2024 Alumni Fellow
K-State Salina’s Alumni Fellow takes an ‘unusual’ path to a successful career in uncrewed aircraft systems
SALINA — Kirk Demuth continues to impact the ever-changing industry of uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS), an industry he didn’t expect to be a part of after graduating from Kansas State University Salina. He credits his education that he earned at the campus for greatly accelerating his career path.
“I have never really taken the time to look back on the unusual course that I have taken through my career and how much that reflected on Kansas State University until now,” said Demuth. “There is just so much that I owe to K-State that helped get me to where I am today.”
The 2007 alumnus of K-State Salina is this year’s Alumni Fellow for the College of Technology and Aviation. K-State’s Alumni Fellow program through the K-State Alumni Association brings back successful alumni to campus to meet with students and faculty. This exercise allows the alumni fellows to share their expertise in the classroom and at informal settings. Fellows are chosen by each college to return as distinguished guests.
Demuth is currently the vice president of operations at Perennial in Boulder, Colorado, leading the company’s internal and external operations, data collection and customer delivery teams since 2021. While Demuth has achieved much success in the UAS industry, he had originally set out to become an airline pilot, earning an associate degree in professional pilot and his bachelor’s in technology management while at K-State Salina.
His career path post-graduation has taken many different turns and his goals have changed over the course of his career. Starting out, Demuth simply wanted to earn more flight hours in order to build a career as an airline pilot. Immediately after graduating college, he became a banner tow pilot flying advertisements in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Those flight hours over beaches helped Demuth land his next job that would ultimately change the course of his career. Working as a civilian contract pilot for the U.S. Air Force and Army, based in California, Demuth quickly found a niche in the budding UAS industry. His role at the time involved flying a chase plane as the “eyes” and “ears” overhead of large uncrewed aircraft developed and controlled by the military. Demuth gained knowledge of the new aviation technology by flying in close formation with and providing air traffic control communications and visual collision avoidance of other air traffic.
Coupled with Demuth’s growing expertise with UAS and K-State Salina’s launch of its own UAS program, Demuth returned to the Salina campus in 2009 as the first-ever program manager. The campus’s UAS program today has been developed over the years based on Demuth’s foresight and knowledge gained from his experience in the industry.
“When I came back to K-State Salina, there was no UAS program here at the time. I was the first hire for that,” Demuth said. “I felt like, with my previous experience of working with the military UAS and gaining the insights of UAS operations and regulations, that would help the University build this program.”
As a part of the Alumni Fellow program, Demuth recently returned to campus to visit with students, faculty and staff. He also got to revisit K-State Salina’s UAS program to experience its current offerings and hear about plans for the future.
“To come back and see where this UAS program has grown is amazing to see,” said Demuth who also sits on K-State Salina’s UAS advisory board for curriculum. “Between the new facilities, added training platforms, the quantities of students in the program, the quality of the professors and the different levels of professional pathways for graduates, it shows just how much this program has grown and adapted to what the industry needs.”
In recent years, Demuth has built upon his UAS expertise even more to create his own business that assisted agriculture producers by utilizing drone technology and surveying fields for stressors to crops. The company, RoboFlight Technologies, then could provide a variable rate prescription of treatment from the data collected by the drones to assist the growers with environmental and cost saving measures. Demuth grew the company before deciding to sell and transitioning to his current position.
With his industry expertise and a passion for mentorship, Demuth hopes that students at K-State Salina utilize his time back on campus to further develop their professional network, which will one day assist their own careers. From growing up near Ford, Kansas, to traveling all over the world for his career, Demuth was always willing to adapt.
“I have the opportunity to give back as a mentor to the general K-State Salina student body,” Demuth said. “I think it’s important to not get so caught up in just one career path after graduation. It can be very difficult to understand where you want to go and there is a lot that you don’t know that you don’t know. Like in my career where I was willing to experiment with UAS and I realized that not only did I have an unknown passion for this technology, but it has also provided me an entrepreneurial opportunity to build a company. Find where you have a passion and pursue that passion, because that’s where you’ll have the most success.”