Ioana Cozmuta

Co-Founder & CTO, Flawless Photonics

291 - FLY ME TO THE MOON: SUBORBITAL SPACE = THE JUMP POINT FOR SPACE EXPLORATION

Ioana Cozmuta is the co-founder and CEO of Flawless Photonics, an innovative space manufacturing platform. She is responsible for the company's technology direction with a focus on superior product development for terrestrial commercialization. Dr. Cozmuta's innovative concepts have revolutionized the way space technology commercialization is approached. Her work at the intersection of NASA and private sector has transformed the relationship between business and space: it was key to growing the emerging space startup ecosystem, to creating unique partnerships, and to enabling new opportunities for established businesses. Over her 15 year career working with NASA, Dr. Cozmuta has constantly disrupted the status quo bringing in state of the art computational material science and applied physics expertise to projects such as Stardust, Mars Science Laboratory, Orion, and more. She is recognized as one of the most knowledgeable experts on microgravity research and applications in the world today.

Dr. Cozmuta has a broad, hands-on, deep expertise in a wide variety of areas in science, engineering, and business. She holds a Ph.D. in Physics from University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and an M.Sc in Biophysics and Medical Physics from University Babes Bolyai, Cluj Napoca, Romania. She was a Research Postdoctoral Fellow in the Material and Process Simulation Center, Department of Chemistry at California Institute of Technology, and a Research Postdoctoral Specialist at the Genome Technology Center, School of Medicine at Stanford University.