The launch of Sputnik 1 in October 1957 marked the beginning of the space era and of the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. in the 21st century, there are many more participants in space, including countries such as India and China, and commercial companies such as SpaceX. How will the United States fare in a crowded outer space?

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Join us as we welcome Gregg Maryniak, co-founder of the XPRIZE Foundation and its original executive director. He is the foundation’s corporate secretary and member of the board of directors.

Maryniak is an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He received Russia’s Tsiolkovsky Medal for his work on the energy and material resources of space and the Space Frontier Foundation’s Vision to Reality Award for starting the lunar prospector team which discovered billions of tons of water ice and other frozen volatiles at the moon’s north and south poles. He has testified on energy and space technology before the United States Congress and the President’s National Commission on Space.

He was Chief Executive Officer of the Space Studies Institute of Princeton, Senior Scientist of the Futron Corporation, Vice President of the St. Louis Science Center and Director of the James S. McDonnell Planetarium. He is an associate founder of the International Space University where he served as a member of the board and a managing director of the university as well as a department chair teaching such subjects as orbital mechanics, robotics and space resource utilization. He co-chairs the energy/environment track and the space track of Singularity University.

He served on the Director’s Council of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and is the vice chairman of the Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation.