Dr, Hagop Panossian is a Technical Fellow at Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, a Division of United Technologies, and specializes in control systems, structures and vibration suppression, as well as Health Management and Diagnostics of engine systems. He has over 30 years of experience in control & modeling of rocket engines, large space structures and actuation systems, failure detection, stochastic systems, vibration damping and optimal and adaptive control and has two patents. Dr. Panossian was selected as a Fulbright Exchange Scientist in 1987 and spent one semester in the former Soviet union, specifically Armenia. He is an adjunct professor at California State University in Northridge, in the Mechanical Engineering Department.

Dr. Panossian has published more than 75 articles in the fields of control systems, modeling and control of dynamic systems, vibration supression, and failure detection in numerous technical journals and conference proceedings. He is also the co-author of two books published by Academic Press. He is the inventor of “Non-Obstructive Particle Damping” (NOPD), a novel passive vibration damping technique, as well as several failure detection techniques and has received two patents. He has designed the control system for the SRS 2200, the Aerospike engine, the most advanced rocket engine ever built and tested, and has worked on the Space Shuttle Main Engine, the National Aerospace Plane, the International Space Station and in other NASA and Air Force programs.

He is the recipient of the prestigious Engineer of the Year, as well as the President's awards from Rocketdyne. He has also earned the Distinguished Engineer Award from the Institute for the Advancement of Engineering (IAE).

Dr. Panossian is a Fellow of the IAE, an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronatics and a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He has founded two professional and charitable organizations in Los Angeles, the Armenian Engineers & Scientists of America (1983) and the ARPA Institute (1992). He has served as president of the former for two years and serves as president of the latter since its founding.

As president of AESA in 1987-88, he has travelled to Armenia and has established the initial communication and cooperation with the Academy of Sciences of Armenia, through his meetings with the former president of the Academy of Sciences of Armenia and great astrophysicist, academician Victor Ambartsoumian. As president of ARPA he has worked extensively with the Government of Armenia, as a member of the Economic & Industrial Advisory Board, as well as with various Ministries of the republic of Armenia. He continues to work with the current Government of Armenia through various Ministries, the universities and the academy of sciences. Through ARPA, he has had first hand contributions towards the modernization of the blood services system of Armenia and the eduction of the youth about the health risks of smoking, substance abuse and other problematic health issues; ARPA organizes the annual “Invention Competition” for university students in Armenia as well as monthly lectures on various topics of interest to Armenians and Armenia, in Los Angeles. He also helps organize conferences and seminars directed towards the enhancement of environmental and scientific achievements in the RA.

Dr. Panossian is a graduate of the Armenian Evangelical School of Anjar, Lebanon, has received his B.S. in Mathematics from the American University of Beirut, his M.S. in applied mathematics from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, and his Ph.D. from the University of California in Los Angeles in Control Systems Engineering. He has taught math and sciences for 5 years in the C. Gulbenkian College in Anjar.

He and his wife Ani Panossian have two sons, Armen and Baruir, and a daughter, Lorig.