Prof. Bernard H. Foing is the President of Space Renaissance International and the Executive Director of ILEWG. He is also the manager of EuroMoonMars and ArtMoonMars. He holds professorships at VU Amsterdam, Leiden Observatory, the International Space University (ISU), and EPFL. He is currently on leave from CNRS. He is a former ESA Chief Scientist and served as Chair of the ESTEC Staff Association Committee from 2012 to 2017. He was the Lead Scientist for SMART-1.
He is Chair of the IAF ITACCUS and a member of various IAF committees, including the Technical Activities Committee (TAC), the Global Space Exploration Conference International Program Committee (GLEX IPC), and committees on space exploration, astronomy, space habitats, and traffic management. He has been a full member of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) since 2010. He serves as Vice-Chair of COSPAR’s Planetary and PEX Planetary Exploration Panel. He is also Co-Director of the International Moonbase Alliance (IMA), and the founder of Moon Village and the Moon Village Association. He is the Space Instrumentation Officer for the European Geosciences Union (EGU) and President of the MoonGallery Foundation (moongallery.eu).
Prof. Foing worked at ESA ESTEC from 1989 to 2020. During this time, he served as ESTEC Staff Committee Chair from 2012 to 2017, Senior Scientist, Advisor to the Director General, Chief Scientist, Head of the Research Division, Study Lead for SIMURIS, MORO lunar orbiter, and EuroMoon lander, as well as Staff and Visiting Scientist Fellow. He was a Co-Investigator on SOHO, XMM, BIOPAN, SMART-1, Mars Express, COROT, ISS/Expose, and ExoMars.
He has published 830 articles, including 225 refereed papers. His academic background includes a Habilitation obtained in 1990 through CNRS. He was a post-doctoral astronomer at the ESO European Southern Observatory in Chile. He holds a PhD in Astrophysics and Space Techniques from CNRS, Lockheed, Sacramento Peak, Boulder, and Harvard. He is also a Prof agrégé in Physics from the École Normale Supérieure ENSET Paris-Saclay.