Dr. Eric Johnson is a Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Penn State, and the Director of PURL.

He is an aerospace engineer and an instrument-rated pilot. His research interests include digital avionics system design and integration, and and fault-tolerant estimation and control theory.

Dr. Simon Miller is an Assistant Research Professor at the Pennsylvania State University Applied Research Laboratory (ARL). He works closely with Dr. Johnson and the graduate students of PURL as a research coordinator.

Chris Milcsik is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering at Penn State.

Vitor T. Valente is an Assistant Researcher in PURL. He obtained a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from Pennsylvania State University in 2024, and a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a B.S. in Control and Automation Engineering both from Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul – Brazil.

He is currently investigating a new flight control system design for multirotor vehicles focusing on reducing the acoustic noise generated while in flight. His research interests also include reconfigurable UAVs, state estimation and control system design for robotics and autonomous vehicles. He is affiliated to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the Vertical Flight Society (VFS).

Henrik Christophersen was previously in charge of managing the day-to-day operation of PURL’s facilities at the SCE/UNV airport. Prior to joining PURL, Henrik held positions with the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Georgia Tech Institute of Technology, and Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Company.

His research interests include avionics hardware design and integration into unmanned aerial vehicles.

Dr. Thanakorn Khamvilai (“TK”) has moved to Texas Tech University for an Assistant Professor position.

He was an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University and the Co-Director of PURL.

He obtained a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA in 2021 and a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Kasetsart University, Thailand. He was also a visiting scholar at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in 2020.

His research interests include avionics systems, real-time optimization, and guidance-navigation-and-control of autonomous systems.

Chitoshi Tamaoki was a visiting graduate student in aerospace engineering who was a member of PURL from June 2023 to January 2024. Chitoshi originated from Japan, studied mechanical engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology for his Bachelor’s, worked at PURL in pursuit of a Master’s at the University of Stuttgart. While at PURL, he was interested in exploring applications of adaptive avionics systems with a new framework developed in the Institute of Aircraft Systems (ILS) at the University of Stuttgart.

Dr. Ahmet Taha Koru is an electrical and electronics engineer. His research interests include control theory, time-delay systems, multi-agent systems and optimization. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at Penn State from August 2019 to October 2020.

Jake Crouse joined PURL at Penn State in August 2018 after receiving his B.S. in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado. He graduated with a Master’s of Science degree in August 2020.

Ankit Agarwal earned his B.S. in mechanical engineering at Oregon State University. He joined PURL at Penn State in June 2018 and graduated in June 2020 with a Master’s of Science degree.