Dan Patt supports strategy in the business, financial, and national security sectors. He is a repeat entrepreneur, a former Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency official, technology investor, and researcher.
Dr. Patt is an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at The Hudson Institute, dedicated to the the evolving role of information and operational concepts in national security. He is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He is the originator of the Mosaic Warfare concept, and supported the Deputy Secretary of Defense in leading an effort to define a new modernization initiative for the Department of Defense as part of the 2018 National Defense Strategy effort. He holds advisory board roles at the University of Michigan College of Engineering and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Dr. Patt supports commercial technology investment and companies at Thomas H. Lee Partners and supports strategy at the artificial intelligence company STR. He has more than fifteen years’ experience operationalizing emerging technology including artificial intelligence, networked information systems, robotics, supply chain automation, and enterprise information technology. He is the co-founder of Vecna Robotics, a commercial venture-backed warehouse robotics and workflow orchestration company. Dr. Patt also served as deputy director for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Strategic Technology Office (STO). Dr. Patt previously held technical and leadership positions in the automotive and aerospace industries, focusing on emerging technology, including automation and human-machine integration. He was a MassTechnology Council CEO of the year honoree for emerging technology companies, is a Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Honoree, and is the recipient of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Achievement Award in recognition of his work developing and fielding advanced situational awareness software and networking tools in support of combat operations.
Dr. Patt received his B.A., M.S., and Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan.
Melissa Flagg is the founder of Flagg Consulting LLC, as well as a visiting fellow at the Perry World House at UPenn, a senior advisor to the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center, and a fellow at the Acquisition Innovation Reform Center at Stevens Institute of Technology. Prior to this, she was a Senior Fellow at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University. Previously she served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research, responsible for policy and oversight of Defense Department science and technology programs. She has worked at the State Department, the Office of Naval Research, the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Army Research Laboratory. She holds a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and a B.S. in Pharmacy.
Dr. Matthew Daniels is currently serving in the U.S. Government. He is also an affiliate at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. His work focuses on U.S. space programs and artificial intelligence.
Previously he was the DoD’s inaugural Technical Director for AI in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & 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 a member of the strategy and plans team for the NASA Administrator, focusing on deep space exploration and development. Outside of the U.S. Government, Matt has been a research affiliate at MIT and Stanford, a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, and continues to teach on space security and exploration at Georgetown.
Earlier he was a research engineer at NASA, with work in spacecraft design, stochastic control, and new science missions. He has served as part of NASA Ames delegations to build new technology projects with U.S. allies and partners in Europe, the Middle East, and South America. Matt received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in engineering from Stanford, a B.A. in physics from Cornell, 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.
Jesse Ausubel is Director of the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University and chair of the Richard Lounsbery Foundation. Beginning in 1977, Mr. Ausubel was employed for most of the first decade of his career in Washington, DC at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and National Academy of Engineering (NAE). For the Academies, as a resident fellow of the Climate Research Board, he helped organize the first UN World Climate Conference in Geneva in 1979. The NAS seconded Mr. Ausubel during 1979-1981 to the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), a think-tank near Vienna, Austria, established by the US and Soviet academies of sciences to research common problems of industrialized societies amidst the Cold War. IIASA stimulated a career-long interest in science and international diplomacy. During 1989-1993, Mr. Ausubel served also as Director of Studies for the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government, which sought ways for American government at all levels to use scientific and technical expertise better. Since 1989, Mr. Ausubel has served on the faculty of Rockefeller, where he leads a program to elaborate the technical vision of a large, prosperous society that emits little or nothing harmful and spares large amounts of land and sea for nature.
Author or editor of about 200 publications, Mr. Ausubel is an adjunct scientist of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, university fellow of Resources for the Future, and member of the Council on Foreign Relations where he serves on the board of Foreign Affairs. In 2009, Dalhousie University (Canada) and in 2012 St. Andrews University (Scotland) awarded Mr. Ausubel honorary doctorates for his contributions to environmental science and technology. Other recognition includes the Blue Frontier/Peter Benchley prize for ocean science, elected Fellowship in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the International Cosmos Prize for leadership of the Census of Marine Life. Named America’s National Ocean Champion in 2012, his portrait was included in an exhibit on two dozen leading ocean explorers. A deep sea lobster, Dinochelus ausubeli, is named in his honor. In 2015 he delivered the U.S. Naval Academy’s 2015 Michelson Memorial Lecture. At present his lab is pioneering studies of naked DNA in seawater to assess the presence and abundance of marine species.