Kevin Kochersberger spent a part of April in the western Africa country of Benin. The Virginia Tech professor and 1981 SUNY Jamestown Community College graduate was there in hopes of expanding the African Drone and Data Academy he helped create.
“It's been operational since 2020,” Kochersberger said of the UNICEF-funded program that started in Malawi in southeastern Africa. “We’ve graduated about 2,000 students, and our plan is to expand to other countries in Africa.”
Kochersberger is an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Unmanned Systems Lab at Virginia Tech, which partnered with Malawi University of Science and Technology to develop a curriculum that helps young Africans learn how to construct and pilot drones. Graduates of the program are prepared to take on projects like delivering medical supplies, collecting aerial footage to identify mosquito breeding sites and help combat malaria, identifying flood-prone areas, and other important work.
Besides Benin, Kochersberger said the African Drone and Data Academy is aiming to expand into Ethiopia. Students in the program have represented at least 20 African countries.
“We’ve kind of become the African drone experts,” he said.
director of the Unmanned Systems Lab at Virginia Tech.
The relationship with Malawi University began in 2017, when Kochersberger and his Virginia Tech students designed and built a low-cost drone for imaging and medical supply delivery called EcoSoar. The $350 EcoSoar cost a fraction of that of a typical remote sensing and delivery drone, making it a sustainable aircraft design for Malawi and other African countries.
Kochersberger continues to work with graduate students and professionals to develop designs for uncrewed aircraft applications.
"We look at autonomy in the use for surveillance, for agricultural productivity, for disaster risk management, disaster response, a lot of drone applications that kind of expand over a large area of work," he said.
An aviation enthusiast from an early age, Kochersberger built a hang glider while attending Cassadaga Valley Central School in the 1970s. He was the pilot of the reproduction Kitty Hawk Flyer during the centennial celebration of the Wright Brothers’ flight in December 2003.
Kochersberger earned a bachelor’s and master’s degrees, plus a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech. He was a recipient of JCC’s Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2004 and keynote speaker at commencement that year.
A former engineer for McDonnell Douglas Corp. and the IBM Federal Systems Division, Kochersberger has taught at Virginia Tech since 2006. Before that, he was an associate professor at Rochester Institute of Technology for six years.
The strong relationships Kochersberger had with professors at JCC, including Dan Courtine, Rick Ruprecht, Vince Leonard, and Chuck Rondeau, led him to teaching.
Kochersberger admired JCC faculty “for their love of teaching and communicating their knowledge to students in a learning environment.”
“I really respected that, and it definitely stuck with me,” he added. “I'm like, this is a great model. I mean, I really like the rapport that the faculty had with the students, and for me, that was wonderful to see that relationship.”
Kochersberger, whose father Robert was a longtime JCC professor, said he ended up at JCC by default after graduating third in his class at Cassadaga Valley in 1979.
“I was taking classes at JCC as a senior, which was great," Kochersberger said. “In the back of my mind, I was just thinking, well, this is the natural progression of where I'm going. ... Obviously, it was free at the time, and I think it still is for top graduates in their high school classes. And my experience with taking classes as a senior told me that this is a really great place to learn.”