The final day at GHC14 has already started, and here goes the last keynote by Dr. Arati Prabhakar, Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Dr. Prabhakar has spent her career investing in world-class engineers and scientists to create new technologies and businesses. 1986, she has served in multiple roles at DAPRA. n 1993, President Clinton appointed her director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where she led the 3,000-person organization in its work with companies across multiple industries. I was not really sure what to expect at her session, but seems like it turned to be the most inspiring and informative keynote session I have covered for the GHC14 so far. Dr. Prabhakar is not only an inspiring woman in technology, but she is undoubtedly a remarkable leader too. Working in a challenging environment like DARPA, she made her way through and successfully climbed the executive leader. In her session she mostly talked about the undergoing research activities at DARPA. I was genuinely impressed and I am glad that I went to her keynote session!
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| Photo Courtesy: http://ws-dl.blogspot.com/2014/10/2014-10-16-grace-hopper-celebration-of.html |
"I can't be President since I am a naturalized citizen, but I figured everything else was fair game." – Dr. Prabhakar
Dr. Prabhakar started her keynote by remembering Grace Hopper's amazing contribution and talent to shape the times she lived in and how we can shape ours too. She then shared a video of Jan Scheuermann, who was paralyzed from the neck down, was able to use a robotic arm as her limb, which she could control through her thoughts. Read more about this scientific miracle and watch out the amazing video here. The prosthetic arm was designed by the John Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) and funded by the DARPA. This was just one of the many examples, where the research at DARPA under Dr. Prabhakar is making a phenomenal difference in technology.
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| Photo Credits: http://www.livescience.com/25600-quadriplegic-mind-controlled-prosthetic.html |
DARPA was started in 1985 as a response to the Sputnik1 event in 1957. The mission was to make United States technologically capable enough to prevent technological surprises like the launch of Sputnik. DARPA has this focus for the past six decades now. Another focus was to build precision capabilities, which not only helped us in war times, but also helped in business and corporate sectors to improv our existing technological capabilities. DARPA has been building technologies mainly to support America’s national security, however these were equally useful in other sectors. DARPA mainly has two eco-systems, the first is related to military and the second is related to supporting universities, commercial, and research labs activities.
In all those years, DARPA’s focus and roles had not changed much, but the world we live in has changed significantly and so do our technological capabilities. National security has become bigger and more complex than before due to so many global factors than before. Due to several factors, challenges related to the world’s national security are also amplified. To deal with these challenges, we need to build more advance and complex technologies. Not only there are challenges at the global level, but also there are new challenges in space orbits. More nations have joined the space orbits now. We now need miniature systems that can be launched from any military base within 24 hours.
Another research area where DARPA is focusing currently is biotechnology. We have capabilities to build massive systems, which can impact our lives. DARPA is working on a number of research projects trying to find solutions to outpace the spread of infectious diseases like Ebola, and also creating diagnosis and rapid therapies to treat them. DARPA is currently working on Ebola cure right now, and also trying to reduce the vaccines’ activation time from weeks to hours.
Third and the last research area Dr. Prabhakar talked about, was mastering the information explosion. Due to tremendous advancements in computing and internet technologies, data is being produced at an exponential rate. Information hold by this massive data is also very critical. DARPA is trying to solve the challenge of extracting useful information out of this data and also ensuring that information they extract is reliable. This has also increased the threat of cyber attacks breaching data security and privacy. DARPA is trying to quickly patch and prey these challenging scenarios by building tools, which can run analytics faster than the growth of data and attack surface. Dr. Prabhakar’s team is also working on a project named Cyber Grand Challenge where machines are generating malicious attacks at great speed, and defensive capabilities are being built to match that. DARPA has worked with law enforcement agencies to use these analytics to stop human trafficking especially at the Texas-Mexico border.
Dr. Prabhakar closed her keynote by saying that through her speech, she wanted to give a flavor to the women in computing, of what they are doing at DARPA and how important it is to build technologies for protect America’s national security. Later, while answering to some of the questions asked by the audience, Dr. Prabhakar shared that students who want to join DARPA can work on the research projects funded by DARPA in collaboration with several universities. Also, that DARPA is big organization who is always looking for fresh blood with strong technical and leadership skills who can build solutions to impact humanity. Other than technical staff, veterans are also encouraged to apply. In response to a question related to dealing with office politics at state agencies, Dr. Prabhakar said that she never faced such an issue throughout her career. She always tried to build a working culture based on supporting each other, and there has never been any place for office politics.
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