Dr. Craig Schlenoff
NITRD NCO Director
The Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) National Coordination Office (NCO) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Craig Schlenoff as its new Director. Dr. Schlenoff served as Deputy Director for the NITRD Program since September 2023. Dr. Schlenoff joins the NITRD NCO from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where he served as the Group Leader of the Cognition and Collaboration Systems Group and the Program Manager of the Measurement Science for Manufacturing Robotics Program in the Intelligent Systems Division. He also served as a co-chair for the NITRD Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Interagency Working Group.
While at NIST, Dr. Schlenoff led the Agility Performance of Robotic Systems project and co-led the Embodied AI and Data Generation for Manufacturing Robotics project. He has also led multiple million-dollar projects, dealing with performance evaluation of advanced military technologies and agility performance of manufacturing robotic systems. Previously, Dr. Schlenoff served as the Program Manager for the Process Engineering Program at NIST and the Director of Ontologies at VerticalNet. Dr. Schlenoff is the Associate Vice President for Standardization within the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and the vice chair of the IEEE Robot Task Representation Working Group.
Dr. Schlenoff has research interests in knowledge representation/ontologies, intention recognition, and performance evaluation techniques applied to manufacturing robotic systems. He has published over 150 journal and conference papers, guest edited three journals, and written three book chapters.
Dr. Schlenoff received his Bachelor of Science from the University of Maryland and Master of Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, both in Mechanical Engineering. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Burgundy, France.
Dr. Schlenoff succeeds Kamie Roberts and will become the 15th Director for the NITRD Program.
The NITRD Program Directors throughout the years:
| Name | Dates | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Donald A.B. Lindberg | September 1992 – March 1995 | |
| John C. Toole | March 1995 – July 1997 | |
| Sally E. Howe | July 1997 – December 1997 | acting director |
| Kay Howell | December 1997 – September 2000 | |
| Cita M. Furlani | October 2000 – November 2002 | |
| David B. Nelson | December 2002 – April 2005 | |
| Simon Szykman | May 2005 – January 2007 | |
| Charles Romine | January 2007 – October 2007 | acting director |
| Christopher L. Greer | October 2007 – September 2009 | |
| Ernest L. McDuffie | September 2009 – November 2009 | acting director |
| George O. Strawn | November 2009 – June 2015 | |
| Keith Marzullo | June 2015 – July 2016 | |
| Bryan Biegel | August 2016 – July 2018 | |
| Kamie Roberts | August 2018 – October 2023 |
Please join us in welcoming him and congratulating him on this appointment.