woodruff has over 45 years experience designing optical systems for united states space program missions. he has made significant contributions to projects ranging from skylab, nimbus, apollo-soyuz, galileo, sirtf/spitzer, microgravity science, the hubble space telescope (hst), and next generation space telescope (ngst), terrestrial planet finder (tpf), beyond einstein, exo-planet detection, kepler, as well as others. he has wide and varied experience in the definition of optical space-borne telescopes and instruments. his technical specialties are optical physic, optics design, and optical system engineering. he has served in various technical roles in optical design, system engineering, system test, and system calibration in the development of more than 20 flight hardware instruments, so one or more of his designs have been operational in space continuously for nearly 40 years. among his accomplishments, two activities standout: 1) he helped fix the hubble space telescope spherical aberration flaw and 2) he conceived and generated the optical concept and design for the kepler mission. he is the author or co-author of well over 25 published or presented papers. he is also an associate of center for astrophysics and space astronomy (casa) of the university of colorado in boulder, co. he retired from lockheed martin as a technical fellow and chief scientist for optical systems.