The Advanced Research Projects Agency - Infrastructure

Abstract: The application of the legendary DARPA model of innovation to transportation through the establishment of ARPA-I is an exceptional opportunity for the U.S. to address foundational challenges across the sector and lead the world in breakthrough transportation technologies. Join us for a discussion on the DAPRA model and how US DOT and ARPA-I are applying that model to enable potential breakthroughs for transportation infrastructure.

Bio: Deputy Director, Advanced Research Projects Agency – Infrastructure (ARPA-I), U.S. Department of Transportation. Dr. Vincent Tang is the deputy director of ARPA-I and performing the duties of the director to establish the agency. Prior to this role, Dr. Tang was the deputy director of the National Ignition Facility and Photon Science (NIF&PS) Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). He supported efforts to produce transformational capabilities for DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), including the historic achievement of fusion ignition on the NIF. Before that, Tang was a program manager at the DARPA, where he led the agency’s Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (C-WMD) initiatives, SIGMA and SIGMA+, centered on scalable and distributed sensor networks combined with intelligence analytics to detect WMD threats at the city-to-region scale. Partnering with multiple international and US government entities as well as the private sector, SIGMA/SIGMA+ was successfully developed and operationalized in multiple regions. He was named DARPA’s Program Manager of the Year in 2016 and awarded DARPA’s Superior Public Service Medal for these efforts. Dr. Tang began his career at LLNL, after earning a dual BS in nuclear and chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, an SM in nuclear engineering and a PhD in applied plasma physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.