Alice Bowman (APL)

Alice Bowman is a member of the Principal Professional Staff at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. She is the Space Mission Operations Group supervisor and the NASA New Horizons mission operations manager (MOM).  She supervises approximately 50 staff members who operate deep space and Earth-orbiting spacecraft, including NASA’s TIMED, STEREO, New Horizons, Parker Solar Probe, and recently DART. Ms. Bowman’s experience also includes national defense space operations, systems engineering, program management, space systems, and space instrument development.

Ms. Bowman has a degree in chemistry and physics from the University of Virginia and has more than 30 years of experience in space operations. Asteroid 146040 Alicebowman, discovered by Marc Buie in 2000, is named after her. She is a member of the Society of Women Engineers – which recently presented her with its prestigious Resnick Challenger Medal – as well as an AIAA Associate Fellow, and has served on the International SpaceOps Committee since 2009.

Andrew Monham (EUMETSAT)

Andrew Monham has 37 years’ experience in the space industry, having graduated with a Master of Engineering in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Southampton University in England. Andrew had a leading role in the operations preparation of ESA’s first European Remote Sensing satellite (ERS-1) and subsequently led the flight operations system preparation for ENVISAT. He performed consultancy to EUMETSAT as System Manager on the European Polar System / Metop mission, following which he joined the management team of a Belgian space company, developing the business, as well as Project Managing contracts with ESA. Andrew then moved back to EUMETSAT where he is responsible for Low Earth Orbit Spacecraft Operations and space situational awareness activities, including the strategy for EUMETSAT’s role in supporting space weather services and optimisation of mission lifetime in the space debris environment.

Jillian Redfern (SwRI)

Maria Th. Wörle (DLR)

Maria Th. Wörle is the deputy head of the Mission Planning group within the Mission Technology department at the German Space Operations Center (GSOC) of DLR (German Aerospace Center). She holds a diploma in Mathematics and started at GSOC as a software engineer in 2010. She still supports the development and maintenance of the generic planning and scheduling tool portfolio as well as the compound project-specific planning systems for various missions, e.g. TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X or EnMAP for Earth observation, or EDRS for link management of the geostationary communication platforms, but in the meantime is mainly engaged in the group management as well as the acquisition and ground segment design of new missions. Furthermore, Maria participates in the standardization activities of the CCSDS MO MP&S working group. Within SpaceOps, she supports the Technical Program Committee.

Alexi Glover (ESA)

Alexi Glover leads space weather service development and coordination activities as part of the European Space Agency’s Space Safety Programme. She has a PhD in solar physics and has worked in the area of transitioning research results into space weather applications and services since 2001. She is currently responsible for a diverse network of more than 50 institutes, academic groups and industrial entities who collaborate in order to deliver high quality space weather information to more than 3000 end users. Alexi is the SpaceOps topic co-chair for Safety and Sustainability of Space Operations. She is also an active member of the COSPAR community through the panel on space weather and panel on capacity building.

Simone Pirrotta (ASI)

Simone Pirrotta is the head of the Robotic Exploration Office at the Italian Space Agency. He was in charge of the technical management of some Italian instruments of ESA “ExoMars”, for which is the Deputy Italian Delegate at the ESA Rover Instrument Steering Committee. He was the system engineer for the ASI “LARES” scientific mission, until the launch on 2012. Recently, Simone acted as Project Manager for several ASI missions, mainly based on small satellites: “IKUNS” released from Kibo International Space Station (ISS) module, “LICIACube” that took part in the NASA “DART” mission, “LARES2” successfully launched on board of the ESA VegaC at its maiden flight, “ArgoMoon” that participated in the NASA Artemis1 mission. He is the Italian Delegate at the ESA Exploration and Utilization Board and at the International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG), he also is the PoC for the NASA SSERVI – ASI Associate partnership.

Simone has a Master Degree in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in Materials Engineering. He also acted as ASI Manager of the Broglio Space Center, the ASI Ground Segment located in Kenya and was involved in stratospheric balloons’ missions in arctic regions.

Christophe Belzile (CSA)

Christophe Belzile is a Satellite Operations Engineer with 20 years of experience.  He began his career at Neptec, a small company that produces systems for space robotics operations, providing space operations support and on-vehicle testing.  For the next 10 years, he was responsible for training astronauts, cosmonauts and flight controllers on the International Space Station (ISS) robotics systems.  In the next phase of his career, he worked on assembly, integration and testing of Radarsat Constellation Mission and participated in the launch and early operation phase of the satellite constellation.  He was a member of the team that operates Radarsat Constellation Mission for three years.  He now does project management for new missions in the satellite operations group.

Mr. Belzile’s pastimes includes photography, cycling and skiing.

Nathalie Corcoral (CNES) 

Nathalie Corcoral is the deputy head of the Cnes Operations Department. At the present time, this department operates 14 satellites in LEO orbits and prepares more than 10 new missions for national purposes or international cooperations. Before joining operations, Nathalie was involved in Monitoring and control activities (Head of M&C Office) as well as System Engineering and MBSE activities. She also was System Manager for a French and Chinese mission, mission manager in Operations department and responsible for Earth Terminal Development. Before joining Cnes, she spent some years in Airbus Defence & Space in Assembly Integration and Test department and was involved in Cassini Mission through the development of FPGA for one of the payloads.

Eugene Avenant holds the position of Chief Engineer at the South African National Space Agency’s Space Operations unit. He has been with SANSA since its inception in 2011 and before that at SANSA SO’s precursor The Satellite Applications Centre a centre of the CSIR. His responsibilities include the upgrade and establishment of new TT&C, Image download stations and other satellite monitoring systems. He has also been involved in development of a GNSS augmentation system for South Africa leading from projects with the European Commission in their Frame Programmes 6 and 7 and the UK Space Agency Industrial Participation Support Programme.  Additionally, he is involved in several working groups around space strategy for government departments and leads a team in SANSA that is producing the feasibility study for the Space Infrastructure Hub, a national strategic infrastructure project that aims to build infrastructure that will support a space value chain to address the needs of the country and region through space technology in a sustainable way.

Eugene was the TPC Chair for the SpaceOps2020-21 Conference and Co-Chair for both the SpaceOps2018 and SpaceOps2023 conferences. 

Ahmed Salem (MBRSC)

Ahmed Salem is an expert at Space Robotics Lab, MBRSC. He started as a research assistance involved in DubaiSat-1 in 2008 (UAE’s First Earth observing Satellite). He worked on several engineering disciplines in MBRSC involving developing Electronics boards such as onboard computers and Telemetry and Telecommand Encode/decoder, FPGA chips development, Software Development for Debugging, spacecraft AIT (Assembly, integration & Test), Radio Analysis, Develop analysis tools and software to help in trouble shooting Subsystems and Spacecrafts and many more fields across Satellites developments. Developed Command & Data Handling for DubaiSat-2, KhalifaSat and MBZSAT (Earth Observing missions). He worked on C&DH for Mars Mission. Headed digital system Units, then Headed Satellite Electronic Section, then becoming the first System Engineer in MBRSC. He worked on Rashid-1 Rover UAE’s First Lunar Mission.

Chiara Cocchiara

Chiara Cocchiara is a female Aerospace Engineer with more than 10 years of experience in the Space Sector. Forbes listed her as 30Under30 Leader in the category Industry. In the Space Community, she received the IAF Young Space Leaders award, and Space & Satellite Professionals International – SSPI Promise Award. Her design of a new drone technology to help saving human lives by using the Space infrastructure was recognized by the MIT Innovator Under35 and the ESNC Prizes.

In her full time job, she is a System Operations Engineer at EUMETSAT, where she supports the preparation of future Earth Observation Space Missions (EPS-SG) to monitor weather and climate.

Pushed by her dreams of becoming an astronaut, Chiara played the roles of Crew Commander (rotation) and Crew Engineer of a Mars Analogue mission with the Mars Society and experiments from NASA.

She volunteers for the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) since 2015 and she currently covers the role of SpaceOps Manager. She is part of the SpaceOps Committee, where she leads the SpaceOps Students and Young Professionals (SYP) program.

She speaks five languages, has one Bachelor and three Master degrees in Aerospace Engineering, and completed her education with an MBA.

Young Lee

Ms. Young Lee is the Advanced Design Engineering Technical Group Supervisor and Project Support Lead in the Project Systems Engineering and Formulation Section in Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Over the last fifteen years, she has held many diverse leadership positions in NASA programs and projects, establishing strategic and collaborative working relationships across many organizations within NASA, including its domestic and international partners. Moreover, she has over twenty years of experience in the development and deployment of operations systems for deep space missions, focusing on operations cost reduction, user-productivity improvements and increased information throughput to support many NASA’s deep space missions. She has served on the International SpaceOps Committee since 2014. She has a M.S. in Management of Information Systems from Claremont Graduate University in California.

Gladys Magagula 

Ms. Gladys Magagula is the Projects Manager at the South African National Space Agency’s Space Operations directorate which is situated at Hartebeesthoek. Over the past 19 years, she has worked for a diverse range of organizations and held various positions including Software Developer, Satellite Mission Control Specialist Science Communicator, etc.

She has served on the International SpaceOps Committee since 2019. She holds a master’s degree in engineering science (M. Eng. Sci.) from the University of Stellenbosch and is currently studying for an MBA degree at the Business School Netherlands.

Saeed Al Mansoori