Milan (Mitch) Nikolich
Dr. Milan (Mitch) Nikolich serves as the Chair of the Science, Technology and Innovation Board. He previously served as the Director of Defense Research and Engineering for Research and Technology with establishment of the then Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering in 2018. He was responsible for near, mid, and long-term development and rapid transition of technologies into applications ranging from prototyping, experimentation, demonstrations and acquisitions for battlefield applications. He was also responsible for leading the Department’s efforts in Directed Energy Weapons, Microelectronics, Quantum Science, Biotechnology, as well as Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence and Cyber technology.
An electrical engineer by education with concentration in plasma physics, he began his career at the outset of the Strategic Defense Initiative conducting space power technology and architecture assessments, later conducting assessments to guide decisions across the full range of missile defense technologies. This culminated in membership in the U.S. delegation sent to Russia under Presidents Bush and Yeltsin to find areas of common ground in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. He later helped to establish the Department’s Counterproliferation Program in the wake of the first Gulf war – an effort to equip our fighting forces to prevail against adversaries that might use chemical or biological weapons on the battlefield. He has extensive experience in all aspects of nuclear weapons including weapon effects, strategy, planning, operations, non-proliferation and arms control. He participated in arms control talks in Geneva with the Russian Federation on the disposition of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the New Start Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. He also worked on the Congressional Commission on High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (commonly referred to as the EMP Commission).
A former co-owner of a small business, over the span of four decades, he also held senior positions with several companies in the Defense sector, worked in the Physics Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was a part time faculty member at the George Washington University Space Policy Institute and served on the Board of Directors of the George C. Marshall Institute – an organization committed to the application of sound science to public policy issues. He has worked in both the Pentagon and in the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.
Dr. Nikolich holds a BS, MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is currently a senior staff member at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory where he is responsible for technical analyses to guide research activities at the Lab and formulating recommendations to the Department of War on the development and application of advanced technology to ensure U.S. military dominance.