Kevin Sagis

Education: B.S., Aerospace Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin

Kevin Sagis began his multi-faceted career in 1988 supporting the Space Shuttle return-to-flight campaign and also contributed to key Space Shuttle initiatives such as the Day-of-Launch-Iload-Update (DOLILU) enhancement.  In 1990 he joined Lockheed Martin to support Advanced Programs for NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Marshall Space Flight Center, helping design the National Launch System (NLS), which subsequently provided the foundation for the Space Launch System (SLS).  After his early career experience supporting NASA, Sagis changed his focus to the commercial sector, where he and a skunk-works team rapidly created multiple versions of the Athena launch vehicle that repurposed existing technologies to provide cost-effective launch opportunities for the emerging small-satellite market.

In addition to his diverse early career in the aerospace industry, in 2000 Sagis pivoted into the high-tech industry and founded a start-up that architected and deployed wireless internet capability for Ticketmaster Online-Citysearch; later he broadened his early entrepreneurial spirit and joined American Express Business Finance where he created mission-critical applications that automated loan processing for small businesses. 

In 2007 he returned to aerospace with Lockheed Martin and was the chief engineer of the Extended Medium Range Ballistic Missile that was designed with unique air-launching capability to enable testing of critical scenarios for the Missile Defense Agency. In 2012 as one of the original visionaries of Virgin Orbit, Sagis partnered with Richard Branson to reimagine how a Boeing 747 carrier aircraft could be used to launch liquid-engine orbital rockets. As chief engineer at Virgin Orbit, he was directly responsible for numerous new technologies that significantly advanced the field of aerospace engineering.

In addition to his extensive portfolio in aerospace and software, Sagis has created transformational change in the aviation sector at Reliable Robotics with highlights such as garnering FAA acceptance of the certification plan for remotely operated aircraft systems and an industry first of a flight of a Cessna 208B Caravan with no one on board. Before becoming a professor of practice, Sagis was the chief product officer and enterprise chief engineer at ABL Space Systems.

Sagis has been awarded the Lockheed Martin Mission Success Award and has received recognition and awards from NASA for innovations on trajectory simulation. His achievements have been featured numerous times in Aviation Week and Space Technology and he holds multiple patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Additionally, Sagis has presented to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).  He has been inducted into Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics (ASE/EM) Academy