Team

Matt Daniels is Co-Founder and CTO of Ultra, a company building new technologies for future security. Previously, he led initiatives at the White House, NASA, and Department of Defense. His work focuses on space and technology strategy.

At the White House, Matt developed policies and launched initiatives spanning space and national security, lunar exploration, and planetary defense. Before that, he served as the Department of Defense’s inaugural Technical Director for AI in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, overseeing the DoD’s broad artificial intelligence R&D portfolio. He has also served as Advisor to the Director of Net Assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, focusing on strategy for U.S. space programs, and as a member of the NASA Administrator’s strategy and plans team, focused on deep-space exploration and development. He is a research affiliate at MIT and Stanford, and a fellow of the Explorers Club.

For his work on planetary defense, Asteroid 22028 Matthewdaniels, discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey, is named for him. The asteroid is non-hazardous, approximately 2-3 km in diameter, and orbits in the inner main belt between Mars and Jupiter. Matt received his Ph.D. and M.S. in engineering from Stanford and B.A. in physics from Cornell. He was a Fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and is a recipient of the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service.