Dr. James (Jim) Heidmann
Deputy Director, Advanced Air Vehicles Program
Jim Heidmann is the deputy director for the Advanced Air Vehicles Program (formerly Fundamental Aeronautics Program) under the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Heidmann is responsible for the overall planning, management, and oversight of the directorate’s efforts to develop innovative concepts, technologies, and capabilities to enable revolutionary advances for a wide range of air vehicles. He supports the mission directorate and the ARMD associate administrator in a broad range of activities, including strategic and program planning, budget development, program review and evaluation, and external coordination and outreach.
The Advanced Air Vehicles Program focuses on achieving major leaps in the performance of subsonic fixed and vertical lift aircraft to meet challenging and growing long-term civil aviation needs; on pioneering low-boom supersonic flight to achieve new levels of global mobility; and on sustaining hypersonic competency for national needs while advancing fundamental hypersonics research.
Heidmann most recently served as Manager of NASA’s Advanced Air Transport Technology Project. In this capacity, he led NASA’s technology development for subsonic transport aircraft. Prior to this role, he served as Acting Deputy Director of NASA’s Advanced Air Vehicles Program, managed NASA’s Transformational Tools & Technologies project, and also served as Chief of the Turbomachinery and Heat Transfer Branch.
In addition to these management roles, Jim spent 20 years as an Aerospace Research Engineer, publishing more than 20 papers and journal articles in the area of turbomachinery aerodynamics and heat transfer. He was elected Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2007, Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2015 and received the Outstanding Mechanical Engineer award from Purdue University School of Mechanical Engineering in 2017. Jim received a bachelor’s of science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Toledo in 1986, a master’s of science degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University in 1988, and a doctorate in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Case Western Reserve University in 1997.