TRL 5-6

Dr. Chris Haase is the Founder, President, and CEO of Gadolyn, Inc., a company transforming rare earth and strategic alloy production with its DARPA-validated D-DIRECT technology. With over 25 years of leadership in critical materials, venture capital, energy, and defense, Chris drives innovation to deliver sustainable, high-purity alloys for industry, defense, electric mobility, and aerospace, reducing U.S. dependence on foreign supply chains. His expertise in venture capital and technology commercialization has positioned Gadolyn as a leader in advanced alloys and national security. A former Department of Energy Oppenheimer Fellow and Department of Defense Fellow at the University of Chicago, Chris has held key roles, including Director of the U.S. Critical Materials Institute, Investment Director at Aramco Ventures, and Chief of Staff to Shell’s CTO. He has managed over 100 transactions across venture capital, licensing, research collaborations, and divestments, and holds multiple patents. Chris earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Chicago, an MBA from the Rotterdam School of Management, and is a Summa Cum Laude graduate from Ohio State University.

Served as a foreign volunteer fighter in the Ukrainian Armed Forces for 2 years, where I flew drones in combat, worked on electronic warfare and as right hand for drone and electronic warfare to 2 battalion commanders, out of the battlefield lessons learned I ended up developing Omira Systems, a company building comms that intelligently adapt to the spectrum around themselves and bypass adversary jamming efforts, allowing our troops and systems to keep communicating in an otherwise denied environment.

Colonel (Ret.) Lee Rosen served over 23 years with the US Air Force where he was a commander, space operator and DoD certified acquisition officer, including tours at the Pentagon, National Reconnaissance Office and Air Force Space Command. As a former SpaceX VP of Mission and Launch Ops, and Customer Operations & Integration with more than 200 space launch missions completed successfully, Lee brings extensive experience with operations, engineering, program management and government relations. During his 10+ years at SpaceX, he led the build of 3 Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch pads, was responsible for operations & mission management of all military, civil and commercial missions, and the team that flew cargo & crew Dragon spacecraft, as well as Astronaut training. In 2022 he co-founded ThinkOrbital where he serves as President & Chief Executive Officer building space and battlespace domain awareness capabilities and huge infrastructure in space to ignite the new space economy. Lee’s been married for 30+ years, has 2 lovely daughters, and is an avid runner, cyclist, surfer, outdoorsman and brewer.

Ben is the founder and CEO of Ensemble Space Labs, a startup building advanced space weather analytics and forecasting tools to support satellite operations. He is a former Nuclear Surface Warfare Officer in the U.S. Navy and has a background in nuclear and radiation engineering and business management with degrees from Georgia Tech and the Wharton School. Benjamin’s work now focuses on applying physics-informed machine learning to improve operational decision-making for satellite operators and national security stakeholders.

Prior to founding TrustPoint, where he serves as CEO, Mr. Shannon was Vice President at Astro Digital, responsible for strategy, business development, and product management. He oversaw six satellite programs supporting IoT, broadband, and laser communications including the Mandrake-2 program for the SDA. Before that, he was Vice President of Business Development at SpaceQuest, where he developed solutions for maritime domain awareness. Mr. Shannon began his career as a satellite systems engineer at Orbital Sciences, later moving into corporate strategy to support M&A. He has over 18 years of experience developing commercial solutions for systems traditionally operated by governments and holds degrees from MIT and Stanford University.

Patrick Haddox is CEO and co-founder of Samara Aerospace, where he leads the development of advanced satellite platforms for both defense and commercial space missions. With more than a decade of experience in spacecraft technology, Patrick specializes in attitude determination and control systems, trajectory optimization, and hardware-in-the-loop simulations. Earlier in his career, he developed a state-of-the-art real-time hardware-in-the-loop space vehicle dynamics simulation suite for the Air Force Research Laboratory. At CU Aerospace, he created high-performance orbit optimization tools and co-developed the Distributed and Scalable IMU system for spacecraft jitter detection and source localization. At Blue Canyon Technologies, he led ADCS test campaigns on missions including DARPA Blackjack, MethaneSat, and the Space Development Agency's missile tracking layer. Patrick holds a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as Bachelor of Science degrees in Engineering Mechanics from UIUC and Physics from Illinois State University.