Bio:
Mengu Cho received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Tokyo, in 1985 and 1987, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the Department of Aeronautics/Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1992. After working at Kobe University from 1992 to 1995 and at International Space University from 1995 to 1996, he joined Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech), Kitakyushu, Japan in 1996. Since 2004, He has been a Professor and the Director of the Laboratory of Spacecraft Environment Interaction Engineering (LaSEINE) of Kyutech. Currently, he is the head of Department of Space Systems Engineering. His research interests include spacecraft environmental interaction, particularly spacecraft charging and nano-satellite reliability. He is the author or co-author of more than 170 papers in peer reviewed journals. He served as the project lead of three ISO standard, including the nanosatellite testing standard ISO-19683. He supervised 11 university satellite projects, among which 9 projects, 16 satellites, were already launched as of October 2019. He received Space Development and Utilization Award from Japanese government twice. The satellite project, BIRDS-I, he supervised received 2017 GEDC Airbus Diversity Award in recognition of demonstrating a fine example of bringing diversity to engineering education. In 2019, he received Frank J. Malina Astronautics Medal from International Astronautical Federation as an educator who demonstrated excellence in promoting the study of Astronautics.