William Woods

Will is the Director of Technology for NorthStar’s U.S. company. He is currently focused on creating and delivering enhanced space situational awareness for the Department of Commerce and NASA and integrating NorthStar’s contribution into Department of Defense and Intelligence Community space domain awareness initiatives.

Prior to joining NorthStar’s U.S. team, Will served as the Entrepreneur in Residence at the Menlo Park, California-based venture capital firm Noosphere Ventures. At Noosphere, he led development of multiple U.S. and international satellite remote sensing programs within the firm’s considerable space portfolio.

While a Ph.D. candidate research assistant to Dr. Ivan Linscott in radar remote sensing at Stanford University, Will supported the New Horizons Mission to Pluto by investigating radio occultation and the effect of interplanetary media upon RF signal propagation. He also generated, analyzed, and simulated data from the radio science experiment (REX) onboard the spacecraft to include Pluto fly-by mission rehearsals performed at John’s Hopkins Applied Physics laboratory.

Like many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Will left the Stanford Ph.D. program to found and serve as Chief Technology Officer of start-up synthetic aperture radar company Capella Space. As CTO, Will led definition and assessment of Capella’s technology roadmap to ensure alignment with product needs, managed all engineering system interfaces to include spacecraft and ground system and their interactions. Capella has launched seven functional SAR satellites to date. Will is a NASA “brat” whose father spent his career there and inspired an early passion for space that included stints as a student intern at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Goddard Space Flight Center.

Will holds a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering obtained while a Ph.D. candidate in Professor Zebker’s Radar Remote Sensing Group. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Bucknell University where he concurrently was graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Bachelor of Arts in East Asian Studies.