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BioSimone D’Amico is Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AA), W.M. Keck Faculty Scholar in the School of Engineering, Associate Professor of Geophysics (by Courtesy), Science Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Chief Science Officer at EraDrive Inc. He is the Founding Director of the Stanford Space Rendezvous Laboratory, Founding Co-Director of the Center for AEroSpace Autonomy Research (CAESAR), and Director of the Undergraduate Program in Aerospace Engineering at Stanford. He has 23+ years of experience in research and development of autonomous spacecraft and distributed space systems. He developed and deployed the distributed Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) system of several formation-flying, rendezvous and proximity operations missions such as GRACE (NASA/DLR), PRISMA (OHB/DLR/CNES/DTU), TanDEM-X (DLR), BIROS (DLR) and PROBA-3 (ESA). Currently, he is the institutional PI of four autonomous satellite swarms funded by NASA (STARLING, STARI) and by NSF (VISORS, SWARM-EX). Dr. D'Amico is Fellow of AAS, Associate Fellow of AIAA, Associate Editor of the AIAA's JGCD and he is in the Advisory Board of four space start-ups focusing on distributed space systems for future applications in SAR remote sensing, orbital lifetime prolongation, and space-based solar power. He was the recipient of several awards, most recently the 2024 NASA Ames Honor Award for the Starling mission, Best Paper Awards at IAF (2022), IEEE (2021), AIAA (2021), AAS (2019) conferences, the M. Barry Carlton Award by IEEE (2020), the Leonardo 500 Award by the Leonardo da Vinci Society/ISSNAF (2019), FAI/NAA’s Group Diploma of Honor (2018), DLR’s Sabbatical/Forschungssemester (2012) and Wissenschaft Preis (2006), and NASA’s Group Achievement Award for the GRACE mission (2004). He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Politecnico di Milano (2003) and the Ph.D. degree from Delft University of Technology (2010).

Hannah Katherine D'Apice

Lecturer, Civic, Liberal, and Global Education

BioHannah D'Apice is a Lecturer in the COLLEGE (Civic, Liberal, and Global Education) Program. She received her doctorate from the Stanford GSE in International/Comparative Education and the Sociology of Education. Her work examines the historical and transnational sociology of organizational structures, policies, and leadership in education, especially as they relate to issues of race/ethnicity and gender/sexuality.

Prior to her doctoral studies, Hannah worked as a research manager, managing randomized controlled trials evaluating the effectiveness of educational programs. In addition, she taught professionally for four years in Texas and Singapore.

In addition to her PhD, Hannah has a Master's in Sociology and Master's in International Education Policy Analysis from Stanford, as well as a Bachelor's in Political Science from Columbia University.