Who We Are
NTC is made up of former and current researchers
in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. Our
close working relationship with MIT provides us with unparalleled
access to technologies, expertise, and ideas from MIT.
James D. Paduano
President
Dr. Paduano has worked on innovative vehicle design and flight
control projects since his Masters program conducted jointly with
Dryden Flight Research Center in 1986, having developed practical
methods in the areas of robustness analysis, LPV control of flight
vehicles, and reconfigurable control. His areas of expertise include
experimental control of fluid dynamic systems and associated signal
processing, system identification, and control law implementation,
as well as flight dynamics and control. Dr. Paduano received a
B. S. and M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from University of Kansas,
where he applicatied sensitivity analysis techniques to high-order
digital flight control systems. He received a Ph.D in Aeronautics
and Astronautics from MIT in 1991 in the area of active control
of rotating stall in axial compressors. From 1992 to 1998, he
was a faculty member in the department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
at MIT, after which he became a Principal Research Engineer working
solely on sponsored research, and launched Nascent Technology
Corporation. He has also worked at Draper Laboratory and Dryden
flight research center as a graduate researcher, and has consulted
with various firms in the areas of stall detection, signal and
array processing, and flight control.
paduano@nascent-tech.com
Olivier Toupet
Engineer, Controls and Autonomy
Olivier Toupet received his M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering at
SUPAERO, France, in 2003, and his M.S in Aeronautics and Astronautics
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge,
in 2006. At SUPAERO, he specialized in Flight Dynamics and Aerodynamics
and was awarded the Von Karman prize by his professors. He also
received a private pilot’s license. At MIT, he specialized
in Optimization and Controls and worked as a Research Assistant
in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS),
where he developed path-planner software that was embedded on
a DARPA-owned helicopter, the Renegade, that flew autonomously
as part of the SEC program in February 2006. The planner derived
from his thesis work on trajectory planning using Mixed-Integer-Linear-Programming
(MILP) combined with global cost-to-go functions. He is currently
an Aerospace Engineer at Nascent Technology Corporation where
he is involved with flight dynamics and control work, simulation,
flight control hardware integration and autonomous helicopter
flight tests.
paduano@nascent-tech.com
Andrew Stubbs
Senior Engineer, Controls and Integration
Dr. Stubbs Received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Boston
University in 1994, and his MS (2001), and PhD (2005) in Mechanical
Engineering from University of Illinois. His thesis work was on
Estimation and Control of Autonomous Vehicles over Networks. During
his Ph.D. program, he initiated and managed the UIUC HoTDec testbed,
designing and building these autonomous vehicles using SLA rapid
prototyping equipment and CNC machines. Also designing and building
embedded control circuit boards for sensing and actuation. He
modelled and proved the system dynamics, including delays, vision
quantization and sensor and actuator noise. Finally, he formulated
and developed a method for multi-rate H2 controller synthesis
which takes into account a continuous plant and asynchronous multi-rate
sensors and actuators in a discrete time controller using semi-definite
programming. His research experience, as well as his job experience
at Ulvac Inc., General ElectricAircraft Engines, and Boston University,
give him a broad background in mechanical design, DSP programming
and data acquisition, and control system engineering.
astubbs@nascent-tech.com
Kyungyeol Song
Senior Engineer, Consultant and MIT Liason
received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in aerospace engineering from
Seoul National University in Korea in 1996 and 1998, respectively,
and a PhD in control and estimation at MIT in 2002. For his Ph.D.
dissertation, he developed the innovative structural-acoustic
control algorithms and their implementation for the reduction
of radiated noise from vibrating underwater vehicles. He was a
Senior Engineer at Nascent Technology Corporation, until taking
a position at MIT where he liaises with NTC, working on system
dynamics modeling and control, flight dynamics and control, and
flight control hardware integration. His areas of interest include
dynamic system modeling and control, multivariable robust control
and estimation theory, and their applications to mechanical/aerospace
systems.
drsky@mit.edu
Aurelie Letellier
Office Manager
letellier@nascent-tech.com
Interns
Melanie Sanchez
3rd year of SUPAERO student, focusing on
multi-vehicle autonomous coordination and vision sanchez@nascent-tech.com
Guillaume Crochon
3rd year of ESIEA (Superior School of Informatics
Electronic and Automatism)
Damien Bardon
3rd year of ESIEA (Superior School of Informatics
Electronic and Automatism)
