Dr. Arati Prabhakar

Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences,
Stanford University;
Former Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

 

Arati Prabhakar is a 2017-18 fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, where she will explore how we shape our technologies and how they shape us. She was the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) 2012-17. Under her leadership, DARPA initiated programs to rethink complex military systems; harness the information explosion for national security; and plant new seeds of technological surprise in fields as diverse as complexity, synthetic biology, and neurotechnology. Previously, she was a partner at U.S. Venture Partners, a senior executive at Interval Research and at Raychem, director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a DARPA program manager, and a Congressional fellow at the Office of Technology Assessment.