Brian German

Areas of Expertise

Aircraft Electric Propulsion, Autonomous Flight, Emerging Aviation Markets

Education

B.S., Aerospace Engineering, 1999, Georgia Institute of Technology M.S., Aerospace Engineering, 2000, Georgia Institute of Technology
Ph.D., Aerospace Engineering, 2007, Georgia Institute of Technology

Biography

Brian German is the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) Langley Associate Professor in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech. He is also the director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Urban and Regional Air Mobility (CURAM). His research involves aircraft electric propulsion, autonomous flight, and the emerging aviation markets that these technologies enable. He specializes in configuration design of electric aircraft, aerodynamics of distributed propulsion, battery and hybrid electric propulsion modeling, operations research problems for innovative scheduled and on-demand air services, and aircraft operational economics modeling.

His work focuses primarily on new types of electric regional aircraft and eVTOL aircraft for urban air mobility. Prof. German is a founding member and former chair (2014-2016) of the AIAA Transformational Flight Program Committee, which was chartered to explore the opportunities of emerging aircraft electric propulsion and autonomy technologies, and he is a member of the AIAA Aircraft Electric Propulsion and Power Working Group. Prof. German is a former Fulbright student scholar and NDSEG Graduate Research Fellow, and he received the NSF CAREER award in 2012. He is an Associate Fellow of AIAA. 

Honors

NSF CAREER award, 2012; Lockheed Martin Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award, 2012; Outstanding Aerospace Engineering Professor Award, presented by the Georgia Tech chapter of the Sigma Gamma Tau Aerospace Honor Society, 2011; Northrop Grumman Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award, 2011; AIAA Senior Member, 2010; Fulbright Student Scholar, 2002-2003; AIAA Gordon C. Oates Air Breathing Propulsion Graduate Award, 2001; National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellow, 1999-2002; NSF Graduate Fellow, 1999

Lab/Collaborations

• Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence (VLRCOE)
• Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL)
• Center for Urban and Regional Air Mobility (CURAM)

Disciplines

• Systems Design & Optimization