National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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Biography

Image Credit: NASA

Dr. Nateri Madavan

Director, Advanced Air Vehicles Program (AAVP)

NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD)

Nateri Madavan is the director for the Advanced Air Vehicles Program under the NASA

Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Madavan is responsible for the overall planning, management, and oversight of

the directorate’s efforts to develop innovative concepts, technologies, and capabilities to

enable revolutionary advances for a wide range of air vehicles. He supports the mission

directorate and the ARMD associate administrator in a broad range of activities, including

strategic and program planning, budget development, program review and evaluation, and

external coordination and outreach.

The Advanced Air Vehicles Program focuses on achieving major leaps in the performance

of subsonic fixed and vertical lift aircraft to meet challenging and growing long-term civil

aviation needs; on pioneering low-boom supersonic flight to achieve new levels of global

mobility; and on sustaining hypersonic competency for national needs while advancing

fundamental hypersonics research.

Madavan most recently served as the deputy director of the Transformative Aeronautics 

Concepts Program within ARMD. In collaboration with the program director, 

Madavan supported the overall planning, management, and evaluation of the 

directorate’s efforts to cultivate revolutionary concepts, tools, and technologies that 

enable aviation transformation.

He previously served as the acting deputy director of the Integrated Aviation Systems Program, where he supported the overall planning, management, and evaluation of ARMD’s

efforts to conduct experimental flight research, testing the most promising concepts and

technologies from across the ARMD portfolio at an integrated system level. He also

served as the associate project manager for technology for the Advanced Air Transport

Technology project in the Advanced Air Vehicles Program, managing the project’s research

portfolio to enable revolutionary improvements in the energy efficiency and environmental compatibility of future generations of aircraft.

Madavan began his NASA career conducting research in the development and application of high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics simulation techniques at NASA’s Ames

Research Center in California. He has authored or coauthored more than 60 journal articles

and technical papers, and jointly holds two U.S. patents. He is a two-time recipient of the

NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal and his work has been recognized through various

NASA honor, space act, group achievement, and technology transfer awards.

He obtained a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur, a

master’s degree from Iowa State University, and a doctorate from Penn State University, 

all in mechanical engineering. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical 

Engineers, a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and an Associate Fellow of the 

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.