Jason Aquino is a development advisor for AWMF. In this capacity he devises fundraising strategies and helps both the Chairman and Executive Director plan for the Foundation’s future. 
 
An expert in war gaming, alternative futures analysis, and strategic decision making, he has been in the strategy profession for over 20 years, many of them spent as an outside consultant working on study projects for the Office of Net Assessment under the late Andrew W. Marshall. 
 
Jason is the president and founder of Scouts Consulting, a strategy firm that advises the leaders of elite organizations in business and sports on matters of research strategy, decision quality and process, and long-term competitiveness. He has a B.S.F.S. in International Politics and M.A. in Security Studies from Georgetown University. 

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.

Matt Daniels is the co-founder of Ultra, a privately held tech startup based in New York. Earlier, he led initiatives at the White House, Department of Defense, and NASA where his work focused on space, AI, and technology strategy for the United States.

At the White House, Matt led initiatives across space security, technology strategy, Cislunar exploration and development, planetary defense, and special projects involving defense technologies. He also spearheaded diplomacy on these matters with select countries and international organizations. At the Pentagon he was a senior advisor in the Office of Net Assessment, where his work focused on U.S. space programs and artificial intelligence at the whole-enterprise level for DoD, as well as studies on emerging issues in nuclear competition for U.S. leaders. Also at the Pentagon, as the inaugural Tech Director for AI, he oversaw and focused the Department’s AI/ML research portfolio, architected future capabilities, and engaged the research and technology organizations of U.S. allies.   

In his free time Matt is coauthoring a book on the history and future of space exploration, under contract with Oxford University Press. He is also helping to revitalize the historic Georgetown Observatory, the third oldest astronomical observatory in the United States, as the home of a new institute for thinking on space exploration and security. In the rest of his time he avidly finds his way into mountains, archaeology sites, and launch complexes.

Matt remains research affiliate at MIT and Stanford, a fellow of the Explorers Club, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and adjunct professor at Georgetown.  

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 started as an engineer at NASA, where he worked on spacecraft designs and building new technology projects with U.S. allies and partners in Europe, the Middle East, and South America. He got his Ph.D. from Stanford, and has received the Department of Defense medals for Distinguished Public Service and Distinguished Civilian 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.