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Computing Community Consortium Blog

The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.

DARPA Director Stepping Down, Heading to Google

March 12th, 2012 / in policy / by Erwin Gianchandani

As our colleagues at CRA’s Policy Blog have covered, Wired.com is out with an exclusive story this afternoon about Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Director Regina Dugan:

Darpa director Regina Dugan will soon be stepping down from her position atop the Pentagon’s premiere research shop to take a job with Google. Dugan, whose controversial tenure at the agency lasted just under three years, was “offered and accepted at senior executive position” with the internet giant, according to Darpa spokesman Eric Mazzacone. She felt she couldn’t say no to such an “innovative company,” he adds.

Dugan’s emphasis on cybersecurity and next-generation manufacturing earned her strong support from the White House, winning her praise from the President and maintaining the agency’s budget even during a period of relative austerity at the Pentagon. Her push into crowdsourcing and outreach to the hacker community were eye-openers in the often-closed world of military R&D. Dugan also won over some military commanders by diverting some of her research cash from long-term, blue-sky projects to immediate battlefield concerns [more after the jump]…

Dugan is expected to depart “sometime in the next few weeks,” Mazzacone notes in an email. Darpa deputy director Kaigham “Ken” Gabriel, who has overseen the agency’s day-to-day operations since mid-2009, will serve as the acting Darpa chief. He’ll certainly be a strong contender for the permanent position, as will Lisa Porter, the head of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity — Darpa’s counterpart in the intelligence community.

In the meantime, the Pentagon’s leadership are hailing the first female director of its most important research agency. “Regina Dugan’s leadership at Darpa has been extraordinary and she will be missed throughout the Department,” Frank Kendall, Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, says in a statement. “We are all very grateful for the many contributions she has made in advancing the technologies that our war fighters depend on. She leaves for an exciting new opportunity and we wish her every success.”