Mark L Bathrick is the former Director of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s (DOI) Office of Aviation Services (OAS) and current President of Bathrick Aviation Consulting.  As Director, Mark was responsible for the safety, compliance, and performance of over 2,000 contracted and government-owned crewed and uncrewed aircraft and pilots.  Mark was also instrumental in affecting some of the greatest modernization of wildland firefighting aircraft in the last 30-years.  He led efforts to test and integrate new platforms like the Very Large Air Tanker, the amphibious single engine air tanker, NextGen air tankers, and drones for aerial ignition, precision mapping, hotspot detection, and other applications.  Mark was a recipient of the 2017 Commercial Drone Alliance Industry Heroes Award, was selected by Commercial UAV News as a Top 7 Drone Visionary in 2018 and received the DroneResponders.org Public Safety Drone Leadership Award in 2022.  Prior to DOI, Mark completed a distinguished career as a Navy carrier-based, TOPGUN-trained fighter pilot and experimental test pilot, retiring as a Captain.  He has piloted over 40 different types of fixed wing, rotary wing, and lighter-than-air aircraft and holds an FAA commercial instrument, multi-engine pilot rating.  Mark holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and a Master of Business Administration from Boise State University.  He is a member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, Tau Beta Pi National Engineering Honor Society and was inducted into the University of Idaho Academy of Engineers in 2017. Mark also serves as a Fellow at the UC Berkeley Disaster Lab and holds advisory board positions with numerous companies and nonprofits.