Michael Griffin, undersecretary of Research and Engineering at the Department of Defense (DoD) and a two-time Wash100 Award winner, and his deputy Lisa Porter will leave their current posts on July 10, Defense News reported Tuesday. Griffin and Porter said in a letter to their staff that they have decided to pursue together a career opportunity in the private sector.
“It has been a pleasure leading this great team over the past few years. We greatly appreciate your hard work, diligence, integrity, and devotion to technical excellence and technical truth in furtherance of the R&E mission,” they wrote in the letter. “We wish you all the very best.”
Griffin assumed his current post in early 2018 to oversee directed energy, hypersonic weapons and other technology capabilities for DoD. Agencies under his leadership included the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). He served as NASA administrator under President George W. Bush.
Porter has been serving as deputy undersecretary for research and engineering at the Pentagon since 2018. She previously served as executive vice president and director of In-Q-Tel Labs.
