Dr. Nanda Ramanujam has been a technology and strategy executive in the Aerospace & Defense sector for over 15 years, focusing on innovation and technology strategy at both large companies and startups. He is currently Managing Director of Strategic Initiatives and AI Operations at HII Mission Technologies, reporting directly to the Corporate CTO. He leads several strategic campaigns spanning: AI, Digital Twins, Contested Logistics, Operational Readiness, Space ISR, PAI exploitation, and Acoustics. Nanda is also responsible for cross-divisional collaborations with HII’s Newport News and Ingalls shipyards, in support of strategic initiatives such as: shipyard digital transformation, improved delivery of carrier complex overhaul, submarine industrial base resilience, and the next generation attack submarine program. In addition, Nanda manages some of the company’s most significant strategic partnerships and corporate investments in breakthrough emerging technologies to create transformative capability for HII and its customers. Nanda has been invited to deliver several key capability briefings on topics like Contested Logistics and Fleet Readiness to leadership across DOD. He also served as consultant to an Air Force Studies Board project at the National Academy of Sciences, led by retired 4-star General Lester Lyles (USAF), on Experimentation Campaigns in the US Air Force. Nanda’s professional experience spans multiple industries, from Defense and Strategy Consulting to Healthcare, Venture Capital, and Telecom, at both multinational corporations and venture capital- backed startups. Prior to HII, Nanda was VP and CTO at the Defense Solutions division of DRS Technologies (Leonardo DRS) and was on the board of an acoustics joint-venture between DRS and Thales. Earlier in his career, Nanda was founder and CEO at an Angel-backed Medical Devices startup commercializing non-invasive optical sensors for management of stroke and peripheral artery disease, and prior to that, he led the development of breakthrough undersea Fiber Optic Telecom products at Tyco (AT&T Bell Laboratories spin-off) and two successful VC-backed startups. Notably, his contributions to Error Correction Codes and Raman fiber amplifiers in undersea fiber-optic systems set industry firsts and records for transmission distance and quadrupled transmission capacity. Nanda has been an invited speaker at several conferences, such as the Lasers & Electro-Optic Society meeting, and at the Bell Labs Technical Seminar series. He has several patents, publications, and book chapters to his credit. Nanda has an S.B. from MIT in electrical engineering, MS/PhD in Optical Sciences from the University of Arizona, graduate research fellowship from NIST’s Advanced Technologies Program, post-doctoral research fellowship at MIT’s Research Laboratory for Electronics, and MBA in Strategy and Finance from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Nanda received the highest graduate student award (D.J. Lovell) from the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) for his work in photonics, as well as the Sol Snider award for entrepreneurship and Mack Center Ford Fellowship for research in the management of emerging technologies at Wharton.