Siamak Tafazoli

Canadian Space Agency

Siamak Tafazoli is a chief engineer in the Space Utilization branch of the Canadian Space Agency and he is also an adjunct professor at Concordia University’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department as well as an adjunct professor at McGill University’s Mechanical Engineering Department.

He holds a bachelor's and a master's degree in aerospace engineering from Carleton University in Ottawa and McGill University in Montreal, respectively, and obtained his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Concordia University in Montreal. Siamak also obtained a graduate degree in Air and Space Law from McGill’s prestigious Institute for Air and Space Law. He has over 20 years of experience in the aerospace industry having had his own consulting company, working in industry at CAE Electronics and Canadair, in academia for McGill and Concordia universities as adjunct professor and in government at the National Research Council of Canada and since 1997 at the Canadian Space Agency.

He is actively involved in the systems engineering and technical management of Canadian satellites missions such as NEOSSat and M3MSat. NEOSSat was launched successfully on February 25, 2013 and is the world’s first asteroid finder satellite. Dr. Tafazoli’s research interests are on model and knowledge-based techniques applied to spacecraft control, formation, autonomy and health monitoring and diagnosis. He has more than 60 technical publications and one patent to be issued.