William E. (Bill) Carter is a research professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Houston. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona, where he was part of a team that developed one of the first lunar laser ranging (LLR) observatories, on Mount Lemmon. As a research associate at the University of Hawaii, he led the development of the second-generation LLR observatory at the summit of Mount Haleakala. He then spent 20 years working at the National Geodetic Survey, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. During his tenure as director of the NOAA Geosciences Research Laboratory, he led the development of national and international programs in very long baseline interferometry (VLBI).