NASA Ames Research Center

Why I joined the Kepler Team

I was tired of working for start-ups, so I began to paint my parachute and the color that emerged was that I should apply my software skills in a field that I was passionate about--such as astronomy. I joined the team at the end of 2006 to develop the SOC pipeline and am now working on a project that is contributing to mankind's knowledge. What could be more rewarding than that?

Background

While Jon Jenkins was growing up in the shadow of Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building, Bill was growing up in the shadow of Ames' Hangar One. As a child, his passion for astronomy was fueled by fieldtrips to Ames, where he peeked inside the 40x80 wind tunnel, and strolled on the tarmac while a U2 took off.

Bill received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of California, Davis, and started out his career in 1985 at SRI followed by SAP while he lived in beautiful Heidelberg, Germany. By 1993, California was calling him back. He took a year to get home while traveling through Asia and Australia.

He has worked for several start-ups and has been programming user interfaces in Java since 1997. He joined Orbital Sciences Corporation in 2006 when he began working in the Kepler SOC.

Bill has played in three Ultimate Frisbee World Championships: the first for the German National Team and the next two for the Geneva Wizards. He now lives in Palo Alto with his sweetheart of many years, Lori Heyman, and wishes he had more time to sail, dive, hike, cycle, brew, and write open source software. Learn more about Bill on his home page.

Kepler Job Description/Role/Duties

Bill Wohler is a senior principal software engineer for the Kepler SOC who enjoys working in the Java programming language. He is responsible for most of the user interfaces in both application form and on the web as well as a smattering of the pipeline modules. He maintains the SOC's software repository in Subversion and the continuous build system on Hudson. He also keeps the SOC productive and happy by managing the delivery of Peet's coffee to the team and supplying the Kepler barbecues with his homebrew.