Leadership

MEET THE FOUNDERS

Unknown Unknowns was founded by engineers with complementary experience across spacecraft systems, hardware development, communications, autonomous operations, and technical leadership. Together, Matt, Kevin, and Peter have built a company focused on honest partnerships, thoughtful execution, and engineering teams empowered to do exceptional work.

Matt La Pan

Co-Founder and CEO

Matt La Pan is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Unknown Unknowns. He sets the company’s technical and business direction, develops key client relationships, and creates the conditions that allow its engineers to work effectively. His technical background encompasses embedded and non-embedded software, radio-frequency systems, digital communications, and signal processing.

Before launching Unknown Unknowns, Matt spent seven years as an independent aerospace consultant supporting organizations including Virgin Orbit, ABL Space Systems, and Maxar. Earlier, at Millennium Space Systems, he developed software-defined radios that flew in space and supported both spacecraft-to-spacecraft and space-to-ground communications. He later built ground systems used to track launch vehicles for Virgin Orbit. His work in aerospace communications grew directly from his doctoral research in signal processing and secure communications.

Matt’s strength lies in charting the full path from an initial challenge to a working solution. He helps teams sequence the right work, identify opportunities for early impact, and balance technical ambition with cost, schedule, and operational realities.

For Matt, building a successful engineering company is itself an engineering challenge. He co-founded Unknown Unknowns to create a workplace grounded in trust, honesty, shared responsibility, and long-term investment in its people. His leadership philosophy is simple: treat colleagues as teammates and never ask someone to do work he would not be willing to do himself. Matt earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech.

Kevin Rockwell is Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Unknown Unknowns. He leads company operations, bids and proposals, technical project management, client relationships, and the technical execution of hardware-focused programs. An engineer and experienced product leader, Kevin excels at moving satellite systems from early design through qualification and scaled production.

Kevin previously held technical and product leadership roles at Millennium Space Systems, Blue Canyon Technologies, and Maxar. At Millennium, he helped develop and qualify a flight computer before leading the effort to increase its production from three units to 100 units annually. As chief hardware engineer for the clean-sheet Maxar 300 avionics system, he assembled and led a multidisciplinary design team of 25 mechanical, electrical, software, IT, and manufacturing professionals. His career includes five qualification campaigns, more than 50 product deliveries, and support for approximately 15 space programs.

Kevin helped establish Unknown Unknowns to create an environment where exceptional engineers have the trust, resources, and ownership needed to do their best work. He believes strong technical execution begins with taking care of people and remaining open to the many ways a problem can be solved. Kevin earned his B.S. in Computer Engineering from Purdue University and his MBA from Quantic School of Business and Technology.

Peter Greene is Co-Founder and a primary technical architect at Unknown Unknowns. He shapes solutions to complex client challenges and guides multidisciplinary teams from early concepts and uncertain requirements toward clearly defined, executable programs. His experience spans spacecraft, autonomous vehicles, avionics, robotics, controls, power, data systems, and autonomous operations.

As Director of Advanced Technology Development at Maxar, Peter worked on next-generation Earth-observation spacecraft and a clean-sheet avionics and software architecture for proliferated low Earth orbit systems. He also held systems engineering roles at Waymo and SSL.

Peter architected a scalable hardware and software solution that advanced from a clean-sheet concept to nine unique prototype cards in 10 months. He also developed autonomous launch and early-orbit operations for SSL spacecraft, reducing commissioning time from 5.5 hours to 30 minutes without requiring a human in the loop. He has supported more than 20 programs, contributed to dozens of satellites flown or in development, led teams of more than 70 people, and managed an annual budget exceeding $20 million.

Peter approaches systems architecture by breaking large challenges into achievable components while leaving room for iterative refinement. He believes giving execution teams meaningful autonomy strengthens ownership, engagement, and the quality of the finished system. Peter earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Davis, and is the inventor on two patents involving autonomous-vehicle control architecture and the autonomous geolocation of space-based imagery.