Jason Matheny named IARPA director

Jason Matheny has been named director of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, according a release from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Matheny had been serving as director of IARPA’s new Office for Anticipating Surprise, overseeing research efforts to develop new capabilities for a range of events relevant to national security. He was also overseeing three IARPA programs: the Open Source Indicators (OSI) program, Foresight and Understanding from Scientific Exposition (FUSE) and Forecasting Science and Technology (ForeST).

Matheny joined IARPA in 2009, when he started off helping grow programs related to forecasting geopolitical events. He helped create SciCast, the world’s largest science and technology forecasting tournament, which was run in partnership with George Mason University.

Jason Matheny has been with IARPA since 2009. (IARPA)

Before joining IARPA, Matheny worked at Oxford University, Princeton University, the World Bank, the Center for Biosecurity and the Applied Physics Laboratory, and he is the co-founder of two biotechnology companies.

“Jason brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the position and I’m confident that he will continue to maintain the high bar for technical excellence and relevance to our Intelligence Community mission,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in a statement. “I look forward to him continuing to work closely with partners throughout the national security community to bring to bear our future capabilities.”

IARPA is known for high-risk, high-payoff research that looks to leverage forecasts or predictions to provide the country with a technological edge over adversaries. (We’ve written about some of their more recent projects and challenges.)

Matheny takes over for Peter Highnam, who left IARPA in July to run the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency’s InnoVision program.