Neal Blue

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
General Atomics

The Athenaeum, California Institute of Technology
Monday, 6 p.m., October 17, 2013

2013 PROGRAM

Hosted Reception 6:00 p.m.
Banquet 7:00 p.m.

Eugene L. Tattini
Lieutenant General, Retired, United States Air Force
Deputy Director, Retired, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Ares J. Rosakis
Otis Booth Leadership Chair, Division of Engineering and Applied Science; Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering

Speakers

Dr. George A. Keyworth
former Science Advisor to President Reagan and head of the Strategic Defense Initiative

Linden P. Blue
President, Reconnaissance Systems Group, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems

Anya Blue
Program Director, Reconnaissance Systems Group, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems
&
Nadya Blue-Scheder
Program Director, General Atomics

Presentation of the
International von Kármán Wings Award to
Neal Blue

Awards will be presented by
G. Ravichandran
Chair, Aerospace Historical Society
John E. Goode, Jr., Professor of Aerospace and Professor of Mechanical Engineering; Director, Graduate Aerospace Laboratories

BIOGRAPHY

Neal Blue

A leading entrepreneur, strategist and innovator, Neal Blue is Chairman and CEO of San Diego-based General Atomics (GA), which his family acquired from Chevron Corporation in 1986. GA is a high-technology company, created by General Dynamics in 1955 to develop peaceful uses of atomic energy, whose later owners included Gulf Oil, Royal Dutch-Shell, and Chevron.

GA’s affiliated companies include GA Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) of which Mr. Blue is founder and CEO. GA-ASI’s Aircraft Systems Group produces the internationally known Predator® series of
remotely piloted aircraft used in the Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. GA-ASI’s Reconnaissance Systems Group provides tactical reconnaissance radars as well as high-resolution surveillance systems for both manned and unmanned aircraft.

GA supplies the U.S. Navy with electromagnetic aircraft carrier launch and recovery systems, as well as electromagnetic rail gun and power conversion systems. GA is the principal private sector participant in thermonuclear fusion research through its DIII-D program operated for the U.S. Department of Energy. GA is also the industrial pioneer of the GT-MHR and EM2 helium-cooled nuclear reactor technologies for electric power production.

Other GA affiliates include the GA Uranium Resources Group; Heathgate Resources (South Australia); the GA-Honeywell uranium conversion partnership; medical diagnostics unit; and Spezialtechnik Dresden GmbH with subsidiaries in the German States of Saxony and Brandenburg. Under Mr. Blue, the GA group has grown to over 8000 employees.

He is also co-founder and chairman of Denver-based Cordillera Corporation, a private company with investments in real estate, agriculture, natural gas distribution, and oil and gas production. His other activities have included development of a cocoa and banana plantation in Nicaragua.

He graduated from Yale University, is a pilot, and served in the U.S. Air Force. During college years, he was a correspondent for the Yale Daily News/New York Times Paris-Calcutta Expedition, and later with his brother, Linden Blue, was featured in a Life Magazinecover story for having flown a single-engine Piper aircraft over the Andes and around
South America.