Former project manager provides inside view of innovative US defense research agency
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.029555
Science : Founded in 1958, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has earned a reputation for its unique approach to research and out-of-the-box thinking. “The public gives DARPA $3 billion a year, in round numbers, and every decade out pops an Internet, or synthetic biology, or carbon nanotubes, or another significant technology,” says Zach Lemnios, the Pentagon’s chief technology officer during the first Obama administration. The key to DARPA’s success, according to people who have worked for or with the agency, is its group of some 100 program managers, who decide which projects DARPA will address. In this Science article, Jeffrey Mervis talks to one of those former managers, mathematician Benjamin Mann, about what led him to join DARPA and his experience with and unique insights into the agency.
