Bill Jackson, Deputy Director, NASA Independent Verification and Validation Facility, Fairmont, WV

Searching for defects amid several thousand lines of code in mission critical software, NASA’s Independent Verification and Validating Facility (IV&V) was open for business in 1994 as a safeguard against mission failure. Reporting to the Goddard Space Flight Center, the IV&V audits software across NASA (and other government agencies) dealing with several different projects concerning satellites and shuttle mission software. The current Deputy Director, Mr. Jackson was Acting Director of IV&V from January to October of 2006.