Leroy Chiao, Ph.D.
Former NASA Astronaut and Co-Founder and CEO of OneOrbit
Dr. Leroy Chiao works in business and consulting, is an active international speaker, and participates in various education programs. Dr. Chiao is a co-founder and the CEO of OneOrbit, providing keynotes and training to companies and schools. He also serves as a co-founder and advisor of Black Moon, a commercial lunar data and energy startup. In addition, Dr. Chiao is an Adjunct Professor at Rice University, and in the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), and is also a special advisor to the Houston Association for Space and Science Education (HASSE).
In 2012, Dr. Chiao became a Director and the CEO of Diomics Corporation, a bio-materials company. He led the company through technology and product development, business development, testing/validation phases, and corporate governance restructuring. Having brought the company through its startup phase at the end of 2013, Dr. Chiao transitioned from the chief executive position and served an additional two years as an advisor to the Board of Directors.
From 2017-2018, Dr. Chiao served on the Planetary Protection Committee of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. In June 2009, Dr. Chiao was invited to be a member of the White House appointed Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee. The committee reviewed NASA’s plans for human space exploration and formulated options for the administration. He served on the NASA Advisory Council’s Human Exploration and Ops. cmte, (2009-2020) and is the Special Advisor for Human Spaceflight to the Houston Association for Space and Science Education (HASSE). He also served in a similar role to the Space Foundation from 2012-2016.
Dr. Chiao was the first Raborn Distinguished Chair Max Faget Mechanical Engineering Professor at Louisiana State University. He served in that capacity from August 2006 through June 2008, in the Mechanical Engineering Department. He also previously served as the VP and Advisor for Space and Medical for Epiphan Systems (2012-2017) and as the Executive VP of Technical Operations for Excalibur Almaz, a commercial spaceflight company from 2006-2012. In addition, Dr. Chiao held appointments in Rice University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering from 2012-2021.
Dr. Chiao served as a NASA astronaut from 1990-2005. He flew four space missions, serving aboard three Space Shuttles and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. He also served as the commander and NASA science officer of Expedition 10, aboard the International Space Station. During his NASA career, Dr. Chiao served in several leadership and management roles, including branch chief.
Dr. Chiao earned a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 1987, from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and joined Hexcel Corporation. There, he was involved in process, manufacturing, and engineering research on advanced aerospace materials. He worked on a joint NASA-JPL/Hexcel project to develop an optically correct, polymer composite precision segment reflector for future space telescopes. He also worked on cure modeling and finite element analysis. In January of 1989 Dr. Chiao joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, California, where he was involved in processing research for fabrication of filament-wound and thick-section aerospace composites. While at LLNL, he developed and demonstrated a mechanistic cure model for graphite fiber/epoxy composite material. An instrument-rated pilot, Dr. Chiao has logged 3000 flight hours in a variety of aircraft and spacecraft.
