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Key Management

>Dr. Kessler is the founder and president of MDC. He received his S.B., S.M. and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering at MIT between 1995-2002 with a focus on composites and SHM. He worked at the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works as an advanced concepts engineer on the X33/VentureStar/JSF programs. In 1998, he received the MIT Admiral Luis De Florez Award, in 2001 was awarded the American Society for Composites (ASC) Ph.D. Research Scholarship, was a Draper Fellow in 1999 and has won best paper awards in 2002 from ASC, in 2009 the Prognostics & Health Management (PHM) Society, and in 2011 from the International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring (IWSHM). In 2019 he received the "Most Practical SHM Solution for Aerospace" award from the IWSHM voting community. Dr. Kessler holds 17 patents (4 pending), and recently served as the Chair of the Aerospace Industry Steering Committee on SHM (SAE AISC-SHM). Dr. Kessler has more than three dozen technical publications, has authored chapters in 3 textbooks and guest lectures for advanced graduate courses on composite mechanics in the Aerospace Department at MIT.

Company History

Metis Design was founded in 2002 as a spin-out of research being conducted in the Technology Laboratory for Advanced Composites in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Subsequently, MDC has thrived through a blend of government research grants and commercial development contracts totaling over $40M. MDC employs a diverse staff of creative and highly specialized engineers. A large majority of our engineers hold Ph.D.'s in Aerospace, Mechanical or Electrical Engineering, and combine creativity with hands-on experience and fundamental principles to develop novel solutions for a wide range of real-world challenges. The experience of the MDC staff spans a broad range of disciplines, ranging from air and spacecraft applications to consumer products.