The AML Team

Dr. Inna Sharf is currently a full professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. She received her B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science, specializing in Aerospace option, from the University of Toronto. She completed her PhD at the Institute for Aerospace Studies, University of Toronto and in January 1991, joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Victoria (UVic) as an Assistant Professor and holder of the NSERC’s Women’s Faculty Award. Sharf’s research activities at that time were focused on the dynamics and modeling of space manipulators, such as Canadarm. In the ten years at UVic, she collaborated with several industries, most notably, with MDA (former Spar Aerospace).

In 2001, Sharf relocated to McGill where she took up a position as Associate Professor. At McGill, Sharf started the construction of a facility for studying robotic grasping of satellites and debris in space, which later grew into the Aerospace Mechatronics laboratory. Since its inception in 2003, the research in the lab expanded to include problems in control, motion planning and state estimation for unmanned aerial vehicles.

Sharf is presently participating in the NSERC Canadian Field Robotics Network, as a principal investigator in the group of 11 co-applicants from 8 Canadian Universities. Her contribution to this five-year initiative is to further develop autonomy for small rotary UAVs. Sharf has published over 100 conference and journal papers on her academic research. She teaches courses in the areas of mechanics, system dynamics, controls and robotics. She is an associate fellow of AIAA and a member of IEEE and ASME.

Dr. Meyer Nahon received a B.A.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Queen's University in Kingston, an M.A.Sc. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from McGill University. He was an Assistant and Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Victoria from 1991 to 2001, following which, he was Associate Professor, and now Professor and chair of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University.

His research has spanned a range of topics, including flight simulation, redundantly-actuated robots, underwater vehicles, cable-actuated systems, lighter-than-air vehicles (airships and aerostats), offshore platforms and autonomous aerial vehicles. Most recently, he has worked on various aspects of dynamics and control of aerial and marine vehicles and systems, with a particular emphasis on tethered systems.

He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, and an Associate Fellow of the AIAA and Fellow of the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute (CASI). He has received a number of awards from the AIAA and CASI for his work on flight simulator motion systems, space-based robotics and thruster modeling.