Mr. Mehul Patel is the Director of Research Projects for ASU's Mars Space Flight Facility (MSFF) in the School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE) where he leads all Program Management and Proposal Development activities for sponsored research projects. He is also the Director of Core Operations for the Instrument Mission & Development Laboratory (IMDL) at the ASU Knowledge Enterprise (KE), where he supports new business development activities advancing research and development of instrumentation for planetary and earth sciences, as well as Department of Defense (DoD) applications.
Mr. Patel is an experienced Engineer, Manager, and Intellectual Property (IP) Strategist, with 25+ years cultivating alliances between industry, academia, and government labs. He is experienced in research strategy, entrepreneurship, proposal development, program management, IP protection/prosecution, government contracts and grants (FARs/DFARs), export control compliance, and sponsored-research agreements. He has served as a Principal Investigator (PI) for over 25 SBIR/STTR projects, has 85 publications and 24 issued patents, and is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
Mr. Patel currently serves as the Program Manager (PM) for several ASU space flight instrument projects-
- The Artemis Infrared Reflectance and Emission Spectrometer (AIRES) for NASA's Lunar Terrain Vehicles Instruments (LTVI) program
- Emirates Main Belt Infrared Spectrometer (EMBIRS) for UAE's Mission to the Asteroid Belt
- Gamma-Ray Neutron Spectrometer (GRNS) for NASA's Lunar Vulkan Imaging and Spectroscopy Explorer (Lunar-VISE) mission
- Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System (E‑THEMIS) for NASA's Europa Clipper mission
- Lucy Thermal Emission Spectrometer (L’TES) for the NASA Lucy Discovery mission
- Emirates Mars Mission Thermal Emission Spectrometer (EMIRS) for UAE’s The Hope Probe (1st mission to Mars)
Prior to joining ASU, Mr. Patel served as Vice President at Innovative Technology Applications Company, LLC, and Director of the Aerodynamics group at Orbital Research, where he was responsible for leading technology R&D projects, business strategy, technology road mapping, and IP capture. During this period, he served as a PI for various projects funded by the U.S. DoD agencies (Air Force, Army, Navy, DARPA, and SOCOM), NASA, and the Department of Energy (DOE/NREL). In these projects, Mr. Patel led the design and development of advanced aerodynamic and propulsion systems for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), rotorcraft, weapon systems, aircraft self-protection systems, wind turbines, automobiles, and submarines. Mr. Patel’s technical background and contributions are in the areas of aerodynamics, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), active flow control, weakly-ionized plasma devices, propulsion, flow sensing and diagnostics, MEMS, and biomimetics.