Peter Thomas

Dr Peter Thomas serves as head of the aerospace group and principal lecturer in aerospace engineering at the University of Hertfordshire's School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science. He is an active member of the Centre for Engineering Research and teaches flight mechanics, stability and control systems, aeroelasticity, and aerodynamics.

His academic qualifications:

• MEng Mechanical Engineering, University of Warwick
• PhD Aerospace Engineering, Cranfield University

Research focuses on flight dynamics, autonomous flight control systems, and biomimetic flight. Expertise includes UAVs, air-to-air refuelling, vortex lattice methods, and experimental testing. He possesses over a decade of programming experience in MATLAB/Simulink for simulation and control implementation.

Recent publications reveal strong trends in supersonic aerodynamics (using shock cone modeling and compressibility corrections), UAV motion planning with geofencing algorithms, and biomimetic wing morphing structures. His work integrates computational fluid dynamics with experimental validation to advance autonomous systems and sustainable aviation solutions.

Current research projects include decarbonising London Elstree Aerodrome (2024-2025), origami-based debris capture for CubeSat satellites (2022), and lattice structures for aerospace components (2022-2023). He previously collaborated with Cobham Mission Equipment on autonomous air-to-air refuelling and served as Honorary Research Associate at the University of Bristol (2014-2016).