Dr. Sorensen is one of the founders of Interstel Technologies. He received his BS. (1973), M.S. (1976) and Doctor of Engineering (1979) degrees in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Kansas (KU). He did his doctoral project on Pioneer Venus at NASA Ames Research Center. He then was a Space Shuttle guidance and control engineer, worked in Mission Control as assistant Flight Director, and finally was a software engineering manager supporting Shuttle missions. In 1990, Dr. Sorensen was the Observations Manager for the SDIO LACE satellite. In 1994, he was the Lunar Mission Manager for the DoD/NASA Clementine lunar mission for which he received the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement. He was then the Program Manager for the Space R&D contract at NRL under which the USAF MSTI-3 satellite was operated, and in 1997 the technical lead for Honeywell’s commercial satellite ground network, DataLynx. In 2007 he joined the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa as a specialist professor and project manager in the Hawai`i Space Flight Laboratory (HSFL). Dr. Sorensen is the chief designer of the iCOSMOS™ architecture and is the PI of the NASA STTR contract to develop iCOSMOS-Swarm™. He is a Fellow of the American Astronautical Society, a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and was on the AIAA Board of Directors as the Director of the Space and Missiles Group, which consisted of 14 technical committees. In 2021 Dr. Sorensen was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by the International Space Operations Organization. In the 1980s, Dr. Sorensen founded and was President of a computer software publishing company, Interstel Corporation, which was an affiliated label of Electronic Arts. He created the Star Fleet series (Star Fleet I – The War Begins in 1983, Star Fleet II – Krellan Commander in 1989, and Star Legions published by Mindcraft in 1992). One of Interstel’s games, Empire – Wargame of the Century, was selected as Computer Game of the Year by Computer Gaming World magazine in 1988. He started upgrading Star Fleet II in 2018, and Star Fleet II – Krellan Command, Version 2.0 was released on Steam and GOG in 2023. Dr. Sorensen grew up in Australia and holds dual US and Australian citizenship.

Eric Pilger is one of the founders of Interstel Technologies, Inc. He earned a B.A. in Astrophysics from Williams College in 1982, started graduate school at UHM, where he earned his M.S. in Astronomy in 1985 and completed research towards his PhD. Starting in 1988 he was a systems software programmer for the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility for eight years, then joined the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) first as an Electrical Engineer, then as a Systems Engineer. Mr. Pilger was the architect of the low-level structure of COSMOS and developed the majority of its current simulation abilities. He supervises the upgrades to its infrastructure necessary to support its enhanced abilities and improved simulation required for iCOSMOS-Swarm™.

Dr. Miguel Nunes is one of the founders of Interstel Technologies and co-inventor of the COSMOS multi-agent system software. He received his Aerospace Engineering Degree from the Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal, and Ph.D. at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2016 where he developed a Multi-Agent Robotic System (MARS) and Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) algorithms for distributed space missions. He has also worked as the Systems Engineer and Attitude Control Engineer and other roles for various SmallSat missions (ESEO, LEO-1, HiakaSat, Neutron-1, NASA HyTI). Miguel enjoys playing the violin, hiking and everything related to water activities.