Iris Automation and AirMap appoint new CEOs as they look to progress in Unmanned Traffic Management market

Iris Automa­tion and AirMap have each appoint­ed new Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cers, as both look to gath­er more momen­tum in the Unmanned Traf­fic Man­age­ment (UTM) indus­try.

Jon Damush, pre­vi­ous­ly at Boe­ing NeXT, has become Iris Automa­tion’s new CEO, effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly. The com­pa­ny is devel­op­ing Casia, the first onboard detect-and-avoid (DAA) solu­tion to safe­ly enable com­mer­cial BVLOS oper­a­tions for Unmanned Air­craft Sys­tems. The sys­tem allows a UAS to see and react to the avi­a­tion envi­ron­ment around the air­craft.

Iris Automa­tion’s Co-founder Alexan­der Harm­sen has been pro­mot­ed to Chair­man of the Board, where he will guide strat­e­gy for the com­pa­ny and pro­vide thought lead­er­ship on beyond line of sight (BVLOS) drone oper­a­tions.

Damush has more than 30 years of exten­sive avi­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy expe­ri­ence and exec­u­tive lead­er­ship, build­ing upon his tech­ni­cal back­ground in engi­neer­ing, soft­ware devel­op­ment and sys­tems inte­gra­tion. He is also a FAA-cer­ti­fied com­mer­cial pilot with mul­ti-engine and instru­ment rat­ings and a cer­ti­fied flight instruc­tor.

Before Boe­ing NeXt, Damush was Chief Growth Offi­cer at Insi­tu, Inc., a Boe­ing sub­sidiary, devel­op­ing nov­el air­craft and UAS inno­va­tion includ­ing detect-and-avoid. He was also a Boe­ing exec­u­tive liai­son and board observ­er to Sky­Grid, LLC, a joint ven­ture between Boe­ing and SparkCog­ni­tion.

“I am hon­oured to be tak­ing over lead­er­ship of this incred­i­ble com­pa­ny,” Damush said.

“James [Howard, co-founder of Iris Automa­tion] and Alex have built an amaz­ing team, devel­oped a crit­i­cal tech­nol­o­gy and achieved results where oth­ers have failed. As we grow into our next phase, I am eager to col­lab­o­rate with our cus­tomers, part­ners, glob­al reg­u­la­tors and investors to bring these capa­bil­i­ties to every­day use and make fly­ing safer.”

Ear­li­er this week, Iris Automa­tion came first in the Tech­nol­o­gy & Inno­va­tion cat­e­go­ry and third in the Com­mer­cial Enter­prise Oper­a­tion or Solu­tion cat­e­go­ry of the 2020 XCELLENCE Awards by the Asso­ci­a­tion for Unmanned Vehi­cles Sys­tems Inter­na­tion­al (AUVSI).

Casia detects oth­er air­craft, uses com­put­er-vision algo­rithms to clas­si­fy them, makes intel­li­gent deci­sions about the threat they may pose to the drone, and then trig­gers an alert to the pilot in com­mand and auto­mates maneu­vers to safe­ly avoid col­li­sions.

And Dig­i­tal air­space and automa­tion firm AirMap has also wel­comed Simon Crowther as its new CEO. He brings a track record of cre­at­ing win­ning hard­ware, soft­ware busi­ness­es and lead­ing high per­form­ing teams. Crowther replaced out­go­ing Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer David Hose.

Pri­or to join­ing AirMap, he was Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at Yama­ha Motor Ven­tures & Lab­o­ra­to­ry Sil­i­con Val­ley, where he invest­ed in tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies dri­ving dis­rup­tive change. Crowther also served as CEO of Nearmap, an aer­i­al imagery tech­nol­o­gy and loca­tion data com­pa­ny.

AirMap Chair­man and Co-Founder Ben Mar­cus, said: “After a thor­ough selec­tion process, we decid­ed that Simon Crowther was the right leader for AirMap’s next phase of growth. His exper­tise in lead­ing mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary teams in high-growth indus­tries will ensure AirMap’s con­tin­ued suc­cess as we work to enable safe drone flight at scale.”

AirMap’s prod­ucts are deployed in the Czech Repub­lic, Japan, Sin­ga­pore, Switzer­land, the Unit­ed States, and also avail­able in over 30 oth­er coun­tries. It announced last month that it had been award­ed a con­tract to pro­vide unmanned traf­fic man­age­ment ser­vices to the US Air Force’s Agili­ty Prime pro­gramme, worth $1 mil­lion.

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