Drawing upon her experience in government, academia, and industry, Professor Dr. Diane Howard is now a principal in sur l’espace PLLC, a consultancy focused upon issues pertaining to space policy and law. Diane is also a non-resident scholar at UT Austin’s Strauss Center for International and Security Studies developing the Center’s Space Security and Safety program. This trans-disciplinary offering provides students with opportunities to work on solutions to challenges to the space environment through a combination of law, policy, engineering, and science curricula. Diane teaches courses in this program through UT’s School of Law.

Diane served as Former Chief Counsel for Space Commerce at the U.S. Department of Commerce where she provided space law expertise to the Office of Space Commerce (OSC) and the Department of Commerce as a whole and participated extensively in interagency work. She was pivotal in the implementation of Space Policy Directive-3 and is an internationally recognized SME in space traffic management.

Diane was chair of the annual Space Traffic Management (STM) conference while at Embry-Riddle, ongoing since 2013 and now hosted at UT Austin since 2019 and has been active in the debris community since 2007 and the STM community since 2011. She serves as Vice President of the International Institute of Space Law (IISL) after several terms as its Executive Secretary. Diane participated in the UN COPUOS Long Term Sustainability work as a private sector advisor to the U.S. Department of State who named her a subject matter expert for Expert Group D. In addition to the IISL, Diane is a member of the IAA, AIAA, IAASS, and the Florida Bar.