Metis Design employs a small but diverse staff of creative and highly specialized engineers. A large majority of our engineers hold Ph.D.'s in Aerospace, Mechanical or Electrical Engineering. MDC continually seeks new talented staff to stay competitive and up-to-date with new technologies.

Seth S. Kessler, Ph.D. - President

Dr. Kessler is the president and founder of the Metis Design Corporation. He received his S.B. in Aerospace Engineering at MIT in June 1998 studying the effects of a cryogenic environment on composite materials. In December 1999, he received his S.M. from that department creating and validating a design tool to analyze composite structures subjected to extreme inertial (high-g) loading. Dr. Kessler completed his Ph.D. in January 2002 researching structural health monitoring techniques that use piezoelectric devices to continuously detect damage in composite structures. He has worked at the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works as an advanced concepts engineer on the X33/VentureStar/JSF programs, and was a Draper Fellow working on the DARPA seedling WASP program. In 1998, he received the Admiral Luis De Florez Award for Ingenuity and Creativity in Design, in 2001 was awarded the American Society for Composites Ph.D. Research Scholarship, in 2002 the ASC Best Paper award for functional composites, and in 2009 the PHM Society Best Paper Award for applied systems. Dr. Kessler has experience managing more than two dozen major federally funded contracts with various agencies including every branch of the DoD and NASA. Dr. Kessler has more than three dozen technical publications in his areas of expertise, holds 8 patents ( Damage Detection Device patent, Sensor Infrastructure patent, Sensor Infrastructure Network patent, Sensor Infrastructure Method patent, Vector-based Localization patent, Flyer assembly patent, Flyer assembly follow-on patent, Box pad patent ) with 5 patents pending, is a member and contributing author of the American Society for Composites, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Prognostics and Health Management Society, SPIE and IEEE, is on the editorial boards for the International Journal of Prognostics and Health Management and is the System Engineering section editor and author of 2 chapters for the Integrated Vehicle Health Management for Aerospace Application textbook being published by Wiley/AIAA in 2010.

Hugh L. McManus, Ph.D. - Lean Enterprise Solutions Lead

Dr. McManus, Senior Special Projects Engineer at Metis Design, is involved in applying modern product development, business and technical practices to the aerospace industry. He has done pioneering work in application of lean techniques to product development with MIT's Lean Aerospace Initiative (LAI). Dr. McManus received a Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and S. B. and S. M. degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT. He has previously worked at Kaman Aerospace, at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, and at teaching and research positions at MIT. Dr. McManus recently co-authored the LAI book, Lean Enterprise Value, is working on a book on space system architecture and design, co-edited a book on high temperature applications of polymer composite materials, has been an associate editor of the AIAA Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, and has published over 60 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications.