Space lawyer brings skills into Lincoln’s orbit

Dr Maria A Pozza

Dr Pozza lectures in COMP 637, a course in the fee-waivered Master of Applied Computing programme, which, after being introduced at Lincoln in 2020 has become hugely popular, growing by 263% from 2022- 23.

Her course, Business Analysis and User Engagement, is a “practical approach to engaging with users to ascertain their business requirements for software development projects”.

Dr Pozza recently did the course herself as a student, as well as completing a Master of Business (Global Management and Marketing) at Lincoln.

She brings a unique perspective to her teaching through her work as a lawyer within her law firm, Gravity Lawyers, where she often takes on the role of managing the deployment of complex projects that requires her to communicate across business units to different stakeholders. 

In her role, she points out that it’s vitally critical to be able to understand business analysis and user engagements processes and procedures to provide sound strategic advice. 

In New Zealand the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Act 2017 (the Act) regulates activities in outer space undertaken by New Zealanders or other organisations that undertake an activity in space from New Zealand.  It's administered by the New Zealand Space Agency within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE).

Dr Pozza says that her law firm deals with a variety of legal work in this area that range from considerations for launch, high-altitude vehicles (HAVs), and payloads as well as corporate and commercial law with a focus on cyber, data, technology and privacy.

“Space law is complex,” she said.

“There are treaties or international laws governing the realm of outer space, but that when it comes to commercial space activities, each nation needs to develop its own rules to ensure oversight over those activities as well as compliance with the international law.

“Currently the big issues under contemplation by the space-faring nations concern sustainability, space debris, and ensuring the longevity of access and utilisation of the space environment.”

She also deals with questions around AI too, which has been used by the space industry for a long time and has only really hit the spotlight through generative programmes like ChatGPT. 

She considered generative AI to be a very powerful tool, but the parameters of its use were not framed by law and “there different tolerances in the use of AI. More work needs to be done in this area”.

Dr Pozza brings all of her skill to her teaching in a down-to-earth practical way, including compliance, documentation analysis, business analysis, data analysis techniques, and others,  and her practice work so students can learn how to add value to a business through using their other skills that they develop on the Applied Computing programme.

And she can give a wholistic view of a project where a new IT system may be being initiated having worked on complex IT implementation projects in the past, and look at issues like data governance, privacy, and security, and how any data gained is used ethically.

She has 270 students on her Summer School course with students progressing to other courses to complete the course in 12 months.

Starting her own course online during COVID, the mixture of distance and on-campus courses offered by Lincoln in the programme “hit the nail on the head”.  She made many friends on her course and really enjoyed the teaching and learnings.

Dr Pozza said that there were “really fantastic lecturers on the programme”, and she was enjoying her new role.

“In the programme we are training the next generation of people with the skills and tools to be very effective in this changed post-COVID world. How lucky am I to be part of this, working with a great bunch of lecturers and within a fantastic institution here at Lincoln.”

You can hear Dr Pozza talking about space law on RNZ (at about 8mins 20 secs).