Speakers

Kathleen Fisher is the CEO of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), joining the agency in February 2026. 

She previously served as Director of DARPA’s Information Innovation Office (I2O). Earlier, as a Programme Manager at DARPA, she created the High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems (HACMS) programme, awarded DARPA’s 2023 “Game Changer” award for the most influential programme of the decade. Kathleen also served as a Director of the Cybersecurity Initiative at RAND. 

Before joining DARPA, Kathleen was a professor and chair of the Computer Science Department at Tufts University and a principal member of the technical staff at AT&T Labs. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University and is an AAAS fellow and ACM fellow.