He received mechanical engineering degrees from McGill (B.Eng 1989), Seoul National (M.Sc 1992), and Columbia (PhD 1999). Honors include faculty fellowships at NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (2002), Naval Research Lab (2003), the NSF CAREER award (2004), the SAE Ralph Teetor Award for Engineering Education Excellence (2005) and being named a Boeing Welliver Fellow (2006). He is the Director of the Drexel Autonomous Systems Lab and also the Founding Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Aerial Robotics and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Currently he is on academic leave, serving as Program Director for Robotics for the National Science Foundation.