FOUNDER
About the Founder & CEO
Dr. Thomas A. Campbell — globally recognized senior analyst and researcher in emerging and disruptive technologies — is the Founder & CEO of FutureGrasp, which advises organizations on trends and implications of emerging technologies. He is also co-director of LEAP Manufacturing, which is building a research and industry partnership designed to be the leading force for accelerating advanced energy systems (specifically, new sustainable batteries for grid energy storage and transportation systems, including electric vehicles and aerospace). The combination of a unique holistic view of technology and deep experience in multiple genres of research communities enables Tom to successfully identify technology trends and offer actionable insights to capitalize upon and to develop sound policies around them. Tom has informed senior policymakers and corporate leaders, enabled millions of dollars of industry and academic funding, broken ground in new research areas, served as an expert witness in technology-related litigations, and kept diverse groups abreast of the rapid pace and implications of technology change. His career encompasses national and international experience in government, academia, industry, startups and national laboratories. He is also a Senior Fellow with the Council on Competitiveness (Washington, D.C.), a Special Advisor to BootstrapLabs (San Francisco, CA), and a Member of the Board of Advisors of the Global TechnoPolitics Forum (Canoga Park, CA).
From February 2015 to August 2017, Tom was the first National Intelligence Officer for Technology (NIO/TECH) with the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). As NIO/TECH, he served as the focal point within the ODNI for all activities related to emerging and disruptive civil technologies. With his team (deputy NIO/TECH and others on assignments) and in collaboration with other NIOs and government agencies, he drafted, coordinated reviews of, and briefed a broad portfolio of intelligence products for senior policymakers—including senior directors in the National Security Council, senior staff of the Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP), Senators, Congressmen, and senior ranking officers within the Department of Defense. Tom established and managed liaison relationships with academia, industry, and others to ensure a comprehensive understanding of technology and its intersection with global military, security, economic, financial and energy issues.
Prior to his government service, Tom was Research Associate Professor and Associate Director for Outreach with the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS) at Virginia Tech for over six years. He led corporate outreach and facilitated large, multi-principal investigator (PI) program and proposal developments in interdisciplinary areas. Tom assisted commercialization of faculty research into spin-offs, joint ventures, and licensing. He organized national and international outreach for ICTAS, including establishing an innovation research center on every continent and organizing and running major conferences. He built a research lab from scratch and performed fundamental research on nanomaterials and 3D- and 4D-printing, culminating in the 2014 Outstanding Paper award in the top journal in the field. He was frequently called upon by journalists from around the world as an expert in 3d and 4d printing, and he gave dozens of keynotes and invited talks to industry and the US Government.
Leveraging his expertise in emerging technologies, Tom was a Senior Fellow (Non-resident) with the Strategic Foresight Initiative of the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. for almost two years. He helped guide the Atlantic Council in consideration of emerging technologies for their implications to geopolitics and societal disruption.
Tom’s industry experience covers both small business and large corporations. He worked three years at ADA Technologies, Inc., where he led proposal concept, writing, and project execution of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) proposals. He helped spin-off two companies from ADA as separate small businesses. For five years, Tom was a Research Scientist at Saint-Gobain Crystals (part of the French Fortune 100 company Saint-Gobain), where he was PI and R&D Project Leader during a $13 million dollar expansion project for optical microlithography materials processing.
Tom is a recipient of the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship, granted to global researchers for post-doctoral research in Germany. Living in Freiburg, Germany for 16 months, he executed all his research in the German language (having learned German from scratch in four months at the Freiburg Goethe Institut). He developed and implemented novel experimental studies of interfacial kinetics and crystal characterizations of germanium-silicon compounds. Following his return to the United States, he was a Member of the Board of Directors of the American Friends of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and Chair of its Strategic Planning Standing Committee.
Tom holds a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research was funded under a three-year NASA Graduate Student Researcher Program Fellowship. He designed, constructed and implemented an in-situ, real-time visualization capability using non-intrusive X-ray radioscopy to study opaque semiconductor materials and liquid metals; he built the measurement and controls system from scratch with ca. US $1.0 million worth of equipment. Tom holds a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering (Magna Cum Laude, Honors in Mechanical Engineering) from Vanderbilt University. At Vanderbilt, he was President of the Pi Tau Sigma Mechanical Engineering Honor Society, a Member of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society (comprising the top 10% of engineering students based on GPA), and a Member of the Gamma Beta Phi Honor Society.