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Caltech Alumna Named to Key Defense Department Post
July 10, 2009
 Caltech alumna and defense technologies expert and entrepreneur Regina Dugan, PhD '93, has been named director of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense, it was announced on July 2 in Washington, D.C. Dugan, the founder and CEO of RedXDefense, LLC, a Maryland-based firm that develops technologies to detect and counter explosives, becomes the 19th director and first woman to head DARPA, the DoD's principal research and development agency. DARPA's mission, in the words of its website, is "to maintain the technological superiority of the U.S. military and prevent technological surprise from harming our national security [and to] create technological surprise for our adversaries."
In the press release announcing Dugan's appointment, Zachary J. Lemnios, director for DoD Defense Research and Engineering, calls her "precisely the dynamic leader DARPA needs to open new technology frontiers and transition revolutionary technologies to serve our nation's interests. I am delighted she will be leading this agency and look forward to working closely with her."
In taking the top job at DARPA, Dugan will be returning to the agency where she worked from 1996 to 2000 as a program manager in the Defense Science Office. In that role, she headed the $50 million "Dog's Nose Program," whose aim was to develop an advanced portable system that troops could use in the field to detect the explosive content of land mines. In 1999, she received DARPA's program manager of the year award for her leadership of the project. She left DARPA in 2000 to take up a series of executive positions in industry, and in 2005, she cofounded RedXDefense. In the course of her R&D work, Dugan has also participated in active mine-clearance efforts in Mozambique and in equipment field tests in Bosnia and regions of Africa.
A recipient of the Bronze deFleury Medal of the Army Engineer Regiment and the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Exceptional Service, Dugan has participated in wide-ranging studies for the Defense Science Board, the Army Science Board, and the National Research Council and Science Foundation. She currently sits on the Naval Research Advisory Committee and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency Science and Technology Panel. She is the coauthor of Engineering Thermodynamics, published in 1996. She holds one patent, and is inventor or coinventor on several patents pending.
Dugan received her BS and MS degrees from Virginia Tech before coming to Caltech, where she earned her doctorate in mechanical engineering. She then worked for three years, from 1993 to 1996, as a researcher at the Institute for Defense Analyses before joining DARPA, to which she now returns as the agency head. For more information about DARPA and its programs, go to http://www.darpa.mil.
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