NASA is generating vital data to accelerate the development of electric air taxis and drones, supporting the FAA in safely integrating these vehicles into the national airspace. Their work is laying the foundation for a scalable, resilient air‑mobility ecosystem by 2030. What insights have emerged so far, and how is the future of air mobility beginning to address our future mobility needs?
Ramses Madou is the Division Manager of Planning, Policy, and Sustainability for the Department of Transportation in the City of San José. At the City of San José. Ramses leads a team of planners, engineers, policy specialists, data and model experts to plan the Citywide transportation system. His team is working to implement the ambitious mode change and VMT reduction goals of the City’s general plan all while proactively dealing with the fundamental disruptions that are currently shaking the transportation world. He is leading the City’s efforts to find new and innovative transit technologies, delivery methods, and business plans. He is also the Vice Chair of the Board for the Open Mobility Foundation. Before joining the City of San Jose he worked as the Associate Director of Parking & Transpiration Services for Stanford University where he worked for 10 years. At Stanford Ramses played many roles over his time there including managing program and policy development, planning efforts, retail operations, the University’s Marguerite transit system planning and operations, and regional transportation relationships.
Chris Bley has a BA in Biology from UC Santa Cruz. He has been involved in renewable energy for 20 years and currently focused on the aviation industry. Chris founded Rope Partner in 2001, a rope access service company originally based in Santa Cruz. In 2012, Chris focused on the growing needs of Internet of Things in wind energy, solar and utility industries, thus co-founded InspecTools. This new company built drones, integrated sensors and developed software to capture imagery and deliver objective insights into a cloud based GIS software for OEM & owners of wind, solar and grid infrastructure assets. In September, 2018, InspecTools was acquired by PrecisionHawk and in January of 2020, Rope Partner was acquired by Magnesium Capital. Chris is currently focused on several drone/aviation related projects including Monterey Bay DART (a non-profit, supporting and connecting aviation innovations, training & collaborations between industry, academia and government). Insight Up Solutions (drone and sensor resale) and AirSpace Integration (managing CA66’s grass airfield, unmanned aircraft test range and shared workspaces). These companies are all located in the region of the Central Coast that includes Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito Counties.
Yolanka Wulff is Executive Director of CAMI, the Community Air Mobility Initiative, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support the responsible and sustainable integration of aviation into community transportation through education, communication, and collaboration. Yolanka is responsible for CAMI’s programs including the development of topical resources, webinars, conferences, and collaborations. This includes the Urban Air Policy Collaborative, a cohort-based curriculum for state and local agencies and airports. Prior to co-founding CAMI in 2019, she was a sustainable aviation consultant for ten years, working with industry, government, academia and nonprofits on policy, standards, industry development, market challenges, and communications. Yolanka serves on multiple advanced air mobility advisory committees. She served on the FAA’s Advanced Aviation Advisory Committee (AAAC), and was the organizer and convener of the annual VFS Electric Aircraft Symposium for eight years. She is a nonprofit and business attorney and consultant with over two decades of experience in the successful development, implementation, and management of mission-driven programs, with a focus on sustainable transportation, land use, and collaborative solutions.
While I love making things with technology, what gets me out of bed in the morning is helping people accomplish ambitious goals. My three decade career in Technology spans succesful startup exits, thought leadership, and delivering ambitious projects under difficult circumstances. The latter part of this career has focused on perhaps the most ambitious goals of all, that of electrifying our economy and modern world.
SkyZero.io began in 2023 as a project to track all electric aviation on the planet. The global map highlights aviation charging networks, airports with electrified aviation activity, and the OEMs that are leading the charge. Our mobile app for pilots provides critical logistics support for flight planning in this new era of aviation, and our enterprise data tools are the source for intelligence on electrified aviation.
Ms. Tran, as the Director of Aeronautics (2015-Present) at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center (ARC), provides technical and management oversight of research disciplines in air traffic management, airspace simulation and operations, autonomous systems, computational fluid dynamics analysis, vertical flight vehicle technology, experimental fluid mechanics, and wind tunnel operations. She ensures the safe operations of the world’s largest wind tunnels and Vertical Motion Simulator. She has also served as the Aeronautics Research Director representing NASA Ames at the Aeronautics Mission Directorate. She works closely with the office of the Associate Administrator and its program directors to develop strategic plans and directions for Aeronautics, including several critical initiatives such as Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) or Drones Traffic Management (UTM) and airspace operations and safety technologies to enable more efficient and safe commercial aviation as well as the integration of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) in the national airspace systems. Her organization also develops new portable ATM systems for wildland fire aerial suppression during degraded condition and nighttime operations. Ms. Tran is the lead inventor of the Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA) heat shield material that was successfully protected sample return to earth from comet Wild II (Stardust) and asteroid Bennu (OSIRIS-Rex), four Mars missions and currently used as the primary heatshield for Space-X cargo and crew Dragon capsules. Ms. Tran holds three patents, numerous publications and awards. She earned five NASA achievement medals including the highest recognition from the agency – the Distinguished Service Medal in 2023.
Dr. Min Xue is an aerospace research engineer at NASA Ames research center. He earned his doctorate degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland at College Park. At NASA Ames, he has been working on a broad spectrum of aviation research, ranging from conventional traffic management to the integration of new-entrant vehicle operations. He has authored more than 60 journal and conference papers in the field of air transportation research. Currently, he serves as the project manager for NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility Pathfinders (AAMP) project, where he leads the development of advanced airspace management systems for emerging aerial operations. This includes the airspace services needed for AAM operations and the portable airspace management system (PAMS), which enables 24-hour beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) operations in degraded visual environments for emergency response missions.
