Staff Biographies | Full Biography
Director, Advanced Concepts Group
Brad St. Germain
Email: brad.stgermain@sei.aero
Phone: 1+770.379.8010
Dr. St. Germain has managed and supported a wide range of space systems and architecture design activities for SEI’s government and commercial clients. He has a strong background in aerospace systems design, with specific disciplinary expertise in space vehicle trajectory simulation, weight estimation and propulsion analysis.
Recent work at SEI has focused on the design of various lunar exploration architecture concepts for several different customers. This work involved the end-to-end simulation of lunar exploration architectures involving the sizing of Earth-to-Orbit vehicles, in-space stages, and the assessment of overall architecture costs and reliability. Other recent projects at SEI include the evaluation of a small payload class Earth-to-Orbit launch vehicle, investigation of a Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP) powered Pluto/Kuiper Belt exploration mission, and the development of both an in-space trajectory analysis tool and a parametric space vehicle weight estimation tool. Dr. St. Germain also leads many of the technology assessment activities conducted at SEI.
While at the Space Systems Design Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he developed an optimization technique for the performance and powerhead configuration of liquid rocket engines (Ph.D. Thesis), led various conceptual level launch vehicle and space systems design projects, and supported other research projects with propulsion/trajectory/weights & sizing analysis. Dr. St. Germain also has work experience obtained through positions at Pratt & Whitney Space Propulsion, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, and NASA Langley Research Center.
Dr. St. Germain holds Doctoral and Masters Degrees in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, along with a minor in Mathematics. He also holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Louisiana State University. Dr. St. Germain is a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the AIAA Space Transportation Technical Committee (STTC).
