Arlington, VA—Robert Hummel, Ph.D. has joined the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies as the new Vice President of Research. In this position, Dr. Hummel will direct studies on technology and innovation, and support a variety of Government clients including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA).

Previously, he was a Principal at Booz Allen Hamilton, where he provided science and technology business offerings to the Intelligence Community S&T innovation strategy to commercial as well as Government customers.

Dr. Hummel states, “I am honored to now be able to lead and direct the excellent policy research work at the Potomac Institute. Specifically, this Institute has a reputation for strategically utilizing top level military, government, academic and business leaders in order to best assess and analyze a diverse and ever-changing technology landscape and then providing the best policy options available. It’s exciting to be an integral part of these research efforts.”

“Dr. Hummel brings us a valuable and extensive intelligence in science and technology having served in key program management positions at DARPA. He is also an expert in his field after spending much of his career as a tenured university professor in computer science and information systems,” comments Michael S. Swetnam, Chairman and CEO of the Potomac Institute. “We are proud to bring on board someone of Dr. Hummel’s caliber in this key role to drive our policy research efforts at the Institute.”

From 1997 to 2006, Dr. Hummel was a program manager at DARPA, serving in the Information Systems Office, the Special Projects Office, and in the Information Exploitation Office. He was the recipient in 2005 of the Director’s Award for Personal Achievement. At DARPA, he managed over a dozen different projects, and initiated projects in LADAR sensing and LADAR exploitation, multi-sensor exploitation, and computer science futures. He worked extensively with DARPA strategy teams, elements of the DoD Joint Staff, and with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, he directed a 24/7 operation to provide indications and warnings, based on imagery sensor feeds.

Prior to joining DARPA, Dr. Hummel was a tenured university professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. At NYU, his area of research was in computer vision and information fusion, where he published over 70 journal articles and refereed conference articles on object recognition in computer images, image processing, parallel computing, uncertainty reasoning, information fusion, and mathematics. He served as Director of the computer science Masters Program, and developed and co-directed a Masters Program in Information Systems.

Dr. Hummel has a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago.