David W. Miller is an American aerospace engineer who is the current
Jerome Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an elected Fellow of the
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics since 2015.
He is currently on a leave of absence from MIT to be a VP and the Chief Technology Officer to
The Aerospace Corporation.
He has worked on multiple NASA projects and served as
NASA Chief Technologist
The Chief Technologist is the most senior technology position at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The Chief Technologist serves as the principal advisor to the NASA Administrator in technology policy and programs, and as ...
.
Early life and education
Dr. Miller received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering at MIT.
MIT Professor
After graduation in 1988, Dr. Miller became a Research Associate for MIT's Aero/Astro. He was promoted to Principal Research Scientist and Assistant Professor before becoming an Associate Professor in 1997.
He flew experiments on the
Space Shuttle, including
STS-48
STS-48 was a Space Shuttle mission that launched on September 12, 1991, from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The orbiter was . The primary payload was the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS). The mission landed on September 18 at 12:38 a. ...
,
STS-62, and
STS-67
STS-67 was a human spaceflight mission using that launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida on 2 March 1995.
Crew
Mission highlights
Ultraviolet Imaging Experiments
Astro-2 was the second dedicated Spacelab mission to conduct astronom ...
missions.
He is faculty for and the former director of the
Space Systems Laboratory (MIT).
Much of the research has focused on reconfigurable spacecraft concepts and on-orbit operations.
The laboratory has many research projects, include the
SPHERES testbed on the
International Space Station.
The projects have also been on the JWST Product Integrity Team, and the
NASA CubeSat Launch Initiative.
He worked with the
United States Air Force to create fully funded graduate scholarships for graduates of the
USAF Academy's
FalconSAT
FalconSAT is the United States Air Force Academy's (USAFA) small satellite engineering program. Satellites are designed, built, tested, and operated by Academy cadets. The project is administered by the USAFA Space Systems Research Center und ...
program.
NASA career
He served as the
NASA Chief Technologist
The Chief Technologist is the most senior technology position at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The Chief Technologist serves as the principal advisor to the NASA Administrator in technology policy and programs, and as ...
from 2014- 2017.
He was the principal investigator for the Regolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (REXIS) for the
OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, which launched in 2016.
He has been an advisor to or on steering committees for a variety of NASA projects:
*Space Infrared Interferometric Telescope (SPIRIT) of
GFSC
*In-Space Assembled Telescope (iSAT) Study of
JPL
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States.
Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA an ...
Industry Positions
Dr. Miller was selected in 2018 to be the vice president and chief technology officer (CTO) of
The Aerospace Corporation.
He spent five years on the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board,
two of them as the Vice Chair.
References
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
MIT School of Engineering faculty
American aerospace engineers
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