Mostafa was elected to the board in 2023 and serves on Friends Events Committee. Mostafa is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the director of the Autonomous Flight and Aquatic Systems Laboratory (AFASL) at New Mexico Tech. He earned his Ph.D. and Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from New Mexico State University in July 2018 and December 2016, respectively.

Dr. Hassanalian taught three well-attended and popular workshops at Festival of the Cranes 2022 and loves birds and the outdoors, especially Bosque del Apache nearby. His main research interests are in the fields of unmanned aerial and aquatic systems, bioinspiration and biomimetics, swarm and formation flight, novel mechanisms for space exploration, heated boundary layer and drag reduction mechanisms. Hassanalian serves as PI and Co-PI of ~$5M from NSF, NASA, NIOSH-CDC and Alpha Foundation. He has authored over 180 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications. In October 2021 and 2022, he was recognized as one of the Top 2% of Cited Scientists Worldwide. In October 2021, he also received United Nation-USA SDG Advocate Award from UNA Project Rocky Mountain Region. Some parts of his research have been featured by Media worldwide, such as NBC, New Scientist, Popular Science, Independent, Telegraph, Forbes, Discover Magazine, WOWScience, etc.

He is currently serving as the advisor of fourteen graduate students (six Ph.D. and eight MS) and, in the past, has graduated fourteen graduates (one Ph.D. and thirteen MS) and about fifty undergraduate students. Hassanalian is the faculty advisor of the New Mexico Tech American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and Society of Allied Weight Engineers (SAWE) student chapters, and he runs the K-12 Drone Program at New Mexico Tech. In 2023, he was named New Mexico Tech’s most recent Dean’s Scholar. Being considered for this honor means that an educator has shown significant passion and dedication for teaching and working with students. This award is given in recognition of faculty who attain extraordinary success in research, acquiring research funding, and supporting graduate students.