Ian Willey: A little background about me.

My name is Ian and my chosen academic, professional and personal path choice is with-in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and their systems. What lead me towards an interest in UAS was a need for dramatic change in my career choice while in the United States Army. In 2008, I made the change from combat arms to intelligence gathering and support by becoming a UAV operator with the Army. After deploying with an unmanned system to Iraq in 2010 and reaching a stagnate point in my career with the military I separated and began to pursue an education. I started with Ivy Tech community college working on an associate degree in general studies. After a great deal of researching four-year universities around the country, I discovered a newly established UAS BA degree at Purdue that would both supplement my operational experience and keep me close to my children living in Indiana. My original intent for post graduation was to work with the integration of UAS into large companies as a consultant or to develop training and operational programs. My short- term goal is to work with the ING as the UAS liaison between senior management and manned aviation   

Education:

I am currently pursuing two bachelor degrees at Purdue for Unmanned Air Systems (UAS) and Aviation Management. During pursuit of the UAS degree, I did an internship  for an Unmanned Aerostat company. My focus during the internship was R/D for manufacturing processes and human interfacing.

Operational Experience:

I have over nine years experience with over 1 thousand flight hours on military grade fixed winged unmanned aircraft. I'm a current Instructor operator/pilot with the Indiana National Guard on the RQ-7b. In the ING, I am responsible for the training and evaluation of a 14 UAS operators. 

I have over four years experience with commercial off the shelf (COTS) drones. I have expanded outside of the classroom and  assembled, tested and flown multiple quad-copter and fixed wing systems.

I am currently a teaching employee for Purdue University's UAS program as a lab instructor for the Aviation Technology (AT) 209 and 219 courses since 2017.