Professor Ella Atkins is the Fred D. Durham Chair of the Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She is a foremost authority on autonomous aerospace systems with research contributions to both aeronautical and space domains. She serves as the editor-in-chief of the AIAA Journal of Aerospace Information Systems. Before joining Virginia Tech, Dr. Atkins was a professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan, where she also served as the Director of the Autonomous Aerospace Systems Laboratory, as well as the Associate Director of the University of Michigan Robotics Institute. She began her academic career as an assistant professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Atkins holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT. She earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. Dr. Atkins is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. In 2022, she received the AIAA Intelligent Systems Award.