Ugo Celestino has been working in the space domain since 2007 as Policy Officer for the European Commission. In the Directorate General Defence Industry and Space (DG DEFIS), he manages research, innovation and new space/start-ups activities of the EU Space Programme (e.g. Galileo, Copernicus, etc.) and in this frame he has been working in the team masterminding the CASSINI initiative since 2019, as well as other actions aiming at easing access to finance & markets for start-ups, both in upstream and downstream segments. Before 2019, beyond dealing with innovation for Galileo/EGNOS, he managed downstream applications and international relationships with EU southern neighborhood/Middle East.
Previous professional experiences include being start-upper/entrepreneur himself in the internet space, setting up & managing local business units for corporations (both digital and traditional brick & mortar companies), in Italy, Europe and consulting in strategy/M&A. He holds an MBA from INSEAD (France) and Economics degree from Bocconi University (Italy)