Designing for Space: Insight from Australia’s Leading Space Entrepreneurs and Engineers

As advances in aerospace technology and microelectronics become increasingly affordable and accessible, increasing numbers of start-ups and universities are leading the next space revolution. The ambitions of this emerging industry are diverse and the quick acceleration of innovation in this field suggests that we are only beginning to glimpse what the future might hold.

Join us at the historic Sydney Observatory to learn about Australia’s unique contributions to this emerging field and learn about the challenges and opportunities when designing for space.

Speakers:

Dr Elias Aboutanios (Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications, UNSW)

Dr Elias Aboutanios is the Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research and a Senior Lecturer with The School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications at the University of New South Wales.

In 2011, he assembled a consortium that, in addition to UNSW, included Thales-Alenia Space (France), Optus, and l’Institut Superieur de l’Aeronautique et de l’Espace (France) and was successful in obtaining over $1.1M in funding to develop Australia’s first masters in Space Systems Engineering. In 2012, he set up the UNSW-EC0 project that contributed a satellite to the QB50 constellation. He is the academic mentor of the BLUEsat team, a group of university students who have space activities, including satellites and a Mars rover, and high altitude balloon missions.

He currently conducts research in radar, GPS, power systems and smart grids, space systems (and stratospheric balloons), and Nuclear Magnetic resonance. 

Will Reid (Australian Centre for Field Robotics, University of Sydney)

William Reid is a PhD student at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics at the University of Sydney. His main research interests include the design of planetary rover mobility systems and motion planning for autonomous reconfigurable robots. During his PhD he has been involved in the development of the MAMMOTH rover system, an actively articulated wheel-on-leg rover that is capable of driving and clambering over unstructured terrain. 

William received a Bachelor's degree in Mechatronics Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Melbourne. While on a university exchange at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, William project managed a sub-orbital rocket experiment that was sponsored by the European Space Agency and Swedish Space Corporation. The experiment's aims were to study the density profile of the middle atmosphere as well as aerosol particle concentrations. William has a passion for space engineering and the development of autonomous robotic systems for the exploration of the unknown.