Joel Marciano Jr.

Joel Joseph Sacro Marciano Jr. is a Filipino engineer, academic and the first Director General of the Philippine Space Agency, a government agency under the Office of the President in charge of the Philippines' national space program.

Prior to his appointment as PhilSA administrator, Marciano served as acting Director of the Advanced Science and Technology Institute of the Philippine Department of Science and Technology. He is also a university professor at the University of the Philippines College of Engineering since 1994. Marciano has also served as the program head of the Philippine Scientific Earth Observation Microsatellite program (PHL-Microsat) that launched the first Philippine-made satellite, the Diwata-1, into space in April 2016.

Early life and education Marciano is the second of four siblings born to Joel Jacob Marciano and Elizabeth Sacro.

He attended Benedictine Abbey School (now San Beda College Alabang) in Muntinlupa, Metro Manila. He considered taking up the study of law, but eventually decided to follow in his father's footsteps with the goal of working for his father's company. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 1994.

Marciano worked as a postdoctoral fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2003. As a fellow of the UP–Dado Banatao Educational Foundation, he worked for the Berkeley Wireless Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley in 2004 and for the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, San Diego in 2005. He continued his work in the United States and served as visiting professor for Tallwood Venture Capital in 2005, and as visiting associate research scientist at UCSD in 2007 and 2009. The PHL-Microsat program was an initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and the University of the Philippines in partnership with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency under the Asian Microsatellite Consortium. With Marciano as its program leader from 2015 to 2018, the country successfully launched its first Philippine-made satellites into orbit, the PHL-Microsat-1 (Diwata-1) in April 2016 and the PHL-Microsat-2 (Diwata-2) in October 2018. As a DOST executive, he continued his work on the Philippine space program and spearheaded the creation of Philippine Earth Data Resources Observation Centers in Quezon City in December 2016 and in Davao City in June 2019. In June 2018, the institute under his leadership successfully deployed the country's first CubeSat, the Maya-1, in partnership with the Kyushu Institute of Technology.

Marciano also serves as program leader of the STAMINA4Space Program of the DOST-ASTI. In August 2019, he led the inauguration of the country's hub for space technology, the University Laboratory for Small Satellites and Space Engineering Systems building (ULyS3ES) within the UP Diliman campus. Also in 2015, he was awarded the 2015 Engineering Excellence Prize by the Manila Water Foundation for his work on the microsatellite program that significantly improved the country's weather forecasting and climate change monitoring. Marciano was conferred the 2017 UPAA Distinguished Alumnus in the field of Science and Technology by his alma mater, University of the Philippines. He is also honored as among the 100 Outstanding Alumni Engineers of the Century of the University of the Philippines College of Engineering by the UP Alumni Engineers Association. He also received the UP Diliman Gawad Chanselor Para sa Natatanging Guro award, the 50 Men and Women of Science and Technology award from the Department of Science and Technology, and Most Outstanding Electronics Engineer award in the field of Education from the Institute of Electronics Engineers of the Philippines (IECEP).