Kathleen B. Alexander
Dr. Kathleen Alexander, a member of the Senior Executive Service, is Assistant Deputy Administrator for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Defense Programs. Previously she was the Director of Interagency Work for the National Nuclear Security Administration at the Department of Energy, where she oversaw work with partner agencies, technology transfer and other cooperative work agreements. She also served as sponsor of the Defense Programs Science Council and Executive Secretary for the Mission Executive Council, a four-part agreement between the departments of Defense, Energy and Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Security. Before taking that post, she was on assignment from Los Alamos National Laboratory as Senior Advisor to Dr. Steven Koonin, the Under Secretary of Science for DOE.
For more than 13 years, Kathleen was at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she held nuclear weapons program management positions and several management posts in the Materials Science and Technology, Applied Physics and Hydrodynamic Experiments divisions. Her nuclear weapons program management positions included Hydrodynamic Testing, Pit Certification, Dynamic Materials Properties, Advanced Radiography, Enhanced Surveillance and Dynamic Plutonium Experiments. From July 2009 to December 2010, she was a technical advisor in the Office of Defense Sciences of the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Before joining Los Alamos, Kathleen spent 11 years at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where her last post was Microscopy and Microanalytical Sciences Group Leader. She previously was a technical staff member performing high-resolution imaging and analytical electron microscopy studies of metals and ceramics.
Kathleen earned her Ph.D. in Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science and her B.S. and M.S. in Metallurgy and Materials Science, all from Carnegie Mellon University. She conducted postdoctoral research as a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK.
Kathleen was named a Fellow of ASM International in 1996 and of the American Ceramic Society in 2001. In 1997 the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce named her one of Ten Outstanding Young Americans. Kathleen also has received multiple Defense Programs Awards of Excellence (team awards). She served on the ASM International Board of Trustees from 2000 to 2003 and was Treasurer of the Microscopy Society of America from 1998 to 2004. Kathleen has more than 100 peer-reviewed publications in archival journals and conference proceedings with more than 1,300 citations. She also has two patents and received a technology transfer and licensing support award in 1993. She became a member of the federal Senior Executive Service in 2011.