All students in the spring and summer 2017 cohort passed the FAA Remote sUAS Pilot exam. Congratulations to our twenty-two new commercial sUAS pilots! Several pilots were freelancing as aerial camera operators for real estate and commercial/industrial inspection companies before the semester ended.
Joe Murray is an instrument-rated private pilot, SEL, SES, Complex, Tailwheel, Remote sUAS.
Murray was trained as an educational psychologist and is a former director, editor and writer for PBS television. He has worked in Europe and the Middle East, Cuba, Antarctica and South Africa. He is published widely in scholarly journals, national magazines and websites and recently authored a chapter in Contemporary Research Methods and Data Analytics in the News Industry ( iGI Global, 2015).
In 2010, Murray's efforts to reduce college textbook costs were recognized with a resolution by the 128th Ohio General Assembly and a Faculty Innovator Award from the Ohio Board of Regents. He was honored by the state legislature again in 2012 for his historic, record-setting flight to all of Ohio's 88 counties in an antique airplane. The flight, joined by circumnavigator, Dr. Ron Siwik, covered nearly 42,000 square miles in 36 hours. Murray chronicled the "first, longest, slowest, most peculiar flight to Wright Brothers Airport ever made," in his book, Lost in Oscar Hotel (Mirabilis/Ingram, 2014).
Dr. Murray's research and development on sUAS is supported in part, by a generous award from the Kent State University Foundation. He is an Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and a contributing faculty member in the School of Digital Sciences at Kent State University.
