Dr. Kerri Dugan joined DARPA as the deputy director of the Biological Technologies Office in August 2019, and was named director in December 2020.

Before coming to DARPA, Dugan served in several leadership roles at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) since 2007. Most recently, she was the senior scientist for the Analysis Directorate. She also led the Research Directorate’s Environment and Culture Pod, where she developed multidisciplinary research programs to understand how the effects of complex natural systems and cultural dynamics impact national security. Additionally, Dugan served as NGA’s first scientific integree in the United Kingdom (UK) at the Defense Science Technology Laboratory, leading collaborative R&D to exploit and analyze geospatial information derived from multiple intelligence sources.

From 2016 to 2018, Dugan led the ODNI Intelligence Community (IC) Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program and worked with the UK’s chief science advisor for national security to establish the UK-IC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Programme, fostering long-term scientific relationships between academia and the IC while supporting basic research of interest to the IC.

From 2000 to 2007, Dugan led biological sciences research at the Federal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory Division, where she focused on developing and transitioning new assays for human and microbial genetic identification to operations.

She holds a doctorate degree from Princeton University in molecular biology and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry from the College of William and Mary.