Speaker Profile

David Calley is a premier designer of advanced electric motors, wind turbines and innovative electric vehicles. After studying physics, mathematics and sculpture at Northern Arizona University, he developed 3 clean-sheet wind turbines at Southwest Windpower, where he was Founder and CEO. He later worked with NREL and DOE to develop the SkyStream, a highly efficient appliance wind turbine with integrated utility grid connected inverter. Concurrently, he used wind tunnel and CFD study to develop a very successful drag reducing device for the commercial trucking industry, which he licensed to ATDynamics and which is currently selling about $20M/year. In 2009 he became Founder and CTO for Motor Excellence where he advanced the torque and efficiency of small electric motor design. In 2011, he became Founder and CEO of Planet Rider LLC to develop an innovative streamlined vehicle to demonstrate, test and tune unique dynamics of hyper maneuverability in a health-enhancing, interactive commuting vehicle. In 2014 he became a Research Scientist at MIT applying his tech innovations to prosthetic limb drives. At present, he is continuing the development of new motor technologies using J-Mag, Ansys, Maxwell, SolidWorks, 3-D FDM printing and exotic materials testing while maturing the Planet Rider surface-commuting vehicle. He holds 55 patents and has received numerous awards.  These include the “Outstanding Research and  Development Partnership” award from DOE, the “Good Design Award” from MITI in Japan, and the “2009 Small Business Exporter of the Year” award from the USSBA. David’s interests extend to environmental issues, human powered transportation, aerodynamics, world citizenship, renewable energy, electric flight and the betterment of humanity.