About Us

Aleksey Matyushev

Co-Creator & Administrator

Aleksey's main focus in the openAE community is to facilitate the growth and quality of material at openAE.org, and to turn it into a central source of aerospace related infromation in the community.

Outside of openAE, Aleksey is currently a student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University at Daytona Beach, FL USA. He is currently finishing up his BA in Aerospace Engineering with a specialization in aeronautics and will be graduating in Spring of 2010. Aleksey has worked in the aerospace, simulation, and turbo-machinery industries during his studies at Embry-Riddle and has practical experience with aircraft design. His main interests in the aerospace industry include panel codes, CFD, sub-orbital vehicles, and lean systems engineering design approaches.

Aleksey is also the co-creator of AreaPhones, kideya, and joint partner at Lexegy LLC. | Resume | This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Brandon Smith

Co-Creator & Principle Developer

A bit about Me,

I am a Senior in Computer Engineering (CE) at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) in Daytona Beach, Florida. I will have my Bachelor in CE in Spring 2010 but I am going to stick around and get my Masters in either CE or SE (software engineering). I enjoy both the hardware and software aspects of computers and spend quite a bit of time in the labs here at ERAU. I am currently working at Raydon, along with Aleksey, as a Software Engineering Intern. I am also a team lead with Embry-Riddle's EcoCar Challenge project and pour quite a bit of time towards it and several other projects. Needless to say, I like to stay busy/productive.

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John Hopp

Core Team

John is a Senior at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University majoring in Aerospace Engineering concentrating in Propulsion. John's experience as an F-16 Crew Chief in the United States Air Force inspired him to further pursue his education. Some of his interests include aircraft sustainment, control systems, and aircraft structure design using computer-aided design technologies. His military experience coupled with his internship experience, as a propulsion engineer with Continental Airlines makes him an irreplaceable asset to the openAE Team.

John can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it | Resume

Wail Yahia

Principle Administrator

I am a recent graduate with a masters in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Liverpool at United Kingdom. My masters focus was on key simulation techniques in aerospace engineering including: Computational Fluid Dynamics, Computer-Aided Design, Aerodynamics, Flight Simulation, and Reduction and Analysis of Data. I am a member of Royal Aeronautical Society (RAes UK). My interest lies in simulation, programming and I enjoy graphic design.

Wail can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it | Resume

Kevin Russell

Core Team

I’m a graduate student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University working towards my degree in aerospace engineering. I’m interested in the design aspects of engineering, and am looking for a job where these interests can be rewarded. I’ve currently been working extensively on modifying a Stemme S10-VT to meet NASA/CAFE foundation competition requirements of extreme efficiency (The Green Flight Challenge); I’m pretty well invested in this project and want to see it go as far as it possibly can. As my interests in the industry include very fast aerospace vehicles, in the near future I’ve planned to start investigating magnetic cooling systems for a hypersonic aircraft as a thesis topic.

I can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it | Resume