October 2, 2017

Lisa M. Zurk named executive director of UW Applied Physics Laboratory

Lisa Zurk will be the next executive director of the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington (APL-UW), Vice Provost for Research Mary Lidstrom announced this week. She will be the first woman to hold the position of executive director of APL-UW. Zurk comes to the UW from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where she directed allocation of the nation’s research investments. As a program manager in the agency’s Strategic Technology Office, her area of interest was physics-based processing techniques applied to advanced sensor system concepts.

An alumna of the UW, Zurk’s most recent academic position was as professor of electrical and computer engineering at Portland State University. During her decade-long career at PSU she founded and co-directed the Northwest Electromagnetic and Acoustics Research Laboratory (NEAR-Lab), which is recognized nationally for developing advanced techniques to exploit physics-based wave phenomena.

Zurk will join the UW this spring to become the eighth leader of APL-UW, succeeding Jeff Simmen, the executive director since 2003. Bob Miyamoto, director for defense and industry programs at APL-UW, will serve as interim executive director. Read the full article in UWNEWS.