Our Team
Founders
Pete Giannola
Pete Giannola is an Aerospace Engineer with 35 years of experience in the research and development of various propulsion system-related products. Pete is a hands-on cross disciplinary technical leader, leveraging his experience to deliver solutions to challenging technical problems in thermodynamics, combustion, fluid dynamics, and heat transfer. Pete has worked for United Technologies Research Center, Pratt & Whitney, Northrop Grumman, and Blue Origin. Pete has been an active private and glider pilot since 2005 and is the owner of a Bellanca Super Viking.
Brad Poeltler
Brad Poeltler began his career in the Navy as a fighter pilot, accumulating over 4000 flight hours. He served as Deputy Director of Trident Warrior for 20 years. Since 2005, Brad has been consulting various agencies on experimental testing efforts involving various surface, underwater and aerial vehicles. Brad is currently working out of San Diego supporting special Navy programs for autonomous vehicles.
Luis Ramirez
Luis Ramirez is a Mechatronic Engineer with over 10 years of experience in Electro-Mechanical Systems. His experience includes the development of Electronic Hardware, Firmware, and software for hybrid electric vehicles. He has been responsible for developing novel hybrid propulsion systems at Wrightspeed. Most recently he has helped develop autonomous control of delivery vehicles for a bay area startup. He is currently a Systems Engineer with a Bay Area startup. Luis is an avid Porsche enthusiast, having recently re-built two Porsche 911, and a 944 engine. Luis is a pilot in training.
Advisors
Gerry McCann
Gerry McCann is an Electrical Engineer with extensive experience in Safety Critical Systems. His experience includes the development of Electronic Hardware, Firmware, ABS, and Traction Control for Ground Vehicles and, most recently, Battery Management Systems (BMS) for Lithium Ion Batteries. His responsibilities have included managing BMS design at Tesla for the Model 3 launch and developing novel hybrid propulsion systems at Wrightspeed. He is currently Principal Systems Engineer at Element Energy developing entire systems for grid storage applications. He holds over 20 US Patents.
John C. C. Ho
John C. C. Ho started his career at Pratt & Whitney Canada where he designed and analyzed gas turbine compressors and turbines. His experiences include designing the MPSPU 6:1 centrifugal compressor, the design of PW540 centrifugal compressor, the JAS39 centrifugal Load compressor, and the B787 APU 8.6 to 1 centrifugal compressor. His responsibilities also including managing the Cold module design group at P&W AeroPower and more recently lead the gas turbine team at Wrightspeed. He currently is the global lead of Export Control and Customs Classification at a Multinational Lithography machine manufacturing company. He holds a US Patent on impeller manufacturing and shared the UTC Horner Trophy for developing the UTRC Freon 22 compressor for Carrier Corporation.
Cedric Ma
Cedric Ma has over 20 years of Aerospace Engineering experience in flight autonomy, including flight plan optimization, route guidance, path generation, flight dynamic simulation modeling, real-time flight software design, redundancy management, ground station and datalink integration, navigational mapping and weather, autonomy flight system display, and advanced UX designs. He has experience from low TRL R&D of advanced concepts, to autonomy systems engineering, system test for deployment to full life cycle software sustainment, and user training. Cedric Ma is a developer of Auto-Land Systems for UAM aircraft at Supernal (a subsidiary of Hyundai). Cedric is a pilot and aircraft owner based in San Diego, CA.