New DARPA Chief, Former Cleantech VC Arati Prabhakar

Former USVP Cleantech and IT Partner to head the $3B defense research agency

Eric Wesoff July 11, 2012

Eric Wesoff

Editor-at-Large
Greentech Media

Eric Wesoff is Editor-at-Large at Greentech Media. Prior to joining GTM, Eric Wesoff founded Sage Marketing Partners in 2000 to provide sales and marketing-consulting services to venture-capital firms and their portfolio companies in the alternative energy and telecommunications sectors. Mr. Wesoff has become a well-known, respected authority and speaker in these fields.

His expertise covers solar power, fuel cells, biofuels and advanced batteries. His strengths are in market research and analysis, business development and due diligence for investors. He frequently consults for energy startups and Silicon Valley's premier venture capitalists.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) allocates its $3 billion budget to foster new technologies that will "maintain the technological superiority of the U.S. military and prevent technological surprise from harming our national security by sponsoring revolutionary, high-payoff research bridging the gap between fundamental discoveries and their military use," according to the DARPA website.

It sounds a little like a venture capital firm in that it invests in new technologies and entrepreneurs.

To that end, DARPA just appointed a former venture capitalist, Arati Prabhakar, as Director of the important agency, according to reports in Wired. Prabhakar replaces Acting Director William Edward Lehr.

Until last year, Prabhakar was a partner in the IT and energy practice at USVP. USVP's portfolio includes battery maker Contour Energy Systems, combinatorial R&D player Intermolecular, and at least in the past, solar and political black hole Solyndra. According to the same article, quoting a "senior defense official," “Dr. Prabhakar, who underwent extensive vetting, had no involvement in the federal loan guarantee for Solyndra and wasn’t involved in the restructuring of the loan.”

Prabhakar has an impressive CV. She holds an MS and a PhD in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology, served at DARPA from 1986 to 1993, and was head of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) from 1993 to 1997. She spent a decade as a VC at USVP. Prabhakar looks to have been the only woman partner and only Indian-American at the estrogen-challenged firm, which includes Partner Irwin Federman.