Key Members

Jason DouglasJason Douglas, President
Mr. Douglas has been managing projects related to the development of unmanned systems for the last 6 years. He has worked to develop and implement military and commercial unmanned systems and subsystems as an engineer and program manager.

He has specialized knowledge in the areas of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned vehicle (UV) control software, and the integration of autopilot avionics. As part of his work on a recent mission control suite, he was a co-inventor on a U.S. Patent application titled “Unmanned Vehicle” which covers an autonomous surveillance technology. In addition to developmental projects, he has fielded UAV systems, including an expedition to Mount St. Helens during the eruption in the winter of 2004/2005 and an expedition to Greenland with NOAA and Advanced Ceramics Research (ACR) to record ice melts.

In the summer of 2006, Mr. Douglas formed Latitude Engineering, LLC, an engineering group, to focus project management and technical development expertise to a wide array of problems. Jason holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Arizona.

Mike DoughertyMike Dougherty, Chief Technology Officer
Michael Dougherty is a software engineer with over 10 years of experience.  He specializes in geo-image software design and is a veteran developer and expert in C++.  Prior to joining Latitude, Mr. Dougherty was Director of Engineering at Terrain Experts (TERREX), the industry leader in rapid correlated 3D terrain database generation and visualization.  While at Terrex, he developed innovative medial axis road network regeneration technology, enabling reconstruction of road network topology from 3D database ground polygons.  He was lead architect for TERREX' (now Presagis') Terra Vista Compact Terrain Database Format (CTDB) capabilities for two years.  In 2001 he acted as the primary investigator for a NAVAIR Phase II SBIR studying hardware-accelerated wavelet decompression for 3D visualization. During his tenure with TERREX, the company grew from four software engineers to fifteen, and the company's revenues increased fivefold.

Michael Dougherty holds a B.S. in Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute.

Dr. Lois J. WardellDr Lois J Wardell, Principal Scientist
Dr. Wardell is the Principal Scientist at Latitude. She recently joined Latitude Engineering to focus on the development of technological solutions for the environmental industry and  assisting scientific research in the earth sciences. Lois has a richly diverse background as a scientist and engineer having worked on all seven continents in fields as diverse as their locations.  She has been recognized/published for her work in unmanned aerial systems, environmental engineering, climate change, polar science, volcanology, phamacognosy (marine natural product chemistry), and extremeophilic organisms (microbes in extreme environments). Her awards and accomplishments illustrate her passion for problem solving and tackling multi-disciplinary projects.  Prior to joining Latitude, Dr. Wardell was the Chief Scientist in charge of managing the development and integration of unmanned aerial vehicle sensors at Advanced Ceramics Research.  Her responsibilities there ranged from sensor development to science support and program management.

Lois brings over twenty years of work experience to Latitude Engineering and holds a PhD in Geochemistry from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, MS in Environmental Engineering from Southern Illinois University and a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Missouri.