Café Scientifique - Join us for another exciting Virtual Café Scientifique featuring Ilan Kroo!

Air transportation and aircraft design, after it recovers from the current pandemic shock, is likely to be different from what it was. This talk will begin with a summary of potential near-term changes to our air travel experience, and continue with a longer-range view of future aircraft, including those designed for fewer passengers and sub-regional route structures. Urban and inter-urban air mobility concepts promise efficient air travel, over many segments now dominated by ground transportation. Hundreds of start-up companies and more mature companies, such as Boeing and Bell, Airbus and Hyundai, are working to make this vision a reality. Our discussion will highlight current research and technology advances in electric propulsion, autonomous flight control, energy storage, and system modeling that will be key to the environmentally-sustainable reinvention of air transportation.

Ilan Kroo

Ilan Kroo is a Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University, where he teaches courses on future aircraft design and applied aerodynamics. He was the founding CEO of Zee.Aero (now Kitty Hawk), working on the development of electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft for efficient urban mobility. He also worked at NASA Ames Research Center and as a consultant for many aviation companies. An early hang glider pilot, he was one of the developers of the SWIFT, a high-performance foot-launched sailplane.

Café Scientifique is a place where anyone can come to explore the latest ideas in science and technology. The Café provides a forum for debating science issues outside a traditional academic context. We are committed to promoting public engagement with science and to making science accountable - all spoken in plain English. There is no admission charge to attend our events.

Building on its great success outside the United States, Café Scientifique Silicon Valley is the first such Café on the West Coast. We meet monthly to discuss a variety of science topics.