Dr Peter Thomas is head of the aerospace group and principal lecturer in aerospace engineering in the School of Physics, Engineering, and Computer Science. He is also a member of the Centre for Engineering Research. He lectures in the areas of flight mechanics, stability and control systems, aeroelasticity, and aerodynamics. He has significant experience in experimental testing; the implementation, modelling, and simulation of flight control and autonomous systems; as well as a decade worth of programming experience, including MATLAB/Simulink. His main research interests are in flight dynamics, autonomous and automatic flight control systems, and biomimetic flight.

After completing his MEng (Warw) in mechanical engineering and PhD (Cran) in aerospace engineering Peter worked at the Department of Aerospace Engineering in the University of Bristol, working with Cobham Mission Equipment on the ASTRAEA programme for autonomous air-to-air refuelling of unmanned aerial vehicles. He then worked at the Engineering Design Centre in the University of Cambridge, with industrial partners on developing evolutionary human-machine interfaces (HMI) for aerospace applications. He also worked on a number of other internal and industrial collaborations including experimental flight testing, bio-inspired flight control, and the implementation of technology-focused methods for engineering education.