Thomas (Tom) Vaneck joined KRI in April 2022. Previously, he was Vice President and Managing Director of the Aerovironment Innovation Center New England, where he led the engineering and product development activities for the greater New England area, focused primarily on small, multi-rotor unmanned aircraft systems.
Tom has broad robotics experience (underwater, air, and space) with particular expertise in miniaturization and biomimetics. Before his time at Aerovironment, Tom cofounded and led InstantEye Robotics, a division of Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI), as the Vice President of Disruptive Technologies. Prior to PSI, Tom was the Vice President of Research and Development at Aurora Flight Sciences where he stood up and ran the Research and Development Center based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Tom earned a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering (focused on controls engineering) from Stanford University, Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering, Master of Arts degree in Mathematics, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering, all from Penn State University. Tom was also a Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT in the Aerospace Engineering Department and the Sea Grant College Program