Dr. Amy Henninger serves as Senior Advisor for Advanced Computing (AC) in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) S&T Technology Centers, providing strategic vision and leadership to programs and policy makers in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cybersecurity, Data Analytics, Modeling and Simulation (M&S), and Quantum Information Science.
Prior to joining DHS, Dr. Henninger’s work traversed the private/public defense sector space. In the public sector, she has served in several special term appointment technology leadership positions in the DoD and IC that, cumulatively, span the RDT&E space.
- Interagency personnel appointment to the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, leading digital engineering and standards portfolio for systems engineering.
- Highly Qualified Expert (HQE) Army M&S Executive, providing vision, leadership, and oversight for a $10B M&S portfolio; and advising the Army’s Senior Analyst on studies supporting operational requirements analyses.
- Defense Intelligence Senior Leader Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Senior Advisor, leading the development of the Agency’s Digital Transformation Strategy.
- HQE Senior Advisor for Software and Cybersecurity, serving as the Pentagon’s final technical authority in the assessment of software and cybersecurity T&E on major DoD programs for the Director, Operational T&E. She has over 200 hours training with NSA Cyber Red Teams.
In the private sector, she served at a federally funded research and development center, leading a variety of strategic technology initiatives including the development of a software assurance primer promulgated by CISA and NSA as recommended reading. Dr. Henninger’s other private sector experience includes founding a P&L center of Soar Technology, Inc., a tech startup focused on third-wave context-informed AI solutions that grew out of the AI Laboratory at the University of Michigan. Over her tenure, Dr. Henninger led research teams sponsored by DARPA and other Defense agencies, growing the office by 400%. Her private sector experience also includes co-leading the development of a distributed virtual training system used to train over 1.5M soldiers.
Dr. Henninger earned a PhD in Computer Engineering with emphasis and dissertation work in AI. She has taught undergraduate classes in computer science and graduate classes in AI, authored over 80 publications, and received multiple awards for her work.
