William J. Byrd Director Iowa Space Grant Consortium Iowa State University 2271 Howe Hall, Room 2363 Ames, IA 50011-2271 800-854-1667  or  515-294-3106 FAX: 515-294-4848 E-mail: wbyrd@iastate.edu

William J. Byrd is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Iowa State University, in Ames, Iowa, where he is also Director of the Iowa Space Grant Consortium.

Byrd was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1953. He attended Iowa State University where he earned the Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering in 1975. He was commissioned in the United States Navy and served on active and reserve duty until 1983; achieving the rank of Lieutenant Commander. His duty stations included the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) and the Navy Fighter Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX-4) where he served as an aircraft maintenance officer. He completed a Master of Science Degree from the University of Southern California in Systems Management in 1981.

Dr. Byrd began work at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, in 1982, where he was employed by McDonnell-Douglas as a Space Shuttle operations engineer. In 1986 he was hired by NASA to work on the Space Station program in the space operations office of the Level B Program Office, which was later moved to Reston, Virginia. During this time he managed the $1.8 billion space operations program for the Space Station Freedom program. While at NASA he earned NASA performance awards in 1986, 1987, and 1989.

Byrd left NASA in 1994 to serve as the Director of the Iowa Space Grant Consortium and Associate Director of the Institute for Physical Research and Technology at Iowa State University. He was also granted adjunct faculty status and teaches spacecraft systems, senior design, and scientific ballooning courses. His work includes development of the Spacecraft Systems and Operations Laboratory at Iowa State University. The first spacecraft designed, built and flown in space by Iowa State personnel was the IJEMS (Iowa Joint Experiment in Microgravity Solidification) experiment flown onboard Endeavour's flight STS-69 in 1995. Byrd oversaw the development of this experiment by students from Iowa State University and the University of Iowa in collaboration with scientists from the Ames Laboratory of the US Department of Energy and the University of Iowa. More recently, he collaborated with the University of Iowa and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on balloon testing of the Mars Express antenna. He completed a doctoral program from Kennedy-Western University in public administration in 1999.

Dr. Byrd has served on the executive committee of the National Council of Space Grant Directors as Treasurer and Secretary. He has also served on the Board of Directors of the National Space Grant Alliance as Treasurer. He currently serves as President of the National Space Grant Foundation. He is the Governor's appointee to serve as the Iowa Delegate to the Aerospace States Association where he has also served as Secretary.