Joel Joseph S. Marciano Jr | Vice President for Research Development Innovation
University of the Philippines

Dr Joel Joseph S. Marciano, Jr. served as Director General (DG) of the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) from January 2020 to June 2025, a position that holds the rank of a Cabinet Secretary and serves as Presidential Adviser on Space Matters. As the founding DG of PhilSA, he led the agency’s buildout and mobilisation from the ground up. Dr Marciano is also a Full Professor at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman, where he held the Dado and Maria Banatao Professor Chair. He has recently been appointed Vice President for Research and Innovation (VPRI) of the University of the Philippines System.

Dr Marciano obtained his BS in 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 University of California, Berkeley in 2004 and at the Jacobs School of Engineering in the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in 2005; and was a Visiting Professor at Tallwood Venture Capital in Palo Alto, CA, also in 2005. In 2007 and 2009, he was a Visiting Associate Research Scientist at UCSD. Prior to PhilSA, Dr Marciano was the Director of the Institute for Information Infrastructure Development of the Philippines-California Advanced Research Institutes (PCARI) of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and Acting 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 utilisation of the Philippines’ first scientific Earth observation microsatellites, Diwata-1 and Diwata-2, and the Maya nanosatellites. This also includes establishment and implementation of 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.

He is a recipient of the 2017 Distinguished Alumni Award in Science and Technology from the University of the Philippines Alumni Association (UPAA); and the 100 Outstanding Alumni Engineers
of the Century from the UP Alumni Engineers (UPAE); the 50 Men and Women of Science Award from the Department of Science and Technology; the Most Outstanding Electronics Engineer in the field of Education from the Institute of Electronics Engineers of the Philippines (IECEP); the Gawad Tsanselor Para sa Natatanging Guro (Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Teacher) in the University of the Philippines; the 2015 Prize for Engineering Excellence from the Manila Water Foundation; and was a Regional Winner and Finalist of the Dangal ng Bayan Award from the Civil Service Commission.

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.