Mike Hirschberg Named by SAE in Its 2025 Class of Fellows, in Recognition of 35 Years of Leadership and Advocacy For Cutting Edge Aircraft Research

SAE Inter­na­tion­al has named Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety’s for­mer Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Mike Hirschberg in its 2025 class of SAE Fel­lows, which recog­nis­es mem­bers who have made a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the soci­ety’s mobil­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy through lead­er­ship, research and inno­va­tion.

Found­ed in 1905 as the Soci­ety of Auto­mo­tive Engi­neers, SAE Inter­na­tion­al is a pro­fes­sion­al and stan­dards-devel­op­ing orga­ni­za­tion for the engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sion in the aero­space and auto­mo­tive sec­tors, with more than 200,000 indi­vid­ual mem­bers. SAE’s cita­tion for Hirschberg’s award reads:

For 35 years of impact­ful inter­na­tion­al lead­er­ship of and advo­ca­cy for research and devel­op­ment of cut­ting-edge air­craft and propul­sion approach­es, such as rock­ets, mil­i­tary jets, heli­copters, drones and oth­er types of ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing air­craft (VTOL) and tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) and hydro­gen avi­a­tion.

In receiv­ing this award from SAE, Hirschberg has now been named as a Fel­low of the world’s four lead­ing avi­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy pro­fes­sion­al soci­eties, believed to be the first per­son in his­to­ry to be so hon­ored.

In addi­tion to SAE, he was select­ed as a Fel­low of the Roy­al Aero­nau­ti­cal Soci­ety (RAeS) in 2011, the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Aero­nau­tics and Astro­nau­tics (AIAA) in 2024 and as an Hon­orary Fel­low of the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS) in 2025.

Com­ment­ing on his lat­est award, Hirschberg said:.“This is an incred­i­ble hon­or for me. I joined SAE in col­lege in the 1980s and have stayed active with it over the past four decades for its lead­er­ship in advanc­ing avi­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy.”

In the 1990s, Hirschberg began sup­port­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Pow­ered Lift Con­fer­ence (IPLC) — the world’s only ded­i­cat­ed con­fer­ence span­ning the breadth of short take­off and land­ing (STOL) and ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing (VTOL) air­craft and tech­nolo­gies — which is orga­nized by the same four soci­eties that have now rec­og­nized him as a Fel­low.

Since 2000, he has been part of the IPLC steer­ing com­mit­tee and has been heav­i­ly engaged in orga­niz­ing and run­ning the bien­ni­al event. Hirschberg was the IPLC Chair in 2005, 2008 and 2018, and is chair­ing this year’s IPLC 2026, held in con­junc­tion with SAE International’s upcom­ing AeroTech con­fer­ence in West Palm Beach, Flori­da, June 2–4. Details are post­ed at www.sae.org/aerotech.

Hirschberg led the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety dur­ing 2011–2023 and as Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, he spear­head­ed indus­try sup­port to the Future Ver­ti­cal Lift (FVL) ini­tia­tive — which has now led to the Army’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary MV-75 Val­or tiltro­tor — as well as the nascent elec­tric ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing (eVTOL) com­mu­ni­ty, with sev­er­al com­pa­nies now near­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of their advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) air­craft.

His lead­er­ship at VFS con­tributed to impor­tant improve­ments in ver­ti­cal flight safe­ty, noise, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, tech­nol­o­gy and accep­tance.

In 2014, when the idea of elec­tric ver­ti­cal flight was first being explored, VFS orga­nized the world’s first eVTOL tech­ni­cal meet­ing in 2014, launched the world’s first eVTOL eNewslet­ter in 2016, the world’s first ded­i­cat­ed eVTOL web­site in 2017 and the world’s first eVTOL short course in 2018. 

Hirschberg was also the long­time edi­tor of the VFS Ver­ti­flite mag­a­zine (1999–2025) and served as its Direc­tor of Strat­e­gy (2023–2025), con­tin­u­ing to sup­port the advance­ment of ver­ti­cal flight and aero­space tech­nol­o­gy, and advo­cat­ing on behalf of the indus­try.

In 2022, while at VFS, Hirschberg ini­ti­at­ed the world’s first in-per­son hydro­gen avi­a­tion con­fer­ence, the H2-Aero Sym­po­sium, an annu­al gath­er­ing to high­light progress and remain­ing chal­lenges in hydro­gen for avi­a­tion. In 2023, this result­ed in the estab­lish­ment of the SAE Inter­na­tion­al AE-5H Hydro­gen Avi­a­tion Com­mit­tee, which is pro­duc­ing reg­u­lar SAE aero­space infor­ma­tion reports (AIRs).

The next H2-Aero Sym­po­sium will be host­ed by AIAA, as part of its annu­al AVIATION Forum in San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia, June 8 –12. Details are at www.aiaa.org/aviation.

In 2025, Hirschberg left the non-prof­it and found­ed H2 Advi­sors to pro­vide con­sult­ing ser­vices to aero­space and defense organ­i­sa­tions, with exper­tise in ver­ti­cal and elec­tric flight, hydro­gen avi­a­tion and oth­er appli­ca­tions of nov­el air­craft propul­sion.

Fea­tured image cour­tesy of Unither Bioélec­tron­ique.