Dr. Carl E. McCants is a special assistant to the DARPA director, focusing on the Microsystems Technology Office's (MTO) Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) and the National Network for Microelectronics Research and Development.

Prior to his role at DARPA, he was the technical director of the Supply Chain and Cyber Directorate of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. McCants provided scientific and technical input and briefed senior government leaders on national-level supply chain integrity issues. He also provided subject matter expertise on microelectronics-related supply chain concerns.

From 2012 to 2018, McCants was a senior program manager at the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), managing the Rapid Analysis of Various Emerging Nanoelectronics (RAVEN) program, the Trusted Integrated Chips (TIC) program, and the Circuit Analysis Tools (CAT) program. His IARPA programs earned him the Intelligence Community's Science & Technology Individual Contributor Award for FY2016.

From 2010 to 2012, he was a program manager in MTO at DARPA, focused on microelectronic integration and hardware assurance and reliability. From 2003 to 2009, he was an associate at Booz Allen Hamilton, where he served as the chief technologist to the director of MTO, and special assistant to the DARPA deputy director.

From 1999 to 2003, McCants was a project manager at Agilent Technologies' Semiconductor Products Group where he was responsible for front-end and back-end optical and electrical characterization of photonic devices, and automated test platform development. From 1988 to 1999, he was a development engineer at Hewlett-Packard's Optical Communication Division, where he focused on materials characterization, wafer fabrication, and photonic measurements of LEDs and lasers.

McCants received his bachelor's degree from Duke University in 1981 and his master's and doctoral degrees from Stanford University in 1982 and 1989, respectively, all in electrical engineering. He is a senior member of the IEEE.