Dufour Aerospace appoints Thomas Seiler as lead engineer

Dufour Aero­space has announced anoth­er senior appoint­ment, with Thomas Seil­er join­ing the com­pa­ny as a lead engi­neer.

Seil­er has more than two decades of indus­try expe­ri­ence, includ­ing elec­tron­ics, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and high-pow­er volt­age sys­tems in var­i­ous indus­tries.

He was a Research Engi­neer for Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Swiss­com and Head of Solar Impulse’s Ener­gy and Propul­sion Team — where he was respon­si­ble for all elec­tri­cal sys­tems on board the SI‑2 solar-pow­ered air­craft, which was flown around the world by Solar Impulse pilots and Founders André Borschberg and Bertrand Pic­card in 2016.

Seil­er was also at Swiss Hydro­gen, where he inte­grat­ed hydro­gen range exten­der sys­tems into elec­tric vehi­cles, and has designed, built, inte­grat­ed and cer­ti­fied a wide range of sys­tems includ­ing bat­tery man­age­ment, teleme­try, hydro­gen pow­er, and actu­a­tion.

Announc­ing his appoint­ment, Dufour Aero­space said: “The knowl­edge Thomas brings in, espe­cial­ly with his knowl­edge from Solar Impulse, where he was respon­si­ble for build­ing sys­tems for a manned air­craft that can stay aloft for days and nights as it cir­cum­nav­i­gates the world, will accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of the elec­tric pow­er, propul­sion and avion­ics sys­tems need­ed for our elec­tric VTOL air­craft.

“We are extreme­ly hap­py that he has decid­ed to join Dufour Aero­space, and we warm­ly wel­come him to our grow­ing team.”

The com­pa­ny has recent­ly com­plet­ed the first phase of its VTOL tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor flight, and received a grant from Inno­su­isse to ver­i­fy the aero­dy­nam­ic design of its tilt-wing aEro3 air­craft.