Jose Lorenzo Alvarez – MIRI Manager & Principal System Engineer, ESA

Alvarez has been with the ESA's James Webb Space Telescope project since 2005. He began as ESA MIRI System Engineer from 2005 to 2009 before taking his current leadership position. He loves the international cooperative environment working across three different space agencies and 11 different countries for the MIRI.

Before joining ESA, Alvarez worked as a senior passive photonics engineer for CIENA Corporation in Linthicum, Md., and as a product designer in Brimrose Corporation of America.

Alvarez obtained a Master of Science in Telecommunications Engineering in 2000 from the Technical University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain and is a Certified System Engineering Professional by the International Council of System Engineering.

Originally he's from a small town in Galicia, a region in the North of Spain; he currently lives in the Netherlands with his partner Leticia.

In his free time he enjoys reading, writing and carpentry.