Joel Joseph S. Marciano Jr., Ph.D.  

Director-General, Philippines Space Agency (PhilSA) 

Professor, University of the Philippines 

Dr. Joel Joseph S. Marciano Jr. is the first and current Director General (DG) of the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA). He is also a Full Professor of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD) where he held the Dado and Maria Banatao Professorial Chair. As PhilSA DG, Dr. Marciano holds the rank of a Cabinet Secretary and serves as Presidential Adviser on Space Matters.  

Dr. Marciano obtained his BS Electrical Engineering from UPD and his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He was the UP-Dado Banatao Postdoctoral Fellow at the Berkeley Wireless Research Center in the University of California Berkeley in 2004 and at the University of California San Diego in 2005. In 2007 and 2009, he was a Visiting Associate Research Scientist in UCSD. Prior to PhilSA, Dr. Marciano was the Director of the Institute for Information Infrastructure Development of the Philippines-California Advanced Research Institutes of the Commission on Higher Education and Director of the Advanced Science and Technology Institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).   

From 2014 to 2020, Dr. Marciano led the development and utilization of the Philippines’ first scientific Earth observation microsatellites, Diwata-1 and Diwata-2, and the Maya nanosatellites, including ground station and mission control operations, computational methods and analyses, calibration and ground truthing, data archiving and distribution, and academic program and industry linkage development under the DOST.   

He is a recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Teacher in UPD; the Most Outstanding Electronics Engineer in the field of Education from the Institute of Electronics Engineers of the Philippines; the 50 Men and Women of Science from the DOST; the 100 Outstanding Alumni Engineers from the UP Alumni Engineers; the 2015 Manila Water Foundation Prize for Engineering Excellence; and the 2017 Distinguished Alumni Award in Science and Technology from the University of the Philippines Alumni Association. For his distinguished contributions to advancing education and research via international exchanges, Dr. Marciano was conferred an Honorary Doctorate (honoris causa) by Hokkaido University in January 2023.