Dr William Notardonato started his career as a fluid systems engineer on the Space Shuttle with NASA in 1988. Working both on Life Support and Fuel Cells systems, Bill gained cryogenic fluid and high pressure gas operations experience that proved valuable for later design projects and research efforts. He was the system lead for the vehicle Atlantis and also led the mission specific fluids modifications group. He earned awards for payload integration and Shuttle modifications for the Mir airlock modification and the Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission.

After a brief stint in Design and Development designing and testing X-33 umbilical hardware, Bill was selected to lead cryogenic systems development for a Mars In-Situ Resource Utilization R&D effort. From here was awarded the Kennedy Graduate Fellowship to attend the University of Florida to work on his PhD in the area of Integrated Refrigeration and Storage of Liquid Hydrogen.

Since that time, Dr Notardonato has been working as a senior Principle Investigator at the Cryogenic Test Laboratory. He created novel cryogenic and thermal control systems including cryocoolers and their components, shape memory alloy thermal switches, and test cryostats for materials research. The original IRAS work started during his dissertation has continued to mature and has included small scale tests with LH2, LX, and LNG.

Bill has successfully demonstrated large scale LH2 zero boil off and densification operations as part of the Ground Operations Demonstration Unit for Liquid Hydrogen. This demonstration included no loss tanker offloads, in-situ hydrogen liquefaction, 18 month zero boil off storage, and densification to slush conditions. This IRAS technology is being infused into several tanks worldwide, including the new 1.4 M gallon sphere at LC-39B at KSC. Bill is author or co-author of over 60 technical papers in the field of ground and in-space cryogenic systems, and he holds 4 patents on heat exchanger and thermal switch developments.