I am a Guidance, Navigation & Control (GNC) Engineer-PhD at HyLight (YC S23), where we build the HyLighter: an hydrogen-powered airship drone that flies long distances with zero emissions to capture precise data over critical infrastructure. Our mission is to replace the helicopters that still inspect hundreds of thousands of kilometres of power lines, pipelines, and railways every year.

In this role I apply the estimation and control algorithms, embedded systems expertise, physics background, problem-solving mindset, and research experience developed throughout my studies and PhD while expanding my knowledge in aerodynamics. These responsibilities build on my work in Kalman Filtering, Sensor Fusion, Navigation, Estimation, and Cyber-Physical Security.

Education

• Ph.D. in Automatic Control, Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France, Oct 2022 - Sept 2025.
• M.Sc. Mobile, Autonomous and Robotic Systems, Grenoble-INP, Grenoble, France, Sept 2021 - Aug 2022.
• B.Sc. Electronic Systems Engineering, Higher Institute for Applied Sciences and Technology, Damascus, Syria, Oct 2013 - Aug 2018.

Short Bio

• (10-2022 to 09- 2025) PhD student at GIPSA-LAB, University of Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France. The PhD with title “Contributions to Navigation Under Unknown Input and Cyber-Physical Security”, supervised by Hassen FOURATI, Alain KIBANGOU, and Christophe PRIEUR. Teaching assistant for Masters M1 and M2, at Grenoble-INP, ENSE3, and Université Grenoble Alpes, Phitem.

• (07-2024 to 10-2024) Visiting PhD at the University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada, working on a project titled “Enhancing the Security and Reliability of Navigation Systems”.

• (02-2022 to 08-2022) M.Sc. Intern at GIPSA-LAB, University of Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France. The internship with title: Q-Learning-Based Noise Covariance Adaptation in Kalman Filter For Velocity Estimation.

• (09-2021 to 09-2022) M.Sc. Mobile, Autonomous and Robotic Systems (MARS), at Grenoble-INP, ENSE3, Grenoble, France.

• (01-2019 to 09-2021) Assistant teacher for undergraduate engineering students at Higher Institute for Applied Sciences and Technology & Member of the scientific committee at Distinction and Creativity Agency, Damascus, Syria.

• (09-2013 to 10-2018) B.Sc. Electronic Systems Engineering at Higher Institute for Applied Sciences and Technology, Damascus, Syria.

• Qualified 3 times to the Africa and Arab Collegiate Programming Championship (ACPC) as a contestant in Egypt (2016, 2017, 2018).

• Qualified 3 times to the International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) as a contestant (Thailand-2011, Estonia-2012, Denmark-2013).

Skills

• Programming Languages: Python, MATLAB, C++, C.
• Development Tools: Git, Simulink, Visual Studio Code, LaTeX.
• Embedded Systems: Beaglebone, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, AVR.
• Control and Estimation: MPC, Optimal Control, Kalman Filtering (KF, EKF, UKF, IEKF), State Estimation, Linear/Non-Linear Observers.
• Sensor Fusion: IMU, GPS, Magnetometer, Visual-Inertial Odometry (VIO) algorithms.
• Optimization and Solvers: CVXPY, CasADi, YALMIP, Quadratic programming (QP).
• Reinforcement Learning and Machine Learning: Q-Learning, Bi-LSTM.
• Research Communication: Literature review, academic and technical documentation, scientific presentations.