Tim McLain

Tim McLain is a professor of mechanical engineering at Brigham Young University, where he has also served as department chair. He received BS and MS degrees in from BYU and a PhD from Stanford University, all in mechanical engineering. He joined BYU as a professor in 1995. During 1999 and 2000, he was a visiting scientist at the Air Force Research Laboratory where he initiated research in the guidance and control of unmanned aircraft systems. Since then, his UAS research has attracted the support of the Air Force, the Army, DARPA, NASA, NSF, ONR, NIST, and numerous companies. With Professor Randy Beard and students, he helped found Procerus Technologies that produces UAS autopilot, sensing, and guidance technology. Lockheed Martin acquired Procerus in 2012. He is a co-author of the textbook Small Unmanned Aircraft published by Princeton University Press. He is the author of 180 peer-reviewed articles with over 14,000 citations of his work. From 2012 to 2019, he was the director of the Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems sponsored by the National Science Foundation involving five universities and over 30 industry partners. In 2017, he was recognized with the Utah Governor’s Medal for Science and Technology for his pioneering efforts in UAS research and the state’s UAS industry. He currently serves as the associate dean for research in the Fulton College of Engineering at BYU.