Dr Michael Smart is CTO, Director and Co-Founder of Australian aerospace company Hypersonix Launch Systems.  Michael is a world leader in scramjet hypersonic engine design. He graduated with a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering from The University of Queensland in 1985 and completed a Masters of Engineering Science in 1987 and a PhD at Brooklyn Polytechnic in New York in 1995. Michael spent 10 years as a research scientist in the Hypersonic Airbreathing Propulsion Branch at NASA’s Langley Research Center. While at NASA he was involved in the design, analysis and testing of innovative hydrogen fuelled scramjet engines. He returned to Australia in 2005 to be a part of the UQ HyShot Program, which was pioneering a low cost means of flight testing scramjets. Michael spent 15 years as a senior member of the UQ Centre for Hypersonics, being appointed Professor and Chair of Hypersonic Propulsion in 2007. From 2010 to 2017 he was one of the leaders of the HIFiRE Program which performed multiple hypersonic flight tests at Woomera in Australia and Andoya in Norway. In 2019 Michael co-founded Hypersonix Launch Systems to commercialise the SPARTAN scramjet engine with a vision to bring aircraft like capabilities to access to space.