R. Connor Willison
At Lincoln Laboratory, I draw on my industry experience to connect advanced cybersecurity research with real-world system deployments. It’s a unique place to push forward the development of secure space systems.
R. Connor Willison is an associate technical staff member in the Secure Resilient Systems and Technology Group. His current work is focused on the development of next-generation secure spaceflight software. Willison is interested in how technologies such as memory-safe programming languages can be applied to improve the security and reliability of embedded systems.
Prior to joining the Laboratory in 2024, Willison spent five years in industry as an embedded software developer. At Ball Aerospace, he contributed to the satellite bus flight software for the SWFO-L1 and SPHEREx missions. At Rockwell Automation, he developed fault-tolerant embedded software for novel industrial I/O platforms. He brings practical experience from the industrial automation and space sectors to bear in his current role, where he develops Rust embedded software to advance the state-of-the-art in secure space systems.
Willison received his MS degree in electrical engineering in 2024 from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he studied control theory and autonomous systems. He received his BS degree in 2018 from Carnegie Mellon University in electrical and computer engineering, where he focused on operating systems and embedded software.