Zaheer Ali
Zaheer Ali is the Program Director and Interim Associate Provost for Space Commercialization and Strategy at the University of Central Florida, Senior Partner at Space Outcomes LLC, and Managing Director at NewSpace Finance. He is a physicist, engineer, and entrepreneur who has successfully secured over $500 million in contracts, cofounded multiple technology companies, and authored over 40 scientific publications.
Since joining UCF’s College of Business in July 2025, Zaheer has driven the development and implementation of strategic roadmaps to strengthen UCF’s role in space commercialization. He expanded UCF’s partnerships with industry and government to develop the talent needed to sustain and advance Florida’s leadership in the space sector, which is projected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2035. Read Zaheer Ali Named Program Director of UCF’s Space Commercialization and Strategy Initiative.
He serves as a key architect of UCF’s fully online Space MBA program, the nation’s only dedicated MBA focused entirely on space commercialization from an accredited U.S. business school, launching in Spring 2026. As Senior Partner at Space Outcomes LLC since April 2025, he provides strategic consulting to space sector organizations on business development, operational excellence, and market positioning.
From February 2022 to May 2025, Zaheer served as Chief Operating Officer at Positon AI, an AI-powered mergers and acquisitions platform that revolutionizes M&A workflows through data analytics and machine learning algorithms. At Positon AI, he helped the company become a Microsoft for Startups partner while achieving SOC 2 Type 2 certification. Read Taking the complexity out of mergers and acquisitions with AI.
Between May 2021 and May 2025, Zaheer served as Professor of Practice at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management, where he developed and taught the Executive Master’s in Management in Space Leadership, Business, and Policy. From January 2020 to December 2021, he served as Senior Manager and Technical Area Lead for AI, Data Sciences, and Aerospace at USRA on the NASA Ames Academic Missions Services contract.
He led research teams of approximately 30 people in quantum information, aeronautics data sciences, fluid dynamics, and other fundamental and applied research at technical readiness levels from 0 to 6. Between October 2010 and September 2018, he served as Science and Mission Operations Laboratory Supervisor for NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a 2.5-meter telescope mounted in a modified Boeing 747SP aircraft. Read A Review of Science Ground Operations for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy.
At SOFIA, his work included building the SOFIA Telescope Alignment Simulator, establishing science laboratories, and creating a $50 million mirror coating facility. From October 2018 to April 2021, he also served as Manager of USRA SOFIA Safety and Mission Assurance, where he led the program’s return to operations during COVID-19 and implemented new processes that increased compliance from 55% to 95%. Read My GREAT Experience with SOFIA: Part 1.
Between December 2006 and June 2010, Zaheer worked as Program Manager at National Security Technologies, LLC (NSTec) at the Nevada Test Site. He led a team in product development for nuclear experiments, homeland security, and intelligence projects with P&L responsibility. During this tenure, he cofounded the National Center for Nuclear Security, a $50 million-per-year, 10-year appropriation that he helped establish by coauthoring the white paper and structuring the organization.
He served as Principal Investigator for the Nevada Test Site study on electromagnetic fields created by nuclear fusion reactions and as OMEGA Laser Shot Director at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics. His achievements included scaling national security critical system manufacturing from 100 per year to 10,000 per year.
From May 2001 to October 2006, Zaheer worked as a Science and Engineering Technical Scholar at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he spent over 10,000 hours in microfabrication facilities developing radiation detector systems. His work resulted in patents, and he was a team member on an R&D100 award-winning project for an extreme low-temperature heat switch and nuclear radiation spectrometer.
He built the total beam energy monitor for the SLAC Stanford Linear Coherent Light Source and increased the homeland security device detector yield by 150% through his research. Between February 2001 and May 2005, he also served as an Undergraduate Research Scholar at UC Berkeley, working on the design and development of superconducting electronics for dark matter searches, medical, and national security applications.
Zaheer has cofounded and led multiple technology companies. He served as Chief Executive Officer of Material Mind from September 2018 to September 2024, an AI-powered company that accelerates R&D by applying machine learning to materials research and discovery. He was Chief Science Officer at AIXIA Global from August 2018 to January 2022, an Industry 4.0 technology integration and digital transformation company.
From June 2021 to February 2022, he served as Director of Business Development and Government Relations at ThinkOrbital, a company building fourth-generation space stations. He has also served as an advisor to multiple space startups, including Pulsar Fusion, Neutron Star Systems, Magdrive, Parsimoni, Paterson Aerospace, and Space Railway.
Between February 2022 and December 2022, Zaheer served as Director of High Performance Computing Strategy at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, where he directed strategy and planning for the company’s HPC division. From June 2021 to February 2022, he was a Visiting Professor at DeVry University, teaching business strategy, international business, project management, and technology strategy for Industry 4.0.
Zaheer earned his Executive Master’s in Global Management with a concentration in Business Administration and Management from Thunderbird School of Global Management in 2019, where he was inducted into the Beta Sigma Gamma International Business Honor Society. He earned a Certificate in Nanotechnology from Columbia University in 2008, focusing on nanoscale molecular structures and electron transport for next-generation computing devices.
He earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005, where he was a member of the Society of Physics Students, Model United Nations, and Fencing Club. During his undergraduate studies, he took extensive coursework in electrical, nuclear, materials, and bioengineering, in addition to his physics major, focusing on applied physics for the development of experimental instrumentation and on electron transport in superconducting and semiconductor-based devices.
From October 2019 to January 2023, Zaheer served as AI Program Executive at the World Sustainability Foundation, directing AI programs and investment for sustainability-enabling technologies. Between June 2020 and January 2023, he was a Board Member of the Newark Chamber of Commerce in California, where he hosted industry webinar series, spoke on COVID-19 risks and opportunities, and led the chamber’s digital transformation.
Zaheer delivered the TEDx talk Agile, Culture, and How to Make It Work for Us at TEDxHastingsSt in July 2018, discussing how agile software development principles can be adapted to any organizational system and even personal life. He has presented keynote addresses at DesignCon, the Space Settlement Summit, and numerous international conferences on space technology, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and enterprise agility. He is a Certified Scrum Professional through the Scrum Alliance and holds a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute. Listen to Out of This World Science with Zaheer Ali of NASA’s SOFIA.
Zaheer has authored or coauthored over 40 scientific publications, including A Review of Science Ground Operations for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) published in the Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation in 2018, and High-energy x-ray backlighter spectrum measurements using calibrated image plates published by the American Institute of Physics in 2010.
His research has spanned radiation detection, nuclear physics, semiconductor device development, astrophysical instrumentation, and AI-driven materials science. He has been awarded multiple patents for his work in radiation detection and MEMS engineering, accumulated over 12,000 hours in microfabrication facilities, and contributed to an R&D100 award-winning project.
Zaheer is a first-generation American of Indian ancestry and Muslim faith, and a practicing Stoic. He has been honored to be part of a Maori Whanau, wearing his third-generation Punamu with pride. His perspectives on space and the future represent a consilience of Eastern and Western ideas with an inherent integration of indigenous wisdom. He is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Orlando, Florida. In his spare time, he enjoys running, biking, climbing, and working on his 1977 Corvette.
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