Matej POLIAČEK

Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR) • ISS / Columbus Flight Director

Matej Poliacek is a Flight Director at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), responsible for real-time operations of ESA’s Columbus laboratory module on board the ISS. His role involves coordinating the work of the astronauts aboard the station and the European flight control teams on the ground, as well as interfacing with the NASA flight control team in Houston and the JAXA flight control team in Tsukuba. Beyond console shifts he is involved in a number of projects, the most recent being RESPIRE, a microgravity aerosol experiment selected by Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) and flown by Matej in the Aurelia Horizons parabolic campaign, aiming to advance human physiology research in space. His interest in human spaceflight research has also brought him inside an isolated habitat and into the field as a participant in several analogue research missions simulating missions to both Mars and the Moon, and to contributing to the organisation of the V4 Analogue Challenge, a 24-hour isolation mission that gave four analogue astronauts from Czechia, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary their first taste of analogue research. He is active in SGAC, where he started the “Postcards to Space” project, allowing the general public to fly their postcards to space and back with Blue Origin's foundation Club for the Future, and helped deliver events from regional workshops to Space Generation Congress 2023 and 2024, in Baku and Milan, respectively. Matej also serves on the Human Spaceflight, ACCESS, and WD-YPP committees of IAF, and has been recognised by Forbes Slovakia’s 30 Under 30, IAF Emerging Space Leader and Space and Satellite Professionals International’s 20 Under 35 awards. He holds an MSc in Software Development and a BSc in Statistics from the University of Glasgow.

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