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Chief Executive Officer

 

Ira Scharf is Chief Executive Officer of PlanetiQ. Ira joined PlanetiQ in early 2023 and brings over 30 years of senior operating experience in enterprise weather solutions, artificial intelligence, cyber security and enterprise SaaS solutions. Most recently he was CEO and Founder of Spark Insights, an AI and geospatial analytics insurtech company founded in 2018 to deliver unparalleled global satellite and aerial-based insights to insurers and reinsurers for risk analysis, pricing and post-catastrophe damage assessment and response. Spark Insights was acquired by Concirrus Ltd in 2021.

 

Prior to that, Ira held numerous senior executive positions at major enterprise weather and cyber security firms, including Chief Operating Officer of Tomorrow.io, Chief Strategy Officer of BitSight Technologies and President, Commercial Services at AirDat (acquired by Panasonic).

 

Earlier in his career Ira spent eight years as Vice President and Division General Manager at The Weather Company (acquired by IBM) where he led the development of enterprise weather solutions for airlines, corporate and general aviation, energy utilities, wind and solar energy producers, agricultural entities, traders and hedge funds. He has been quoted in numerous business publications including BusinessWeek and The Economist.

 

Ira earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from MIT, a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.​

Chairman & President

 

Chris McCormick, Founder of PlanetiQ, serves as President and Chairman of the company. He has more than three decades of experience in aerospace mission design, engineering, and leadership. At PlanetiQ, he directs the company’s mission to deliver the world’s highest-quality atmospheric and ionospheric data, driving innovation by assembling talented teams and advancing technologies to solve some of Earth’s most pressing remote sensing challenges for weather forecasting and related applications.

 

Before founding PlanetiQ, Chris established Broad Reach Engineering, where he served as CEO for 15 years. Under his leadership, the company pioneered the development of GPS Radio Occultation sensors for missions such as COSMIC, where Chris also served as Lead Systems Engineer. Following Broad Reach’s acquisition by Moog in 2012, he became Vice President of Moog’s Space Sector, overseeing more than $250 million in revenue and expanding operations internationally.

 

Chris previously held roles at Spectrum Astro, DARPA’s Space Applications program, and in multiple space and terrestrial sensing and communications initiatives. He earned his B.S. in Aerospace and Ocean Engineering from Virginia Tech.

Chief Scientist

 

Dr. E. Robert Kursinski is Chief Scientist of PlanetiQ, where he leads the conceptualization and development of next-generation radio occultation and other remote sensing systems and their applications to improve our ability to observe, monitor, understand and predict weather, climate, and space weather.

 

Prior to PlanetiQ, he was Chief Scientist at Moog Broad Reach Engineering and previously served as Associate Professor of Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona, where he developed the prototype ATOMMS (Active Temperature, Ozone and Moisture Microwave Spectrometer) system. Earlier in his career, he was a Research Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, contributing to GPS radio occultation development and the Mars Atmosphere Climate Observatory mission.

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Dr. Kursinski has authored numerous scientific publications and earned recognition for innovations in GPS occultation analysis and atmospheric remote sensing. He holds an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from USC and a Ph.D. in Planetary Science from Caltech.