About
Dr. Andrew A. Shapiro is a Partner at Cyrus Ventures, a consultant and advisor in aerospace strategic planning, technology portfolio management, space technologies, additive manufacturing, and materials for electronics/optoelectronics assembly and packaging. He is a Techstars All Star Mentor. He also was Co-founder and CTO of Proteus Space where he set the technical direction for the company directed at the government small spacecraft market with the objective of rapid satellite design and delivery. Dr. Shapiro was previously the Manager of Technology Formulation for the Space Technology Office at JPL where he managed a large portfolio of research tasks with the goal of infusion into space flight systems. He was the Division Chief Technologist and Principal for JPL's Enterprise Engineering Division and has worked in technology infusion for 40 years. He was key at implementing additive manufacturing at JPL. He also has infused RF and optical technologies onto spacecraft and performed re…
Experience
Partner
Cyrus Ventures · Glendale, California, United States
Present
Review and advise on investments in the energy and defense sectors.
Partner, Senior Technical Consultant, Advisor
SY Consultants · Glendale, California, United States
Present
Advisory Board Member for half a dozen startup companies and venture funds. Advise funds and companies on viability of new technology development. Lead workshops and team exercises in technical strategic planning.
Consultant
SY Consultants · Greater Los Angeles, California, United States
Present
Consultant, Advisor, Satellite design, Aerospace Systems, Materials and Manufacturing May 1995 - Present Consultant for several, aerospace, photonic, electronic, materials, components and testing firms. Served as an expert witness. Consulted on spacecraft design, RF flip-chip packages, optical packages. Performed failure analysis (SEM, EDX, XRD) for materials. Recommended materials for electronic and photonic components and subsystems manufacturing. Performed analysis of high frequency (x-band) materials properties. Engineered design, layout, and component selection for multilayer Low Temperature Cofired Ceramic and ferrite materials. Expert witness for engineering electronics cases.
Co-Founder and Cto
Proteus Space, Inc. · Los Angeles, California, United States
Co-created and defined technical direction for the company directed at the government small (ESPA Class) spacecraft market. Proteus Space is a seed round company which produces tailorable autonomous small spacecraft, that are be built to flight-ready more reliably, cheaper and faster. Oversaw the development of automated spacecraft design software. Went from clean sheet to flight unit at test ready for delivery to launch in 7 months manifested on Transporter 15 (October 2025). Assisted in successful fund raising of two seed rounds totaling >$10M with $28M valuation. Developed SBIR, STTR, OECIF, DIU, and STRATFI proposals with multiple industry partners. Won multiple SBIR and STTR Phase I and Phase II with all deliverables ahead of schedule and substantially beating performance metrics. Generated eight provisional patents and three full patents in the last year.
Manager Technology Formulation
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory · Pasadena
Manager of a broad portfolio of new spacecraft technologies for Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Portfolio highlights include NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, NASA Space Technology Research Fellowships, Space Technology, Office Advanced Concepts, comprised of additive manufacturing modeling, gradient additive manufacturing, small robot autonomy, advanced data synthesis, robotic mobility on ice and many more.
Manager, Early Stage Innovation and Division Chief Technologist
California Institue of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory · JPL
Responsible for all aspects of the JPL component of three programs from the NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate (about $5M/yr); NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC), Center Innovation Funds (CIF), and NASA Strategic Technology Research Fellowships (NSTRF). Responsible for technology infusion into the Europa Lander and advancement through the Game Changing Development (GCD) program. Responsibilities include direct interface with NASA headquarters. Created strategy for additive manufacturing for JPL. Led creation of JPL Engineering and Science Directorate (3,000 personnel) Science and Technology Roadmap and advised the JPL Deputy Director for Research. Chaired the Engineering and Science Directorate Research Board and currently serve on the Technology Working Group of the Office of the Chief Technologist. Called on to review task progress and proposals for the Office of the Chief Scientist and Chief Technologist. Office won 21 of 116 NIAC proposals in nationwide competition und…
Visiting Associate
California Institute of Technology
Visiting Faculty Research in Aerospace. Performing research and co-advising students in the areas of materials for spacecraft fabrication, computational evolutionary growth, development and embryogeny, and metamaterial structures.
Lecturer in Applied Physics and Materials Science
California Institute of Technology
Lecturer for core materials science courses.
Associate Adjunct Professor
University of California, Irvine
Co-principal investigator on several grants for engineering research in environmentally sustainable manufacturing of electronics and in electronic and optical packaging at UCI totaling more than $4.5M. Currently performing research in environmentally sustainable manufacturing, packaging materials and photonic packaging. Instructor for Microelectronics Packaging, Environmentally Sustainable Manufacturing, Materials Processing, Electron Microscopy, Advanced Concepts in Materials (crystallography), Electronic Properties of Materials (solid state), Characterization of Materials and various seminar courses. The first three courses were newly created. The last three courses were required core graduate courses for all Materials Science majors at UCI.
Manager, Mission Assurance
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory · Pasadena, California, United States
Project manager for NASA Electronic Parts and Packaging program. Responsible for all aspects of the Parts and Packaging portion of the program which included approximately thirty research tasks ($5M/year not including government employee costs). Directed government, industry, and academic consortia for electronic packaging technology and reliability tasks for planetary and deep space exploration missions.
Product Line Manager
Product Line Manager 1997– 1999 Manager of all aspects High Density Multilayer Interconnect. Improved yields by four times in four months making product line profitable. Lead two award winning teams with university and industry technical experts to resolve launch-critical problems in space qualified HDMI process. Program Manager: Gallium Arsenide Operations 1995 – 1997 Coordinated active array programs in the GAO product line. Program manager for three programs for commercial and military high frequency applications, for $10M. Project / Laboratory Manager: Interconnect Technology 1990-1995 Proposal manager for winning NIST ATP and ARPA TRP proposals for $10M and $8M. Project manager, responsible for $7.5M LTCC development program. Obtained funding for high volume $10M LTCC manufacturing line. Manager of 5,000 sq. ft. analytical laboratory, including FA, and materials and process development. MTS II: Advanced Technology Laboratory1984-1990
Member of Technical Staff 2
Rockwell International, Autonetics Division
Research on solder joint integrity, and surface mount technology. Adapted computer control and developed software for vapor phase soldering system. Application of military processing and testing specifications including MIL-STD-454, W/S 6536E, MIL-S-45743, MIL-STD-2000, MIL-STD-883, MIL-STD-490, and QQ-S-571E.
Education
UC Irvine
Ph D, Materials Science
UCLA
MS, Materials Science
University of California, Berkeley
BS, Chemichal Engineering
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