Olivier Thepaut is a Managing Consultant, Project Manager and Earth Observation Expert in Satconsult. Over the last 27 years, Olivier has acquired a sound expertise in a wide range of remote sensing systems (Electro-Optical (EO) imagers, and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagers and altimeters). Throughout his career, Olivier has proven his ability to work flexibly and efficiently within international teams, leveraging his excellent interpersonal skills.
Since joining Satconsult in January 2017, Olivier is managing bids and projects and is involved in several projects dealing with Earth Observation systems.
His backbone role is to support the customers from the fine definition of their needs and performance requirements (phase-0), along with the selection of the industrials and the monitoring of the development, up to the exploitation of the systems (phase-E), offering his years of experience to a variety of customers (civilian and defence) and domains (Space-Based Earth Observation for natural event monitoring as well as intelligence, and more recently Surveillance of Space, SSA/STM).
And to illustrate recent activities of leading design studies, Olivier was Technical Manager of a preliminary design and cost study performed on first half of 2020 for the Canadian Department of National Defence. The team was composed of 8 experts in Electro-Optical Earth Observation systems (instruments, platform and ground segment), and, based on the user requirements in terms of performance and cost, the team designed 3 different concepts, including a smallsat constellation of optical instruments (VNIR camera, MSI and HSI) with laser intersatellite link (ISL).
Prior to joining Satconsult, Olivier worked for ESA for 4 years as Coordinator of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 Expert Support Labs radiometry and geometry Calibration/Validation (Cal/Val) activities in the context of the Sentinel-2 Mission Performance Centre, where in addition he deputized the Service Manager. Of particular relevance of Olivier’s background are 23 years of project and bid management; and regarding the domains of competence 18 years in sub/metric Electro-Optical & SAR imagery, and 7 years in radar altimetry, in terms of system architecture, development, integration and validation, satellite database, ground-satellite interface, data processing & Cal/Val activities (SPOT, ERS, Helios-1&2, Jason-2&3, SARAL-AltiKa, HY-2A, Sentinel-2&3, SWOT) for a wide variety of customers (Undisclosed EMEA, Undisclosed APAC, DND, CSA, ESA, EDA, EUMETSAT, CNES, DGA).
Olivier graduated in 1996 with a Master of Science 2 (MSc-2/DEA) in Radar and Radiocommunications Engineering from INSA in Rennes, France, where he prepared a PhD in SAR and Optical image data fusion between 1996 and 1999.
