At Harvard Business School he met David Thompson and Scott Webster, with whom in 1982 he co-founded Orbital Sciences Corporation to develop commercial opportunities in space. From 1982 to 1993, in positions that included Senior Vice President, Finance and Administration; General Counsel; and Chief Operating Officer, Ferguson played a role in arranging collaborations and financing for projects such as development of the world’s first privately-funded orbital launch vehicles: the Space Shuttle-launched Transfer Orbit Stage for boosting spacecraft from Shuttle orbit to geosynchronous orbit and planetary trajectories; the aircraft-launched Pegasus for delivering small research and communications spacecraft into low Earth orbit; and the ground-launched Taurus for delivering larger payloads to Earth orbit. From 1993 to his resignation in 1997, Ferguson's was Executive Vice President, Communications and Information Systems Group; his activities included management of Orbital’s Magellan division that built and marketed commercial Global Positioning System receivers, Orbcomm's introduction of low-Earth orbit satellite systems, and Orbimage's introduction of commercial Earth remote sensing services.
Edenspace
In 1998 Ferguson founded and was the first president of Edenspace Systems Corporation, a privately-held plant biotechnology company that bioengineered crop plants to increase livestock nutrition and to assist in biomass pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis for ethanol production. However, public concerns about bioengineered crops and the consequent delays and high cost of obtaining regulatory approvals made commercial development of this technology impractical. Edenspace terminated most of its research and development in 2011, when Ferguson stepped down as president.
In 2012, Ferguson joined the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi as Professor of Practice, Engineering Systems and Management. He formed and led a new Institute Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and developed new course content on entrepreneurship, led the creation of a $7 million collaboration with BP Ventures on technology innovation, and helped to develop a new space graduate degree program with Yahsat and Orbital ATK.
Ferguson was named AUIS President on August 1, 2016, succeeding Dr. Esther Mulnix who had served as Interim President since January, 2015. During Ferguson’s tenure, AUIS was the first Kurdistan Region private university to receive accreditation from the central government in Baghdad, and added new majors in Civil Engineering, Medical Laboratory Science, Translation, Law, and Software Engineering.
