Unmanned Aircraft Systems, or more commonly known as drones, are increasingly being utilized all across university campuses. Researchers have been developing drones for a wide variety of applications such as critical infrastructure inspections, agriculture and digital archeology, while students and staff are increasing looking to utilize drones for photography, journalism and recreational activities. Over the next couple of years, commercial drone usage is expected to increase dramatically. The University of California is committed to help promote innovation and technology with forward thinking policies and safety and risk management. In this presentation, Brandon will provide an overview of the new drone laws and existing regulations to help researchers, students and staff get up to speed on utilizing drones in new and innovative ways. This will include an introduction to the new SUAS license for research and commercial use, aircraft registration, best practices for safety and requirements for record keeping. In addition to Federal regulations, attendees will be introduced to the UC’s UAS Safety Management System to address drone safety and risk management for both end-users and oversight managers. A key component of this system is a software suite called the UC UAS Fleet Management System, available to the campuses free of charge, to promote safe operation, hazard assessments and recordkeeping. The UC UAS Fleet Management system provides effective UAS flight planning and risk mitigation solutions while enabling data analysis of UAS activity to help end-users and oversight managers for safety risk monitoring and hazard tracking. Brandon Stark is the director of the UC Center of Excellence on Unmanned Aircraft System Safety and provides UC system-wide guidance on UAS regulations, operations and applications for UC researchers, staff and students, as well as develop effective policies and safety management for system deployment. He can be reached at bstark2@ucmerced.edu or (209) 201-2051.