Professor Anu Ojha OBE is the UK Space Agency’s first Space Chief Technology Officer, providing strategic leadership across science, engineering, regulation and technology. Previously Director for Championing Space having joined the Civil Service in 2023, he oversaw the UK’s multi-billion pound European Space Agency commitments, international relations, skills and workforce development, parliamentary affairs, stakeholder engagement and communications, and continues to be a strategic ambassador for UK space priorities spanning space science, exploration and satellite applications.

Prior to joining UKSA, he founded the UK National Space Academy in 2008 and, in his first career in education, was among the first UK physics teachers to receive Advanced Skills Teacher status for outstanding teaching, later serving on the leadership team of England’s largest school.

Appointed Honorary Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester in 2016, he continues to teach at Space Park Leicester at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. His technical work includes co-investigating nuclear power applications for exploration, analysing data from ESA missions such as SOHO, Rosetta and ExoMars, and leading ISS education programmes including the Astro Academy Principia experiment suite conducted by astronaut Tim Peake. Over the past decade he has helped shape UKSA, STFC and ESA strategies, led international capacity-building partnerships, supported the UK Ministry of Defence’s Space Directorate, served six years on both STFC Council and ESA’s senior science committee for human and robotic exploration, and contributed to the 2025 UK Strategic Defence Review as an invited member of the Review and Challenge team as well as continuing to work with NATO’s Space Centre of Excellence in Toulouse.