Dr. Richard (Rick) Peterson is a Department of Defense (DoD) civilian in the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (ODASD) for Threat Reduction and Arms Control (TRAC). In this role, he serves as the Director of DoD’s Radiological and Nuclear Defense Capabilities Development (RNDCD) Program. This program sponsors the advanced development and modernization of radiological and nuclear (RN) detection and identification capabilities that will be fielded by the Joint Warfighter and the National Guard Bureau. Dr. Peterson oversees the selection and execution of this investment portfolio to ensure that capabilities are developed efficiently and in response to Joint Force and National Guard Bureau requirements.

Prior to this role, he served as contract support in ODASD(TRAC) for over four years, conducting oversight of the DoD Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program. This portfolio included all Biological Threat Reduction Program (BTRP) capacity-building projects across Eastern Europe and Eurasia, the Middle East, Africa, and South/Southeast Asia. In this role, he ensured the program efficiently leveraged federal resources to address strategic priorities across the department to reduce threats to United States interests from natural, accidental, or deliberate release of deadly pathogens. Prior to coming to DoD, Dr. Peterson served as a professor at Coastal Carolina University where he directed a Ph.D.-level research program that used natural radioisotopes to interrogate timing and mechanics of oceanographic processes. He pioneered novel approaches and detection capabilities to measure radioisotopes across a variety of extreme environments around the globe. He authored over 50 publications on his research. Dr. Peterson earned his Ph.D. in 2009 from Florida State University where he studied environmental radiochemistry. In 2019, he was awarded a Science and Technology Policy Fellowship through the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is married with two sons and a daughter.