Mike started his aviation career in a high school club and went on to complete a commercial airline and air traffic control track at ERAU in Daytona Beach. During his time at ERAU, the first iterations for a degree program for unmanned aviation were being developed, with Mike completing some of the first offerings of courses for that degree program. With this newfound interest, his career path evolved from training with JetBlue to focusing on sUAS by joining a startup company in North Dakota in 2018. There, he developed skills in aerial and vehicle LiDAR acquisition, electric and oil & gas utility inspections, leak detection & emergency response, 2D & 3D mapping/photogrammetry, volumetric, multi-spectral, magnetometer, and FLIR/thermal sensing operation & collection. Much of this work in the oil fields was unprecedented in the sUAS space, and in addition to the inherently austere working conditions that oil & gas present, hazards of North Dakota winters made operating conditions even more complex. Mike led other industry-leading operations towards the progress of the rapidly evolving BVLOS certification in the US—acting as RPIC of multiple missions conducted by the Northern Plains UAS Test Site. He accomplished the goals set by the FAA and L3 Harris for the ASSURE program, border defense technology testing with our nation’s CBP, and the IPP with Airbus Aerial. That 3-year stretch of work developed a strong safety-oriented mindset which Mike brought to DronePhD in early 2022. Mike’s combination of manned and unmanned experience brings a well-equipped knowledge base that has helped grow DronePhD, while maintaining a strong safety culture.