Banavar Sridhar
Dr. Banavar Sridhar is the NASA Senior Scientist for Air Transportation System Studies at NASA’s Ames Research Center. He is responsible for maintaining technical excellence in aviation systems research and provides advice on external research related to air transportation. His research interests are in the application of modeling and optimization techniques to aerospace systems. Widely recognized for his pioneering work in the application of singular perturbation theory to the real-time optimal guidance of missiles, his research formed the basis for the guidance laws implemented in the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), which is used on many U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy fighter aircraft. Dr. Sridhar achieved a major “first” with the successful flight demonstration of the vision sensor-based real-time obstacle detection and ranging system on a NASA/Army UH-60 helicopter. In recent years, Dr. Sridhar designed and developed the Future Air Transportation System Concepts Evaluation Tool (FACET), which received the 2006 NASA Software-of-the-Year Award, AIAA Engineering Software Award in 2009 and the 2009 NASA Invention-of-the-Year Award. He and his team also received 2010 FAA Excellence in Aviation Research Award for research outside the FAA that has resulted in a significantly safer, more efficient national airspace system. Dr. Sridhar is a Fellow of AIAA and IEEE (2001) and received the IEEE 2004 Control Systems Technology Award.