Will Zortman

Biography

William (Will) Zortman is the Digital Assurance for High Consequence Systems (DAHCS) Campaign Manager for Sandia National Laboratories’ Laboratory Directed Research and Development Office. The DAHCS Mission Campaign is fundamental and developmental research focused on integrating digital assurance into the discipline of systems engineering so that systems engineers, program managers and risk acceptors can make engineering trade-offs between digital risk and other system risks. 

He began his career as an Air Force Combat Weather Officer which included assignments leading a detachment at the Army’s First Special Forces Group (Airborne) and a special operations weather team at the Air Force’s 16^th Special Operations Wing. Upon leaving the military Will led a security contracting activity providing tactical training to intelligence agencies. 

Will later moved into the semiconductor industry as a product change engineer at Lam Research Corporation, where he was responsible for integrating design changes on etch and chemical mechanical planarization tools. He transitioned to diffusion engineer and later a defect failure analysis engineer at Intel Corporation, where he pioneered AutoTracer, an automated defect response tool. Will left Intel to consult on the semiconductor industry for global investment firms including Goldman Sachs and Bain Capital. 

His career at Sandia began in integrated photonics designing state of the art photonics including devices for focal plane array communications, high performance computing interconnect and spread spectrum technologies. Will later transitioned to Sandia’s Threat Intelligence Center, where he had leadership roles in supply chain security, anti-tamper and integrating cyber security into the nuclear deterrence mission. During that time, he authored guidance to the defense industrial base on the acquisition of security devices. 

An author on more than 50 peer reviewed publications, Will has served on multiple IEEE committees and is the author of 14 patents that have been licensed to semiconductor manufacturers. He has a Bachelors in Atmospheric Science from the University of Arizona and a PhD with distinction in Electrical Engineering from the University of New Mexico. Will is a volunteer Emergency Medical Technician on Albuquerque Mountain Rescue.

Education

He has a Bachelors in Atmospheric Science from the University of Arizona and a PhD with distinction in Electrical Engineering from the University of New Mexico with joint advisement from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Publications