Dr. F. Douglas Witherspoon is the founder and chief scientist of NearStar Fusion. Doug obtained his PhD in Plasma Physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has several patents in pulsed energy technologies and numerous publications. Dr. Witherspoon has over 40 years of experience with hypervelocity plasma railguns, beginning with the Star Wars program in the 80’s and extending to high performance plasma jets since 2004. He was also the founder of HyperV Technologies and co-founder of HyperJet Fusion who partnered with Los Alamos National Labs to develop plasma guns for fusion experiments.