Regina E. Dugan is the 19th Director of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). She was appointed to that position on July 20, 2009.[1] She is the first female director of DARPA, having risen through the ranks as a program manager in 1996. She led a counterterrorism task force for the Deputy Secretary of Defense in 1999 and, from 2001 to 2003, she served as a special advisor to the Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army. Dr. Dugan co-founded Dugan Ventures, a niche investment firm, where she served as President and CEO. In 2005, Dugan Ventures founded RedXDefense, LLC, a privately held company devoted to innovating solutions for combating explosive threats, where she also served as President and CEO.
Dr. Dugan obtained her doctorate degree in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology and her master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Virginia Tech.
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In March 2011, an article in Wired Magazine revealed that Dugan had held on to her stock in RedXDefense, even as RedXDefense was awarded a $400,000 Darpa contract. A DARPA spokesperson states that Dugan had no involvement in the 2010 contract, and that the contract was vetted by the agency’s top lawyer to assure there was no conflict. Subsequently the LA Times and Wired reported that her company received around $1.8M in DARPA contracts and that Dugan had received a promissory note from RedXDefense in the amount of $250,000.[2]
In August, 2011, the Inspector General of the Department of Defense began an investigation into conflict of interest represented in a new hypersonic vehicle project and Regina Dugan's family connection to RedXDefense, the contractor of the project.[3] The audits, which the watchdog nonprofit Project on Government Oversight (POGO) revealed on its website August 17, 2011, will examine DARPA's general policies on conflict of interest as well as a specific concern that DARPA Director Regina Dugan retains financial ties to her former firm, which has won some $6 million in contracts with the agency.[4]