Parimal Kopardekar
We humans always dreamed about flying like birds. In the last 120 years, we have gone from primitive flying machines to big jumbo jets that can transport hundreds of people and huge machinery. In the last five years, we took the next step. Now anyone in most Western countries can walk into an electronics store and walk out with his own flying machine. We call them drones, and soon everyone will have one. The problem with everyone having his own flying machine is that there are no traffic police in the skies. One man is trying to solve that problem. He is Parimal Kopardekar, the Manager of Safe Autonomous System Operations Project at NASA. Kopardekar has a BE in production engineering from the Victoria Jubilee Technical University, Mumbai, a Master’s in Industrial Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a doctorate in Industrial Engineering from the University of Cincinnati. He has been on the adjunct faculty of Rutgers University and Drexel University, has worked as a manager at the Titan Corporation and as an engineer at the Federal Aviation Administration in the US. Since 2004, he has been working at NASA’s Ames research and development centre. As the head of the drone traffic management programme, he is trying to develop an air traffic control system for drones.