Tao Huang

CEO and Founder

Dr Tao Huang started his career in the UK in 1996 after receiving his PhD from the University of Sheffield. He has been working extensively in terrestrial and space telecom industries for the last 27 years, specializing in microwave engineering, radio wave propagation, and antennas. He is well recognized and known as a technical expert and RF guru in these fields, with 5 patents and over 30 papers published. He has served as a conference chair at Eucap and an honorary lecturer at University College London.

Dr Huang has held many technical management roles in his career, including the Technical Manager at CSA Wireless, Technical Director at Flextronics, and the Head of RF Engineering at Oxford Space Systems, where he successfully supported the growing business by coaching, building, and leading strong RF engineering teams.

Mike Lawton

Non-executive Director

Mike is founder of Oxford Space Systems (OSS), an international recognized and multi award-winning, space technology business based at the Harwell Space Cluster. OSS is Mike’s third company, with previous ventures including a remote telemetry business built around an idea he had at university and a biofuel technology business that led to a joint venture in India, which won Mike the title of Green Entrepreneur for India 2009.

Lawton was awarded Barclays Bank Start-Up Entrepreneur of the Year in Dec 2018 for the progress and ambition of Oxford Space Systems as well jointly sharing the title of Oxfordshire Businessperson of the Year 2018.  He is keen supporter of STEM activities in schools and colleges across the UK and believes in the need to excite the UK’s future generation of engineers and scientists.  Mike is featured in the “Engineers Making a Difference” book, released in March 2023.   He has given several keynote speeches at including the Institute of Mechanical Engineers Christmas Lecture in 2018, as we at numerous universities both in the UK and overseas.

Lawton stepped down as CEO of Oxford Space Systems in October 2019 after over 7 years in office to focus his next tech venture: Oxford Dynamics which was awarded Best New Business 2022 at the Oxfordshire Business Awards.        

Paul Febvre

Non-executive Director

Paul was Chief Technology Officer at the Satellite Applications Catapult, responsible for establishing a future vision for the sector and directing the technology strategy for the Catapult. Paul leads a team of solutions architects and technologists that work across the Catapult to provide industry support in the creation and realisation of technologically innovative solutions to real world challenges.

Prior to joining the Catapult, Paul was Design Authority for the Inmarsat BGAN system and responsible for managing Inmarsat’s activities under the European Space Agency (ESA) ARTES  programme. This included the Alphasat-Extension programme to integrate advanced technologies into the Inmarsat systems, and the Iris programme under SESAR (Single European Skies Advanced Research) joint undertaking to develop the next generation of aviation safety services for air traffic management communications systems over Europe.

Paul previously worked for many years at BT Research Laboratories in Ipswich, developing mobile and satellite radio communications systems, advanced modulation and coding, data transmission protocols, and information security architectures.

Simon Watts

Advisor

With over 40 years’ experience in satellite and terrestrial radio communications,  Simon is the senior technical and commercial consultation lead on various projects including ESA, EC FP7 and H2020.  Activities include satellite system design and commercial modelling for theoretical studies, incubator projects and operational networks.

Prior to his current role Simon was Chief Engineer, Hughes Network Systems Europe.  Responsible for the integrity of all network services and solutions across Europe and for providing technical direction to these services, leading pre-sales support and service product design.  Before this he was the technical marketing manager, Hughes Network Systems Europe, responsible for development of marketing proposition for PMP radio systems in Europe for US lead.  He joined Hughes from BT where he worked as an engineer on satellite communication systems and offshore radio links.