Gregg Maryniak

An internationally-recognized expert on energy, space, aviation, and risk management, Gregg Maryniak is the cofounder, secretary, and director of the XPRIZE Foundation, a nonprofit that creates prize competitions to stimulate research and development to benefit humanity. Maryniak guided the foundation from its inception through the successful completion of the 2004 Ansari XPRIZE competition. He is also chair of Energy and Space at Singularity University and vice chairman of the Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation. His work today focuses on energy issues, including new techniques to increase the percentage of renewable energy used to power society, improve energy storage, enhance energy networks, establish wireless power transmission, and realize carbon-free power from space. He was awarded Russia's Tsiolkovsky Medal for his work on the use of the energy and material resources of free space and received the Space Frontier Foundation's Vision to Reality Award for his role in creating NASA's Lunar Prospector Mission launched in 1998 for a low polar orbit investigation of the moon. Maryniak is an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics that named him a Distinguished Lecturer for his presentation, 'The Harvest of Space.' He was the director of the J.S. McDonnell Planetarium in St. Louis, Mo.