Design. Teach. Test. Fly
Aircraft aerodynamic design • Flight tests • Machine learning • Open Science
Elena Karpovich — Associate Professor, PhD, Moscow Aviation Institute
Hi!
Here you’ll find everything I create and share: course materials for my students, research papers, code, datasets for machine learning models, and more.
Once a month, we also gather for the Journal Club — a friendly discussion of the latest advances in aircraft engineering.
Whether you’re passionate about theory, hands-on testing, or simply curious to learn something new in aircraft engineering — you are very welcome here.
Once a month, we also gather for the Journal Club — a friendly discussion of the latest advances in aircraft engineering.
Whether you’re passionate about theory, hands-on testing, or simply curious to learn something new in aircraft engineering — you are very welcome here.
I’m Elena Karpovich, Ph.D., Associate Professor and researcher at the Moscow Aviation Institute. Welcome to my open workspace!
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I love helping design better aircraft — from aerodynamic shapes and wing sections to propellers and flight trajectory optimization. I use surrogate modeling and machine learning to speed up aircraft design, and I run flight tests on small UAVs.
Once a month, we discuss the latest in aircraft engineering. Everyone is welcome.
Latest news
Hopefully, this website will bring much value to all guests:)
May 30, 2026
June 15, 2026
June 12, 2026
It has been my dream for so many months to write this code and apply it to a real project. Now, this dream came true.
Sensors, power source, wind-tunnel speed readings linked to the propeller control system, test program - checked and ready for a new adventure!
Now, we have to carefully postprocess the raw test data.
July 27, 2026
The code for the design and analysis of a variable-pitch propeller is ready to go!
Everything is ready for the wind-tunnel tests of the lift-cruise propeller.
This website is launched.
The article is about three lessons I learned while working hard on the variable-pitch prop design and analysis code.
A new blog article has been posted.
August 13, 2026
August 9, 2026
These are Random Forest Regression models for propeller mass, power, and efficiency prediction from required thrust trained on a BEM-based dataset.
I also created a page where I share the models' details, and where you can download both the models and the dataset.
I am truly happy to say: one more dream became a reality, and I can finally share it with everyone.
I also created a page where I share the models' details, and where you can download both the models and the dataset.
I am truly happy to say: one more dream became a reality, and I can finally share it with everyone.
August 16, 2026
I created a separate page for my Unmanned Fixed-Wing Aircraft: Aerodynamic Design and Flight Testing course.
In addition, I uploaded to this page two Excel workbooks implementing classical conceptual design methods (Raymer, Gudmundsson, Tyan, Hepperle, and others), as well as my historical sizing models in a structured, easy‑to‑follow spreadsheet format. One can use it to size, evaluate, and refine their own electric UAV – from initial requirements to performance maps and cost estimates. The workbooks are in Russian and in English.
August 29, 2026
August 30, 2026
The paper is entitled 'Scaling a Technology Demonstrator of an Electric Vertical Take‑Off and Landing Boxwing Martian Aircraft for Low‑Altitude Flight Tests on Earth' – and it reports the findings of research that was, for me, deeply joyful, fascinating, and immensely fulfilling.
On August 28th, a new article was published by Aerospace Systems journal. I uploaded it to the Publications page.
This tool is based on my working Python scripts. It takes flight conditions as input and returns propeller geometry and performance (at the design advance ratio), as well as stator diameter, height, and KV. My primary goal was to help students estimate the required pitch angle for a propeller and match motor size without needing to handle heavy, complex code or download dependencies—while still fully understanding how the code works. So, here it is (making me so proud and happy!), and I’d appreciate your feedback!
October 5, 2026
