Professor John Economou CEng IET FHEA is a Professor of Defence Robotics and Autonomous Systems and is the Deputy Head Centre for Defence Engineering at Cranfield Defence and Security and Head of the Vehicles and Mechatronics Group. He is also the Campaign lead for Robotics and Autonomous Systems and Human Machine Teaming (RAS-HMT) and the International Cranfield Defence and Security representative for the University’s International Committee. John has authored/co-authored over 98 publications including book chapters, peer-reviewed Journals, refereed conference papers, and abstract refereed papers in the area of Control Systems for land and aerial platforms.

He has successfully chaired, supervised to completion of many PhD research students and MSc students and has been appointed as the External Examiner of PhD thesis at other UK Universities and Overseas and the Internal PhD Examiner within the University in different Departments/Schools. At the University level, he has directly contributed to the REF 2021 process, both reviewing papers and impact case studies in support of the REF Operational Group. Cranfield achieved an 88% of research rated world-leading (4*) or internationally excellent (3*) and was ranked 7th in the UK for Engineering research power. He is also an active reviewer the next REF University submission. He was the Course Director of the Military Aerospace and Airworthiness MSc for the University and is currently Course Director of the Aerosystems MSc, both courses developed for the UK Ministry of Defence. He has been leading the process for the development of the latter course for the University. John has led and supported work for sponsors such as UK MOD, BAE Systems, HQ Air Command, Allen Vanguard Ltd, EPSRC, Mexican National Research Council for Science and Technology, and Igence Radar Ltd and USA DoD organisations delivering courses in the area of Control and autonomous systems. As an example of consultancy work, John has worked on land vehicle platform stabilisation using decision-making methods in a product intended to be used as a full-scale concept demonstrator prior to commercialisation using embedded control design. Currently, he supervises amongst several students a Research PhD work in relation to inertial measurements. Furthermore, John is placed at the Defence Academy of the UK which offers a thriving environment thus keeping our UK military personnel informed and educated with the latest technical and leading developments in the field.