He graduated from the University of Maryland in 1981, with a BS degree in electrical engineering. He then received a master's degree in the same field from Cornell University in 1982. He went to work for AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1982 to 1989 designing hardware and software for long-haul, near gigabit-per-sec, optical fiber repeaters. Next he backpacked all over the world for three years. He worked at Panasonic (in Japan) on telecom projects from 1992 to 2004 as a quality control engineer; at Panasonic he mastered the Japanese language.

From 2005 to 2015, George Maeda installed real time fluxgate (MAGDAS) magnetometers all over the world for ICSWSE (Int'l Center for Space Weather Science and Education) at Kyushu University; MAGDAS is regarded as the world's largest array of magnetometers, with 72 units.

In July of 2015, he began working as assistant professor at Kyutech in the LaSEINE laboratory of Prof. Mengu Cho. He is currently the Research Coordinator of the BIRDS Project and he is also the editor of the "BIRDS Project Newsletter" whose website is: BIRDS PROJECT NEWSLETTER

This is the list of BIRDS projects (with members) to-date (July 2019):

• 2015--BIRDS-1: Ghana, Bangladesh, Japan, Nigeria, Mongolia
• 2016--BIRDS-2: Bhutan, Malaysia, Philippines
• 2017--BIRDS-3: Nepal, Sri Lanka, Japan
• 2018--BIRDS-4: Paraguay, Philippines, Japan
• 2019--BIRDS-5: < now being formed >

For most of these nations BIRDS is their first satellite into space.

Contact: maeda(at)ise.kyutech.ac.jp