Ryan Perroy, Ph.D.
Ryan has decades of experience in utilizing remote sensing techniques to support natural resources and improve livelihoods. He holds a undergraduate degree in physics, and advanced degrees in geography and remote sensing. He has been paramount in advancing the use of drones and associated novel methods to protect Hawaiʻi’s native landscapes. This includes leading multiple research projects and efforts to support forest and watershed health, better understand and estimate eruption trajectories and dynamics, measure erosion effects and mitigation efforts, develop automated detection systems for invasive species using remotely sensed imagery, and bolster biocontrol release and examination efforts, via drone technology.
Roberto Rodriguez III, Ph.D.
Raised on a farm in Vieques, Roberto is a preeminent expert in designing, developing, researching and utilizing drone application technologies. He holds a degrees in engineering, agricultural, and aeronautical sciences from the University of Hawaiʻi, and has published multiple scientific research articles and white-papers examining the capacity for drones to detect for and control invasive species in both the conservation and agricultural fields. He pioneered, managed, and enacted drone application operations for the USDA’s APHIS-PPQ programs, and has developed game-changing advancements in invasive species control technologies, including herbicide ballistics, AI detection models, and biocontrol release efforts.
The Aloha ʻĀina Drone Company
Aloha ʻĀina Drones believes cutting edge drone technology can, and more importantly should, empower, protect, and benefit Hawaiʻi’s greatest treasure, its priceless natural resources.
To honor this belief, and the principal and promise of Aloha ʻĀina, we chose this name to remind, guide, and inspire ourselves to prove that advanced technologies should exist to not only better humanity, but all natural systems.
Comprised of three world-experts with over 30 combined years of experience in using drones for conservation efforts, our team have dedicated their professional lives to making the world a better place through transforming cutting-edge technologies into practical, field-ready tools capable of significant conservation impact.
We have conducted ground-breaking conservation and agricultural focused drone operations on all major Hawaiian islands, as well as systems in the Galapagos, Caribbean, Tahiti, Fiji, Marshall Islands, Palau, Wallis and Futuna, and across the United States.
Something here to close the book on who we are and why we are awesome
Timo Sullivan, M.S., CEO
Raised on a farm in Kealakekua, Hawaiʻi, Timo has spent his entire life combatting invasive species. Since 2012, he has developed and enacted groundbreaking drone programs for conservation organizations including the Hawaiʻi Invasive Species Committee, The University of Hawaiʻi, and Island Conservation. He has trail-blazed multiple drone based methods to detect, monitor, and inventory priority alien and endemic plant, animal, and pathogen species around the world. A global expert in using heavy-payload drone systems to control for, and moreover eradicate, invasive species populations, he has had the honor to help remove predatory alien species from over twenty tropical island systems across the pacific via drone application.