Prof. Zurbuchen is the Director of Entrepreneurial Programs: Michigan Engineering for the College of Engineering of the University of Michigan. He also is an active researcher in Space Science and Aerospace Engineering and serves as a consultant to a range of industry partners. He is part of two standing committees of the National Research Council and has served as an advisor to NASA for several future space missions.

Prof. Zurbuchen performs experimental and theoretical studies in space and solar research. He leads the Solar and Heliospheric Research Group which develops new theoretical concepts and models, analyzes data from the ongoing NASA Ulysses, WIND, and ACE missions, and which constructs new flight instruments. Most recently, his group built an instrument, FIPS, for NASA’s MESSENGER mission to Mercury. He also has an active group focusing on breakthrough technology developments for future missions and for broader engineering applications. These technologies include microfabricated instruments for space exploration and remote sensing, and novel space system designs of commercial interest.

He is a program advisor of a professional space engineering Masters program focusing on systems engineering of space systems. He teaches hands-on engineering classes in this program. Mostly based on these classes, this Masters program has become of major interest to the aerospace industry and its graduating students have significantly (~$15,000) higher salaries than their peers.

Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1996, Dr. Zurbuchen worked in the Space Research Laboratory as a Research Fellow sponsored by a Young Researcher Award from the Swiss National Science Foundation. He received a Masters (1992) and a PhD (1996) from the University of Bern. During two years of his graduate school he worked for Contraves, a large Swiss aerospace corporation. Zurbuchen is a recent recipient of the presidential early career award for engineers and scientists, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers.

Thomas Zurbuchen is the president of a small consulting company, Z Transform, LLC, which specializes in the quantitative analysis of space systems. He is also a sought-after public speaker and has presented talks on science and technology in such places as schools, museums, libraries, and Capitol Hill.