Dr. Petri Mononen is a Principal Scientist at VTT and has a PhD in Industrial Engineering and Management. He is the leader of the UAV Excellence Node at VTT, consisting of 40 VTT experts involved in UAV related research. Prior to VTT Mononen worked in University of Oulu Faculty of ICT as a Research Manager and as member of the faculty management board. He has also worked as team leader and member of company management group in Liidea Ltd. Before that he was employed by Mott MacDonald Group (UK) and Jaakko Pöyry Group.

He holds an International Project Manager Certificate IPMA C. His main expertise areas include Urban Air Mobility, large scale national and international project lead & coordination, socio-economic impact evaluation, co-innovation and business ecosystems, ITS in general and evaluation frameworks for ecosystems and information services. He has been the coordinator for several EU FP7 and Horizon 2020 projects (incl. TeleFOT IP, TeleFOT-InCo, AiRMOUR) and large Business Finland projects (SmartRail2, Drolo). He was awarded the 2013 iMobility Award for excellence in ITS implementation activities by the European Commission and iMobility forum at den Haag Netherlands; and also the VTT STOR TIC award for outstanding work as leader in strategically important large scale European projects with high visibility.