Dr. David A. Markowitz

David A. Markowitz is a scientist and engineer with a decade of experience leading applied research in biotechnology and artificial intelligence. As an IARPA Program Manager from 2017-2022, he designed and led moonshot research programs that bridge biology and computing. He has delivered breakthrough capabilities for national security and made foundational contributions to several emerging science and technology domains, including synthetic biology, DNA data storage, and connectomics. Through the IARPA FELIX program, he helped revolutionize the field of biosurveillance by leading the development of experimental and computational tools for detecting genetic engineering in complex biological samples. Using these tools, in January 2020, he coordinated the national security community’s initial analysis of the SARS-CoV-2 genome. He is also an award-winning neuroscientist who played a central role in the design and execution of the $6B U.S. BRAIN Initiative. Prior to public service, he contributed advances in computational neuroscience and neural engineering as an academic research scientist. For this work, he was recognized with a 2019 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). He received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Neuroscience from Princeton University as a DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellow and holds a degree in management from MIT.