David A. Sheffler is a senior research program of-ficer in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, University of Virginia School of Engi-neering and Applied Science. 

As a researcher and lecturer, he brings over 20 years of engineering work experience in jet engine and gas tur-bine design and development to his research projects and courses. His accomplishments include the design of many components of gas turbine engines including fans, compressors, combustor sections, turbines, bearing com-partments and engine external hardware. Dave has coor-dinated with airframe manufacturers on aircraft/engine 

integration and has served as technical lead engineer in the development of a small turbofan engine for the Very Light Jet (VLJ) aircraft market. 

In 1989 Dave started his career with United Technology- Pratt and Whitney (Jupiter, FL) working in the military 

jet engine division providing propulsion systems for state-of-the-art governmental weapon systems pro-grams. In 1997 he was recruited by Agilis Engineering Inc. (Palm Beach Gardens, FL) which specializes in prod-uct development for the gas turbine industry in both aer-ospace and ground based power generation systems. During his last 3 years at Agilis, Dave held the position of mechanical design discipline lead. 

In 2009, Dave left the industry sector and began teaching self-developed courses on jet engine design and manu-facturing at the UVA Engineering School where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering. The courses, based on his years of personal experience in the jet engine industry, incorporate a combination of lec-turing and hands-on learning opportunities to design and fabricate jet engine models in the engineering depart-ment’s Rapid Prototyping Lab using 3D printers. The courses are offered as technical electives to fourth year mechanical and aerospace engineering students and have been well received by both students and faculty. 

The efforts from these courses have gained notoriety and led to research contracts to design, build and fly various small autonomous unmanned aerial systems (UASs), of-ten called drones, that are uniquely designed to be pro-duced on 3D printers. Dave is currently executing an Army funded contract to design a system to incorporate vertical take-off and landing capability for delivery of mission specific payloads that will be the basis of a family of low cost UASs leveraging commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies. Publications of his work have ap-peared internationally with notable articles in WIRED, National Defense Magazine and Popular Mechanics Maga-zine among others.