This STTR Phase I project proposes to develop an automated design optimization tool for electromagnetic flow control based on the gas-kinetic BGK scheme and the adjoint optimization method. A non-equilibrium BGK solver will be generalized to explicitly take into account the acceleration and deceleration of the charged particles and the effects of electromagnetic forces. A comparison between the continuous and discrete adjoint optimization methods will also be made to investigate which one is better suited for hypersonic flows. Furthermore, an exploratory computation will be performed for shape optimization to maximize the electrical conductivity for external flow control applications.