Demoz Gebre-Egziabher

Professor Demoz Gebre-Egziabher is a faculty member at the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, University of Minnesota, where he serves as Director of the Minnesota Space Grant Consortium. His work focuses on navigation, guidance, and control of aerospace vehicles, with a particular emphasis on applying estimation theory to sensor fusion and reliability quantification.

• Academic Rank: Professor
• Department: Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics
• School: College of Engineering
• Director, Minnesota Space Grant Consortium

His research spans critical aerospace domains including:

• Designing algorithms for optimal sensor fusion in safety-critical systems
• Developing autonomous aerial vehicles for national airspace operations
• Advancing GNSS applications for high-accuracy aircraft navigation
• Exploring CubeSat platforms for X-ray characterization and navigation
• Creating automated frameworks for air data sensor degradation analysis

Recent work trends show interdisciplinary applications of aerospace technology in:

• Humanitarian data analysis (e.g., Tigray conflict impact studies)
• Hypersonic re-entry vehicle instrumentation
• Temporal logic for autonomous system navigation

Scientific Recognition:

• AIAA Associate Fellow (2014)

Research Collaborations: Partnerships with NASA, USDOD Air Force, Honeywell Inc., and RTX Corporation. His lab tests UAVs as surrogates for manned aircraft development, balancing cost-efficiency with safety validation.

Applied Impact: Projects range from enhancing agricultural precision through UAV data collection to improving deep-space navigation systems. Current grants include:

• Vehicle-as-a-Sensor for aerospace PNT systems (Honeywell, 2025-2026)
• DESPINA deep-space PNT instrument (NASA Ames, 2023-2025)
• EXACT CubeSat development (Space Dynamics Lab, 2025)