CHARLES VIDAL

STUDENT COMPETITION COMMITTEE CHAIR

Charles Vidal emerged as a leader in the unmanned systems sector in 2004 when he founded the successful UAS group VAMUdeS at University of Sherbrooke. Today, Charles plays a significant leadership role in the sector by spearheading multiple research initiatives in the UAS sector at National Research Council Canada (NRC), where he is currently the Program Leader (interim), for the Integrated Aerial Mobility (IAM) Program. Charles also has significant engineering experience in leading multi-disciplinary teams creating next generation Unmanned Aircraft Systems. Early in his career, Charles was a highly regarded as the Boeing/Insitu ScanEagle UAS site lead, operator, and maintainer in Afghanistan. 

As a volunteer, for the past 12 years, Charles has chaired of the Unmanned Systems Canada (USC) Student UAS Competition committee, maturing it into a world class, highly competitive, highly valued annual event. Few have the breadth of knowledge and experience gained from high intensity military UAS operations to complex commercial service offering, including collaborating with multiple governments, and performing leading edge UAS research and product development. 

You can reach Charles at [email protected]