Mission: Possible - a sparks & honey Fireside Chat
Many have heard of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), but rarely do we get to learn about the problem-solving methodologies that lead to its outsized results. On June 9th at 12 pm ET, former DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar and former DARPA Program Manager Wade Shen joined sparks & honey CEO and Founder Terry Young to share their “solutions R&D” approach, developed at DARPA in their experiences with counterterrorism, monitoring of nuclear materials, and most topically, mRNA vaccine technology.
Combining years of experience at the highest levels of scientific and technological innovation, Arati and Wade have launched Actuate, a new non-profit to bring this kind of radical innovation to our most critical societal challenges.
Watch the full Culture Briefing here:
About Arati Prabhakar
Arati Prabhakar has led two very different federal R&D organizations: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In between, Arati worked for 15 years in Silicon Valley, first in a couple of companies and then for a decade as an early-stage venture capitalist at U.S. Venture Partners. She has worked with startups, mature companies, universities, government labs, and nonprofits across a variety of sectors to advance research, bring products to market, and demonstrate powerful new capabilities.
About Wade Shen
As Chief Program Officer at Actuate, Wade develops new programs and program leaders for Actuate. As a program manager at DARPA, Wade ran a portfolio of machine learning programs, demonstrating better-than-expert automation of AI/ML, developing AI processors at 130x the speed of GPUs, and deploying tools that over 300 law enforcement agencies use to find human trafficking networks.
About Actuate
Actuate is a new kind of nonprofit organization, with a mission to address four critical societal challenges: mitigating climate change, establishing good health across our population, reinvigorating democracy, and opening access to opportunity for every person. Actuate designs and conducts “solutions R&D” programs that create fresh, practical, potent solutions for these major challenges.
Actuate’s work is to catalyze this future by designing and running solutions R&D programs that create breakthroughs. To this task, we bring broad innovation experience and a track record of delivering results with the high-risk, high-payoff DARPA method. During our seed stage, we’re defining our first programs, fundraising, and building partnerships for the work ahead.
Learn more and contact Actuate to get involved.
Watch live Culture Briefings every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 12 pm ET on the sparks & honey LinkedIn page.