Bill Donovan

President

Bill Donovan is an Aerospace Engineer with expertise in aircraft conceptual, preliminary, and detailed design, stability and control, structural dynamics, and UAS project management. Bill focuses on UAS design as well as modeling, simulation, and controller synthesis for fixed and rotary wing UAS. Recently, Bill has worked as the chief designer for multiple unmanned aircraft including the Meridian, a 1,100 lbs 26 ft wingspan UAS that was designed to measure ice thickness and bed surface topology in Antarctica and Greenland. During the development of Meridian, Donovan was responsible for its conceptual, preliminary and detailed design, and he managed several groups of engineers throughout the manufacturing and development phases. He has spent two summers in Antarctica and one in Greenland operating multiple UAS in addition to several UAS flight test campaigns in Dugway, Utah and Fort Riley, KS. He performed his graduate research at the University of Kansas Flight Test Laboratory. Bill holds two patents and his previous work includes the development of several new unmanned aircraft systems including the Hawkeye UAS, the Wolverine helicopter UAS, and the Meridian UAS. Bill earned a B.S. and an M.S., both in aerospace engineering from the University of Kansas where he focused his studies under Dr. Jan Roskam and Dr. Rick Hale in the areas of aircraft design and structural dynamics.

Lance Holly

Vice President

Lance is an Aerospace Engineer specializing in UAV avionics, automatic flight control systems, and flight test. He has co-developed, integrated and flight tested fully automatic systems on many variations of fixed-wing and helicopter UAVs including the Meridian UAV, Yamaha RMAX helicopters nationwide, various UAV trainers, and other nonconventional unmanned aircraft programs. Recently, Bill Donovan and he designed and developed the Wolverine III electric UAV helicopter currently in use in various civil and defense applications including the UAV Training Program at K-State Salina. Lance received his Master’s Degree in UAV avionics and flight test with Honors at the University of Kansas Department of Aerospace Engineering. His experience in unmanned systems, flight dynamics and formal controller synthesis, high fidelity inertial measurement methods, flight data and dynamics analysis of aircraft is a valuable asset to many UAV and scale demonstration programs nationally and internationally. Lance is also a professional UAV and R/C test pilot who holds certification for Yamaha RMAX helicopter operation and piloting. He has trained the Nation’s leading DoD National Laboratories and University robotics institutes on UAV helicopter flight operations and integrated flight control system operations. In 2009 Lance was given the opportunity to successfully pilot the maiden voyage of the 1200 lbs. Meridian UAV at Ft. Riley Kansas. Furthermore, Lance was deployed to Dugway Utah and on to McMurdo St. Antarctica for the first field campaign of the Meridian with the National Science Foundation and the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets.