Derek A. Paley. Derek Andrew Paley is an American aerospace engineer, academic, and researcher specializing in collective dynamics and control in natural and robotic systems. He is the Willis H. Young Jr. Professor of Aerospace Engineering Education at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he holds a joint appointment with the Institute for Systems Research (ISR). He is the recipient of American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics National Capital Section's Engineer of the Year and Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

He is also the director of the Maryland Robotics Center (MRC) and has affiliations with the Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center.

Education and career 
Paley earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Physics from Yale University in 1997 and went on to receive a Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University in 2007.

He founded the Collective Dynamics and Control Laboratory (CDCL) in 2007, focusing on the development of algorithms and control systems for autonomous robotic vehicles and bioinspired systems.
Since becoming director of the Maryland Robotics Center in 2019, Paley has overseen developments in robotics education and research at the University of Maryland. 

He has received teaching awards, such as the UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award and the Exemplary Researcher Award. Paley also serves as the Technical Director of the M.Eng. Robotics program.

The Autonomous Micro Air Vehicle (AMAV) team, which he founded, has won multiple national awards, including the NIST UAS First Responder Challenge.  He was also honored as a UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher for the 2020–2021 academic year. He is also and associate fellow with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Research 
His work includes developing distributed control algorithms, conducting hypothesis-driven studies on biological collectives, and optimizing sensor networks for environmental monitoring. His research has been funded by agencies such as DARPA, the Army Research Laboratory (ARL), and the Office of Naval Research (ONR), with total funding exceeding $23 million.

Paley's research integrates dynamics, estimation, and control theory to address challenges in autonomous robotics, mobile sensor networks, and bioinspired engineering.

He has published in the fields of dynamics and controls, with over 100 peer-reviewed articles and his work has been cited more than 8,000 times, with an h-index of 38 as of 2024.
In 2021, he explored autonomous scooters as part of his research in robotics and artificial intelligence. His interest in autonomous systems began in the late 1990s when he encountered autonomous underwater vehicles, which led him to pursue graduate studies in control systems. Paley's recent work involves developing self-driving scooters, focusing on their ability to reposition themselves for greater convenience in shared spaces like college campuses.

Paley and his students have built prototypes of autonomous scooters equipped with sensors, working towards a goal of enabling scooters to travel short distances autonomously.

Paley and his team have developed fish-inspired underwater vehicles with flexible tails powered by electric motors and momentum wheels. These robots are designed to mimic real fish movements and respond to hydrodynamic signals, including vortices generated by nearby "fish."

Selected publications

Journals

Books

References

External links
Paley's research at Google Scholar
Paley's profile at IEEE

American aerospace engineers
21st-century American engineers
Princeton University alumni
Yale University alumni
University of Maryland, College Park faculty
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people