Education — Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Master of Science in Unmanned Systems

Embry-Riddle’s Unmanned Systems program is one of the few graduate degrees that takes the full systems-engineering view of autonomous platforms — flight dynamics, sensor fusion, mission planning, regulatory frameworks, the integration layer between human operators and autonomous agents.

The relevance to current AI work is direct. Manufacturing AI is fundamentally a human-autonomy teaming problem: an operator and a model sharing a control loop. The vocabulary I learned in Unmanned Systems is the vocabulary I use every day at Tamko.

Bachelor of Science in Aeronautics

The foundation in aerodynamics, propulsion, avionics, and aviation operations. Completed during active military service.

Why I picked Embry-Riddle

It’s the school that takes aviation seriously as a discipline rather than as a hobby. The faculty has either flown the platforms they teach about or built them. The standard maps directly onto how I think about applied AI now: take the discipline seriously, learn from the people who’ve actually shipped, and don’t accept “good enough” as a final answer.