President Donald Trump has appointed Randolph Alles, former acting deputy commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection and a retired Marine Corps major general, as director of the U.S. Secret Service, the White House announced Tuesday.

Alles performed duties of a chief operating officer during his tenure as CBP acting deputy commissioner and previously served as acting executive assistant commissioner of the agency’s enterprise services branch as well as deputy assistant commissioner of the air and marine operations group.

He has held various leadership positions at the Marine Corps and joint commands during his 35-year military career and gained experience in work areas such as aviation maintenance, flight training, logistics, quality assurance and standardization.

Alles holds a bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M University and a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies from Naval War College.

The Government Accountability Office has called on the Federal Aviation Administration to implement initiatives to identify FAA’s long term research-and-development priorities and  comply with research-related statutory reporting requirements.

GAO said Monday it found that FAA does not fully meet requirements, guidance and leading practices on the management of the agency’s R&D portfolio.

FAA has yet to address all statutory reporting requirements such as the identification of long term research resources in the National Aviation Research Plan and the creation of the R&D Annual Review, GAO added.

The congressional watchdog noted FAA has begun to explore ways to improve the usefulness and timeliness of its R&D reports but the agency has yet to specify necessary changes.

GAO also found that FAA does not formally study the impact of its R&D activities on the private sector because FAA and the industry have varying research objectives.

Three private companies told GAO there is “little evidence” that FAA’s actions prevent private sector firms from launching their own R&D projects.

GAO recommended that the Transportation Department direct the FAA administrator to outline long term R&D priorities; disclose project selection methods; and validate that FAA’s NARP and R&D Annual Reviews meet statutory requirements for content.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity has launched an effort to research and develop “quantum enhanced” computers.

The Quantum Enhanced Optimization program aims to develop technology that can speed up the training of machine learning algorithms; support circuit fault diagnostics on larger circuits; and accelerate optimal scheduling of multiple machines on multiple tasks, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Monday.

“The goal of the QEO program is a design for quantum annealers that provides a 10,000-fold increase in speed on hard optimization problems, which improves at larger and larger problem sizes when compared to conventional computing methods,” said Karl Roenigk, QEO program manager at IARPA.

IARPA has awarded a QEO research contract to a consortium led by the University of Southern California.

The team includes Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, California Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California at Berkeley, University College London, Saarland University, University of Waterloo and Tokyo Institute of Technology.

NASA‘s Ames Research Center and Texas A&M University will also provide validation support for the program, ODNI noted.