Gérard Maral is a French engineer and academic specializing in satellite communications. A graduate of the École centrale de Paris and holder of a doctorate in science, he was appointed professor at Toulouse's Paul Sabatier University in 1970 and joined the École nationale supérieure des télécommunications (ENST, now Télécom Paris) in 1984. There he built up the school's Toulouse site together with its satellite-communications teaching and research programme, and in 2003 founded its MSc in Aerospace Communications Systems. An internationally recognized expert and lecturer in the field, he is, with Michel Bousquet, co-author of the standard textbook Satellite Communications Systems, reissued in several editions by Wiley.