Dr. Joel Joseph S. Marciano Jr. is the first and current Director General (DG) of the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA). He is also a Full Professor of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD), where he held the Dado and Maria Banatao Professorial Chair. He was the UP-Dado Banatao Fellow at the University of California Berkeley and UC San Diego in 2004-2005 and a Visiting Associate Research Scientist in UCSD in 2007 and 2009. His research spans wireless communications, rural connectivity, and scientific Earth observation (EO) microsatellites. He led the development of the Philippines’ first microsatellites, Diwata-1 and Diwata-2, and the Maya nanosatellites, which include associated mission control operations, computational methods and analyses, ground validation, data archiving and distribution, and academic program and industry linkage development. As PhilSA DG, Dr. Marciano holds the rank of a Cabinet Secretary and serves as Presidential Adviser on Space Matters.