Dr. Peter Highnam

Deputy Director, DARPA

Dr. Peter Highnam became the deputy director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in February 2018. Before coming to DARPA, Dr. Highnam was the director of research at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), on assignment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), for two and a half years. Prior to that assignment, he served six years at the ODNI’s Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), initially as an office director, and then as director. Dr. Highnam worked from 2003 until 2009 in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Initially, he served as a senior advisor in the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with responsibilities in areas where high-performance computing intersects with biomedicine and public health, including computational epidemiology. Subsequently, he served as senior advisor to the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), where he produced analyses in support of public health decision-making related to chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear events, as well as naturally occurring disease.