Eric Udd, President of Columbia Gorge Research, USA has been deeply involved with fiber optic sensors since 1977 and helped pioneer early work on fiber optic gyros, fiber optic smart structures for health monitoring, high temperature and high speed fiber optic sensors systems, multi-axis strain sensors and fiber optic pressure sensors. He worked for McDonnell Douglas from 1977 to 1993, where he managed over 25 DoD, NASA and internally funded fiber optic sensor programs. Mr. Udd has held a series of positions moving from Engineer/Scientist, to Manager-Fiber Optics, and in 1989 was appointed as one of 40 McDonnell Douglas Fellows. In 1993, he started Blue Road Research and directed the growth of the company through its acquisition by Standard MEMS in January 2000. In January 2006, Mr. Udd left Blue Road Research to found Columbia Gorge Research. He started Columbia Gorge Research with the intent of focusing strongly on the objective of moving fiber optic sensor technology to the field quickly and efficiently supporting both end users and developers of the fiber optic technology.
Dr William Spillman received his Ph.D. from Northeastern University, USA in 1977 in experimental solid state physics. The title of his thesis was ""Low-Temperature High-Pressure Dielectric Measurements of the Paraelectric-Ferroelectric Phase Transition in the Hydrogen-Bonded Arsenates and their Deuterated Isomorphs."" Since that time he worked in industry at the Sperry Corporate Research Center, Geo-Centers, Inc., Hercules Inc. and the Goodrich Corporation prior to joining Virginia Tech as an Associate Professor of Physics and Director of the Virginia Tech Applied Biosciences Center in 1999. He has now retired from Virginia Tech but remains active as a technical consultant to a number of firms and as an expert witness.
He has been awarded 44 US and 50 non-US patents and is the author or co-author of more than 170 technical publications, 16 book chapters and edited proceedings, and 2 video short courses. He is a co-editor of the CRC Press Sensors Series of Monographs and has served on the editorial boards of the Journals: Measurement Science & Technology, Optical Engineering, Smart Materials and Structures, Journal of Optics A: Pure and Applied Optics and the International Journal of Optomechatronics. He is a fellow of both the SPIE and the Institute of Physics in the U.K.