George W. Davis is the founder and CEO of Emergent Space Technologies, Inc., an aerospace engineering and software development company. His research interests include GPS-based positioning, navigation and timing and spacecraft autonomy for constellation, formation and cluster flight. Dr. Davis received his B.S, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in aerospace engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.
He began his career in 1996 at the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research at the University of Colorado as a post-doctoral research scientist. In 1997, he moved his family to Maryland to join the Orbital Sciences Corporation and support the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in the development and test of space-based GPS navigation technology. In 2000, he took a brief hiatus from the aerospace industry and joined Appnet, an IT company that built websites for commercial and government clients.
In 2001, he founded Emergent to provide engineering, science and research and development services to NASA, the U.S. Air Force and DARPA. The company, headquartered in Laurel, MD and with its software factory in Austin, TX, currently has 90 employees spread across 6 states and 4 time zones. Dr. Davis has regularly served on the UT Austin ASE/EM External Advisory Committee since 2005, including one stint as the committee chair.
He lives with his wife Elizabeth, also a UT Austin graduate, in Ellicott City, MD. Their three children, Tristan, Graham and Kieran, have left home and are in various stages of their college and professional careers.
