February 20, 2019
Dr. David Bell has been appointed as the new Director of NASA Academic Mission Services (NAMS) Program, effective February 20, 2019.
In this role, Dr. Bell will serve as Site Manager for NAMS activities at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California. He joined USRA in 2002, and serves currently as both Director, Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science (RIACS) and NAMS Chief Technologist. In his latter role, David’s focus is enabling R&D collaborations between universities, industry, and NASA in a range of domains, including quantum computing, machine learning, autonomous systems, nanotechnology, and biotechnology. Among his many contributions as RIACS Director is the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a collaboration among USRA, Google, and NASA.
Prior to working with USRA, Dr. Bell worked for ten years as a member of the research staff at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, in the Scientific & Engineering Reasoning Area of the Systems and Practices Lab. At Xerox, he conducted multi-disciplinary research with computer scientists developing novel artificial intelligence software and social scientists who studied work practices of organizations. David also held an appointment at MIT where he led a research program in the Center for Innovation in Product Development. In this capacity, David led a research program involving faculty and students at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the MIT School of Engineering, and the Stanford Management Science & Engineering and Design Research programs. Partner organizations included the U.S. Navy, ITT Industries, IBM, General Motors, Ford, and others. David received his Ph.D. from Cornell University with a dissertation on the dynamics of product development processes, is co-inventor on multiple patents, and author of around 30 papers.