Mazlan Binti OTHMAN

USPACE Technology Group LimitedChairman, International Cooperation Committee

Dr. Othman obtained a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Otago, New Zealand, in 1981 and became a lecturer at the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) in 1981. Dr. Othman was seconded to the Prime Minister's Department in 1990 to set up and head the Planetarium Division, which subsequently became the Space Science Studies Division in 1993. She was appointed by UKM as Professor of Astrophysics in 1994. She was appointed Director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) in Vienna, Austria, in 1,999. Dr. Othman returned to Malaysia to become the founding Director General of the National Space Agency (ANGKASA) in July 2002. In this capacity, she established the National Observatory in Langkawi and National Space Centre in Selangor. She headed the National Angkasawan (Astronaut) Programme, which launched the first Malaysian to the International Space Station in 2007. In addition, she was responsible for the launch of Malaysia Remote Sensing Satellites: TiungSAT and RazakSAT. She attended the Advanced Management Programme (AMP169) at Harvard Business School in 2005.

Dr. Othman resumed her post as Director of UNOOSA in December 2007 upon retirement from the Malaysian Civil Service. She was appointed as the Deputy Director-General of the United Nations Office at Vienna (UNOV) in June 2009, and she retired from the United Nations in December 2013. Dr. Othman was appointed as the Project Director, Mega Science 3.0 at the Academy of Sciences Malaysia (ASM) from 2014 to 2016. She became Professor Emeritus at UKM in 2015 and was a Fulbright Scholar at the Space Policy Institute of George Washington University from 2015 to 2016. Dr. Othman was elected as a Senior Fellow of ASM in 2016. She was the Director of the International Science Council (ISC) Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP) from 2017 to 2021.

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