Overview

Gender

male

Payam Banazadeh is CEO and founder of Capella Space, a Silicon Valley company building the largest constellation of commercial Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites in order to provide hourly monitoring services of anywhere in the globe. Prior to starting Capella Space Payam was a project manager and flight systems engineer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and has been awarded NASA Mariner Award, NASA Discovery Award, and NASA Formulation Award. Most recently Payam was selected to be on the prestigious “Forbes 30 under 30” list in 2017 and Capella has been recognized by The New York Times, Bloomberg, and recently Inc magazine as one of the top 25 disruptive companies in the world.

Outside of Capella, Payam spends his time thinking about the impact of technology on society, economy, politics, and human behavior. He is an advocate of raising awareness around the volatility of life on earth and the responsibilities of technologists to think proactively about their work and its intended and unintended consequences. Payam holds a business/management degree from Stanford University and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BS in Aerospace Engineering from The University of Texas.