Dr. Alexis Nicole Benini is an Engineer Subject Matter Expert (SME) at Space Ingenuity, LLC, HighLands Ranch, CO, USA. She is currently working on the Artemis Mission, as a consultant for Lockheed Martin (Human Space Division) and NASA (Johnson Space Center). Specifically, she is currently collaborating with the GN&C Team for the Orion capsule.

From May 2018 to December 2023 she worked at RedWire Space, Littleton, Colorado, USA (previously Deep Space Systems Inc.) where she reached the qualification of Subject Matter Expert (SME) and Optical Navigation Capability Lead. During her last 18 months at RedWire, she also worked with Lockheed Martin and NASA on the Artemis Mission, providing support to the GN&C and TT&V Teams.

Previously, she was a Research Scientist at Germandrones GmbH, Berlin, Germany, where her duties included the design, development and implementation of navigation and control algorithms for VTOL (Vertical Take-off and Landing) UAVs.

Until December 2016, she worked as Research Scientist at the Unmanned Systems Research Institute (DU2SRI), Denver, Colorado, USA. While at the University of Denver, she also served as Adjunct Professor for the course of Computer Vision, during Winter quarter 2016. 

In 2014 she worked as Algorithm Engineer at Civitanavi Systems S.r.l., Italy, focusing on the development of Inertial Navigation Systems and AHRS, based on Civitanavi’s proprietary Fiber Optic Gyroscope technology. In 2013, Dr. Benini was an exchange Ph.D. Student at the University of Denver working on vision aided autonomous landing for UAVs, using inertial sensors and GPU-based parallel computing methods.

On March 2014, Dr. Benini received the Ph.D. degree in Automation Engineering at the Universita' Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy. During the years as Ph.D. student, she worked on the European Project R3-COP, in collaboration with Thales Italia, focusing on the development of localization algorithms using UWB (Ultra Wide Band) technology and simulation software for rapid prototyping of cooperating unmanned robots.

Dr. Benini's research interests include algorithms for localization and navigation of UAVs, Sensor Fusion algorithms, image-processing (including GPU-based computation) and high-performance embedded systems. She is author of 16 publications in International Conferences / Journals on Unmanned Systems. Furthermore, she is the principal author of 2 patents, in collaboration with the University of Denver (DU) Unmanned Systems Research Institute (DU2SRI).

Dr. Benini's hobbies include: playing piano, hiking, travelling and visiting new places, painting and drawing.