Management

Prof. Dr. Martin Tajmar holds the Chair for Space Systems at the Institute of Aerospace Engineering at TUD and is the director of the institute. After research stays at NASA JPL and ESA ESTEC, the Austrian Institute of Technology as head of the space propulsion & advanced concepts department, being an associate professor at KAIST, he joined TU Dresden in 2012. He is a world-leading expert in space propulsion, particularly for advanced concepts. He has been PI/Co-PI of numerous projects with funding from DFG, DLR, NASA, ESA, US Air Force, Airbus and others (presently 18 grants at space systems chair). He has authored 75 journal papers (including Applied Physics Letters, Physical Review B, Space Science Review, etc.) and 167 conference papers. He is teaching space systems, space propulsion as well as electric propulsion and advanced concepts at TU Dresden and at the Vienna University of Technology. During his career, he supervised more than 100 Master students and 20 PhD students.

As head of the research group for space transportation at Technische Universität Dresden, Christian is managing all activities in the field of launcher and lander technologies, including everything related to chemical propulsion. At the same time, he works as a lecturer in the fields of space transportation, space exploration, orbital mechanics and spacecraft design methods. Due to his experience in the conduction and risk assessment of rocket engine tests, Christian has been appointed as occupational health and safety officer at the Chair of Space Systems. At the beginning of 2019, Christian finished his Ph.D. on the system analysis and prototype development of a fluid injection induced thrust vector control for aerospike engines. Christian published a total of 25 journal and conference papers.

Alessia is a research associate in the working group of Space Transportation at Technische Universität Dresden and ASCenSIon Project Manager. She has a double-degree master in Thermal Power – Propulsion (Cranfield University, U.K.) and in Aerospace Engineering (University of Padua, Italy), where she graduated with an experimental thesis on the impact of the inlet flow profile on the unsteady swirl distortion characteristics of an S-duct intake using Stereo PIV methods, carried out in collaboration with Rolls-Royce. She has past academic and company experience in both technical and commercial sectors, with a focus on business development, experimental investigation of propulsion systems, and multi-physics flow analysis. She is co-owner of a patent for the design and testing of a mechanism to deploy and retrieve a tether in space. She has proven communication skills (i.e. she was a speaker at TEDx Vicenza in 2017) and organizational skills. She is also is a professional musician. She published a total of 10 journal and conference papers.