David W. Miller is an American aerospace engineer who is the current Jerome Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

and an elected Fellow of the

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is a professional society for the field of aerospace engineering. The AIAA is the U.S. representative on the International Astronautical Federation and the International Council of ...

since 2015. He is currently on a leave of absence from MIT to be a VP and the Chief Technology Officer to

The Aerospace Corporation The Aerospace Corporation is an American nonprofit corporation that operates a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) in El Segundo, California. The corporation provides technical guidance and advice on all aspects of space mi ...

. He has worked on multiple NASA projects and served as NASA Chief Technologist.

Early life and education

Dr. Miller received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering at MIT.

MIT Professor

After graduation in 1988, Dr. Miller became a Research Associate for MIT's Aero/Astro. He was promoted to Principal Research Scientist and Assistant Professor before becoming an Associate Professor in 1997. He flew experiments on the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program ...

, including STS-48,

STS-62 STS-62 was a Space Shuttle program mission flown aboard . The primary payloads were the USMP-02 microgravity experiments package and the OAST-2 engineering and technology payload, both in the orbiter's cargo bay. The two-week mission also featu ...

, and STS-67 missions. He is faculty for and the former director of the Space Systems Laboratory (MIT). Much of the research has focused on reconfigurable spacecraft concepts and on-orbit operations. The laboratory has many research projects, include the

SPHERES The Synchronized Position Hold Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellite (SPHERES) are a series of miniaturized satellites developed by MIT's Space Systems Laboratory for NASA and US Military, to be used as a low-risk, extensible test bed for the ...

testbed on the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ( ...

. The projects have also been on the JWST Product Integrity Team, and the NASA CubeSat Launch Initiative. He worked with the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...

to create fully funded graduate scholarships for graduates of the

USAF Academy The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) is a United States service academy in El Paso County, Colorado, immediately north of Colorado Springs. It educates cadets for service in the officer corps of the United States Air Force and Unit ...

's FalconSAT program.

NASA career

He served as the NASA Chief Technologist from 2014- 2017. He was the principal investigator for the Regolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (REXIS) for the

OSIRIS-REx OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) is a NASA asteroid-study and sample-return mission. The mission's primary goal is to obtain a sample of at least from 101955 Bennu, a carbona ...

asteroid sample return mission, which launched in 2016. He has been an advisor to or on steering committees for a variety of NASA projects: *Space Infrared Interferometric Telescope (SPIRIT) of GFSC *In-Space Assembled Telescope (iSAT) Study of JPL

Industry Positions

Dr. Miller was selected in 2018 to be the vice president and chief technology officer (CTO) of

. He spent five years on the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, two of them as the Vice Chair.

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people MIT School of Engineering faculty American aerospace engineers {{US-engineer-stub