Alexander Kott
Chief Scientist, Army Research Laboratory
U.S. Army
Dr. Alexander Kott serves as the Chief Scientist for the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. In this role, he provides leadership in the development of the laboratory’s technical strategy, which includes maintaining the technical quality of research and representing the laboratory to the external technical community.
Between 2009 and 2016, Dr. Kott served as the Chief of the Network Science Division, Computational and Information Sciences Directorate, U.S. Army Research Laboratory He was responsible for a diverse portfolio of fundamental research and applied development in network science and science for cyber defense.
In particular, he played a key role in initiating the Network Science Collaborative Technology Alliance considered to be among the world’s largest efforts to study interactions between networks of different types. His efforts helped start the Cyber Security Collaborative Research Alliance, a unique program of creating basic science of cyber warfare.
In 2013, Dr. Kott served as the Acting Associate Director for Science and Technology of the ARL's Computational and Information Sciences Directorate. In 2015 he also served as the Acting Director of the Computational and Information Sciences Directorate.
From 2003 to 2008, Dr. Kott served as a Defense Advanced Research Programs Agency (DARPA) Program Manager responsible for a number of large-scale advanced technology research programs. Technologies developed in programs under his management ranged from adversarial reasoning, to prediction of social and security phenomena and command and control of robotic forces.
His earlier positions included Director of research and development at Carnegie Group, Pittsburgh, PA and Information Technology Research Department Manager at Allied Signal, Inc., Morristown, NJ. There, his work focused on novel information technology approaches, such as Artificial Intelligence, to complex problems in engineering design, and planning and control in manufacturing, telecommunications and aviation industries.
Dr. Kott received the Secretary of Defense Exceptional Public Service Award and accompanying Exceptional Public Service Medal, in October 2008.
He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1989, where his research proposed artificial intelligence approaches to innovative design of complex systems.
Dr. Kott has published over 80 technical papers and has served as the initiator, co-author and primary editor of over ten books, including Advanced Technology Concepts for Command and Control, 2004; Information Warfare and Organizational Decision Process, 2006; Adversarial Reasoning: Computational Approaches to Reading the Opponent's Mind, 2006; The Battle of Cognition: the Future Information-Rich Warfare and the Mind of the Commander, 2007; Estimating Impact: A Handbook of Computational Methods and Models for Anticipating Economic, Social, Political and Security Effects in International Interventions, 2010; Cyber Defense and Situational Awareness, 2015; Cyber Security of SCADA and other Industrial Control Systems, 2016; and Cyber Resilience, (to appear, 2018).