Dr. Thomas Berger is the President of Karem Aircraft, an advanced aircraft design and prototyping company, focusing on efficient, safe, and quiet VTOL aircraft for commercial and military applications, based on the Optimum Speed Tiltrotor (OSTR) suite of technologies. Thomas also leads the development of integrated systems for all aircraft programs and was the program manager for the DARPA VTOL X-Plane and US Army FARA-CP and JMR-TD programs. Prior to joining the Karem team, he worked for L-3 Communications, Photonics as a Chief Engineer on development and production optics programs and directed all company IR&D. Thomas was involved in aircraft development while employed at Boeing, Concept Exploration / Frontier Systems. He was the electrical, software, and payload integration lead for the A160 unmanned helicopter program and the program manager for several DARPA and SOCOM programs. Thomas was a Principal Investigator and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Marine Physical Laboratory, Scripps Institution of Oceanography leading research in ocean acoustics and fluid dynamics. Thomas received a Ph.D. in Experimental & Theoretical Physics from the University of California at San Diego and has authored numerous scientific articles in fields including aircraft design, mathematical physics, fluid mechanics, acoustics, optics, ocean engineering, and astro-particle physics.
