Timothy Persons [center] holds the Director of National Intelligence Fellows Award, alongside John D. Negroponte [left], then the U.S. director of national intelligence, and Eric C. Haseltine, associate director for science and technology.

IEEE Member Timothy Persons was honored on 15 December with the Director of National Intelligence Fellows Award for his research within the U.S. intelligence community. Persons is the technical director and chief scientist for the Disruptive Technology Office (DTO) at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in Washington, D.C. The annual award comes with a US $200 000 grant to be used in research addressing some of the more challenging science and technology issues facing the intelligence community today. The award was presented at the headquarters of the director of national intelligence. Persons was one of 10 recipients.

“Considering the sheer number of talented colleagues in the science and technology sector alone, this was not something I was expecting,” Persons says. “It’s an honor to be chosen.”

Persons, 36, has been with the DTO for more than four years, overseeing research projects and planning new ones. The term “disruptive technology” describes an innovation or product that eventually overturns and replaces the existing dominant technology.

Persons has conducted research into how molecular-scale optoelectronics interact with light, quantum entanglement, and computational imaging systems.

He joined the National Security Agency in 2001 and spent a year learning cryptographic principles. He moved into the agency’s Advanced Research and Development Activity as a technical director and technical program manager in its nascent quantum cryptography program. In 2005, he was named the DTO’s technical director and chief scientist.

To be successful, Persons says, one must find and hold onto great mentors and be an eternal student. “To constantly learn new things challenges you and keeps you grounded in how little you really know—which is excellent for ego maintenance,” he explains.

As for mentors, it’s important to find people whose experience makes for a “treasure trove of wisdom,” he says.

Persons sees himself remaining in his leadership role. “My job is tremendously satisfying,” he says. He plans to invest the grant in researching ultraslow, or “stopped,” light; commodity-based petascale computing systems; or an exotic computational imaging system he has in mind.