NDIA - S&ET Executive Breakfast - Featuring Dr. Thomas P. Russell, ARL

Dr. Thomas P. Russell, Director, U.S. Army Research Laboratory

Dr. Thomas P. Russell is a member of the Senior Executive Service and serves as the Director of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), the Army’s premier laboratory for basic and applied research and analysis.  ARL conducts research and analysis in weapons and materials, sensors and electron devices, computational and information sciences, human research and engineering, vehicle technology, and survivability and lethality analysis.  ARL’s Army Research Office executes the Army extramural basic research program in scientific and engineering disciplines.  The Laboratory consists of approximately 2,000 military and civilian employees with annual revenue of over $1 billion. 

Dr. Russell’s government career began as a research scientist at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, White Oak Laboratory, MD. In 1994, he joined the Naval Research Laboratory, serving as a research scientist and Head of the High-Energy Materials Section within the Chemistry Division. In September 2000, he was assigned to the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Indian Head Division, where his assignments included Director, Chemistry and Detonics Division, Research Department; Head, Research and Technology Department; acting Technical Operations Manager; and Head, Research, Development, Testing and Evaluation Directorate. In August 2006, he was selected as the Director of the Aerospace and Material Sciences Directorate, AFOSR. He was responsible for the Air Force basic research program in aerospace, chemical and material sciences.

Most recently, Dr. Russell was the Director of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Arlington, VA. He oversaw the management of the entire basic research investment for the Air Force; leading a staff of 200 scientists, engineers and administrators in Arlington, VA, and foreign technology offices in London, Tokyo and Santiago, Chile. Each year, AFOSR selects, sponsors and manages revolutionary basic research that impacts the future Air Force. Dr. Russell actively managed a $510 million investment portfolio and transitioned the resulting discoveries to other components of the Air Force Research Laboratory, to defense industries and to other federal agencies. The office’s annual investment in basic research was distributed among more than 200 academic institutions, 150 businesses and 200 research efforts within the AFRL.

Dr. Russell has been a visiting scientist at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, an adjunct professor at the Washington State University Shock Dynamics Laboratory and a part-time faculty member at Montgomery College. His principal fields of interest are energetic materials, decomposition/combustion chemistry, detonation physics/chemistry, high pressure chemistry/physics and spectroscopy. He has authored more than 100 publications and inventions in these areas. Dr. Russell was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in 2006.