Published: April 12, 2010
The New York Times
ARLINGTON, Va. — The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is different from other federal agencies. For one thing, the agency, known as Darpa, created the Internet (really). For another, it is probably the only agency ever to offer a $40,000 prize for a balloon hunt, a contest that was inspired by Regina Dugan, a 47-year-old expert in mine detection, who took over last summer as its director.
Dr. Dugan, who has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology, is the first woman to be the director of Darpa, and those who know her say she has a knack for inspiring, and indeed insisting on, creative thinking.
Last December’s balloon hunt, otherwise known as the Darpa Network Challenge, is a good example. In marking the 40th anniversary of the connecting of the first four nodes of the Internet in 1969, the agency offered a $40,000 prize to the first team of volunteers able to locate 10 large red balloons hidden around the country.
The task only sounds frivolous. It was actually something that experts agreed was impossible using traditional intelligence techniques. The challenge was designed to test new methods, involving the use of social networks.
The idea for the balloon search came out of Dr. Dugan’s insistence that a group of Darpa fellows — rising military stars — who had been posted to the agency for several months do something more innovative and useful than taking the usual field trips and meet and greet sessions. With her repeated prodding, the fellows — captains, majors and colonels — designed and organized the contest.
The balloon hunt, which would ultimately attract almost 500 teams of volunteers from around the world, was won by a group of M.I.T. experts in the analysis of social networks. The results suggested the potential of these new ways of gathering intelligence. For Dr. Dugan, it was a great example of how Darpa can contribute to what she has called a “renaissance of wonder.”
Her biggest challenges, however, lie ahead. She must orchestrate the work of the military, contractors and universities around a set of ideas to produce scientific and technological breakthroughs. Darpa is built around specific projects undertaken by elite scientists and engineers who sign on for several years to provide service to the country. It is results oriented and not meant to be a long-term home for researchers.
In the past, Darpa has supported the design of the ARPAnet, the forerunner of the Internet and many of the technologies that define the modern computer age, as well as military systems including the stealth fighter, unmanned drone aircraft, the global positioning satellite system, and even the M16 rifle.
The agency has also spawned controversy. During the 1990s it became a lightning rod for a bitter political debate over the question of whether the United States should have an industrial policy to invest in hand-picked industries and technologies.
In 2002, Dr. Dugan’s predecessor, Tony Tether, set off a firestorm of opposition from civil liberties advocates when he created Darpa’s Information Awareness Office run by a former Reagan national security adviser, Adm. John Poindexter. Admiral Poindexter wanted to build a computerized data mining system to look for potential terrorists, and Congress responded by cutting financing for the project.
More recently Darpa has been criticized as focusing too closely on “deliverables” for the nation’s soldiers, in the process forgoing the high-risk technology gambles that originally were the agency’s trademark.
Dr. Dugan must try to redress that balance. Under her direction Darpa is focusing on areas as diverse as advanced manufacturing, biological sensors and the rapid development of vaccines, as well as cyberecurity.
Her ability to see the world in nontraditional ways has impressed Gen. James E. Cartwright of the Marines and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has begun working closely with Dr. Dugan in the past four months.
“Watching her work with the service chiefs has been really amazing,” General Cartwright said. “They listen for 10 or 15 minutes and you can feel lights start to come on and then they’re hooked.”
She has also won strong initial backing outside of the military.
Not long after taking the position last year she toured five of the nation’s leading universities in an effort to address the chill that had set in between Darpa and the universities during the eight years that Dr. Tether ran the agency.
“We did a deep dive and we tried to understand what the universities were experiencing and what they were expressing,” she said. What she found was that not only had financing declined but that there were also a variety of indirect effects crucial to the basic research community, like the ability to include foreign nationals in research, the freedom to publish and the limits placed by export control regulations.
“We came to a better understanding of what the agency needs to do, and then we went to the university community with a challenge for their side as well,” she said, “which is to bring their best and brightest to the table to work on defense problems.”
The new approach has paid off in enthusiastic reviews from many of the agency’s recent critics.
“She came to attract brilliant faculty to become program managers as opposed to selling a research agenda,” said Randy Katz, a University of California computer scientist and former Darpa program manager. “My immediate impression was that when she arrived she commanded the room.”
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