People Category: Tuesday Sessions

Dr. Alexander Titus is currently the Assistant Director (AD) for Biotechnology within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering (OUSD(R&E)). As the AD for Biotechnology, Dr. Titus is the technical and oversight lead for all relevant research and engineering matters across the biotechnology portfolio, and is responsible for developing the department’s biotechnology roadmap.

Prior to OUSD(R&E), Dr. Titus was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company focused on working with the defense & security communities on organizational priorities related to advanced analytics and digital modernization. Before consulting, Dr. Titus held a number of roles as a data scientist at In-Q-Tel, Amazon, and Dartmouth College, where his work focused on artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) applications in biology, cyber security, and speech and audio processing. Dr. Titus was also a member of the 2018 cohort of the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity (ELBI) Fellowship through the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Dr. Titus holds a Ph.D. in Quantitative Biomedical Sciences from the Guarini School of Graduate & Advanced Studies at Dartmouth College, where his work focused on computational epigenetics of cancer and AI/ML applications in biology. He also holds dual BS/BA in biochemistry and biology with an emphasis on quantitative analysis, from the University of Puget Sound.

Ms. Nicole Petta joined the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering as the Assistant Director (AD) for Microelectronics in December 2018.  In this role, Ms. Petta acts as the Department of Defense (DoD) technical and oversight lead, advising the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and DoD leadership on all relevant research and engineering matters in the critical modernization priority area of microelectronics identified in the National Defense Strategy. She is responsible for a Department-wide look at microelectronics modernization, which includes establishing policies on, and supervising all defense research and engineering, technology development, technology transition, prototyping, experimentation, and developmental testing activities and programs to include the allocation of resources, and alignment of efforts across the Department. In this role, she coordinates with the Services and the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment to include transition in acquisition strategies and plans; and seeks to ensure a supporting industrial base capability to achieve microelectronics modernization. She will develop an overarching modernization plan rapidly advancing DoD microelectronic capabilities.

Ms. Petta has over 15 years’ experience in materials research, development, and fabrication and has co-authored over 20 publications. Prior to her position with the DoD, Ms. Petta was the Special Assistant to the Director for the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE). She developed a long-term strategy for microfabrication research, development and production for the Department of Energy’s Inertial and High Energy Density Programs at LLE. Prior to LLE, Ms. Petta was the Division General Manager of Schafer Livermore Laboratory in Livermore, California. She stood up the laboratory, led manufacturing, developed and oversaw the research and development programs and was responsible for business operations. The laboratory was focused on the manufacturing, research and development of nano and micro-engineered materials, metals, aerogels, foams, films and coatings and the rapid prototyping, precision manufacturing and characterization of assemblies made from these materials.

Ms. Petta has a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Sonoma State University and received a certificate in the Executive Program for Women Leaders from Stanford University. Ms. Petta served four years in the U.S. Air Force.

Dr. Thomas Karr is the Assistant Director, Directed Energy in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Research and Engineering). His responsibilities cover all Directed Energy research and development in the Department of Defense.

He has four decades of experience in the application of science to national security. Prior to joining OUSD(R&E) he was a DARPA program manager for six years, where he created new programs for kinetic and non-kinetic effects, communication, information processing and exploitation, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. He was the Director of EO/IR Technology at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems and at Northrop Grumman, and was a Group Leader, Program Leader and senior scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for twelve years. He also co-founded a commercial space company, and consulted for many companies in the national security industry.

He earned his A.B. cum laude in Physics from Princeton, his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Maryland, and was a Joliot-Curie Fellow of the Atomic Energy Commission of France. He has published over 50 scientific papers, serves on the Organizing Committees of three scientific conferences, holds three patents, and he is a Fellow of the Military Sensing Symposia (MSS), the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE), and the Optical Society of America (OSA).