Mr. A.C. Charania, President

Mr. A.C. Charania is President of SpaceWorks Commercial, a division of SpaceWorks Enterprises, Inc. (SEI). He is a strategic thinker and technical analyst in the areas of outer space transportation and infrastructure design, space commercialization and economic modeling, planetary defense engineering and policy, and general far-term technology impact assessment and prioritization. Mr. Charania is an analyst and advocate of commercial space markets, venture-driven space initiatives, and international space activities. He is located in the Washington, D.C. office of SEI, which also serves as the headquarters of SpaceWorks Commercial.

His previous role was as Senior Futurist of SEI and Director of the Engineering Economics Group (EEG). SEI is an aerospace engineering concept design and systems analysis firm focusing on next-generation space transportation systems, future technologies, human and robotic exploration of space, and emerging space markets and applications. He personally proposed and implemented numerous technical projects at SEI, presenting to multiple audiences on various technical topics, and assisting in overall company sales, marketing, and branding. Examples of projects he led include a NASA-funded study to examine the economic development of space using agent-based modeling (including the role of emerging companies in various new markets such as sub-orbital space tourism and International Space Station support), a planetary defense concept using swarms of robotic spacecraft to alter the course of an earth-bound asteroid (the "MADMEN" concept), and a planetary telecommunication network on Mars based upon reflecting signals off of meteor trails in the atmosphere. He has been a NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts (NIAC) fellow for such previous work. In addition to these specific projects, Mr. Charania has performed economic and operations/safety analysis of multiple launch vehicle concepts studies ranging from heavy-lift launch vehicles to military space planes. He has also been involved in analyses and studies related to NASA's implementation of the Vision for Space Exploration.

In his previous position at Futron Corporation, he worked on economic modeling of Space Solar Power (SSP) architecture. In his previous role at Accenture's (formerly Andersen Consulting) Telecommunications Industry Group he formulated strategies to address future concepts of the "network" as applied to comprehensive strategic technology assessments of the terrestrial telecommunications marketplace; examining both markets and technologies.

Mr. Charania holds an M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology (with a concentration in systems design and optimization), a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a B.A. in Economics/Mathematics from Emory University. He is currently a Senior Member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), volunteer supporter to the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC), member of the Space Power Association/Sunsat Energy Council, and a member of the Board of Directors for the Space Frontier Foundation (SFF). He was previously a member of the AIAA Economics Technical Committee (TC). He also contributes to an online blog on the threat to the Earth from asteroids and comets (http://www.planetarydefense.blogspot.com).