Vivek Lall

About

Distinguished Visiting Fellow Vivek Lall is chief executive of General Atomics Global Corporation. In 2018, Dr. Lall was appointed in a key advisory role to the US secretary of Transportation. He previously served as vice president of aeronautics strategy and business development at Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense company, and held numerous marketing and engineering leadership roles within the Boeing Company.

Based in San Diego, General Atomics and affiliated companies operate on five continents. The company produces unmanned aircraft (Predator, Reaper, Guardian) and other defense systems; is the principal private-sector participant in thermonuclear fusion research; and is a leader in development of next-generation nuclear fission and high-temperature materials technologies.

Lall’s work at Boeing, the world’s largest aerospace company (1996 to 2011) included the Airplane Performance and Propulsion Group in Seattle. He was appointed vice president and country head for India for Boeing Defense, Space & Security in 2007. Prior to joining Boeing, Lall worked for Raytheon and conducted research with NASA Ames Research Center in various multidisciplinary engineering fields.

As a special advisor to the United Nations in New York, Lall steered policy and implementation in the area of broadband and associated cybersecurity issues. He also worked as an adjunct faculty member at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, McConnell Air Force Base; and was the founding cochair of the US-India Aviation Cooperation Program, launched in 2005.

Lall was conferred the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award by President Biden and AmeriCorps in 2022 and the World Leader Award by the House of Lords in the United Kingdom in 2023. He is also an ambassador of the State of Arkansas as well as a Kentucky Colonel, the most well-known of US colonelcies, conferred to several US presidents. He was also granted the Grand Cross by His Highness Mahmoud Salah Al Din Assaf and has been listed as one of 2000 Outstanding Scientists of the Twentieth Century by the International Biographical Centre (UK).