DNI Clapper names new IARPA director

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper announced on August 3 that he has selected Dr. Jason Matheny to be the next director of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, effective immediately.

“Jason brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the position and I’m confident that he will continue to maintain the high bar for technical excellence and relevance to our Intelligence Community mission,” said Clapper. “I look forward to him continuing to work closely with partners throughout the national security community to bring to bear our future capabilities.”

Matheny has been serving as director of IARPA’s new office for Anticipating Surprise overseeing research efforts to develop new capabilities to deliver timely and accurate forecasts for a range of events relevant to national security. He served concurrently as the program manager for the Open Source Indicators (OSI) program, the Foresight and Understanding from Scientific Exposition program and the Forecasting Science and Technology program.

Matheny joined the ODNI in 2009 as a program manager in IARPA’s office of Incisive Analysis where he conceptualized, developed, managed and successfully transitioned technologies to the IC from the Aggregative Contingent Estimation (ACE) and OSI programs. Under his leadership, the ACE program grew impressively as the world’s largest forecasting tournament, and increased the accuracy of geopolitical forecasts by more than 50%. OSI has also achieved impressive results: record lead-time on forecasts of societal events, from political instability to disease outbreaks.

Before joining IARPA, Matheny worked at Oxford University, Princeton University, the World Bank, the Center for Biosecurity, the Applied Physics Laboratory and is the co-founder of two biotechnology companies. His research has been published in widely-known publications, such as Nature, and his work has been profiled in the New York Times’ Ideas of the Year, Discover Magazine’s Top Science Stories of the Year as well as in NOVA, Scientific American and The Economist.

Matheny holds a doctorate in applied economics and a master’s in public health from the Johns Hopkins University, a master’s in business administration from Duke University and a bachelor’s from the University of Chicago. He is also the recipient of the IC award for Individual Achievement in Science and Technology.

Source: IARPA