Summary
Mark Genung serves as the Nevada Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Test Manager for UNR / Nevada Autonomous. A thirty-year veteran, Mark served as an officer in the US Navy retiring as a Navy Captain in 2013. His subspecialty was nuclear naval propulsion, and he commanded two warships. In his naval career, he employed unmanned aviation, and surface and subsurface vehicles in a variety of maritime missions.
In 2012, Mark co-founded Hazon Solutions which operated small UAS (sUAS) to conduct precision infrastructure inspections for Fortune 500 Companies. As the Chief Engineer and Chief Pilot, Mark developed the tactics, techniques and procedures to conduct land and waterborne-based sUAS inspection operations in austere environments.
Mark moved to Reno, NV in 2016, and joined Flirtey, an sUAS delivery company as the Field Operations Manager. In this role, he refined drone delivery operations and gained the regulatory approval from US and New Zealand regulatory authorities to conduct scaled delivery operations.
Since 2018, Mark has been the Vice President of Operations for Iris Automation. Iris designs, tests, builds and sells the world’s first commercial machine vision-based sUAS Detect and Alert technology. This is a key enabler technology to allow UAS to fly beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) of drone ground crews. In this role, he is responsible for the safe and efficient flight testing of the Iris Casia DAA system.
Research Interests
- UAS Employment and operations
Education
M.S., Systems Engineering, Naval Postgraduate School
B.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin
Professional certifications
FAA Certified Private Pilot
FAA Certified Remote Pilot
Association for Uncrewed Vehicles Society International (AUVSI)
Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA)
Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA)