​The off-world Industrial Revolution: Mining, Manufacturing, and Power in Space
Prof. Matthew C. Weinzierl
Joseph and Jacqueline Elbling Professor of Business Administration
Senior Associate Dean and Chair of the MBA Program
Harvard Business School
Moderator
Matt Weinzierl is Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Research at Harvard Business School, where he is the Joseph and Jacqueline Elbling Professor of Business Administration and previously served as Faculty Chair of the MBA Program. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research and teaching focus on the optimal design of economic policy, in particular taxation, with an emphasis on better understanding the philosophical principles underlying policy choices, and on the commercialization of the space sector and its economic implications. He is the coauthor with Brendan Rosseau of Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier, and he is co-editor of the National Tax Journal. Prior to completing his PhD in economics at Harvard University in 2008, Professor Weinzierl served as the Staff Economist for Macroeconomics on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and worked in the New York office of McKinsey & Company.
Matt Gialich
CEO and Co-founder
AstroForge
Matt Gialich is the co-founder and CEO of AstroForge, an aerospace startup building technology to mine asteroids for critical minerals. Founded in 2022, AstroForge is reimagining deep space missions with a fast-moving, vertically integrated approach, focusing on the extraction of platinum group metals (PGMs) from near-Earth asteroids. These metals are critical to clean energy technologies, medical applications, and high-performance electronics.
Under Gialich’s leadership, the company has raised over $70 million and has already launched its first mission to deep space. AstroForge is preparing for its second and most ambitious deep space mission, DeepSpace-2, which will analyze the surface composition of a metallic asteroid.
The company now employs over 50 engineers and staff and continues to grow rapidly. Gialich’s bold, iterative approach to building space hardware - rooted in lessons from previous missions - is helping redefine how private companies can pursue ambitious scientific and commercial goals beyond Earth.
Will Bruey
CEO and Co-Founder
Varda Space Industries
Will is CEO and Co-Founder of Varda Space Industries, a microgravity-enabled life sciences company whose hypersonic reentry capsules leverage the unique environment of microgravity in low-Earth orbit. Prior to Varda, Will served as Director of Global Equities Technology at Bank of America. He was the lead avionics engineer at SpaceX and flew Dragon on eight missions to the International Space Station. Will holds a B.S. in Applied Physics from Cornell and a master's in Systems Engineering. He was raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and his hobbies include flying and maintaining his Cozy MK4 aircraft.
Dr. Paul Jaffe
Vice President of Systems Engineering
Overview Energy
Dr. Paul Jaffe is the Vice President of Systems Engineering at Overview Energy. Previously, he served as a Program Manager in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, where he led world record setting power beaming technology projects. He also spent over 30 years at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, where he managed spacecraft development and advanced power beaming and space solar technologies.
