Washington DC

Dr. Ajay Kothari is President and Founder of Astrox Corporation, an Aerospace R&D company located in suburban Washington DC. His PhD and MS in Aerospace Engineering are from University of Maryland. He has been Principal Investigator or Program Manager on more than 30 contracts from Air Force, Navy, DARPA and NASA, focused on rocket and hypersonic vehicle designs, system level analysis and studies which have led to his innovative hypersonic vehicle design for the Air Force. He has been a pioneer in developing the Inward Turning Hypersonic Vehicles traveling up to Mach 10 for which a patent was granted, and which will be able to go to Low Earth Orbit more efficiently using his version of the Rocket Based Combined Cycle (RBCC) concept. He is currently working on reusable rocket transportation which would be more efficient, flexible and more cost effective. He has over 48 professional publications in peer reviewed AIAA (American Institute of aeronautics and Astronautics) journals and various AIAA, International Spaceplanes and Hypersonics, CRASTE (Commercial and Government Reusable Access to Space Technology Exchange) and JANNAF (Joint Army Navy NASA and Air Force) conferences in aerospace field.

Ved Gupta has held several senior technical and executive positions in industry and the government in a career that spans over 40 years. He was with the US government, Lockheed Martin and with IBM, where he spent 29 years. He was also an assistant professor of electrical engineering at a state university in North Carolina for 4 years. During his career, he paid special attention to hiring and mentoring recent college graduates and made sure that they received proper technical and leadership trainings. He helped and promoted minorities and women in the corporate world. He is currently mentoring the university students with technical and career oriented skills. He has undergraduate degrees from Allahabad University and IIT Kharagpur and holds graduate degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Maryland at College Park.