The Initiative for Interstellar Studies is led by a team of dedicated individuals who work to realise the organisation's ultimate goal of enabling both robotic and human exploration and colonisation of the nearby stars—our Board of Directors.
Kelvin F. Long
President, Director Strategy
Kelvin Long completed a BEng Aerospace Engineering and Msc Astrophysics, both from the University of London. He is a Chartered Member of the Institute of Physics, Fellow Royal Astronomical Society, Fellow The British Interplanetary Society, for which he previously served as the Chief Editor of the technical publication, The Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS), which is the oldest astronautical journal in the world. He is also a Member The Mars Society, Member The Planetary Society, Associate Member The International Association of Astronomical Artists and a Member of the Whale & Dolphin Conservation Society. Kelvin has published dozens of technical papers in JBIS, Acta Astronautica, Space Chronicles and other commercial productions, many of which are on the subject of Interstellar flight. He is also an author, with his book “Deep Space Propulsion: A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight”, published by Springer-Praxis, being one of the few text books on the subject ever produced. He was the main founder and creator behind the theoretical design study of an interstellar probe, Project Icarus, serving as its first Project Leader and is currently a Senior Designer within the team, and was one of the co-founders for the non-profit organization Icarus Interstellar, for which he had served as Vice President during the first year of operation, among other roles. Kelvin has been inspired by the achievements of Project Apollo and the writing of authors like Arthur C. Clarke and has declared it a personal goal to work towards the fulfilment of an interstellar capable society before the year 2100. His various initiatives, writing, projects all work towards this goal by catalysing people and ideas. He has appeared and consulted on several documentaries including Going to the Stars produced by Christian Darkin, Evacuate Earth produced by Atlas Media for National Geographic Television, Fight for Space produced by Paul Hildebrandt. He has appeared on the Austrian radio station FM4 and the Space Boffins Podcast, and the Space Show and talking about interstellar travel. He is also the Managing Director and founder of his own Scientific consultancy company, Stellar Engines Ltd. He currently sits on the Advisory Committee for the Breakthrough Initiative Project Starshot. Kelvin also served as the first Executive Director for the first five years of the I4IS and now serves as the company President.
Robert Swinney
Deputy Director, Chairman Education Academy Committee
In the 1980s Rob Swinney completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne (achieving a 2:1) and his Master of Science degree in Radio Astronomy at the University of Manchester (Jodrell Bank – thesis ‘Kinematics of the Radio Flare star Cygnus X-3′). After several successful years working as a teacher of Craft, Design and Technology at Sherborne Boys School in Dorset he returned to his studies and graduated from Cranfield University (then the Cranfield Institute of Technology) with a further Master of Science degree in Avionics and Flight Control Systems (thesis ‘Graphical Interface for a hybrid Flight Simulator’). After Cranfield University he undertook a challenging and rewarding career in the Royal Air Force as an Aerosystems Engineering Officer and he completed his RAF Commission in 2006 having attained the rank of Squadron Leader. He is a Chartered Engineer registered with the UK’s Engineering Council and a Member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology and a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society. Rob has been published in Nature and the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society and recently returned to the world of academia and research. Rob was inspired by Isaac Asimov, first by the great author’s science fiction but later by the non-fiction that opened his mind to the future possibilities. This inspiration encouraged him to undertake a lifelong study of aspects of Cosmology and Astronomy. As a boy he followed the Apollo adventure and as a young man the Grand Tour of the Voyager spacecraft but after his studies became restrained by the realities of life. As important, the boyhood images of Star Trek and such, some 30-40 years ago, appeared to be no more than pure fantasy. Now today, he believes the ‘planets are aligning’ again and the i4is will galvanise the population and prove that, although it may still seem difficult, real practical steps on the road to interstellar travel are being taken.
Andreas Hein
Executive Director, Chairman Technical Research Committee
Andreas received his master’s degree in aerospace engineering at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen. He is now working on a PhD at the same university in the area of space systems engineering at the Institute of Astronautics, focusing on the application of heritage technologies to space systems. He is currently doing a research stay at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) System Architecture Lab under the supervision of Professor Ed Crawley, focusing on the architecture and heritage use for X-ray astronomy missions. He spent a semester abroad at the Institut Superieur de l’Aeronautique et de l’Espace in Toulouse, working on the numerical simulation of hypervelocity impact of space dust on spacecraft antennas. He also worked at the European Space Agency Strategy and Architecture Office on stakeholder analysis for future manned space exploration. In his free time Andreas founded and leads Icarus Interstellar’s Project Hyperion: A design study on manned interstellar flight. He is also a core designer and module lead of Project Icarus. Andreas is also active in the Scientific Workgroup for Rocketry and Astronautics (WARR) at his home university where he founded the space elevator and interstellar flight group. He is a member of the International Honor Society for Systems Engineering – Omega Alpha Association, a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, and a member of INCOSE.
Angelo Genovese
Director of Experimental Programs
Angelo Genovese received a Master’s Degree in Aerospace Engineering (specialising in Space Propulsion) at the University of Pisa, Italy, in 1992. He started to work as Electric Propulsion Engineer in the Italian space propulsion research centre “Centrospazio” in Pisa, developing Field Emission Electric Propulsion (FEEP) ion thrusters for ultra-precise positioning of scientific spacecraft. In 2000 he moved to the Austrian Research Centres in Vienna, Austria, where he contributed to develop an Indium FEEP Micro-propulsion System from breadboard to qualification level for the ESA mission LISA Pathfinder. Since 2009 he has been working at Thales Deutschland, Ulm, Germany, on the development of the innovative ion thruster HEMPT, suitable for new-generation telecom satellites and advanced scientific missions. Angelo has published more than 50 papers in conferences and scientific journals including JBIS, and he contributed to two patents on Indium FEEP ion thrusters. Profoundly interested in advanced space propulsion systems for interstellar precursor missions, he is a Corporate Member of the Initiative for Interstellar Studies (I4IS), in particular involved in the Technical and Educational Committees. He has contributed to the I4IS book “Beyond the Boundary” with a chapter on advanced electric propulsion. Angelo is also a member of BIS, Icarus Interstellar, Mars Society, Planetary Society.
Richard Osborne
Director Technology & Strategic Foresight
Richard Osborne has a Master's Degree in Remote Sensing (specialising in Planetary Physics), a Bachelor's Degree in Physics (specialising in Quantum Mechanics), and studied for a Doctorate in Astrophysics (specialising in Stellar Magnetohydrodynamics). He is a physicist, systems engineer and enterprise architect. He has specialist skills in rocket propulsion, launch vehicle design, astrodynamics, software engineering, mathematical modelling and technological forecasting. He has been a Director of several commercial companies and has over two decades of experience. As well as being a long time Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, he also serves as a member of the governing council. He has also served on the UK Rocketry Associations council for over ten years. He works as a systems consultant for companies such as Reaction Engines Ltd and helping to develop their STERN hydrogen fuelled air breathing rocket engine. He has worked on a number of space industry projects ranging from payloads to the Mir space station to Mars missions, specialising more recently in systems engineering in addition to rocket propulsion. He has also worked as an IT consultant. One of his specialisms is technological and strategic forecasting and he is bringing those skills fully for the use of I4IS as it looks towards developing its own technological and strategic roadmaps for interplanetary and interstellar flight.
Robert Kennedy III
Director Geoengineering & Resource Utilisation, President US Company
Robert Kennedy was educated in the classics and foreign languages since boyhood (Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Russian). He studied studied mechanical engineering at California Polytechnic (Pomona, B.S. 1986), with emphases in robotics, machine design, optical physics. Fresh out of school, he designed industrial robotics systems at the Douglas Aircraft Company (1987-1991) in Los Angeles, and pursued research in artificial intelligence at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (1987). Robert founded the Ultimax Group, Inc. (1992-present, www.ultimax.com ), a Russian-American company in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He is a published commercial artist and author (nonfiction), and has written about space-based solar power, shell worlds, climate change, linguistics, energy parks, biofuels, and energy security. In 2011 and 2013, he co-organized and sponsored the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshops (www.tviw.us) in Oak Ridge Tennessee and Huntsville Alabama and went onto be a co-founder of the subsequent non-profit TVIW. He has lectured on geoengineering in Moscow for the Russian Academy of Sciences / Rosgidromet (their national weather service), and also at the International Academy of Astronautics in Aosta, Italy. His work has also appeared in /Journal of the British Interplanetary Society/, /Acta Astronautica/, the /Whole Earth Review/ and a cover story on Soviet Star Wars in the Smithsonian /Air & Space/ magazine. He has patents and trademarks pending for a number of optoelectronic, robotic, security, and space system inventions as well as the concept of Tetrageneration(TM). As the American Society of Mechanical Engineer’s 1994 Congressional Fellow, he spent his year working for the Subcommittee on Space in the U.S. House of Representatives. He participated in the First Interstellar Robotics Conference at NYU, and was a technical consultant on “Deep Impact” (Paramount/Dreamworks major motion picture released May 8, 1998). He is past-chair of the Oak Ridge Section as well as the Technology & Society Division; and currently sits on the Society’s national Energy Committee, tasked with writing Energy Talking Point papers for the 110th thru 113th Congresses and the Society’s Carbon Statement. Currently, Robert is a senior systems engineer at Tetra Tech.
John Davies
John is a lifelong engineer and a Londoner of over 30 years standing with northern English origins and strong Scottish connections. He has been fascinated by space travel ever since he read the Dan Dare stories in the Eagle in the 50s.
He recalls contradicting his father who, despite being an engineer himself, thought that "rockets can't fly in space because there is nothing for them to push against". Once Sputnik One went up his dad became a bit of a space enthusiast too.
John was the first person in his family to go to university, studying Electronics at Liverpool University. He joined Hawker Siddeley Dynamics Space Projects Division in 1968 and worked on the latter stages of the most substantial launch vehicle ever built in UK, Bluestreak. He also worked on satellite projects including a design study for a large space telescope which acquired the name Hubble about 12 years later.
He was fascinated by digital technology and moved to Edinburgh University where he wrote some very early communications software. He took a year off to study Computer Science more formally at Manchester University, taking his M.Sc. back to Edinburgh before moving on to London University doing similar work.
He re-joined the commercial sector as a consultant and in technical sales support and was involved in the early stages of SMS messaging and in packet radio long before we all started using it, as GPRS, for our smartphones.
He has been involved in three start-up companies, one of which survives! His last full-time job was running the IT volunteering programme for the Information Technologists livery company of the City of London.
He's now retired but busier than ever with educational outreach to schools for the Initiative for Interstellar Studies, coordinating work on i4is website and email, and editing Principium, the quarterly newsletter of the Initiative for Interstellar Studies.
He's a long-established member of both the British Interplanetary Society and the British Computer Society. He was one of the leads for our World Science Fiction Convention 2014 participation.
Sam Harrison
Sam graduated from Bournemouth University in 2016 with a degree in Business Studies. His interest in space then led him to study for a master’s degree in Space Studies at the International Space University, ISU.
During his time at the ISU, he has been involved with the founding and running of several for-profit enterprises including most recently a high altitude stratospheric balloon company called Nebula Sciences, all while furthering i4is’s goals through his role as researcher and board member.
As part of his MSc degree at ISU, Sam worked in the astrophysics department at NASA for four months where he was responsible for designing and building a new type of lower wavefront sensor to help increase the stability in on sky telescope observations.
Sam has also given talks in a wide range of settings including TEDx, ISU and Singularity University, as well as teaching courses for the i4is and students at the University of Oxford.
Currently, Sam works as a business analyst at ASTROCAST, a startup based in Switzerland building a network of nanosatellites to provide communications in the context of the Internet of Things.
