Copernicus Space Corporation Adds Senior Management and Advisors
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts – April 13rd, 2023: Copernicus Space Corporation is pleased to announce key additions to its senior advisor and management team. Professor John Sutherland has joined the Copernicus Strategic & Scientific Advisory Board (SSAB), Barbara Burgess has been appointed as Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), and Bryan Lyandvert is supporting Copernicus as a Senior Advisor in corporate development.
Drs. Avi Loeb and Frank H. Laukien, co-founders and directors of Copernicus Space Corporation, commented: “We welcome John, Barbara and Bryan at Copernicus, and are very pleased that they will contribute their enthusiasm, experience and wisdom to our unique space exploration initiative. Copernicus is leveraging the new paradigm of AI-driven Swarm Exploration™ by large numbers of miniaturized, affordable, intelligent and semi-autonomous in situ detectors to explore cislunar space, the solar system, and eventually our galaxy for the prevalence of life, and for valuable discoveries and new insights into novel materials, planetary, moon and asteroid exploration, and interstellar objects.”
The new Copernicus team members each shared their relevant background and perspectives:
Scientific Advisory Board member Professor John Sutherland is a Group Leader at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge UK, a Senior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge and visiting Professor at Harvard. John’s research concerns the origin of life – how did chemistry initiate biology and to what extent did it shape its basic structure and function? His research has established prebiotically plausible syntheses of the building blocks of the informational, catalytic and compartment–forming macromolecules crucial to life, and his group is seeking to establish how these building blocks became linked. John’s research has been recognized, inter alia, by his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society and their Darwin Medal, and by the Tilden Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Dr. Sutherland said: “Are we alone? Such a profound question – Copernicus have a great approach to trying to find the answer and I’m delighted to join forces with its hugely talented team.”
Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Barbara Burgess is a financial and operational business partner with over 30 years of experience, primarily in the analytical instruments market that specializes in life science applications. She is a member of the finance executive leadership team at Bruker Corporation. She joined Bruker in 1997 and has held various senior financial and operational management positions throughout Bruker. Prior to Bruker, Barbara worked in financial positions within industry and in public accounting at KPMG Boston. Barbara is a CPA and has a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from SUNY Plattsburgh and her MBA in Finance from Bentley University. Barbara commented: “I am honored to be a part of such an innovative group and look forward to supporting their journey in space exploration.”
Senior Advisor Bryan Lyandvert is an American venture capitalist, a prominent investor at MetaProp Ventures, and Managing Partner at T-Bird Capital. He has invested in hundreds of companies, including leading spacetech start-ups such as Loft Orbital, Lynk Global, and others. Bryan has deep expertise in fundraising strategy, go-to-market & commercialization, and is an active LP in several venture capital firms. Bryan serves on Advisory Boards of start-ups and has raised tens of millions in funding from leading investors. Previously, Bryan ran the $260m p.a. Wearables & Emerging Technology category at Amazon. Bryan has a Masters in Finance from Claremont McKenna.
Bryan Lyandvert said: “I am excited to help shape the future of space exploration; the ambition and sheer creativity of Copernicus Space’s team shows the very best of what humanity can achieve. This work will one day shape the future of our species, as we explore the solar system and beyond.”
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About Copernicus Space Corporation
Copernicus Space Corporation (“Copernicus”) is a novel space exploration company with astrophysics, space technology and synthetic biology founders, executives and scientific advisors. Copernicus advances a unique space technology platform strategy for scalable and distributed Swarm Exploration™, breaking away from the traditional paradigms of n=1 probes or rovers, crewed space exploration, or sample-return missions. In its solar systems exploration phase, Copernicus is developing semi-autonomous swarms and networks of hundreds or thousands of miniaturized, intelligent in situ probes in search of extant or extinct microbial life, of scientific discoveries and commercial opportunities on interesting planets, moons and asteroids in our solar system. For its future interstellar phase, Copernicus will deploy millions and eventually billions of hybrid nanotechnology and synthetic biology-based space nanoprobes for exploring and seeding our galaxy to prepare humankind and terrestrial life for a multi-planetary future.
Copernicus enables the next generation of space exploration and operations by pioneering everincreasing capabilities in sensors, scientific detectors, artificial intelligence, computing, and robotics. Copernicus products and systems will provide scalable platforms for distributed space exploration, solar system positioning, navigation and timing, security applications, and commercial endeavors. Copernicus-enabled swarm architectures aim to alter the paradigm of space exploration to create more highly scalable, cost effective, redundant, in situ-capable, intelligent and resilient systems.
Copernicus leverages differentiated and disruptive concepts and proprietary, novel technology combinations for next-generation, semi-autonomous exploration strategies. This will lead to a rich IP estate of patents, proprietary code and know-how. Copernicus also fosters ultralong-range thinking in human-directed interstellar exploration, and eventual hybrid nano- and biotechnological seeding of our galaxy. Copernicus leverages AI/ML-driven nanorobots, bioengineering for sensing and replication, as well as biology-derived ‘panspermia’ long-range information transmission.
