Wade May

Contact: wade.r.may@nasa.gov

Wade grew up in Tennessee and received his Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering Science and Mechanics from Lipscomb University. He continued his education and received a Master’s Degree in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech. After a stint teaching high school math and physics, he moved to Virginia for his first engineering job at Dynamic Engineering, Inc. A few years later, he moved to Advanced Technologies, Inc. and continued working on wind tunnel models, unmanned aerial vehicles, full-scale display and test models of aircraft, helicopter rotor and tail blades, and other test hardware where he ultimately became the engineering manager. In 2006, he worked for a production company in Huntsville, Alabama manufacturing spare airplane parts for commercial airlines.

Returning to Virginia in 2007, Wade started at NASA Langley Research Center as an on-site contractor and converted to civil service in 2008 within the Mechanical Systems Branch. He has served in various roles across multiple projects including L-EX mechanical design lead, CHRONOS proposal lead systems engineer, Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III

(SAGE III) integration and test lead, SAGE III instrument payload manager, NASA Headquarters detailee, Sensor Test for Orion Relative Navigation Risk Mitigation (STORRM) chief engineer, and a Space Technology Mission Directorate Game Changing Development program element manager. In 2018, he served as the assistant branch head for the Mechanical Systems Branch. In 2019, he became the branch head for the Systems Integration and Test Branch. He is now returning to the GCD Program Element Manager position in fiscal year 2021.