Gonzalo Sánchez Arriaga

Gonzalo Sánchez Arriaga is an aerospace engineer (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 2004) and astrophysicist (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2010). He got his PhD on aerospace engineering in 2009 with a thesis on electrodynamic tethers that received the Extraordinary PhD Award of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). Afterwards, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (2009-2011), as Assistant Professors at UPM (2012-2015), and as Ramón y Cajal Research fellow (2015-2020) and Associate Professor (2020-2024) at UC3M.

He is currently a Full Professor and Director of the Bs. in Aerospace Engineering at UC3M. His research focuses on electrodynamic tethers applied to space sustainability, airborne wind energy systems, and plasma physics. He led more than 15 European and National research projects, including the coordination of three projects funded by the European Innovation Council (E.T.PACK, E.T.PACK-F and E.T.COMPACT) for a total of 9.5M€ and 1 ESA project (Pro-BPT). He has been director/co-director of a total of 15 PhD thesis (ended and on-going). He was awarded with a Leonardo Grand by Fundación BBVA and the UC3M Excellence Award. He is co-founder of PERSEI Space, a spinoff of UC3M.
G. Sánchez-Arriaga is committed to scientific outreach and dissemination, as shown by the organization of more than 10 expositions in Semana de la Ciencia de Madrid and his active involvement in promoting research visibility in general media.