James C. Liau is a Principal Director at The Aerospace Corporation (Aerospace). He is currently leading the Guidance & Control Subdivision (GCS) within the Vehicle Systems Division (VSD) under Aerospace’s Engineering Technology Group (ETG). His responsibilities include management oversight for the subdivision, and serving as a senior point of contact for selected Program Offices, providing technical and managerial leadership in control systems and autonomous vehicles, coordinating capabilities that span concept design through development and operation, fostering new business and technological research and developments, serving as a senior advisor and team leader on strategic assignments and anomaly teams, and conducting line management functions. Prior to this assignment, Mr. Liau was the Associate Principal Director for GCS, and the Aerospace Space Systems lead for Weather programs from 2018-2020 in support of Air Force Space & Missile Systems Center (SMC). He managed the procurement, production, integration & test, and launch of space assets across the Space Based Environmental Monitoring Enterprise.

Mr. Liau has been consistently recognized for outstanding support to his customers, most recently receiving the 2019 Aerospace People’s Choice Award from the SMC Production Corps for his contributions in the WSF-M program. Mr. Liau also received a letter of appreciation from SMC Director of Engineering in 2017 for his leadership in promoting collaboration and clear communication throughout the SMC team.

Prior to joining Weather Systems, Mr. Liau was the co-lead in support of the SMC Independent Readiness Review Team from 2015-2018 and managed the Aerospace team in providing in-depth technical evaluations of program data to independently identify risks in key focus areas such as first flight items, out of position work, test anomalies, and test like you fly exceptions. Mr. Liau also led the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) Program’s Space Segment team as the Systems Director from 2010-2015 overseeing space vehicle development, testing, and operations for the first four AEHF satellites. He demonstrated agility, diplomacy, and effective communication of oftentimes contentious technical positions. Mr. Liau led the efforts to ensure proper ground testing of the Hall Current Thrusters leading to a new concept of operations for AEHF-2 and AEHF-3. He was also critical on a major AEHF-4 space vehicle risk assessment and was instrumental in reaching a conclusion that satisfied all parties, avoiding a potential costly program delay.

Mr Liau earned his bachelor’s and master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles.