2018 Hassan A. Hassan Lecture: Dr. Nateri Madavan, NASA

Air transportation is poised on the brink of a revolution that is being driven primarily by electrification. The world has already witnessed the impact of electrification on other modes of transportation – rail, marine, and road – and it is now aviation’s turn. NASA Aeronautics is working with its partners to develop a new class of power, propulsion, airframe, and thermal technologies that will enable quieter, cleaner, and more efficient aircraft.

Together with new aircraft configurations and concepts of operations, these technologies will support new flight applications such as intra-urban on-demand air mobility and regional airport utilization, and will also lead to radically new large transport aircraft. These technologies are part of NASA Aeronautics’ overall research portfolio aimed at developing ultra-efficient commercial aircraft and alternative propulsion and energy systems to enable safe and sustainable future growth in global aviation. This presentation will provide an overview of how electrification will affect the future of air transportation and the opportunities and challenges that it presents, and describes some of the related concepts and enabling technologies that are currently being developed.

Dr. Nateri Madavan is currently on assignment as the Deputy Director (Acting) for the Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program in NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. He has served for many years as the Deputy Project Manager for Technology for the Advanced Air Transport Technology Project in NASA’s Advanced Air Vehicles Program, and has helped manage the Project’s research portfolio to enable revolutionary improvements in the energy efficiency and environmental compatibility of future generations of aircraft. He is based at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, where he is a member of the Computational Aerosciences Branch in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division. Dr. Madavan’s research contributions are in the development and application of advanced high-fidelity numerical simulation techniques for unsteady turbomachinery flows.

He is a two-time recipient of the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, and his work also been recognized through various NASA honor, space act, group achievement, and tech transfer awards over the years. Dr. Madavan obtained his BS degree from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur, MS from Iowa State, and PhD from Penn State, all in Mechanical Engineering, and is an Associate Fellow of the AIAA.