Wesley Vinson

Wesley Vinson has extensive work experience in the aerospace industry. In 2019, they began working at Hermeus as Director of Darkhorse Engineering, then Head of Darkhorse Engineering, and Lead Flight Sciences Engineer. As Lead Flight Sciences Engineer, they were responsible for configuration and sizing of reusable hypersonic aircraft, and owned all flight sciences analyses and systems-level trades that feed into vehicle design. Wesley also developed a vehicle-level multidisciplinary optimizer to rapidly analyze and iterate on vehicle sizing. From 2014 to 2019, they worked at Space Exploration Technologies as an Aerodynamics Engineer, preparing, meshing, running, and post-processing CFD models to produce aerodynamic databases, steady aerodynamic loads, and aerothermal loads. From 2012 to 2014, they worked at Boeing in various roles, including Loads and Dynamics Engineer - High Lift, Aerodynamics Performance Engineer - Sales Support, and Configuration Design Engineer - Product Development. From 2011 to 2012, they worked at Stanford University as a Research Assistant, performing multi-disciplinary optimization on commercial transport aircraft. In 2011, they were a Configuration Design Engineer Summer Intern at Boeing. From 2009 to 2011, they worked at Applied Research Laboratory as a Research Assistant, conducting water tunnel tests to determine the effectiveness of cavitating control surfaces for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, and creating reduced order fluid dynamic modeling code to rapidly design and loft turbomachine blades. In 2008, they were a Combustion Analysis Intern at DLR.

Wesley Vinson completed their Bachelor of Science (BS) in Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from Penn State University between 2006 and 2010. Wesley then went on to pursue a Master of Science (MS) in Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from Stanford University between 2010 and 2012.