“AMSL Aero Appoints Dr Adriano Di Pietro as Company CEO”

Aus­tralia-based AMSL Aero, the devel­op­er of a hybrid hydro­gen-elec­tric eVTOL air­craft called Ver­ti­ia, has appoint­ed Dr Adri­ano Di Pietro as Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer (CEO), reports a press release. 

He is to lead the Aus­tralian avi­a­tion com­pa­ny into its next phase of growth and bring the air­craft to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and inter­na­tion­al mar­ket launch.

Dr Di Pietro joins AMSL from the Aero­space Inno­va­tion Research Hub (AIR Hub) at Swin­burne Uni­ver­si­ty, where he served as Direc­tor and CEO (Inter­im) of the Aus­tralian Air Mobil­i­ty Coop­er­a­tive Research Cen­tre (AAMCRC). 

He brings exten­sive sec­tor knowl­edge, strate­gic and scale-up and go-to-mar­ket expe­ri­ence to the role, after near­ly 20 years of lead­er­ship and tech­ni­cal exper­tise span­ning aero­space, auto­mo­tive, defence and autonomous sys­tems. 

Last Novem­ber, AMSL suc­cess­ful­ly flew the Ver­ti­i­ia via an unteth­ered hor­i­zon­tal flight. The test flights under­scored the aircraft’s lead­ing role in util­is­ing hydro­gen for long-range, heavy-lift and pas­sen­ger oper­a­tions.

Aus­tralia: “AMSL Aero Com­pletes Land­mark Flight of Ver­ti­ia eVTOL Air­craft”

Dr Di Pietro com­ment­ed, “I believe in the company’s bold vision to rev­o­lu­tionise air mobil­i­ty through acces­si­ble zero-emis­sions tech­nol­o­gy. AMSL Aero has a world-class team that’s not only redefin­ing the future of avi­a­tion but build­ing a clean­er, faster and more con­nect­ed region­al trans­porta­tion sys­tem, some­thing that’s vital to Australia’s eco­nom­ic resilience, acces­si­bil­i­ty and future pros­per­i­ty.” 

He joins as the com­pa­ny pre­pares to build a sec­ond full-scale pro­to­type of Ver­ti­ia and under­take its first hydro­gen-pow­ered flight test pro­gram. Dr Di Pietro will lead AMSL’s cam­paign for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its air­craft by the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Author­i­ty (CASA); scale up man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ty; and dri­ve glob­al com­mer­cial expan­sion. 

Aus­tralia: “AMSL Aero Col­lab­o­rates with Con­flux Tech­nol­o­gy for Long-Range Hydro­gen-Fuelled Avi­a­tion”

Andrew Moore, Co-Founder and Board Direc­tor of AMSL Aero, remarked, “His deep tech­ni­cal exper­tise and indus­try lead­er­ship make him unique­ly suit­ed to lead the team into our next growth phase as we move towards hydro­gen flight test­ing.”

Chris Small­horn, the AMSL Chair­man, added, “Adri­ano will lead our grow­ing team of more than 65 tal­ent­ed and pas­sion­ate engi­neers and avi­a­tion experts as we bring Vertiia’s afford­able, zero-emis­sion, long-range, point-to-point avi­a­tion capa­bil­i­ties to Aus­tralia and the world.”

Back­ground

Pre­vi­ous­ly, Dr Di Pietro held key roles at XTEK (now High­Com Group) as Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer, where he led the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of aero­space and defence tech­nolo­gies. He was also one of the first employ­ees at Zoox, the Sil­i­con Val­ley-based autonomous vehi­cle com­pa­ny acquired by Ama­zon, and held lead­er­ship roles at Quick­step Tech­nolo­gies, a lead­ing aero­space com­pos­ites man­u­fac­tur­er in Aus­tralia and Ger­many.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.amslaero.com

(Top image: L‑R: AMSL Aero CEO Adri­ano Di Petrio with Chair­man Chris Small­horn)

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