Event Speakers

Douglas A. Comstock
Director of the Innovative Partnerships Program
NASA

Douglas A. Comstock is the director of NASA’s Innovative Partnerships Program (IPP). Th e IPP provides leveraged technology for NASA’s mission directorates, programs and projects through investments and technology partnerships with industry, academia, government agencies and national laboratories.

Comstock also is responsible for directing the IPP portfolio of technology investments and partnering mechanisms including Small Business Innovative Research, Small Business Technology Transfer Research, the Centennial Challenges and the Innovative Partnerships Seed Fund. Additionally, he is responsible for intellectual property management and technology transfer that will provide broad societal benefi ts from the nation’s investment in NASA’s space and aeronautics missions, and for encouraging and facilitating partnerships with the emerging commercial space sector including the agency’s purchase of emerging commercial services.

Comstock previously served as the NASA comptroller, responsible for the preparation, tracking, presentation and defense of NASA’s budget to the White House Offi ce of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Congress. As the founding director of NASA’s Strategic Investments Division, he was responsible for integrating NASA’s strategic planning and program analysis supporting budget decisions into a single organization. Under his leadership, NASA was the fi rst agency to achieve GREEN status as part of the President’s Management Agenda for Budget and Performance Integration and NASA received its fi rst honorable mention for the President’s Quality Award.

Before coming to NASA, Comstock spent four years as a program examiner in OMB, with responsibility for NASA’s human space fl ight activities, biological and physical research and personnel. Prior to his government service, he was Director of Engineering with the Futron Corporation, a Bethesda, Md.-based technology consulting fi rm, and began his career with General Dynamics Space Systems Division, conducting preliminary design and systems analysis for numerous aerospace systems, from strategic defense to advanced space transportation.

Comstock has undergraduate degrees from the University of Washington in both mechanical engineering and architecture. He did his graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received masters degrees in both aeronautics and astronautics, and technology and policy.