Meet the ZeroAvians: Jonathan Nutzati Fontaine

Is engineering the answer to everything? No. I think, I think it's part of the answer to everything. To quote some famous science fiction authors and paraphrase, magic is science that we haven't yet discovered.

In our case, I would say magic is a synergy of different types of people and their passion and their minds coming together in harmony. How do you get the best out of different kinds of minds working together? I'd say give, give them an exciting problem to solve and let, let them have at it. Especially if it's a problem that they all love to solve and they're all excited to be there, they'll find a way.

At ZeroAvia, we have a team of passionate and intelligent individuals that love working together and are excited to rush to work every day and begin solving these problems together. I think it's important because every, everybody's here because they want to be, they bring their best selves. And I think, it's really beautiful when, when you start to see that, that collaborative spirit shine. I love to be learning all the time and I've always been interested in physics and chemistry.

I'd say physics always came naturally to me in school. I always enjoyed it. I was always engaged and my friends would come over to my house to study for physics 'cause I had the answers. My first real job after graduate school was at Tesla, where I joined the propulsion team, where we made the drive units that that propel the car forward.

Some of the problems that we solved, like, noise, balance of rotor, vibrations, and the solutions were all very fascinating and each was an exciting quest. What I've learned working with Elon Musk is the stubborn, relentless pursuit of goals that are part of the big picture goals that maybe most people don't think about, but they're some of the fundamental problems impacting humanity, not just in our lifetimes, but in the big picture over hundreds of years. What do we need to solve as the human race? How do we improve the quality of life for humans and how do we, how do we solve those big picture problems?

Those are the things that motivate me the most. At ZeroAvia, my role is that of an integration engineer. So I interface with the fuel cell team, the motor team and the certification team, and work to bring those components and subsystems together into a powertrain that can replace the existing turboprop engine on a regional aircraft. And so, you know, that's, that's a very exciting mission because, you know, when, when I take a step back, I think we're literally replacing the engine of a plane and making it fly on hydrogen.

That's amazing. That's, you know, that's, the kind of thing that I get excited about. Generally, I'm motivated by having exciting problems to solve by being able to use, use physics, use science, use chemistry, and generally be able to channel my creativity to, you know, design things that, you know, look like they make sense, that look cool, that are inspiring and bring in the elements of science, to a holistic engineered solution.