Advanced Navigation Appoints Pawel Michalak as Cto to Accelerate Autonomy
In a strategic leadership move, the company has named researcher‑engineer Pawel Michalak as its new technology chief to steer the next stage of its technology roadmap at Advanced Navigation, with a mandate centered on autonomy.
Given mounting pressure on location methods amid hostile weather, jamming, and the demands of abyssal and orbital operations, sole dependence on GPS or other GNSS constellations is buckling across defense and commercial use.
Under his remit, the organization will pivot toward a stack for position, navigation and timing designed for resilience, ensuring guidance even when any single feed becomes unavailable. To make that shift real, European hiring will scale engineering capacity and unlock fresh navigation technology for hostile theaters.
Pawel Michalak Appointed Chief Technology Officer
From the vantage point of CEO Chris Shaw, once it was acceptable to trust only satellites, yet modern navigation systems must assume irregular signals as routine and build autonomy accordingly with AI in the loop.
He emphasized that new architectures and unconventional thinking are required so research can become production-grade breakthroughs at speed.
AI and GPS-Resilient Architectures for Autonomous Systems
To move this vision from lab to line, Michalak will champion an inertial‑first framework that fuses cues from inertial navigation, advanced photonic techniques, and robotics to create a neural‑like layer for self-directed platforms across sea, land, air, and space.
Complementary sources will include quantum sensing modalities, underwater acoustics, and specialized receivers and antennas.
As he notes, true robustness for timing and guidance emerges by blending raw measurements from diverse sensors—ranging from inertial and vision to laser and quantum—so PNT navigation and timing no longer hinge on any single channel.
