CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories

Dr. Abhay Pashilkar is presently the Director of the CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories, Bengaluru. His areas of research are flight dynamic modeling, simulation, control and human factors. He has guided seven PhD’s and one MS Engineering candidate in these areas. He has over 50 publications in national and international journals and conferences. At CSIR-NAL Dr Pashilkar worked primarily at the Flight Mechanics & Control Division (FMCD). Up to 2015, he was part of the National Control Law Team (NCT) for the Light Combat Aircraft - Tejas. Before taking over as its Director, he held various leadership positions at NAL From 2005 onwards till 2022.  

Dr Pashilkar has degrees in Aerospace Engineering from IIT Kharagpur and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. He worked briefly as a Guest Scientist in 1998 at the Institute of Flight Mechanics, DLR, Braunschweig, Germany. Pashilkar was with the NTU, Singapore for his post-doctoral fellowship from 2003 till 2005.

Under his leadership, the laboratory has successfully completed type certification of the Hansa NG and flown the sub-scale HAPS for more than 130 hours. NAL has also been selected to play the role of a multi-stage integrator for the development of the drone eco-system in the country.