2024 Australian Space Domain Awareness and Space Traffic Management Conference

Elizabeth “Liz” Pearce has a background in all things space and has worked across multiple Australian Government agencies including the Bureau of Meteorology, Defence Science and Technology Group and the Australian Space Agency.  Liz worked as a physicist for 14 years in areas of space weather, positioning, navigation and timing (PNT), robotics and autonomy, space domain awareness, launch and human spaceflight. Liz now manages the space program at KBR, with a focus on SDA products for Defence.

Dr. Puneet Singla is a Harry and Arlene Schell Professor of Engineering in the department of Aerospace Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. He received his bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India in 2000 and earned his doctoral degree in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University, College Station in 2006. He was a faculty member of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at the University at Buffalo (UB) from 2006-2017. His research work involves fundamental development of new mathematical and computational approaches for uncertainty propagation through nonlinear dynamical systems, integrating sensing with numerical models, dynamic sensing, optimal control and developing models from sensor data. The interplay between dynamic system analysis, estimation and control lay the scientific groundwork for the development of a data driven framework for diverse problems of varying scales such as tracking resident space objects, trajectory planning for hypersonic vehicles, accurate prediction of toxic material plumes through the atmosphere or water, tumor motion modeling, and control of robotic systems. He is a recipient of the competitive NSF CAREER and the AFOSR Young Investigator awards for his research work. He is also the recipient of the young outstanding aerospace engineer award from Texas A&M University. He has authored over 200 papers to-date including 50 peer-reviewed journals articles. He is the principal author of a text- book entitled “Multi-Resolution Methods for Modeling and Control of Dynamical Systems,” (300 pages) published in August 2008 by CRC Press (Boca Raton, FL). He has received the best paper awards at the 2006 AIAA/AAS Astrodynamics Specialists Conference, 2009 International Information Fusion Conference and 2020 Dynamic Data Driven Application Systems Conference for his research work. His work in attitude estimation included algorithms supporting a successful experiment StarNav that flew on the STS-107. His work on uncertainty propagation was used to compute a probabilistic spatial-temporal estimate of ash presence during the April 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland. He is currently a deputy director of United States Space Force (USSF) funded multi-university SURI program titled Space Object Understanding and Reconnaissance of Complex Events (SOURCE). He is serving as an Associate Editor for AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics (since 2017) and IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems (since 2015). He has also served as a guest editor for the special issue of the ASME Journal for Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control to commemorate the life, achievements, and impact of Rudolph E. Kalman. He has also conducted workshop on new advances in uncertainty quantification at AFRL-RV and national conferences to disseminate his research work to research practitioner.

He is a fellow of American Astronautical Society (AAS), an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).