Skybox Imaging Founder Honored for Innovation in Satellite Imagery

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Technology Review magazine selects Skybox Imaging Founder and Chief Product Officer Dan Berkenstock as a TR35 Honoree for 2011. TR35 is Technology Review’s annual list of the world’s top innovators under the age of 35, spanning energy, medicine, computing, communications, nanotechnology, and other emerging fields.

“Thanks to Dan’s vision, Skybox is pioneering a scalable approach to providing timely satellite imagery and information products to commercial and government end-users alike.”

Berkenstock received the honor for developing a low-cost approach to revolutionizing global access to near real-time satellite imagery and derived information products.

“I co-founded Skybox Imaging because I believe strongly that innovative and affordable microsatellites hold the potential to revolutionize life for millions of people by providing unprecedented access to daily information,” Berkenstock said. “Satellite imagery is powerful stuff. The potential commercial and social benefits are virtually limitless. Imagine being able to monitor global oil reserves on a daily basis, enable farmers to minimize water and fertilizer usage, and bring global awareness to human rights violations early enough to save millions of lives.”

Since founding Skybox in 2009, Berkenstock raised more than $25 million in venture capital and assembled a team of internet and aerospace professionals to develop and deploy a network of high-resolution imaging microsatellites. Skybox is on track to deliver daily overhead imagery for a broad range of applications, including natural disaster response, business intelligence, remote site monitoring, and environmental compliance.

“Today, there simply aren’t enough satellites in orbit to comprehensively monitor daily activity on our planet,” said Tom Ingersoll, Skybox’s Chief Executive Officer. “Thanks to Dan’s vision, Skybox is pioneering a scalable approach to providing timely satellite imagery and information products to commercial and government end-users alike.”

A panel of expert judges and the editorial staff of Technology Review evaluated more than 300 nominations before choosing the final 35. Berkenstock will join other TR35 honorees in discussing their achievements at the emtech MIT 2011 conference, taking place at the MIT Media Lab October 18-19, 2011. All of the TR35 winners for 2011 will be featured the September/October issue of Technology Review and online at www.technologyreview.com/tr35.

Additional information about past and present TR35 winners and judges is available at www.technologyreview.com/tr35/. For more information about emtech MIT 2011 please visit: http://www.technologyreview.com/emtech.

About Skybox Imaging

Founded in 2009 and backed by leading Silicon Valley venture capital firms, Skybox Imaging is creating the world’s first network of high-resolution imaging microsatellites in order to revolutionize access to information that describes daily activity on our planet. For more information, please visit www.skyboximaging.com and follow Skybox Imaging on Twitter.

About Technology Review, Inc.

Technology Review is an independent media company owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). More than two million people around the globe read our publications, in five languages and on a variety of digital and print platforms. We publish Technology Review magazine, the world’s oldest technology magazine (established 1899); daily news, analysis, opinion, and video; and Business Impact, which explains how new technologies are transforming companies, disrupting markets, or creating entirely new industries. We also produce live events such as the annual emtech MIT conference.