President Biden on Wednesday announced his intention to nominate Dimitri Kusnezov, a scientist and Energy Department official helping with international partnerships on artificial intelligence at the department, to head the Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security.
Kathryn Coulter Mitchell is the current acting under secretary for S&T at DHS, a role she assumed in May after then Acting Under Secretary William Bryan departed after four years. Coulter Mitchell was previously chief of staff for S&T.
Kusnezov, a theoretical scientist, currently works in the DoE Office of Science on creating international partnerships in AI. He previously was the deputy under secretary for artificial intelligence and technology at DoE, leading efforts to drive the use of AI and machine learning across the department’s core missions.
Kusnezov joined the federal government in 2001, spending nearly 18 years at the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous arm of the DoE responsible for ensuring the effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. His tenure at NNSA included serving as the chief scientist.
The White House said that Kusnezov has worked with minority serving institutions, international partners, other federal agencies and the private sector. He “has delivered major milestones such as the DoE’s 10-year grand challenge for a 100 Teraflop supercomputer, and first of their kind and world’s fastest supercomputers,” the White House said.