Five Rockwell Collins engineers have been recognized for their leadership and innovation when they were named to the second annual class of Technical Fellows.
The Class of 2015 — Bob Foote, Vlad Gavrilets, Linda Peyton, Jim West and Ken Zimmerman — was honored with a special ceremony on July 14 in Cedar Rapids and joins 25 colleagues who were named to the Rockwell Collins Fellows program when it was introduced in 2014. The program was established as a way to honor and recognize engineers for their expertise in their respective disciplines.
Foote is a principal systems engineer in Vision Augmentation Systems in Cedar Rapids. His most distinctive technical contribution was leading the design and development of all major fixed wing fighter Helmet Mounted Displays fielded by our company over the last 20 years.
Gavrilets is a senior engineering manager in Flight Control and Navigation in Warrenton, Virginia. His patents and publications in the areas of flight dynamics, flight control, and sensor fusion have attracted more than 950 citations. He also demonstrated the world’s first autonomous aerobatic helicopter.
Peyton is senior director of Avionics Products Engineering in Cedar Rapids. While she has a broad grasp of government and commercial avionics technologies, she also was among the early pioneers in GPS receiver software and security design at Rockwell Collins.
West is a principal electrical engineer in Transmitter Technology in Cedar Rapids. He has been an enterprise-level antenna technology subject matter expert and leader for nearly 30 years. He created the Rockwell Collins Advanced Technology Center’s antenna research and development group and antenna lab, and has been responsible for numerous contract awards over the years.
Zimmerman is a principal systems engineer in Head-up Guidance Systems Engineering in Wilsonville, Oregon. For more than 30 years, he has been responsible for identifying and developing the key operational, safety, and certification aspects of essentially every new feature added to the company’s HGS products.
These five individuals join an elite group of employees who hold a total of more than 480 patents and have an average of 20 years with our company.
“During their careers, our Fellows have solved our customers’ most complex problems,” said Nan Mattai, senior vice president of Engineering and Information Technology. “They have developed leading-edge technologies that have resulted in many industry firsts, they have contributed to and influenced a broad array of technologies, and they have achieved a level of mastery in their field of expertise.