Rachel Venn is Policy Intern at the headquarters of Astroscale in Tokyo, Japan, working towards Astroscale’s vision for a sustainable and circular economy in space. She holds a degree in Physics and Astrophysics and graduated with an MSc in Space Science and Engineering from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at UCL, London, along with a year studying abroad at Waseda University in Tokyo on the prestigious UK-Japan Daiwa Scholarship. She is a graduate of the ESA/ECSL Summer Course on Space Law and Policy and serves as Rapporteur for the International Astronautical Federation’s annual session on Norms and Standards for Safe and Responsible Behaviour in Space. Before coming to Japan, Rachel worked as an analyst with space consultancy BryceTech, advising on space and technology policy projects, and previously interned in EU-Africa space data sharing policies at the European weather satellite organization EUMETSAT. She was on the organising team for both the G7 Youth Summit in Hiroshima and the European rounds of the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court, and recently re-launched the Tokyo Space Network in Japan. She currently serves on the Early Careers Subcommittee of the Space Group of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

Passionate about connecting people and building a strong space community, Rachel has been actively involved with SGAC since 2021. She has served as Reports Editor and Reports Coordinator, and was on the leadership team of the SGAC Task Force on U.S. Space Policy. She was a recipient of the 2022 European Space Leaders Award to attend the European Space Generation Workshop in Limassol, Cyprus, where she supported as working group moderator and was also responsible for the conference programme as member of the organising team. Most recently, she led the programming team in the 21st Space Generation Congress in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Rashika Sugganahalli Natesh Babu works as a Software Developer for Enginium in Rome, Italy. She is involved in the development of the numerical simulator of sophisticated space systems with an emphasis on Attitude and Orbit control subsystems. She has over 2 years of experience in the wide area of Model-Based systems engineering from her previous employment at Capgemini, Milan. She has a Master’s degree in Space Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Before arriving in Italy, she obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from Alliance University, India, and later worked at the Indian Space Research Organization and HAL as a Project Trainee. Rashika has been actively involved with the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) for the past 6 years. Currently, she is the co-lead of Achieved Academy under the Education and Professional Development (EPD) Platform, which is a first-of-its-kind initiative to provide Space Systems Engineering courses for highly motivated and underrepresented groups. Rashika is involved in numerous initiatives; she was part of the Asclepios team for its first Analog Astronauts Mission. She continues to be a part of SSERD, where she mentored more than 100 students in developing Space Research projects. She is also actively involved in writing research articles under the newly co-founded Space Dynamics and Systems Engineering (SDCS) group. She is deeply interested in STEM Education and outreach.

Mathilde is a computational scientist at the European Center for Medium Ranger Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) where she works on the Destination Earth initiative, which seeks to create a digital twin of the Earth. In this role, she works on a novel data extraction software called Polytope Feature Extraction. Prior to this, she studied for a MSc in Mathematical Modelling and Scientific Computing at the University of Oxford, from which she graduated in 2022. She also holds a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Warwick, which she completed in 2021. In her free time, she volunteers at SGAC as Local Events Coordination Team lead and as part of different event organising teams. Outside of aerospace, she also likes to travel, practice the piano and play squash.