Periklis (Peri) Papadopoulos, PhD

Dr Papadopoulos is a member of the Technical Advisory Council of Taksha’s Small Satellites and Space Systems Institute (4SI). He is a graduate of the Aeronautics and Astronautics department at Stanford University, class of ’92 where he graduated with honors and was recognized with the best thesis award of the year. He is also a member of the honors societies TAU-BETA-PI National Engineering Honorary Society and PI-TAU-SIGMA National Mechanical Engineering Honorary Fraternity.

He served as senior research scientist at NASA-ARC for 20 years where he participated and project lead planetary mission studies, space transportation and reentry programs. Programs that he was involved include the reusable launch vehicles X-33, X-34, X-38 and XCRV, space shuttle contingency abort, Space Launch initiative (SLI), Mars Science Laboratory, Mars Pathfinder, Galileo probe, and Venus Composition Probe amongst others. He also served as a member of the NASA-ARC COBRA team for designing a next generation Mars Entry vehicle able to land heavy payload delivery systems. His scientific contributions to the space program have been published in over 250 conference and journal publications. In his tenure at NASA he was recognized with several spotlight awards for his outstanding contributions, public service award to the space program including NASA’s prestigious Turning Goals Into Reality (TGIR) award. He has also been invited speaker at the several AIAA conferences and NASA events.

Dr Papadopoulos, currently holds a tenure, full professor, position at California’s San José State University. He is the director/founder of the Center of Excellence for Space Transportation and Exploration and the Advanced Space Systems Engineering Laboratory. He was the co-investigator and probe developer for the ATROMOS/NASA Mars Polar Lander. He directed the microsatellite and TechEdSat cube-sat program. He established a NASA Space Act agreement for university collaboration with NASA on several space programs. He also materialized a memorandum of understanding between the SJSU/MAE department and the Lockheed Martin Co. (LMCO and LMTO) for development of business opportunities in the areas of space transportation, propulsion, and engineering and technology services.

Dr Papadopoulos, has served as member of the International Steering committees of the International Planetary Probe Workshop (IPPW) and the Thermal and Fluids Analysis Workshop (TFAWS.)