Sara Spangelo
Co-Founder and CEO of Swarm

This talk will discuss Swarm's evolution over the last 4 years in our mission to bring low-cost connectivity to every point on Earth at all times. I will discuss the trajectory of my career starting at UM in academia, to JPL/NASA, to Google X, to my tryouts to be a Canadian astronaut, and how each experience prepared me for starting and running Swarm. Through many failures and some wins, I’ll discuss how my team has used our engineering backgrounds and expertise to bring the world’s lowest-cost connectivity solution to life. I'll discuss how we enable new use cases and value to customers across agriculture, logistics, energy, environment, and global development, and discuss future ideas for how I believe we can have a positive impact on life on Earth.

About the speaker...

Dr. Sara Spangelo is the co-founder and CEO of Swarm, the company that is developing the world's lowest-cost global communications network with breakthrough satellite technology and ground hardware for customers in remote locations. Before starting Swarm, Sara worked on small satellites and autonomous aircraft at the University of Michigan and was a lead systems engineer at both NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) and Google X. Her expertise is in modeling and optimizing satellite constellations to maximize impact and business opportunities. Sara holds a PhD in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan and in 2017 was a Top 32 Canadian astronaut candidate.