Steven Walker will lead the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s efforts to target investments in emerging technologies to advance national security as the 21st director of DARPA, the agency recently announced.
Prior to his appointment as director, Walker had been serving as the deputy director of DARPA since 2012. As director, Walker will lead a workforce of 210 government employees and oversee research conducted by public- and private-sector entities through 2,000 contracts, grants and agreements. DARPA’s budget totaled $2.89 billion in fiscal year 2017.
Walker began his engineering career at the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Air Vehicles Directorate. There, he focused on developing thrust vectoring concepts and aeroacoustic prediction methodologies with applications in airplane exhaust systems.
Walker then served as the program manager of the Unsteady Aerodynamics and Hypersonics Research Program at AFRL’s Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and as assistant to the director of Defense Research and Engineering at the Pentagon.
From there, Walker served as deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for Science, Technology and Engineering in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition. In that role, Walker drafted the Air Force’s annual $2 billion technology investment strategy program that supports 14,000 military and civilian scientists and engineers.