Dr. Alan Cain is recognized for the development of active flow control and its application to noise reduction, aero-optics, and control of other complex fluid flows.  Prior to founding ITAC and currently serving as its president, Dr. Cain was at The Boeing Company (McDonnell Douglas) for 13 years and served Boeing as an Associate Technical Fellow and Team Leader of active flow control research.  His accomplishments have been recognized by many awards including outstanding support for flow control and CFD for Orbital Research, Inc., Boeing Special Incentive Award for contributions to the C-17 Program, Boeing Teammate of Distinction Award for explanation and solution to an aircraft auxiliary inlet fatigue damage problem that was a result of flow/resonant acoustic interaction, McDonnell Douglas Certificate of Customer Appreciation for support of the NASA High Speed Research (HSR) Program, three McDonnell Douglas Leading Edge Awards for Innovative New Concepts, and 1996 AIAA Best Paper of the Year Award.  Dr. Cain has been the Principal Investigator or Program Manager for over 35 research programs, with funding mostly from the USAF and NASA.  He is a co-inventor on a patent and has two more patents pending, authored and co-authored over 80 research papers, and has given 18 invited lectures and 9 invited workshop presentations.  He is an Associate Fellow of the AIAA and serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Aero-acoustics.

Dr. Cain holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University. 

Dr. Chris Nelson has extensive experience in the development and application of CFD codes, particularly for unsteady flow applications. Prior to joining ITAC, he worked for 6 years at Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC), eventually becoming AEDC's lead developer on the NPARC Alliance's Wind-US code. In that capacity, he was instrumental in implementing the time-accurate implicit methods currently in the code.  In 1999, Dr. Nelson, as part of the NPARC Alliance development team, received Honorable Mention in the NASA Software of the Year Award competition.  Dr. Nelson has been the Principal Investigator of three research programs with the United States Air Force.  He has also been lead engineer on a number of other NASA and USAF funded efforts.  He is currently involved in a NASA Glenn led project funded by the Air Force “Test and Evaluation Science and Technology” program, entitled “Modeling and Simulation in Support of Test and Evaluation,” which is intended to extend the Wind-US code to be the CFD tool of choice for hypersonic flow simulations.  Dr. Nelson has authored or co-authored more than a dozen scientific papers and presentations.  He is a Senior Member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Dr. Nelson holds a Ph.D., M.S., and B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Mehul manages the creation and growth of advanced technology programs at ITAC in diverse engineering disciplines that relate to commercial and military/defense applications.  He brings 10+ years of technology research, innovation, and SBIR experience to ITAC.  Prior to joining ITAC, Mr. Patel served as Director of Aerodynamics Group at Orbital Research Inc., where he led the technology research, development and commercialization of the Aerodynamics Division while also managing the Intellectual Property (IP) portfolio related to aerospace technologies.  The success of the Aerodynamics Division led Orbital Research to win the national Tibbetts award in 2007, exemplifying the very best in SBIR achievement and product commercialization.  Mr. Patel has been the Principal Investigator for 20 SBIR contracts with funding from the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and Department of Energy, and has also worked on industry-sponsored projects.  He has specific experience in technical areas including applied aerodynamics, aircraft/missile aerodynamics, Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) control, active flow control, MEMS, plasma actuators, weapons steering (missiles/munitions/projectiles), guided destructive expendables for aircraft self-protection/survivability, and flow-control for smart wind turbine rotor blades.  Mr. Patel is an inventor of 7 U.S. patents with 6 additional patents pending.  He has authored over 65 technical papers, given 8 invited talks, and has received an AIAA Young Professional Best Paper award on "closed-loop missile yaw control via manipulation of forebody flow asymmetries".  Mr. Patel is a Senior Member of AIAA, a reviewer for the Journal of Aircraft and AIAA conferences, a past member of the AIAA Applied Aerodynamics Technical Committee, and a current member of the AIAA Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee.

Mr. Patel holds a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University (CASE) and a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU), The Faculty of Technology and Engineering, India.  He is admitted to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) as a registered Patent Agent.