As the Chief of Strategy for the BVLOS Innovation Centre, Chris leads the creation and implementation of strategic initiatives that serve to enable the RPAS Sector. One such current initiative is the development of a risk-based, RPAS-specific airworthiness program to meet a latent sector need. This work enables an organization to prove its air and ground safety toward gaining approvals for high risk BVLOS applications.
Chris completed a fulsome 32-year career within the DND research environment of Defence R&D Canada. He published research on energetic materiel phenomena and on the defence application of both unmanned air and ground systems. He has both led research teams and held key leadership positions related to advancing the adoption of science and technology into the Defence realm. As announced in DND’s Strong Secure Engaged Defence Policy, he led the development and implementation of the Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEaS) program; an investment $1.6 B over 20 years, destined to attract more Canadian research expertise toward solving the hardest defence and security challenges.
Previously, he co-founded a successful engineering consultancy in Alberta’s oil and gas sector aimed at production optimization. Chris is also active in Standard Council of Canada’s ISO Mirror Committees in the UAS sector. He graduated from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in both Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering Technology and holds a Master’s degree in Leadership from Royal Roads University.