight Demonstration Project and applied the approach to the NASA SUSAN Electrofan concept.

Andrew Gibson

Mr. Gibson is President & CEO & Co-Founder of Empirical Systems Aerospace, Inc., a 60 employee San Luis Obispo, CA based Aerospace Engineering Small Business.He has 17 years of experience in the construction and management Aerospace Programs.13 of those have been leading or supporting ESAero’s All-Electric, Hybrid-Electric and Hybrid Electric Distributed Propulsion efforts, including the All-Electric Distributed Propulsion NASA X-57 “Maxwell”, for which ESAero is the Prime Contractor.Mr. Gibson is versed on HEDP and TeDP systems for transformational and transport aircraft, and supports multiple organizations in an effort to advance them, including AIAA.He is a member of the AIAA V/STOL TC, Transformational Flight PC, and Past-Chair of the Green Engineering PC.He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Aerospace Engineering from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.