Embattled UTEP aerospace leader Ahsan Choudhuri to retire, launches local defense firm
by Daniel Perez July 29, 2025
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Ahsan Choudhuri, a University of Texas at El Paso professor who secured tens of millions of dollars in mechanical and aerospace engineering grant research awards during the past 10 years, plans to retire in December.
Choudhuri served as associate vice president of the UTEP Aerospace Center until he was relieved of that duty in May 2024 for alleged irregularities with a National Science Foundation proposal.
The professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering has denied any wrongdoing. The NSF suspended the grant, worth up to $160 million, pending further review, and hasn’t provided an update in more than a year.
Choudhuri continued as an engineering faculty member after UTEP President Heather Wilson stripped him of his associate vice president title.
He announced his retirement plans in an annual report for El Paso Makes, a nonprofit organization he helped found to promote innovative manufacturing opportunities in El Paso.
“At the end of August, I am taking leave (from his faculty role at UTEP) and then I will retire in December after having served UTEP and her students for 25 years. This will allow me to commit myself full time to building a defense innovation company here in our community. I will lead the way in creating quality jobs that honor the talent in this region,” he wrote in the El Paso Makes annual report.
Choudhuri declined to comment further when contacted by El Paso Matters.
The professor and his frequent UTEP collaborator Ryan Wicker, founder and former director of the W.M. Keck Center for 3D Innovation, accounted for almost $36 million, or 12%, of the institution’s research expenditures during the past four fiscal years, according to university data.
In his message in the annual report, Choudhuri highlighted his work with others in the public and private sectors to create more high-paying job opportunities for engineering graduates.
“I am so proud of what we have accomplished together, but there is so much more to do, and many challenges ahead,” he said. “We have to remain focused and ambitious if we are going to deliver transformative economic change for the people who call this place home.”
State records show that Choudhuri incorporated ARC Aerospace in July 2024. Its website describes the El Paso-based company as “a pioneering aerospace and defense technology company dedicated to supporting the agile development and deployment of defense systems.”
UTEP hired Choudhuri in February 2001. He is a former department chair and considered an expert in defense and aerospace systems. Among his other major collaborative projects was the $40 million Build Back Better Regional Challenge grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration in September 2022. He said he plans to continue as an unpaid senior adviser to El Paso Makes/National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining.
UTEP’s Kenith E. Meissner II, dean of the College of Engineering, and Ahmad Itani, vice president for Research and Innovation, did not respond to a request for comment.
Misael Navarrete, an associate director at the Aerospace Center from 2022 to 2024, said Choudhuri worked hard to prepare UTEP graduates for industry and to sell the region to outsiders who might want to do business here. He hoped to make the center a hub that would benefit the region’s economic development.
Navarrete also mentioned Choudhuri’s efforts to secure grants because that money was used to hire more staff to do more research projects.
“Dr. Choudhuri’s interests are the community,” said Navarrete, who works for a defense company in El Paso. “He was constantly traveling to meet with people, groups and different organizations to try to pitch them this idea that they should relocate or have a presence in El Paso.”
While successful for many years as an educator and researcher, Choudhuri began to have trouble in early 2024 when the university did an in-house review of the NSF proposal for the UTEP-led Paso del Norte Defense and Aerospace Innovation Engine. The agency suspended the grant April 25, 2024.
The NSF approved the project in January 2024. It was one of 10 regional awards and involved 18 partners from eight counties in West Texas and Southern New Mexico to include the city and county of El Paso, and could have earned the region up to $160 million through 2034. It was supposed to help develop the region’s aerospace manufacturing capabilities.
Soon after the NSF approval of the grant in January, Itani, the vice president of Research and Innovation, sent Choudhuri, the principal investigator, and Wicker, the co-PI, an email where he told them that the university needed to provide “appropriate governance, oversight and accountability measures.”
The two principal investigators, who had managed numerous million-dollar-plus grants at UTEP, saw the order as an effort to make them want to leave the institution, the grant and the centers that they founded, according to emails between the three of them.
In a Feb. 5, 2024, email to Itani, Choudhuri wrote he was stunned by Itani’s request.
“This unilateral and utterly heavy-handed approach is so unprecedented and undoubtedly will cause massive damage to Ryan and my programs,” he wrote.
Wicker, who did not respond to a request for comment, shared similar sentiments in a Feb. 3, 2024, email to Itani.
“I can only assume that the intent of the UTEP administration is for the two of us (him and Choudhuri) to leave, rescind the grant, and cause damage to UTEP, the City and County, numerous other collaborators and especially the community and students we serve,” Wicker wrote.
Wicker, who retired Nov. 8, had said that he had spent months trying to figure out how he could remain at UTEP.
Jack Chessa, professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, resigned as department chair this past November in part because he did not believe that Choudhuri had been treated fairly. Chessa did not respond to a request for comment.
Daniel Perez
Daniel Perez covers higher education for El Paso Matters, in partnership with Open Campus. He has written on military and higher education issues in El Paso for more than 30 years. More by Daniel Perez
