Dr. Elston is the CEO and co-founder of Black Swift Technologies. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado Boulder based on work that developed a complex meshed network, unmanned aircraft system, and control algorithms for in situ sampling of severe convective storms. His team was the first to intercept a tornadic supercell thunderstorm with a UAS, flying over 72 different missions, with ground speeds of over 100 mph, and never losing an aircraft. He's continued his work at BST in extreme environments, having visited all seven continents and has flown aircraft in the arctic, on the side of volcanoes, through a hurricane, and over wildland fires. Dr. Elston has over 1500 citations of his publications in the field of UAS, and is involved with several cutting edge projects including a tube-launched UAS for hurricane observations, machine vision for low altitude flights and GPS denied environments, and even a NASA project to design a glider to explore the upper atmosphere of Venus.Outside of work, Dr. Elston has climbed all 58 peaks in Colorado over 14,000 ft, skied 6 of them, and enjoys a wide variety of sports. Most of his time is spent creating new adventures with his daugther and wife.Specialties: Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) development and testing, UAS Networking, embedded design, embedded linux, control systems, GUI design