Dr. James Crawford
After leading software research and development for over two decades, Jimi is the founder & CTO of Orbital Insight. Orbital Insight helps business and policy decision-makers understand economic and societal trends through geospatial analytics. His corporate focus is to develop artificial intelligence, machine learning, and computer vision, creating a new source of market data for diverse industries.
Before a successful $1B Monsanto acquisition, Jimi was the SVP of Science and Engineering at the Climate Corporation. Prior to that, he was CTO and Software Architect at Moon Express whose goal was putting the first commercial robot on the moon. As the Engineering Director for Google Book Search, he was in charge of Google’s project to scan, index, and make searchable all the world’s books. As EVP of Engineering at Composite Software, he led product development around data visualization.
At Nasa Ames Research Center, Jimi led Autonomy and Robotics projects and authored over 15 peer-reviewed publications, resulting in five patents. Jimi earned his Ph.D. and Master’s degrees in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, and BA in Math and Computer Science from Rice University.
He has a long-term interest in photography which led him, most recently, to eastern Idaho to photograph the August total eclipse.
Matthew Jenkins
Matt Jenkins joined Maxar Intelligence as the Chief Space Systems Officer in September 2024. He brings two decades of systems engineering leadership, including extensive experience in serving remote sensing and highly technical government missions. With extensive technical expertise in passive and active electro-optical and infrared systems, lasers and radio frequency (RF) systems, he has helped build dozens of advanced spacecrafts that are on orbit today.
Prior to joining Maxar Intelligence, Matt was Head of Engineering for Amazon Project Kuiper’s Government Solutions team, where he led the design of advanced and resilient systems to support U.S. national security priorities. Before that, he was the Director of Space Engineering at Pacific Defense Strategies, where he led the development of innovative RF payloads for national security and space domain awareness missions.
Earlier in his career, he spent more than 15 years at Raytheon, including serving as Chief Systems Engineer for the company’s missile warning and defense systems business, as well as leading Raytheon’s Space System Engineering team. During his time there, he led the team responsible for designing the optical imaging instrument in Maxar’s WorldView Legion satellites.
Matt earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Optics from the University of Rochester, and a Master’s degree in Systems Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. He also holds two remote sensing-related patents, and developed 20+ trade secrets in optical system assembly integration and test.
Christopher Lentz
Chris Lentz serves as a Lockheed Martin Fellow at Lockheed Martin Space, where he is the Chief Architect for Commercial Earth Observation Systems for the company’s Global Situational Awareness mission area.
In this role, Chris is responsible for defining new end-to-end space systems solutions and architectures covering a wide range of remote sensing missions. In addition, he is responsible for identifying new markets and new solutions to meet user needs, engaging with potential customers to define requirements, developing commercial remote sensing strategies, and leading new business pursuits.
Prior to this role, Chris spent the majority of his 30+ year career in systems engineering, specializing in and leading mission performance analysis, Concepts of Operations (CONOPS) development, system interface definition and architecture design.
The remainder of his career was spent supporting programs in a variety of roles, including Systems Engineering Payload Manager, WorldView-4 Satellite Mission Analysis & CONOPS Manager, and Chief Systems Engineer on a variety of remote sensing programs, spanning all phases of program development from concept synthesis, through proposal, design, manufacturing and operations.
Chris received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Adam Maher
Mr. Adam Maher serves as Founder & CEO of Ursa Space Systems Inc (Ursa), whose services enable users to research, monitor, search, and discover changes in physical objects around the globe, from the perspective of space. Ursa Space’s platform orchestrates the collection, analytics, and fusion of data from a virtual constellation of radar, optical, and RF satellites to automate and abstract the complicated process of gaining access to, processing, and fusing satellite data with terrestrial data sources.
Adam’s vision is to improve the satellite Earth observation user experience by bringing the community of traditional and new space members together to illuminate how our physical world impacts daily actions by creating a virtual mosaic of the world that anyone can access. He founded Ursa in 2014 to develop this vision of connecting people to information rich data derived from synthetic aperture radar, seeing an obvious frustration and disconnect between the technology and those who could take full advantage of the capabilities. Today Ursa’s mission is to enable a community of developers to build applications that can illuminate how our physical world impacts daily actions, to understand how changes in the economy, supply chains, and the geopolitical landscape impact daily decisions, and reveal those changes in our ever-evolving world to leaders, professionals, and, one day, all people.
Prior to founding Ursa Space, Adam worked at MAXAR (Space Systems Loral). There, he served as a system engineer from paper to launch for complete satellite builds and multiple successful commercial satellite proposals. In addition to broadband satellite communications work, he also worked on efforts in space robotics, electric propulsion, Earth observation, and government programs.
Adam holds a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering and Master of Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, from Cornell University. At Ursa Space Systems Inc., he uses his knowledge of the satellite industry to fuel his vision of a living world map, where the connection between satellites and users is no longer complicated or difficult, and users are empowered to make better decisions with better data.
Nina Soleng
Nina has more than 15 years’ experience in the satellite industry holding different roles in the company and is currently heading the Communications Team at KSAT.
Due to her in-depth knowledge of the industry as well as the end-user segments, she often represents the company at leading satellite and space industry events around the world as well as engaging with governments and stakeholders of all types. Moreover, because she has worked extensively on both the Ground Station and Earth Observation sides of the business, she has important insights into both.
Nina is former Chairman of NOSCA Clean Oceans, an innovation cluster dedicated to promoting oil spill control technology globally for preparedness and response, as well as transferring technology and knowledge to battle unwanted effects from algae and ocean plastic.
KSAT provides environmental protection- and vessel detection services globally and has pioneered the industry with pushing the timelines for Near Real-Time (NRT) delivery of actionable information- leveraging their global ground network, especially the unique Svalbard station. For many years her focus was on developing markets for KSAT´s Maritime Monitoring services based on SAR data (Synthetic Aperture Radar).
Nina played a key role in taking services to market and worked with several of the large international oil companies (IOC´s), authorities, coastguards and other stakeholders leading the sales efforts in Latin America, South America and the Middle East markets.
Her portfolio also included the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA), an Agency providing technical assistance and support to the European Commission and Member States on maritime safety, pollution by ships and European maritime security.