Dr. Elston is the CEO and co-founder of Black Swift Technologies (BST). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado Boulder based on work that developed a complex meshed network, uncrewed aircraft system (UAS), and control algorithms for in situ sampling of severe convective storms. His team was the first to intercept a tornadic supercell thunderstorm with a UAS, flying over 72 different missions, with ground speeds of over 100 mph, and never losing an aircraft. He's continued his work at BST in extreme environments, having visited all seven continents and has flown aircraft in the arctic, on the side of volcanoes, and over wildland fires. Most recently he's flown with the NOAA hurricane hunters into the eye of a storm to release and pilot an all weather tube launched UAS developed by BST. Dr. Elston is involved with several cutting edge UAS projects including machine vision for low altitude flights and GPS denied environments, and even a NASA project to design a glider to explore the upper atmosphere of Venus.