Raymond Cosner

Director, Technology Strategy Execution,
Boeing Defense, Space, and Security,
The Boeing Company,
BSAAE '72, MSAAE '72

For his technical leadership of The Boeing Company to ensure its leadership in defense, space, and security

Raymond Cosner's belief that he "can" resulted in simultaneous degrees in 1972, when he earned both his BS and MS in aeronautics and astronautics.

"I was always taking 17 or 18 credit hours in courses toward both degrees during the last semesters I was there," Cosner says. "Anything related to mathematics or fluid dynamics came very easily to me."

That ease enabled his pursuit of a passion for propulsion technology.

"When I was a co-op student, I watched a jet engine being taken apart and I thought, 'This looks interesting.' Both in school and in industry, I have done things because they looked interesting — not as part of any master plan. Once I was working, I tilted toward the technology side more than the management side because I found that more interesting."

Cosner's interests, abilities, education and ambition all have culminated in a 40-year career with The Boeing Company where as its current director of Technology Strategy Execution for Defense, Space,and Security, he now is responsible for coordinating roughly $1 billion in investment planning.

Cosner also fixes big problems. In the past five years, he has had short-term assignments to lead efforts to overcome aerodynamic risks on several Boeing products, including the KC-46A Tanker, Space Launch System, Commercial Crew Vehicle, T-X Trainer, P-8 antisubmarine aircraft, and a laser-guided small diameter bomb.

"I’ve become a trouble-shooter," he says. "About five or six times a year a program has a problem or the threat of a problem in aerodynamics, and I work on it. That's interesting because it takes me all over the corporation."

Cosner is a member of the Boeing team developing a strategy for Boeing Computational Fluid Dynamics technology to 2030.

After decades of success, he has not forgotten his time at Purdue, nor its significance in laying the groundwork for his PhD from the California Institute of Technology, and his later career.

"When people ask me where I went to school, I tell them Purdue," he says. "I really think of it as where I got the nuts and bolts of my education."

Career Highlights

2002-present Director, Technology Strategy Execution, Boeing Defense, Space, and Security, The Boeing Company
2001–2003 Chair, Boeing Technical Fellowship, Boeing
1999–2002 Computational Fluid Dynamics Team Leader, Boeing
1997–present Senior Technical Fellow, Boeing
1991 McDonnell Douglas Fellow, McDonnell Douglas Corporation
1975–1991 Senior Engineer, Lead Engineer, Technical Specialist and Principal Technical Specialist, McDonnell Aircraft Company (Boeing)
1976 PhD, Aeronautics, California Institute of Technology
1972 MSAAE, Purdue University
1972 BSAAE, Purdue University