Biography

Michael Thompson

CTO & President of IMAV Corporation

Michael J. Thompson earned a B.S.E. degree in the field of Mechanical Engineering from Arizona State University in the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering in 2012.

He received his Masters in mechanical engineering in the field of Modeling, Analysis, Control, Design, and Rapid Prototype of Micro Air Vehicles in 2017. From December 2010 to 2011, he had participated in five National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Western Alliance to Expand Student Opportunities (WAESO), three NSF funded Fulton Undergraduate Research Initiative (FURI) and one out of state research experience for undergraduates (NSF-REU). He has numerous applicable publications such as: “Parametric Turbulence Model Study for Dipping Operations”, 2017. “Building a Mechanical Flapping Bird and Arduino Robotic Cars for Educating Youths in 7th, 8th and 9th Graders at Arizona State University”, 2016. “Experimental Design of a Micro Air Vehicle through Bio-mimicry of Bumblebees”, 2015. “Learning Robotic Concepts with a 3R Lego NXT Robotic Arm”, 2014. “Building a Lego EV3 Snake to Improve the STEM Education of 12th Graders in Panama”, 2016. Along with these he has received a patent submission with 2 % royalties in a new scientific discovery in drag reduction in computational fluid dynamics research work using ANSYS-FLUENT at the University of Alabama (UA). He is the recipient of 2013 GEM fellowship award. During the summer of 2013 and the recipient of a 2014 NASA Space Grant fellowship award. The research that he is working on can be found on his personal website: https://sites.google.com/a/asu.edu/michael-thompson/projects/spring-2014.

Do you want to tell us anything else about you?

Dear distinguished members of Zero Mass Water selection board,

Hello, my name is Michael J. Thompson, I have earned a B.S.E. degree in the field of Mechanical Engineering from Arizona State University in the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering in 2012. I received my Masters in mechanical engineering in the field of Modeling, Analysis, Control, Design, and Rapid Prototype of Micro Air Vehicles in 2017. I am a Sr. Mechanical engineer ready to join the team. I have the ability to act as a leader on the design team with core responsibilities demonstrated from my work at Sargent Aerospace and Defense performing CFD acoustics for hydraulic valves, working at Honeywell performing thermal CFD analysis on combustors for gas turbine engines as well as an instrumentation engineer instrumenting sensors on gas turbine engines; working at GECO performing design work on drones, working at Ford Motor Co performing aerodynamic CFD analysis on doors and hoods on cars and trucks. So, I have a strong background in working principles of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics and a high aptitude for the product development process for this role. I have experience in the design and validation of product development from working at Sargent Aerospace and Defense, Honeywell, GECO (Mercury Systems) and Ford Motor Co that relate to Zero Mass Water. I have 3D mechanical design experience using Solidworks, CREO, CATIA, and NX. I am able to conceptualize and develop new products, parts, mechanisms and assemblies through my previous work experience. I have experience in manufacturing tolerance analysis through my training at Sargent Aerospace and Defense on Geometric dimensioning and Tolerance training. I possess a mentality of "yes, if" to have the grit and tenacity to do whatever it takes to get the job done. I have a clear ability to lead a multi-disciplinary team of 10-20 engineers through the project development cycle from my experience of running the Micro Air Vehicle club at ASU. We were a diverse group of mechanical, electrical, computer science, civil and chemical engineers who wanted to build and design a micro air vehicle. I possess practical knowledge of statics, dynamics, strength of materials, thermal and fluid design, and the ability to effectively apply such knowledge in a fast-paced environment.