Dr. Thomas (Tom) Vaneck joined KRI at Northeastern University in May of 2022 where he is the Director of the Kostas Research Institute and CEO of KRI, LLC. Tom assumed the day-to-day leadership of the organization and along with his team is expanding and strengthening the applied research and development activities at the institute.
Tom has broad robotics experience (marine, air, and space) with expertise in autonomy, controls and miniaturization. Prior to joining KRI Tom was the Vice President of the Innovation Center New England at AeroVironment where he stood up AeroVironment’s first engineering and product development center outside of California. He also founded and lead AV Ventures, an internal new business creation center. Tom also cofounded and led InstantEye Robotics, a division of Physical Sciences Inc. as the Vice President of Disruptive Technologies and prior to that was the Vice President of Research and Development at Aurora Flight Sciences where he stood up and ran the Research and Development Center based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Tom earned a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Stanford University and a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering, Master of Arts degree in Mathematics, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering, all from Penn State University.