The Defense Innovation Advisory Board has added new members who will work to help the Defense Department stay up-to-date with innovation.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter unveiled the appointees during the official opening of a Boston outpost for the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, a DoD initiative meant to help the department forge ties with U.S. innovators in order to bring new technologies to the military, DoD said Tuesday.
“These new additions to the board represent some of the most innovative minds in America,†said Carter.
The board includes the following members:
- Jeff Bezos, president, chairman and CEO of Amazon
- Adam Grant, professor at Wharton School of Business
- Danny Hillis, computer theorist and co-founder of Applied Inventions
- Eric Lander, president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
- Marne Levine, chief operating officer of Instagram
- Michael McQuade, senior vice president for science and technology at United Technologies
- Milo Medin, vice president for access services at Google Capital
- Richard Murray, professor at California Institute of Technology
- Jennifer Pahlka, founder of Code for America
- Cass Sunstein, professor at Harvard Law School
- Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and author
Carter announced the appointments of retired Navy Adm. William McRaven, former head of the U.S. Special Operations Command; innovation historian Walter Isaacson; and Reid Hoffman, chief of LinkedIn, to the board in June at a Defense One Tech Summit in Washington.
Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt serves as chairman of the board that consists of 15 innovators, scholars and private and public organization leaders tasked with identifying private-sector practices the department could apply to future efforts.
The board will kick off its work in summer and submit recommendations to the secretary by October.
