Dr. Joel Joseph S. Marciano Jr. is the first and current Director General (DG) of the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA), where he provides executive direction and supervision over the entire operations of the newly created national government agency and its attached units. The PhilSA DG holds a Cabinet rank and also serves as the Presidential Adviser on Space Matters. Immediately prior to leading the PhilSA, Dr. Marciano was the Director of the Advanced Science and Technology Institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-ASTI). He is also a Full Professor of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the University of the Philippines Diliman where he held the Dado and Maria Banatao Institute Professorial Chair. He was a JSPS Fellow at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan; a UP-Dado Banatao Postdoctoral Fellow at the Berkeley Wireless Research Center (BWRC) in the University of California Berkeley; and a Visiting Associate Research Scientist at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). He was the Program Leader of the PHL-Microsat and STAMINA4Space programs that developed the Philippines’ first microsatellites, Diwata-1 and Diwata-2, and the Maya nanosatellites. These efforts include associated activities in ground station development and mission control operations, data archiving and distribution, remote sensing and artificial intelligence (AI) computing on geospatial data, academic program institution, establishment of local small satellite research and testing facilities, and local industry engagement in space technology.