New Director at ESTEC Dr Dietmar Pilz

NL Space Campus welcomes the new ESTEC director Dr Dietmar Pilz. Pilz took up duty as the Director of Technology, Engineering and Quality (D/TEC), and Head of ESTEC in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, on 1 May 2023. Dr Pilz has over 20 years of professional experience in the European and international aerospace industry, in various engineering and programme management positions in the defence and security sectors and the space community.

Pilz joined ESA from Airbus Defence & Space, based in Immenstaad, Germany. Here he was the Head of Space Chief Engineering and Products, as well as Head of Site for Friedrichshafen, involved in all Airbus Space programmes, and hence in many ESA projects. He managed a team of system engineers, product managers and end-to-end data managers across Europe and working in exploration, telecom, navígation, Earth observation and science projects, from Copernicus to Juice, Galileo SG to MetOp-SG and from ACES to the Orion European Service Module. Previously at Airbus, he was Head of AstroBus and EO/Science/Exploration, and Head of Payloads and Life Support Systems.

Educated at the University of Ulm, Germany, and the University of California, Los Angeles, he has a PhD and Diploma in Electrical Engineering. He worked as a research scientist on microwave and antenna applications at Rockwell Scientific in Thousand Oaks, USA, before joining the former EADS in 2003.