Pratyush Kumar is an experienced research engineer with a focus on sustainable aviation and manufacturing applications, currently serving as a Senior Research Engineer at RTX from January 2023 to October 2023. Previously, Pratyush was a PhD Researcher at UC Santa Barbara from September 2018 to January 2023, where work centered on leveraging machine learning for enhanced model predictive control and system identification methods, culminating in a thesis on feedback controller design. Early academic pursuits included a Graduate Student position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Summer Research Intern role at the University of Alberta, as well as a Data Center Engineering Intern experience at Google. Pratyush's technical expertise is further demonstrated through a Graduate Controls Research Intern position at Johnson Controls, emphasizing first principles and machine learning modeling of building systems. Pratyush holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from UC Santa Barbara and a BTech in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.