PROJECTS
NEOM, SAUDI ARABIA
NEOM is a $500B infrastructure project located in northwestern Saudi Arabia with a vision for becoming the entrepreneurial, technological, and sustainability center in the region. As a futuristic city, NEOM will be a hub for innovation across mobility modes such as drones, eVTOLs, hyperloop, and supersonic aircraft. As a strategy and technical consultant, I explored existing academic research significantly, setting the vision of Advanced Air Mobility for the region. I designed the low-altitude airspace, crafted a suit of UTM services and functions, created a technology procurement roadmap, and developed a ConOps that formed a critical link between traditional ATM, ground infrastructure, and the digital backend.
UP.PARTNERS, USA
UP.Partners is a unique $230M early-stage venture fund that invests across multidimensional mobility and its enabling technologies. The firm's goal is to enable humanity to go "UP" by investing in promising founders that will form the backbone of mobility this decade and beyond. As a Venture Analyst, I sourced/interacted with 100+ startups across MENA, US, East Asia, and LATAM ranging from fintech to network optimization and e-commerce to autonomy. I also conducted deep dives into specific trends such as the certification of autonomy and adoption of H2, building "imaginary ideal startups" throughout the process. The totality of this allowed me to be at the forefront of cutting-edge innovation across aerial and other types of mobility, giving me a 10,000 ft view of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
NASA AAM NC-DT
The Advanced Air Mobility National Campaign - Development Test (AAM NC-DT) was part of NASA's ecosystem-wide initiative to ensure digital and automated ATC (i.e. Unmanned Trafic Management) is ready before live testing with eVTOL companies commences I led AirMap's participation as a project manager, ensuring the crucial link between NASA's technical requirements and AirMap's software engineering resources. This gave me a deep understanding of what success can look like at the convergence of research and industry while optimizing for business goals of an early-stage SaaS company.
AIRMAP, USA
AirMap was the world's leading Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) company based out of Santa Monica, USA. The company had an innovative software platform for drone operators, enterprises, and traditional ATC with a sophisticated 4D digital twin of low-altitude airspace. This digitized and automated the skies for drones and air taxis across urban and rural use cases. As a consultant, I worked as the UAM Strategy Manager, developing AirMap's product roadmap for urban air mobility and leading/supporting projects with NASA, Bell, Skyports, and Volocopter. As a Business Consultant for AirMap's clients, I successfully delivered on projects with NEOM, EANS, NCDOT, and others across a variety of advanced air mobility segments.
FLOCK, UK
Flock is the leading InsurTech startup in drones and commercial motor insurance based in London. As a strategy consultant, I crafted a financial model sizing the commercial motor insurance market in the UK. Furthermore, I dived deep into the telematics / connected vehicle sector in the global stage, aiding the Flock executive team in creating a data integration strategy in a market that is highly fragmented, rather local, and somewhat antiquated.
EANS, ESTONIA
Estonian Air Navigation Services (EANS) is arguably one of the most innovative and daring ATM organizations in the world. As the advent of European Commission drone mandates had approached, I was part of a consulting team at AirMap supporting EANS from a systems engineering and business strategy perspective. By engaging Estonian stakeholders across the government and industry, I developed a ConOps with a strong focus on private and public roles & responsibilities, UTM services and functional requirements, business models, and a 5-year financial projection.
NCDOT, USA
The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) is a highly innovative government entity in the US when it comes to small drones and passenger air taxis. During Hurricane Florence in 2018 and in subsequent emergencies, NCDOT deployed drones for search & rescue and aerial inspection applications. As a consultant, I worked directly with NCDOT, various government stakeholders, and drone operators to develop a statewide Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) ConOps. This was consolidated with a business and financial model based on UTM services that the state would open up to private businesses in the future.
SESAR-JU Gulf of Finland
The Single European Sky ATM Research Joint Undertaking (SESAR-JU) is a multi-year initiative that aims to modernize ATM in the EU. As a consultant, I participated in the Gulf of Finland (GOF) project, jointly hosted by Estonia and Finland. In particular, Trial 7 had the objective of integrating a Volocopter air taxi into Helsinki Airport's controlled airspace, with a communications exchange platform between UTM and ATM. Besides supporting AirMap as a subject-matter expert on UAM, I gave a presentation to the consortium on why and how UTM is key to enabling autonomy in high-density, high-throughput, and high-tempo environments.
EU HORIZON 2020
5D AEROSAFE
EU Horizon 2020 is the largest funded programme in Europe for R&D. I worked as a consultant at the 5D Aerosafe consortium which aims to integrate UTM systems in the airport setting for on-premise drone operations. I supported the development of 3 different ConOps by building system workflows for specific scenarios. The project is divided across Rhodes International Airport, Corfu Waterdrome, and London Heathrow.
SESAR-JU DOMUS, SPAIN
The Demonstration of multiple U-space suppliers (DOMUS) was an R&D project part of the Single European Sky ATM Research Joint Undertaking (SESAR JU). At the ATLAS Flight Test Center in southern Spain, I supported AirMap as a field liaison engineer acting as a bridge between remote software engineers in California and the technical, hour-to-hour requirements on-site. This gave me crucial operational experience in solving software bugs and ensuring interoperability between companies.
CITI VENTURES, UK
As part of my graduation work for Imperial College London where I studied MSc Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Management, my team and I consulted for Citi Ventures during the summer of 2018. We analyzed labour mobility trends in cyber security and built a global index, ranking cities based on their likelihood on becoming a hub for cyber security technologies. We used a statistical model to build the index with some programming on the backend and frontend on MATLAB.
BELL TEXTRON, USA
Bell Textron Inc. is one of the leading vertical flight companies in the world with a significant military and electrification footprint. Throughout 2019-2020, I supported AirMap as a strategy consultant at a pre-sales level for potential avenues of partnership with Bell on UTM and urban air mobility. The engagement culminated in a joint demonstration of Bell's AerOS platform where we simulated the intersection between UTM, infrastructure, and eVTOLs in an indoor lab environment. I was the project co-manager seeing the demonstration to success.