On May 14th another "Gadz story" took place. After the success of "Gadz story #1" with Dr. Ryan Alimo and Sacha Ghebali (Bo 211) AFAM event team led by Sacha Ghebali and Kevin Kok-Heang organized a second event around aerospace with Hugo Wagner (Bo 211) as a speaker. Nicolas Bagdassarian, currently studying in the US, helped organize this event.

About the speaker:

Based in San Francisco, Hugo leads strategic technology partnerships efforts for Airbus in North America, with a strong focus on sustainable aviation and commercial space. His mission is to find and explore early collaboration opportunities with providers of potentially disruptive technologies and to manage Research & Technology programs in coordination with strategic partners such as universities, federal research centers, startups, and multi-national companies.    

Prior to Airbus, Hugo led the telecommunications company Orange into the heart of the Silicon Valley aerospace ecosystem to conduct assessments of early technology concepts, generate partnerships and develop strategic pilot projects with a focus on high-performance satellite networks. Hugo advised Orange Digital Ventures and Orange M&A on deals in the space-satellite connectivity sector and adjacent domains.

Before joining Orange, Hugo led technical due diligence efforts on various highly innovative topics for renowned visionary entrepreneur Peter H. Diamandis and consulted for Planetary Resources, a small satellite startup, on hyperspectral imaging technology applied to precision agriculture. Aside from being an Arts & Métiers alum, Hugo holds graduate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley (M.S., Mechanical Engineering) - where he worked on combustion and robotics projects for NASA - and the International Space University - where he worked on the theory and use cases of open innovation in space. He served as volunteer STEAM Director of the San Francisco section of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, is an active member of the TED community, and member of the Explorers Club of New York City.

35 alumni and students attended the event.

Next session of "Gadz stories" series is scheduled for July 9th.

Sacha Ghebali, Hugo Wagner and other participants during the conference and networking in one of the breakout rooms