Stefanie Tompkins

Stefanie Tompkins is an American geologist. She was the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) from 2021 to 2025. In February 2025, the Colorado School of Mines announced that she would be its next Provost, starting May 12, 2025.

Biography Tompkins was born on January 21, 1967, on a U.S. Army base in South Korea, She attended the ʻIolani high school in Honolulu, graduating in 1983.

Tompkins graduated from Princeton University in 1987 with a degree in geology and geophysics.

In 2007 Tompkins joined DARPA's Strategic Technology Office as a program manager. In the next decade, according to DARPA, she held many roles at the agency, including a stint as director of the Defense Sciences Office.

In February 2018, she left DARPA to become vice president for research and technology transfer at Colorado School of Mines, spending three years there. Regarding her decision to leave DARPA for Mines, Tompkins told an interviewer:

According to Tompkins, her time at Mines was a valuable preparation for understanding "critical mineral supply chains" and the role of academia "in the national security ecosystem".

DARPA leadership In 2016, Tompkins described to Michigan State University faculty DARPA's mission: "to make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security" in order to prevent, or to create, "strategic surprise".

Tompkins was on the list of President Biden's first political appointees to Pentagon positions, released January 19, 2021. Air Force Magazine noted that this would be the "third recent shuffle" of DARPA leadership. Former director Victoria Coleman resigned the directorship the day after, having served for only four months in the position. The position of DARPA director does not require Senate confirmation.

On March 15, 2021, Tompkins became DARPA's 23rd director.