Curt Kothera

Background

About Curt Kothera

Dr. Kothera is focused on developing emergency care devices. He is the Principal Investigator and technical lead for device solutions that address each of the top three leading causes of preventable battlefield death: traumatic hemorrhage, tension pneumothorax, and airway obstruction. He is integrally involved in all stages of development including conceptualization, design, prototyping, production readiness, and testing for safety, effectiveness, and usability. Other active areas of medical device development include endotracheal intubation and vascular access. Earlier in his professional career, Dr. Kothera served as Principal Investigator and Principal Specialist on several DoD and NASA funded efforts focused on pneumatic artificial muscles for on-blade active control of rotorcraft and robotic applications, as well as advanced composite systems for morphing wing technology and magneto-rheological lag dampers for rotorcraft. As a result of this work, he was awarded the 2010 AIAA National Capital Section – Hal Andrews, Young Scientist / Engineer of the Year Award and was a co-author on the 2012 ASME Best Paper Award in Structures and Structural Dynamics. Some of this legacy work continues. Dr. Kothera received his B.S.(Summa Cum Laude), M.S, and Ph.D. all in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. At Virginia Tech, Dr. Kothera was twice selected for the Space Scholars program from the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Space Vehicles Directorate, was a fellow of the Virginia Space Grant Consortium, a recipient of the Torgersen Graduate Student Research Excellence Award, and received Honorable Mention from the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship program. He has published over 30 journal papers, 4 book chapters, and over 40 conference papers and posters, and is a co-inventor of 18 issued patents. Dr. Kothera is an Associate Fellow of AIAA and member of ASME.