Dr. Gokhale has developed and managed technologies for the aerospace industry. Since 2001, he has been founder and president of Sextant Engineering Technologies, Inc., a small business focused on developing algorithms and software for the US Navy. One area of Sextant’s work has been inventing novel approaches to finding submerged mines and potentially submarines in littoral and deep-ocean environments using acoustic and electromagnetic (sonar/radar) sensor data. Another area of work has been in developing methods to enhance the performance of existing inertial navigation systems onboard US and UK Trident submarines. Prior to Michael’s work at Sextant, he was with The Boeing Company where he was the Integrated Product Team (IPT) Manager of the Precision Navigation Technologies, Mechanization, and Mission Evaluation team. In this capacity, his responsibilities included managing the mechanization and development, for the US Strategic Systems Programs (SSP), of an Interferrometric Fiber Optic Gyro (IFOG) inertial navigator. Michael came out to Southern California (Irvine) from a small town in N.J. close to NYC in 1987 to pursue a Ph.D. in physics. He received his masters and Ph.D. degrees in 1988 and 1993 in theoretical condensed matter physics from UC, Irvine. Later in 2000, he received his MBA with a focus in entrepreneurship, also from UC, Irvine. Prior to his graduate work, Michael received his B.A. and B.S. from Rutgers’ University with a double major in math and physics. He has taught at and mentored students from various colleges and universities, including UCI and UCSD. Most recently, he taught physics 7C during the 2011 summer session at UCI.