Ronald J. Birk
Associate Principal Director, Development Directorate, The Aerospace Corp.
Ronald Birk joined The Aerospace Corp. in 2017 and today provides strategic, technical and managerial guidance to development activities for emerging drivers and national priorities to advance future space capabilities.
“The complex challenges we face in space require that many organizations and people within the space community work together. We have limited abilities as individuals or individual organizations to move the needle in a meaningful way, but working collectively, we can and will achieve significant advancement of U.S. space capabilities in the national interest,” he said.
He also serves as director for development, advancing multiple strategic initiatives and partnerships aligned with national space strategies and priorities for the nation’s future space enterprise. He also served as chair of the Space Enterprise Integration Working Group at the 27th annual Ground Systems Architectures Workshop.
“The space enterprise is experiencing rapid transformation, and how we collaborate will influence greatly our ability to harness the breadth and pace of innovation,” said James Myers, senior vice president of the Civil Systems Group at The Aerospace Corp. “Ron Birk’s tremendous dedication to forging partnerships in critical areas of space development across government, industry and international boundaries is exemplary, and Ron is tangibly contributing to the delivery of a sustainable, prosperous space economy.”
Why Watch
Birk is actively positioned at the nexus of innovation and collaboration in space, energizing space community networks and consortia. His teams are establishing programs and partnerships for national space strategies and priorities to advance technical and operational capabilities for U.S. leadership in space, focusing on national priorities while addressing emerging drivers changing the face of space.
Birk’s teams are also advancing standards, tools, processes and technologies to enable rapid development, deployment and evolution of evolvable structures and ecosystems in space.
“Space is not standing pat; standalone systems are giving way to evolving ecosystems that require interoperability, modularity and agility to evolve at the pace of innovation,” he said. “Our nation needs these evolving ecosystems and systems of systems aligned with and enabled by hybrid architectures of commercial capabilities integrated with government-acquired, purpose-built systems.”