KEYNOTES
Andrew Ketsdever
Dean
College of Engineering,
Cal Poly Pomona
Education: B.S., M.S., Ph.D., Aerospace Engineering, University of Southern California
Andrew Ketsdever has extensive experience in aerospace engineering and design, project management and higher education leadership and teaching.
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Early in his career, he was a technical staff member at the Propulsion Directorate of the U.S Air Force Research Laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base, where he pioneered development of micro spacecraft propulsion systems, co-edited the authoritative volume on the subject in 2000 and holds patents in this area. He was the founding program manager for Advanced Propulsion and Power Concepts and group leader for Nonequilibrium Flows.
During a 20-year career as a civilian with the U.S. Air Force, he was appointed as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the astronautics department at the U.S Air Force Academy. He was also program manager for FalconSat IV, a small satellite developed to be launched into low-Earth orbit.
At the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Ketsdever served as the director of the Center for Laser, Energy and Exploration Research (CLEER) and professor and chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. In 2018, he joined Oregon State University, Cascades in 2018, as associate dean of academic affairs and prior to joining Cal Poly Pomona in 2023, was serving as interim vice president at the OSU campus.
Ketsdever is currently an associate editor for the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets and is an associate fellow with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
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Mauro Sanchirico
Principal AI Architect
Lockheed Martin
Artificial Intelligence Center
Moorestown, New Jersey
Education: B.S., M.S., Electrical Engineering, Villanova University.
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Mr. Mauro Sanchirico is the principal artificial intelligence (AI) architect for the Lockheed Martin AI Center (LAIC), and a member of the LAIC’s Technical Integrity Council.
Mr. Sanchirico is responsible for AI architecture and AI engineering process across the LAIC’s Applied AI engineering teams and across the LAIC’s AI mission applications, spanning development, through testing, forward deployment and maintenance across LAIC Applied AI programs.
Recently, Mr. Sanchirico and team led the first machine learning model updates to deployed Lockheed Martin radar systems, yielding significant performance benefits through the process of rapidly optimizing the system using data collected from the operating environment.
Prior to his current responsibilities, Mr. Sanchirico founded the LAIC’s Cognitive Signals and Systems team, focused on applying AI to all stages of the signal processing chain, from detection through report and response, and served in radar and control systems engineering leadership roles in Lockheed Martin’s Rotary and Mission Systems (RMS) business area. In these roles, he was responsible for leading rapid integration of AI software capabilities into LM sensors and platforms.
Mr. Sanchirico holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in electrical engineering from Villanova University.
Outside of Lockheed Martin, Mr. Sanchirico teaches a graduate course on practices for effective employment of AI, specifically deep learning, in the complexities of real-world, industry applications, and additional university-level courses in data science and software development.
