He has been deeply involved in the development of the EarthCARE satellite, as Principal Engineer for the development of the Atmospheric LIDar (ATLID), then as EarthCARE Payload Manager.

While joining ESA in 2001, he was studying future lidar missions and laser based instruments, and has been initiating new technology developments for optical instruments.

He worked before for Airbus Defence and Space, where he was involved in the development of optical instruments for Earth Observation missions such as ENVISAT, SPOT and the wind lidar Aeolus.

WANG Weigang: Professor, Chief Designer of Beijing Institute of Space Mechanics and Electricity. He is mainly engaged in developing space optical payloads for multispectral camera, hyperspectral spectrometer and weak-light camera. Since 2012, He has been the Chief Designer of PAN camera of CBERS 03/04/04A, Wide-swath Multispectral Camera of Gaofen-1, PMS of ZY-1 (02D). Now he is the Chief Designer of the Solar-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence Imaging Spectrometer (SIFIS) Onboard the Terrestrial Ecosystem Carbon Inventory Satellite (TECIS-1) and the Chief Designer of the Thermal Emission Spectrometer of Tianwen-2. He is currently personally responsible for the development of 19 optical payloads of 5 types of 8 satellites that are successfully operating in orbit. He has been involved in many satellites or space optical remote sensing planning arguments in China such as CBERS series, Mars, etc.

Mr. Sachidananda Babu is technology validation program manager in Earth Science Technology Office under Earth Science Division at NASA. He has been working at NASA for more than 34 years, prior that he worked at Intel submicron R&D and TIFR, India.  While at NASA he initially worked on Focal Plane Technologies for many space flight projects like Cassini, Gravity Probe B, Spitzer, SWIFT, SOHO, Landsat, JWST, JPSS, and others.  Last 9 years he has been managing the technology validation program at NASA Earth Science Technology Office.  Under this program main elements are InVEST (CubeSat/SmallSat/hosted payload based technology validation program) and SLI-T (Technology for future Sustainable Land Imaging (LandSat) program). InVEST program has many successful CubeSat missions like RAVEN, IceCube, RainCube, TEMPEST-D, HARP and CIRiS. Recently launched NACHOS1/2, CTIM and getting ready to launch MURI on hosted payload and HyTI CubeSat. Past 5 years he has been organizing CubeSat/SmallSat mission focused sessions under SPIE and IGARSS. He is recipient of many NASA group and personal awards including “ NASA Exceptional Service Medal”.

Martin Jacobs graduated as the best engineering student in South Africa, before joining the Sunsat microsatellite project of Stellenbosch University. As Masters’ student he was responsible for full development of the Sunsat star tracker under leadership of Prof WH Steyn. The project kindled his love for optical sensing. He later earned an MBA, cum laude, from Warwick Business School (UK).

Martin has 20 years’ experience as smallsat system engineer in conceptualization, functional design, simulation, testing and calibration of imaging sensors and missions, with emphasis on novel techniques which optimise performance, size, mass and cost-efficiency for small satellites.

After ten years at SunSpace, he joined the SCS Aerospace Group in 2012. Here he conceived and pioneered the use of high-speed commercial-off-the-shelf snapshot (matrix) detectors for pushbroom imaging, which spawned a new high-growth sector in the local industry.

Furthermore, his conception and functional design of the first nanosatellite high-resolution hyperspectral (> 100 bands @ 7m GSD) imager and mission in 2014 enabled their development of a high-resolution hyperspectral camera range for cubesats and a startup client currently funded in excess of $35M to deploy a hyperspectral constellation.

In 2020 Martin founded aQmetriq as a newspace mission originator and imagery consulting company. He currently also serves as the National Earth Observations and Space Secretariat’s co-chair for Agriculture and Food Security.

Marcos Bavdaz has an engineering degree in technical physics and a PhD in applied physics, both from the Technical University of Vienna. Currently, as Head of the Technologies Preparation Section at ESA/ESTEC, he is responsible for the technological preparation of the future ESA Science missions.

His 30-year career at ESA has been focused on technology innovation. He was responsible for the detector unit of the LEGSPC flight instrument for the Rossi-Prize winning BeppoSAX Observatory. Subsequently, his work focused on the development of compact lightweight real imaging X-ray optics, refined filters and photon detectors for space-mission applications.

His invention of the Silicon Pore Optics has become the centerpiece of the ATHENA, the large class ESA high energy astrophysics mission. The European patent was awarded in 2004, followed by the USA patent in 2008.

He led the development of novel microchannel plate planetary X-ray optics from a concept phase in 1999 to a technology readiness level adequate for adoption by a flight project in 2007. Today this optics is flying towards the planet Mercury on the BepiColombo mission.

Marcos Bavdaz has published more than 200 papers in professional literature, on space system studies and technology innovation. He is a regular session chair and member of organizing committees (SPIE, ICSO, IEEE, SRI, etc), and invited speaker to renowned conferences and symposia worldwide.

Marcos Bavdaz was appointed an ESA Senior Advisor in 2008.

Jos de Bruijne holds a PhD in astrophysics from Leiden Observatory. In 2000, he joined the European Space Agency, at the ESTEC research and technology centre, first as data analyst and later as a post-doctoral research fellow working on the astronomical exploitation of superconducting tunnel junction detectors. In 2002, Jos became a staff member as scientist in the Directorate of Science, where he has been heavily involved in the Gaia Milky Way mapper mission working on various systems and payload aspects, for example the on-board timing requirements, the on-board object detection, the scientific performance models, and more recently the Gaia ESA Archive that hosts the mission’s science data.