Paul B. MacCready is chairman and founder of AeroVironment, Inc., a company in Monrovia, California, that generates intellectual properties in the form of patents, trade secrets, copyrights and expertise in efficient energy systems, unmanned aerial vehicles and electric vehicle systems. He won the National Soaring Championship in 1948, 1949 and 1953 and the World Champion Soaring Contest in 1956, and he has designed and built several prize-winning aerial vehicles, including the Gossamer Condor, in which in 1977 he made the first sustained, controlled human-powered flight, staying aloft for seven minutes, and the Gossamer Albatross, a human-powered plane that crossed the English Channel in 1979.