David Bestwick

David was the co-founder and CTO of Avanti Communications, a start-up company which pioneered the use of Ka band satcoms to deploy a fleet of four high throughput geostationary telecom satellites serving EMEA. The company was the first to fly a new generation of spacecraft payloads which provided massively increased flexibility and in-orbit reconfiguration capabilities. This was recognised by the Royal Aeronautical Society which awarded the Company a Silver Medal in 2011. David also led the deployment of a series of seven satellite ground stations and data centres across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. David’s early career was spent at the Marconi research Laboratory and at VEGA Group plc where he worked on the commercialisation of Earth Observation satellite data. He has advised the European Space Agency on its telecommunications research strategy and sits on the Board of the Quantum Technology Industry Group. He earned a BSc Honours degree in Astrophysics from the University of Leicester.