Judging Team Member
Gregg Maryniak
Director
J. S. McDonnell Planetarium
Gregg Maryniak is the Director of the J.S. McDonnell Planetarium, Vice President for Energy and Aerospace of the St. Louis Science Center and Executive Vice President of the X PRIZE Foundation. He formerly served as Executive Director of the X PRIZE Foundation, Senior Scientist of the Futron Corporation and Chief Executive Officer of the Space Studies Institute of Princeton.
Mr. Maryniak is a member of the faculty of the International Space University. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics named him a Distinguished Lecturer for his presentation, "The Harvest of Space." He was awarded Russia’s Tsiolkovsky Medal for his work on the use of the resources of free space. He received the Space Frontier Foundation’s Vision to Reality Award for his role in creating the Lunar Prospector Mission launched in 1998.
An instrument-rated commercial pilot with more than 30 years of flight experience, Mr. Maryniak was the Flight Director for Erik Lindbergh’s New Spirit of St. Louis flights in 2002. In 2006 he was the recipient of the St. Louis Flight Instructors Association’s James Byrnes Aviation Excellence Award. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Lindbergh Foundation.