The Senate confirmed Arati Prabhakar, former director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and a previous Wash100 awardee, as director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy in a 56-40 vote Thursday.
Prabhakar, who was nominated to the post in June to replace Eric Landers, will concurrently lead OSTP and serve as chief adviser to President Biden on science and technology matters, the White House said Thursday.
She led DARPA from July 2012 to January 2017 and was the first woman to lead the National Institute of Standards and Technology as director, a role she held from 1993 to 1997.
Her private sector career included leadership positions at Raychem, Interval Research and U.S. Venture Partners.
The federal R&D veteran most recently served as CEO of Actuate, a nonprofit organization she established to conduct managed programs that focus on developing options to address societal issues, according to her LinkedIn account.