Dr. Ed Lu serves as an advisor to Almaz Capital. He also works with several entrepreneurial companies in Silicon Valley including Hover Inc. Almaz portfolio company.

He served as Program Manager for Advanced Projects at Google Inc. from 2007 to 2010. He was responsible for a diverse group of projects ranging from Google Street View imaging, book scanning technology, imaging for Google Maps/Earth, and energy projects including Google PowerMeter, an online tool for monitoring home energy usage.

Prior to Google, Ed served as a NASA Astronaut for 12 years. He flew the Space Shuttle twice, the Russian Soyuz, and a 6 month tour on the International Space Station. Altogether he logged over 206 days in space and an EVA (spacewalk) totaling 6 hours and 14 minutes. Dr. Lu flew as a mission specialist on STS-84 in 1997, as a payload commander and lead spacewalker on STS-106 in 2000, as flight engineer of Soyuz TMA-2, and served as NASA ISS science officer and flight engineer on ISS Expedition-7 in 2003.

Recognitions in his twelve year NASA career include NASA’s highest honor, the Distinguished Service Medal, as well as the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, Russian Medal of Merit for Spaceflight, Gagarin Medal, Fédération Aéronautique Internationale Komorov Medal, Beregovoy Medal and three (3) NASA Spaceflight medals.

Ed has also served as a scientific advisor to the White House and NASA on space technology and policy issues. He helped drive energy policy work for Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google. In this role he testified before the US Congress on energy issues, and met with officials on both the Federal and State level to ensure that consumers are granted access to their own home energy use information. In addition, he has testified before both the US Senate and House of Representatives on aerospace issues. Ed recently served as a commissioner with the Center for Strategic and International Studies Commission on US/China Relations.

He received a PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford University and a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.