Wisk brings in wealth of aviation expertise with two new hires as Head of Autonomy and Head of Software

Autonomous eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er Wisk has expand­ed its tech­ni­cal exper­tise by appoint­ing Jonathan Love­g­ren and Sumi­ta Tan­don as Head of Auton­o­my and Head of Soft­ware respec­tive­ly.

Since 2010, the com­pa­ny has been suc­cess­ful­ly design­ing, devel­op­ing, test­ing five gen­er­a­tions of eVTOL air­craft and is now onto its sixth.

In his new role, Love­g­ren will over­see Wisk’s auton­o­my pro­gram, includ­ing engi­neer­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy for auton­o­my. While as Head of Soft­ware, Tan­don will be respon­si­ble for lead­ing all aspects of Wisk’s Soft­ware and Automa­tion Group through the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process, from air­craft to ground con­trol soft­ware.

Gary Gysin, CEO of Wisk, said: “Cre­at­ing an entire­ly new type of air­craft that has the poten­tial to trans­form the way we move in our day-to-day lives is not an easy task. It requires not only years of research, design, and test­ing, but also a tal­ent­ed team.

“Jon and Sumi­ta bring more than 40 years of com­bined expe­ri­ence to our team and exem­pli­fy the excel­lence need­ed to make UAM a real­i­ty. We are excit­ed to wel­come them to the team.”

Pre­vi­ous­ly, Love­g­ren served as Flight Soft­ware and Sim­u­la­tion Lead at A3 by Air­bus, where he was respon­si­ble for over­see­ing crit­i­cal flight con­trol soft­ware and sim­u­la­tions for Vahana, Airbus’s autonomous, full-scale eVTOL demon­stra­tor. Love­g­ren has also held key lead­er­ship and tech­ni­cal roles at Air­ware, the enter­prise unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle com­pa­ny, Boe­ing, and Lock­heed Mar­tin.

Pri­or to join­ing Wisk, Tan­don was Direc­tor of the Chief Engi­neer­ing Office at L3Harris for its com­mer­cial avion­ics divi­sion, dri­ving robust designs for sur­veil­lance prod­ucts and striv­ing for engi­neer­ing excel­lence across the organ­i­sa­tion.

She brings more than 25 years of expe­ri­ence, with a sig­nif­i­cant part in the aero­space indus­try at avi­a­tion com­pa­nies includ­ing Unit­ed Tech­nolo­gies and Hamil­ton Sund­strand. She has helped cer­ti­fy many safe­ty crit­i­cal prod­ucts on major plat­forms, such as Bom­bardier CSeries and Embraer KC-390, meet­ing DO-178 guide­lines. Pri­or to join­ing the aero­space indus­try, she held mul­ti­ple embed­ded soft­ware roles in the trans­porta­tion and tele­com sec­tors.

Com­ment­ing on his role, Love­g­ren said: “I tru­ly believe that advances in autonomous tech­nolo­gies will make avi­a­tion safer and more effi­cient but it has to be done right. Wisk is one of the only UAM com­pa­nies with a self-fly­ing first approach and has been lead­ing the indus­try in auton­o­my since 2010.

“I’m excit­ed to be join­ing a com­pa­ny mov­ing auton­o­my beyond its lim­it­ed use cas­es in avi­a­tion today, and to lead Wisk’s effort to cer­ti­fy a sys­tem smart and safe enough to fly pas­sen­gers in our air­space sys­tem.”

Tan­don added: “I am very excit­ed to join Wisk and their amaz­ing team of engi­neers, as we embark on a jour­ney to make Urban Air Mobil­i­ty acces­si­ble to every­one! All-elec­tric, self-fly­ing air­craft are the future,” said Tan­don. “Through­out its decade-long his­to­ry, Wisk has demon­strat­ed the inno­va­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty required for suc­cess in this indus­try and I look for­ward to being part of this epic jour­ney.”