Dr. Spillman received his Ph.D. from Northeastern University in 1977 in experimental condensed matter physics. The title of his thesis was "Low-Temperature High-Pressure Dielectric Measurements of the Paraelectric-Ferroelectric Phase Transition in the Hydrogen-Bonded Arsenates and their Deuterated Isomorphs." Since that time he worked in industry at the Sperry Corporate Research Center, Geo-Centers, Inc., Hercules Inc. and the Goodrich Corporation prior to joining Virginia Tech as an Associate Professor of Physics and Director of the Virginia Tech Applied Biosciences Center in 1999. He has now retired from Virginia Tech but remains active as a technical consultant to a number of firms and as an expert witness. He has 46 US patents, 180+ technical publications, 3 books (Fiber Optic Sensors: an Introduction for Engineers and Scientists, 2nd Edition, 2011, Fiber Optic Sensors: an Introduction for Engineers and Scientists, 3rd Edition, 2024, and Field Guide to Fiber Optic Sensors, 2014, all with Eric Udd), 16 book chapters, with his publications and patents resulting in more than 6500 citations, an h-index score of 35 and an i10-index score of 89 (Google Scholar). He is a Fellow of the SPIE and the Institute of Physics (UK) and has been a member of research review panels for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Networked Centres of Excellence (Canada). He has served on the editorial boards of the journals Measurement Science & Technology, Optical Engineering, Smart Materials and Structures, Journal of Optics A: Pure and Applied Optics and the International Journal of Optomechatronics.