Josef Aschbacher is Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA), based in Paris, with 5,500 employees and an annual budget of 7 billion euros. He is responsible for European space infrastructure and activities as well as the ESA 2025 strategy, which aims to significantly accelerate the use of space in Europe through major new programs.

Linkedin, opens an external URL in a new window
Researchgate, opens an external URL in a new window

Dr. Olga Bannova is a Research Professor at the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering, Director of the world’s only Master of Science in Space Architecture program and Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture. She received her architectural degree in Moscow, Master of Architecture and Master of Science in Space Architecture from the University of Houston and PhD from the department of Architecture and Civil Engineering of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.

Olga conducts research and design studies of orbital and surface habitats and settlements, including inflatable structures, special design influences and requirements for different gravity conditions in space, and habitat concepts for extreme environments on Earth. She is an author of books “Space Architecture: Human Habitats beyond the Planet Earth” (2021) and “Space Architecture Education for Engineers and Architects” (2016) with Sandra Haeuplick-Meusburger, many book chapters and dozens of technical publications. 
Dr. Bannova received College of Engineering Outstanding Instructional Faculty award, International Academy of Astronautics Best Book annual award, NASA Silver Achievement Medal award, Outstanding Technical Contribution Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Aerospace Division, and 2 NASA Certificates of Appreciation for MFHE study developments.
She is the current chair of the ASCE ASD Executive Committee, a full member of the International Academy of Astronautics and a chair of the Commission 6 of the IAA.
 

Jean-François Clervoy, was an active CNES, ESA and NASA astronaut for 33 years and flew on three missions aboard the space shuttle: in 1994 to explore the atmosphere, in 1997 to resupply the Russian space shuttle Mir space station and in 1999 to repair the Hubble -Space telescope. JFC then worked as a senior advisor for ESA's manned space programs and as CEO of Novespace, which organized zero-gravity parabolic flights on board the Airbus A310 AirZeroG. He continues to be the founder and ambassador of AirZeroG, author, inventor and professional speaker.
Linkedin, opens an external URL in a new window

Dietmar Grebner is CEO of Austrospace, an association of 20 successful Austrian companies and institutions that deal with space applications and research, and managing director of Peak Technology GmbH. Previously, he was a designer at Sauber Motorsport AG's Formula 1 and head of the composite department at Modell- und Formenbau Blasius Gerg GmbH.
Linkedin, opens an external URL in a new window
Researchgate, opens an external URL in a new window

Johann Fellner is Associate Professor for Waste Management at TU Wien. From 2012 to 2020 he was heading the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Anthropogenic Resources, a temporary research center that aims at enhancing the sustainable utilization of man-made resources. Besides his work in different national and international organizations (ISWA International Solid Waste Association, IWWG International Waste Working Group, ÖWAV Austrian Association for Water and Waste Management) he is Associate Editor of Waste Management journal (Elsevier).
His educational background is Environmental Engineering with a strong focus on water and waste management. His research interests are the field of landfilling, thermal waste utilization, innovative waste analysis and waste management in developing countries. The overall goal of his methodologically oriented research is to optimize the anthropogenic metabolism in view of environmental protection and resource conservation.

Brand Griffin is the former single-person spacecraft program manager at Genesis Engineering Solutions. Before joining Genesis, he supported NASA's Advanced Concepts Office at the Marshall Spaceflight Center, where he was involved in the analysis and design of lunar bases and space habitats. Previously, he worked at Boeing as lead configurator for Space Station Freedom and Habitation Module Manager.
Researchgate, opens an external URL in a new window

Dr. Gernot Grömer is Director of the Board of the Austrian Space Forum and responsible for the spacesuit project management and is PolAres program officer (OeWF-Mars analogue research projects), including the development of a spacesuit simulator suitable for research, as well as AMADEE program coordinator. Likewise, Dr. Grömer is Project Manager for Analogue Research Missions and lecturer at the University of Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, FH Steyr, TU Munich. Mr. Grömer has received numerous awards in the areas of science communication and research activities.

Researchgate, opens an external URL in a new window
Linkedin, opens an external URL in a new window

Christophe Lasseur is head of the MELiSSA project at the European Space Agency.He currently serves as European representative on the ISS Medical Board for Microbiology and is a consultant for various European Union activities. Since 2012 he has led COSPAR's Life Support Sessions (F4). He regularly teaches at several European engineering schools (e.g. KTH, EPFL, Agro-Paris). In March 2017 he received a Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Antwerp (Belgium) and was an invited speaker at the World Government Summit 2018 in Dubai.

Researchgate, opens an external URL in a new window
Linkedin, opens an external URL in a new window

Advenit Makaya is an Advanced Manufacturing Engineer at the European Space Research and Technology Center of the European Space Agency. It supports the development of advanced materials and processes for space applications and supports ESA materials and processes missions. In this context, Advenit coordinates the Out-of-Earth Manufacturing initiative with the aim of promoting the development of technologies for in-orbit and on-planet manufacturing.
Researchgate, opens an external URL in a new window
Linkedin, opens an external URL in a new window
 

Piero has worked at the European Space Agency for over 30 years in various positions and in various ESA centers. Before holding the current position, he was Chief of Staff/Advisor to successive ESA Directors of Human Spaceflight and Space Exploration for several years. In 2004 he co-chaired the Adelaide SSP TP for Lunares. He is an examiner at the French Institut des Hautes Études de Defense Nationale (IHEDN) in Paris and has a master's degree in change psychology from UniLink in Rome.

Researchgate, opens an external URL in a new window
Linkedin, opens an external URL in a new window

Franco Ongaro was previously Chief Technology and Innovation Officer of Leonardo (Feb 2022 – June 23).
In the last eleven years prior to joining Leonardo, Franco Ongaro was Director of Technology, Engineering and Quality (D/TEC) and Head of ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

He held various positions: among others, he managed the start of Aurora and Iris Program and was the Head of the Advanced Concepts and Technology Planning Department, starting the Concurrent Design Facility and the Advanced Concepts Team. 
He graduated in Aeronautical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano and joined the European Space Agency (ESA) in 1987, working on the Columbus project.
 

Maria Antonietta Perino works at Thales Alenia Space as Director of Space Economics Research and International Network. She promotes the development of young professionals in the space industry and is co-editor of Acta Astronautica, member of the Académie de l'Air et de l'Espace and the International Academy of Astronautics, and former Vice President of the IAF Office. She is president of Explore Mars Europe, board member of Women in Aerospace–Europe, International Lunar Observatory Association, World Space Week Association and member of the ISU Academic Council.

Researchgate, opens an external URL in a new window
 

Georgi Petrov is a practicing architect, civil engineer and interior designer. He is a senior associate principal in the structural group in the New York office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, where he works on high-rise and long-span structures around the world. He is the leader of SOM's space architecture efforts. He is an adjunct professor at NYU and MIT, where he teaches high-rise design, and vice chair of the AIAA's Technical Committee on Spatial Architecture.
Researchgate, opens an external URL in a new window
Linkedin, opens an external URL in a new window

Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu works as an expert in the Romanian Space Technology and Industry Association ROMSPACE and as a board member of the Romanian Space Agency. He was also President of the Romanian Space Agency (1998–2004) and Ambassador of Romania to the Russian Federation (since 2004). Prunariu is co-author of several books on space technology and space travel and is a committee member of international space organizations. An asteroid was named after him, the asteroid “10707 Prunariu”.
Researchgate, opens an external URL in a new window
Linkedin, opens an external URL in a new window

Professor Chris Rapley CBE is Professor of Climate Science at University College London (UCL). He is a Fellow of
UCL and of St Edmund's College Cambridge, a member of the Academia Europaea, Chair of the European Science
Foundation’s European Space Sciences Committee, Member of the Advisory Board of the UK government’s Clean
Growth Fund, Patron of the Surrey Climate Commission, a member of the UK Science Museum Group’s Science
Advisory Board, a member of the Science Advisory Board of Scientists’ Warning, and a member of the UK
Parliamentary and Scientific Committee.

His previous posts include Director of the Science Museum, Director of the British Antarctic Survey, Chairman
of the London Climate Change Partnership, President of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, Executive
Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, and Distinguished Visiting Scientist at NASA’s Jet
Propulsion Laboratory. He was founder and Head of UCL MSSL’s Earth Remote Sensing Group, Chair of the
International Planning Group for the International Polar Year 2007-2008 and Chair of the European Space Agency
Director General’s High-Level Science Policy Advisory Committee.

More recently he has focused on the role of climate scientists in delivering value to society through decision
making, public policy and more effective communication. He is Chair of the UCL Policy Commission on Communicating
Climate Science.

In 2014 Prof Rapley and the playwright Duncan Macmillan wrote the acclaimed play ‘2071’ which Prof Rapley
performed at the Royal Court theatre and in Hamburg and Brussels. More recently Prof Rapley was the Science
Consultant on BBC1’s ‘Climate Change – The Facts’ presented by Sir David Attenborough.
In 2003 Prof Rapley was appointed CBE by Her Majesty the Queen. In 2008 he was awarded the Edinburgh
Science Medal for having made 'a significant contribution to the understanding and wellbeing of humanity'.

Brent Sherwood is senior vice president of Advanced Development Programs (ADP) for Blue Origin (spacecraft development). As a space architect, he spent 35 years involved in the design of planetary missions, manufacturing engineering for space station modules, and program development for commercial and space science projects. He has published over 50 articles on space exploration, development, and colonization and edited the book Out of This World: The New Field of Space Architecture. He is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a 2020 recipient of the Columbia Medal of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Researchgate, opens an external URL in a new window
Linkedin, opens an external URL in a new window
 

Mr. Viehböck studied Electrical Engineering at the TU Wien. In 1990 he had a cosmonaut training at the Juri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. In 1991 during 9 days stay on the MIR space station he made different experiments. On behalf of the Austrian government, he held lectures and information events about the mission over the following two years. Then he worked as a program development manager in the Space Systems Group for Rockwell International in the USA and was appointed Director for International Business Development in Vienna following the takeover of Rockwell by Boeing. He later became Technology Representative of the Province of Lower Austria. He was appointed as a managing director of Berndorf Band GmbH. In 2008 he  became a member of  board of  Berdorf AG. Since 2020 he is the CEC of the Berndorf AG.

Dr. Peter Weiss is founder and president of SPARTAN SPACE, a French start-up developing housing systems for extreme environments. Previously, he worked on a motor drive for a lightweight robot arm, at MIT, Boston on the development of artificial muscles for self-transforming robot planetary scientists, at Cybernetix in France as a project manager for European Commission and industry projects, at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University on a robotic microgravity -Sampling device for the PHOBOS-GRUNT mission. He was Director of the Space Division and Board Member of COMEX in Marseille, France for over ten years.
Researchgate, opens an external URL in a new window
Linkedin, opens an external URL in a new window

Melodie Yashar is a space architect, technologist, and researcher. She is the VP of Building Design & Performance at ICON, a construction technologies company focused on large scale additive manufacturing for Earth and in space. Melodie oversees the architectural direction of ICON’s built work as well as the performance of ICON’s building systems to deliver optimally-performing structures and support he development of ICON’s off-world construction systems. In previous roles Melodie was a Senior Research Associate with the Human Systems Integration Division at NASA Ames.
Researchgate, opens an external URL in a new window
Linkedin , opens an external URL in a new window

Mag. Dr. Helmut Aigner has been a lecturer in the field of MBA/Corporate Finance at the Danube University Krems and at the TU Vienna for more than 20 years. In practice, Mag. Dr. Aigner with projects in the areas of M&A, strategic planning, controlling, accounting, financial management, management information systems, feasibility studies, company analysis, and business valuation.

Tina C. Ambos is Professor of International Management and Director of the i2i Hub for Intrapreneurship and Innovation at the University of Geneva. Previously, she was a Professor of Strategy at the University of Sussex and previously held the Chair of International Management at the JKU (Austria). Her research and consulting projects include knowledge management, innovation and strategic management of international organizations.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tina-Ambos, opens an external URL in a new window
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tina-ambos/?originalSubdomain=ch, opens an external URL in a new window

Christian Geiger has been a developer of simulation games for companies and universities at home and abroad for over 20 years. He has commercial banking training and studied economics at the University of Heidelberg. He is an expert in the conception and implementation of simulation games.

Als Gründer von accounting for funding e. U. ist Roland Gutmann spezialisiert auf Finanzcontrolling von Förderprojekten. Zuvor leitete er die 5 Jahre die Abteilung Betriebswirtschaft und Konzerncontrolling des Austrian Institute of Technology. Er hat jahrelange Führungserfahrung in den Fachbereichen Accounting und Management Control (Kostenrechnung) sowie Controlling.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/roland-gutmann-7a5487127/details/experience/, opens an external URL in a new window

Karl-Heinz Leitner is Senior Scientist at the Center for Innovation Systems & Policy at the Austrian Institute of Technology and Professor for Innovation Management at the Karl-Franzens-University Graz. His work focuses on strategy development, innovation management, entrepreneurship and research policy. Karl-Heinz Leitner has conducted numerous research and consulting projects for companies, ministries, interest groups and the European Union.
 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Karl-Heinz-Leitner, opens an external URL in a new window
https://www.linkedin.com/in/karl-heinz-leitner-aa31a519/?originalSubdomain=at, opens an external URL in a new window

Klaus Nordhausen is a university lecturer in statistics at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Previously, he was Assistant Professor at the Institute of Stochastics and Economic Mathematics and Associate Professor of Computational Statistics at the TU Vienna. His research interests include supervised and unsupervised dimension reduction, blind source separation, independent component analysis, robust and nonparametric methods and computational statistics.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Klaus-Nordhausen, opens an external URL in a new window
https://www.linkedin.com/in/klaus-nordhausen-4180852/originalSubdomain=at, opens an external URL in a new window

Ferry Stocker is a lecturer in economics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, the Vienna University of Technology and the Danube University Krems. His research focuses on European integration, in particular European monetary integration, applied microeconomics (“managerial economics”) and didactics of economics.

As Co-founder and head of the enable2change network, Dagmar Silvius-Zuchi is an experienced consultant and trainer as well as a lecturer at various universities. Her focus is on stakeholder-oriented project and program management as well as change management, systemic methods for management, and design of co-creation processes.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dagmar-silvius-zuchi-b3481236, opens an external URL in a new window
https://www.enable2change.at, opens an external URL in a new window

Wolfgang H. Güttel is university professor for human resources and corporate management at the Institute for Management Sciences, Dean of the Academy for Continuing Education (ACE) at the Vienna University of Technology. His research is dedicated to the topics of leadership, strategy & change management. Previously, he was head of the institute for leadership and change management at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz and co-managing director of the LIMAK Austrian Business School.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Wolfgang-Guettel, opens an external URL in a new window

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wolfgang-h-güttel-bb7666154/, opens an external URL in a new window

Yanis Hamdali is a research associate at the Chair of International Management at the European University Viadrina. He is an expert in start-up. His research interests lie in the role of innovation timing and the construction of futures in organizations. His research has received several awards (Best Ph.D. Paper Award, Innovation Award).
www.researchgate.net/profile/Yanis-Hamdali, opens an external URL in a new window
www.linkedin.com/in/yanishamdali/?originalSubdomain=de, opens an external URL in a new window

Astrid Kleinhanns-Rollé is a university assistant (postdoc) at the Leadership & Strategy Research Group at the Institute for Management Sciences at the Vienna University of Technology. In her position as a Managing Director she previously founded 2004 the WU Executive Academy at WU Vienna and advanced it to an internationally recognized business school. Prior to that, she worked as a management consultant for the Boston Consulting Group. 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/astrid-kleinhanns-rollé, opens an external URL in a new window
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Astrid-Kleinhanns-Rolle, opens an external URL in a new window

© Luiza Puiu

Sabine Köszegi is a professor of ergonomics and organization at the Institute of Management Sciences at the TU and heads the doctoral college Trust in Robots as well as the Management & Technology MBA program Innovation, Digitalization, and Entrepreneurship. Her research focuses on Social Robotics, New World of Work, Organization and Gender Studies as well as Management of Conflicts, Digitalization & Robotics.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sabine-Koeszegi/4, opens an external URL in a new window