Ben Wetherfield

Dr. Wetherfield has experience across a range of engineering and computing disciplines, spanning free-space optics, integrated photonics, display technologies, software system design and implementation, high-performance computing architectures, electromagnetic simulation, and audio technology. His cross-disciplinary expertise allows him to tackle challenges across diverse technology stacks, often bridging software and hardware elements.

Prior to joining Exponent, Dr. Wetherfield served as Principal Research Scientist in an interim role at a deep technology startup in the computer vision and hyperspectral imaging space. There, he developed software and systems for large-scale material development and simulation, as well as algorithmic approaches for targeted computer vision tasks. In previous work at SpaceX, he made software contributions (C++, Python) to the Starlink network, introducing new telemetry pipelines and bolstering fleet simulation tools.

For his Ph.D. work, Dr. Wetherfield studied the fundamental performance limits of optical and photonic computing devices that harness diffraction. He used a broad range of computational, mathematical, and experimental methodologies to pursue his research agenda, developing mathematical frameworks for analyzing integrated photonic device performance, implementing large-scale simulated testing of optical computing architectures, and designing optical apparatuses from scratch to demonstrate optical computing principles. In further project work, he investigated holographic display technology based on liquid crystal devices, for virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) applications. He received the honor of passing his viva (or Ph.D. defense process) without corrections, a rare distinction of which he was the first recipient among his supervisor's twenty years' worth of students.

Dr. Wetherfield has teaching and course-devising experience at the graduate and undergraduate level across technology areas in music, audio and acoustics, high-performance computing, theory of computation and engineering mathematics. He has further work experience in the education technology sector, and as a musician, with highlights including producing the theme music for a successful arts podcast, and touring Japan as a jazz pianist. Beyond work in optics and photonics, Dr. Wetherfield has presented original research applying network optimization methods to problems in music technology.