Keynote Speakers

Dr Stuart Minchin joined the Bureau in November 2025. From 2020 he was Director-General of the Pacific Community, a science and technology for development organisation representing 27 member countries and territories across the Pacific region. Previously, Stuart was Chief of the Environmental Geoscience Division of Geoscience Australia, a centre of expertise in the Australian Government for environmental earth science issues and the custodian of national environmental geoscience data, information and knowledge. He has also held senior roles with the CSIRO and Victorian Government organisations.

Stuart is a world leader in digital earth observation services and has represented Australia in key international forums. He has been the Principal Delegate to both the United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management Group of Experts and the Intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations. He has also previously served on the Australian Space Industry Expert Reference Group and led the team responsible for ocean floor mapping for the Malaysian Airlines MH370 search. Stuart holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry with First Class Honours and a PhD at the Water Studies Centre.

Matthew Hanson is a Principal Applied AI Engineer at LGND, where he works on geospatial data infrastructure, processing, and semantic search for Earth Observation. He has more than 30 years of experience in remote sensing, cloud-native and open-source geospatial technologies, with previous roles at Element 84 and Development Seed.

Matt is a member of the STAC Steering Committee and has been an active contributor to the open geospatial community through work on STAC and standards,cloud-native geospatial architectures, and open-source software. He is a frequent speaker at FOSS4G and other international geospatial conferences, where he enjoys sharing practical lessons from building large-scale Earth observation systems.

Program Manager, Earth Observation Program Strategy Office and Earth Observation Research Center, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Dr. Sugita has more than 25 years of experience in the space sector. She has led numerous projects in fostering innovation with the private sector, international cooperation and strategic research for the executives. Currently, she serves as the Japan lead for Earth Observing Dashboard in cooperation with NASA and ESA, to make information from satellites available to decision-makers and the public.

She also leads the secretariat of the Consortium for Satellite Earth Observation (CONSEO), a public-private-academia partnership platform serving more than 350 member companies and specialists.

Dr. K. Dana Chadwick is a Scientist in the Water and Ecosystems Group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). She serves as the Mission Applications Lead for the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) and EAGLE-VSWIR missions. Her research and programmatic activities work to integrate airborne and spaceborne imaging spectroscopy with ground campaigns to advance retrievals relevant to terrestrial ecosystem monitoring, agricultural applications, and environmental management.

Dr. Chadwick earned her Ph.D. in Earth System Science from Stanford University and undergraduate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. Her honors include JPL’s Charles Elachi Award for Outstanding Early-Career Achievement and several NASA Group Achievement Awards.

David Borges