Dr. Philip T. Metzger is a research professor in planetary science at the University of Central Florida and is the director of the Stephen W. Hawking Center for Microgravity Research and Education. He has served on the Science Advisory Board for Blue Origin and currently serves as advisor to ispace-US, to Magna Petra, and to Ion Power Group. He was previously with NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where he worked on the Space Shuttle launch team and Space Station Hardware Integration Office then co-founded the KSC Swamp Works, a space technology innovation hub inside NASA. He performs research on lunar regolith, how rocket exhaust interacts with extraterrestrial soil, and lunar and martian soil simulants, and he develops technologies for lunar mining, beneficiation, and construction. He has patents in lunar ice mining, lunar construction, and lunar energy storage. As director of the Hawking Center he is developing programs to serve as "on-ramps for participation" in space. He was selected as Kennedy Space Center NASA Scientist/Engineer of the Year for 2011. He received the astronaut’s Silver Snoopy award in 2011 and NASA’s Silver Achievement Medal in 2014. He was selected by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) aerospace division for the Outstanding Technical Contribution Award of 2016. He became a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Fellow in 2019. In 2021, the International Astronautical Union named Asteroid 36329 Philmetzger after him.